Demystifying Confucianism

Demystifying Confucianism

By Yoko Miyamoto

Copyright 2011 Yoko Miyamoto

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Disciple: A Novella on Confucius

Chapter 2 On Confucius and Confucianism

Chapter 3 Confucius, Laozi, Daoism, and Buddhism

Chapter 4 The Disciple and Japanese Understanding of Confucianism

Chapter 5 The Journey to the West: Chinese Views of History

Chapter 6 Creation of Lesser Gods: The World of Daoist Magic

Chapter 7 The Mandate of Heaven: The Traditional Social Contract of China

Chapter 8 Romance of Three Kingdoms: Male Bonding as Sanctity

Chapter 9 Women in Romance of Three Kingdoms: Seductress, Warrioress, and Wise Mothers

Chapter 10 Water Margin: Chinese Robin Hood and His Bandits

Chapter 11 Women in Water Margin: Repression of Romantic Love and Civil Service Examinations

Epilogue

About the Author

Introduction

The Mysterious East is a cliché you often hear when Asia is mentioned. When Jackie Chan and Jet Lee are big movie stars, youth throughout the world read manga and watch anime, and fashionable adults know something of Fen Shui, Tao, and Zen, why is Asia still a mystery?

The short answer is that Asians allow it to be a mystery. Asians identify themselves as Asians only when they are away from home. Though they know that they share their cultural bonds, most Asians do not bother to name what that common bond is. For people who have been influenced by Chinese civilization (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, to a lesser degree, Singapore. and their expats communities), the common bond is popular Confucianism. Confucianism has been the guiding principle of Chinese civilization for over twenty-five centuries. Yet Confucians have not realized that they need to explain their morality to outsiders. Confucians believe their ethics are universal human moral values. Every human, by virtue of being human, is expected to understand and share Confucian ethics so there is no need to explain to outsiders, because they do not —nay, cannot— exist.

In other words, Confucianism has never addressed the issue of the insider-outsider chasm that characterizes other major religions of the world. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed as the faiths of minority groups struggling against powerful majorities of the society. These traditions, therefore, have sharp focus on insider-outsider chasm.

One of Judaism’s most important religious holidays is Passover. Passover commemorates and celebrates the Exodus, the tale of how Moses led the Jews out of rich, powerful, and idolatrous Egypt where they had been slaves, how Moses received the Commandments, and how the Jews settled down in their promised land to form their own new nation under the protection of their one true God. Exodus depicts the righteousness of Jewish people as the opposite of the sinful Egyptian masters who had enslaved them. By defining the Jewishness as the opposite of Egypt, the Mosaic Law establishes the theme of the righteous minority (religious insiders) versus the mighty but evil majority (religious outsiders).

Christianity’s most important holidays are Christmas and Easter. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ and the Easter commemorates his crucificion and resurrection. Christ died on the cross as the leader of an anti-establishment religious group. Jesus’ Passion —the story of his persecution, crucificion, and triumphant resurrection— is the defining story of Christianity. It depicts Christians as those who suffer persecution because of their faith; they suffer at the hand of corrupt and ignorant authorities who cannot grasp the truth of their faith. The chasm of insider-outsider (believer versus non-believer) is prominent.

Islam also emphasizes the insider-outsider chasm. Hearing the voice of God in the desert, Muhammed (also spelled Muhammad or Mohammed) surrendered to Him. Islam means surrender (to Allah’s will). Muhammed embraced the monotheistic faith of Islam amidst polytheistic Arab society. Muhammed became a religious and social rebel who defied the prevailing social convention. Muhammed and his followers were not welcomed by the polytheistic majority so they moved from Medina to Mecca to escape persecution. They subsequently triumphed over their former persecutors. In the Islamic pilgrimage of Hajj, one of Five Pillars of Islam, Muslim pilgrims symbolically retrace the footsteps of Muhhamed and his earliest followers. The Islamic insider-outsider chasm is most clearly expressed in the traditional Islamic of notion of dividing the world into Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam) and Dar al-harb (the House of War).

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, thus, all started out as minority challengers to predominant society. Even the South Asian religion of Buddhism shares the characteristics of challenge to and detachment from the prevailing society. Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563 BCE to 483 BCE), the founder of Buddhism, was born a prince and lived in luxury. At the age of 29, shocked by the discovery that many of his subjects lived in poverty and sickness, Siddhartha left the palace and his family, and pursued a life of extreme asceticism. After many days of self-punishing fasting, he achieved Enlightenment where he found the Middle Way, or disciplined moderation which is neither self-indulgent nor self-punishing. Through his Enlightenment, he moved into a different stage of being and became the Buddha who exists outside of the bound of regular human society. The Buddha started off as an insider, but ended up as an outsider. Buddhists, who become monks and nuns in imitation of Buddha, similarly leave their familial and social bonds behind to become outsiders and are very much considered as such.

The insider-outsider distinction in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make their followers aware that there are those who do not share their faiths. They have a tradition of telling dramatic stories of conflict between the believers and non-believers. Though they do not tell such tales of conflicts, Buddhists have been trying to enlighten non-Buddhists to their truths (and consequently better known and understood than Confucianism in the West). In contrast, Confucians do not know how to explain their beliefs to those who do not share Confucian ethics, because, according to their thinking, such humans do not exist.

Mencius (c.372 BCE-289BCE), the Second Sage of Confucianism, who explained Confucius to the world in the way that Paul explained Jesus, said that if you saw a baby about to fall into a well, you would feel something. That feeling is the beginning of ethics, the essence of civilized life, and the foundation of Confucianism. You cultivate that feeling, extend it to your family, then to your neighbors, and eventually to all of society. If you don’t feel moved by a baby about to fall into a well, then you are not human. End of argument, at least from the Confucian point of view.

When the Mughal dynasty came to rule India in the sixteenth century, the Muslim conquerors called the Indians who did not convert to Islam the Hindus. Grouped together under a new name, the very diverse Indians were forced to forge a new self-identity as the Hindus vis-à-vis the Muslim rulers. Confucians knew no such encounters until the mid-nineteenth century where they started to feel the pressure of the Western colonialism.

After decades of struggling with the question how to reconcile the tradition and modernization, China under the Communist government denounced the traditional values of Confucianism, Daoism (Taoism), and Buddhism (as well as the corrupt bourgeois Western capitalists) in an attempt at a wholesale change of Chinese culture into his brand of agrarian communism. Not only the Communist Party, but also many Western sociologists, following the German sociologist Max Weber's argument, claimed that Asian countries could not develop capitalism because of Confucianism. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea have since more than sufficiently proven that Confucianism is no hindrance to the development of capitalism. Singapore, whose first prim minister Yuan Yew Lee prominently embraced Confucianism, has become a high-tech and financial power hub.

After the passing of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, the Chinese have been rediscovering and reclaiming their cultural traditions. Even the Communist Chinese government that once denounced Confucianism now calls their official language teaching program the Confucius Institute. It has also declared in 2008 that it will build the Chinese Culture Symbolic City centering on Confucius’s birthplace in eastern Shandong province; it is projected to be a city sized monument celebrating traditional Chinese culture, with its focus on Confucius. New Confucian schools are popping up in China and books on Confucianism hit the bestseller list. Yu Dan, whom some call China’s Oprah, sold multi-million copies of Confucius From the Heart: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World (Chinese original in 2007) and runs very popular self-help shows loosely based on Confucius’ words. The Chinese even instituted their Confucius Peace Prize in 2010. The process of forging the Confucian identity vis-à-vis the Western world has only started in China.

I think it is high time that we Confucians start trying to explain Confucianism to non-Confucians.

Many fine books have been written in English on Confucius and Confucianism. These fine academic books tend to have the intellectuals’ bias toward high culture and great philosophers. Yes, they are the pinnacles of the culture, but they are not the sole content of Confucian culture. In order to understand Confucianism as culture, one needs know common people's understanding of Confucianism. In the traditional popular Chinese culture, Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism are closely intertwined. While intellectuals may distinguish differences between Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, common people accept mixture as the norm. The vast majority of people learned about the workings of the world not through Confucius’ Analects, but through popular stories. If we only focus on Confucian intellectuals, we fail to understand Confucianism as culture.

Popular stories, borrowing freely from accumulated traditional oral lore of common people, are as much the creation of individual authors as of many generations of storytellers. The Chinese have told and retold rich and colorful tales of heroes and villains, gods and demons, battles and intrigue, love and treachery, flying daggers and dragons, magic and miracles, and of magnitudes saved and slain. These stories have been the backbone of popular Confucian culture. They also form the shared cultural heritage the inhabitants of the Confucian cultural sphere; Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and all their expatriates around the world have shared these stories as their heritage, not only in book forms, but also in human and marionette plays, storytelling on street corners and in theaters, radio and TV shows, movies, and more recently, anime, manga, and video games. Korean TV dramas are popular in mainland China because of their Confucian story lines. Hong Kong and Chinese movies are very popular in Japan. And Hong Kong and Taiwan sometimes make movies based upon Japanese novels and manga. Popular stories were, and still are, the conveyors of a living and evolving tradition.

These popular stories are also great materials to rebuff the prevailing preconception that Confucian culture is uniformly repressive toward women. Yes, as the philosophy of a patriarchal society, male Confucian moralists tried hard to keep women in their proper place, just as the Christian church tried to make women swear not only to love and cherish but also serve and obey their husbands. How successful such efforts were, however, is another question. China is a vast country of 5,000 years long history with many local custom differences, which cannot be painted by one monolithic Confucian model. As the Chinese sociologist Lin Yueh-hwa remarks (not about the popular novels but about the real state of Chinese marriage): As against the common view of the Chinese women as a suppressed being, subordinate to her men folk and her mother-in-law in ways which render her almost a chattel, we are given here examples of a woman who has money of her own, investing in business; of sister-in-law fighting beyond the control of their husbands’ uncle; of a man being nagged by his own wife for defending his daughter-in-law; of a daughter-in-law …chasing her husband round the room with a knife… There are many stories of wife-phobic husbands in Chinese literature. Some even argue what looks like repression is the reflection of men's female phobia.

So, that's what I am trying to do here; demystifying Confucianism and Confucian culture mainly using popular stories. I need to qualify my intent. I am not trying to argue that my understanding is the true or correct understanding of Confucianism. I am simply trying to present how I, as modern Japanese, understand Confucius and Confucianism. For that purpose, I use a Japanese novella titled The Disciple as the starting point in understanding Confucius and Confucianism (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 discusses Confucius and Confucianism, expanding and supplementing what is told in The Disciple.

Daoism (Taoism) and Buddhism are intertwined with Confucianism in Chinese culture. Chapter 3 looks at the relationship of these three religions. The Disciple has a Japanese slant of leaning toward martial. The historical reason behind this tendency is explored in Chapter 4.

The Journey to the West, which is a Mahayana Buddhism propaganda edutainment, expressly tells that three holy teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism can peacefully coexist in China. The novel also shows how the Chinese viewed the history and time, which is very different from the Western views. (Chapter 5)

Daoist magic novel Creation of Lesser Gods tells the rise of the Zhou dynasty that laid the foundation of imperial China as a part of gods' world reorganization plan. While Daoist gods got rid of their accumulated aggression by warring and killing, the human world went through the turmoil of dynasty change.(Chapter 6) This novel teaches the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, the idea that the emperor gains or loses his right to rule through his virtue or lack thereof. This idea was the traditional social contract of China and still retains its influence in China. (Chapter 7)

Romance of Three Kingdoms is said to capture the essence of being Chinese; being political, operating on the basis of personal bond of trust. This novel is well known for the Live together, die together brand of male bonding of three central hero, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei. Romance of Three Kingdoms recounts the events of the war-torn Three Kingdoms period with tales of battles and political intrigues, intricate war strategies and tactics, and winners and losers. (Chapter 8) Even though male bonding looms large in Romance of Three Kingdoms, women also play various interesting rolls. Chapter 9 introduces these remarkable women, including Diaochan who is counted as one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China and the wise mother who dies as a martyr, smiling.

Water Margin is a Robin Hood type bandit novel. While Romance of Three Kingdoms mostly describes the lives of political leader class, Water Margin describes mostly the lives of middle class and lower, showing how common people viewed the world. (Chapter 10) This novel offers a look into the repression of romantic love in Chinese literary tradition. It also shows how the imperial bureaucracy based on the civil service examination system were perceived by common people. (Chapter 11)

Epilogue offers a brief introduction to the dreamy, romantic family saga Red Chamber Dream. By introducing these classic stories and explaining their relevance to the contemporary society, Demystifying Confucianism aims to offer an easier way to understand East Asian Confucian culture.

A Note on the Chinese Romanization

The way the people of Confucian cultural sphere shared the heritage is learning to read written classical Chinese. Written classical Chinese was a lingua franca of Asia, by which different ethnic groups could communicate. Many non-Han Chinese emperors were not only literate in Chinese but also could compose elegant poetry in Chinese. Even now, if they do not speak each others' language, Japanese and Chinese try to communicate in writing Chinese characters.

There are different methods of Romanizing Chinese language. The two most commonly used forms are Wade-Giles and Pinyin. The Chinese government uses Pinyin as the official Romanization method. The concurrent existences of different Romanization systems, which sometimes transcribe the same Chinese character in very different forms, make things very difficult for the English writers and readers. The highest Confucian moral virtue of love for the fellow humans is spelled as ren in Pinyin, and as jen in Wade-Giles. This is almost maddening. Since when j and r are the same sound?

In Chinese, same sound with different tones (flat, going up, going up only at the end, and going down) can mean different characters and meanings. Even with pronunciation marks, there are often plural characters the sound could mean; the only way to make clear which character it is to supplement the pronunciation with Chinese character. Supplementing Chinese characters to every ambiguous word makes it very cumbersome to read.

There is no perfect solution. Some academics use Wide-Giles, while others use Pinyin without pronunciation marks. They sometimes supply Chinese characters for the words of importance in their context. Though this is not a very satisfactory solution, this is the best compromise method we have for transcribing Chinese into English. Here I choose to use Pinyin, but without pronunciation marks, and supply Chinese characters as I see necessary.

When I was checking out books on Confucianism from a library, the circulation guy joked, Some may call it Confusionism! While I do not believe Confucianism is in any sense confused or confusing, there is no denying that the Romanized forms of Chinese language in deed remain very confusing.

Back to ToC

References

J. P. Fokkelman, Exodus, in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed., Robert Alter and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987).

Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986).

Ernst S. Freichs, Introduction, in Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence, ed. Ernst S. Freichs and Leonard H. Lesko (Winona: Eisenbrauns, 1992).

Michael Walzer, The House of Bondage: Slaves in Egypt, in Exodus, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1987).

Burton L. Mack, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q & Christian Origins (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1993).

Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth (New York: Harper Collins, 1995).

Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995).

Daniel N. Schowalter, Churches in Context: The Jesus Movement in the Roman World, in Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed. Michael David Coogan (Oxford, Eng. /New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians: Religion and Religious Life from the Second to the Fourth Century A.D. When the Gods of Olympus Lost their Dominion and Christianity, with the Conversion of Constantine, Triumphed in the Mediterranean World. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987).

Ernest Renan, Muhammad and the Origins of Islam, in The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, ed. Ibin Warraq (New York: Prometheus, 2000).

Entai Tomomatsu, Bukkyo Seiten (The Sacred Teaching of Buddha) (Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 1981).

Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Lin Yueh-hwa, The Golden Wing: A Sociological Study of Chinese Familism (New York: Kegan Paul Trench Trubner & Co., 1947). (The quote is from p. xiii-xiv.)

T. R. Reid, Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West (New York: Vintage, 2000).

Shinji Komada, Rongo: Sono Uraomote (Two Faces of the Analects) (Tokyo: Tokuma Shobou, 1989).

Chapter 1. The Disciple: A Novella on Confucius

Japanese novelist Nakajima Atsushi (1909-42) described Confucius through the eye of his disciple Zilu in a novella titled The Disciple (published posthumously in 1943). Nakajima was born into a family of renowned Confucian scholars. Though not a Confucian scholar by profession, he grew up steeped in Confucian learning and was very proficient in Chinese classics. Though he became famous only after his death, his novellas since came to be revered as masterpieces. His novellas are read and studied by Chinese scholars and have been translated into Chinese, too.

Supplementing the Analects with other historical materials, The Disciple recounts Confucius' life as a teacher. The protagonist of the story is Zilu who is counted as one of the ten best students of Confucius and the second most mentioned student in the Analects. (The most mentioned is Guanhui who also appears in this novella.) Zilu had been a tough guy before becoming a Confucius’ disciple, and had hard time learning the ways of cultured literati. By affectionately describing uncouth Zilu’s mishaps and misgivings, this novella makes a lively introduction to Confucianism.

I introduce this novella here partly because of its excellence, and partly because, as far as I know, Nakajima was the first one to successfully describe Confucius in the form of novel. The standard format to describe Confucius’ thoughts and life has been commentary, expanding the words recorded in the Analects with other historical sources and earlier commentaries. So, Nakajima's novella was quite daring. Similarly, no popular biography of Jesus existed until the French philosopher Ernst Renan attempted in The Life of Jesus (1863) which became a bestseller. Dramatizing Confucius' life still carries some risks today. When the film Confucius was produced in 2009 the celebration of the Republic’s 60th anniversary and Confucius’ 2560th birthday, the dramatization (especially Confucius’ alleged infatuation with the wicked beauty Nanzi) attracted considerable number of complaints.

I offer here a summary of the novella with some excerpts, since there is a full translation is published by Professor Nobuko Miyama Ochner. I did consult and gained insights from her translation, but the following translation is my own and any mistakes found are mine alone.

The Disciple tells that, before becoming Confucius’ disciple, Zilu was a roughneck, very much into the world of swords and fighting, and had no interest in learning. One day, Zilu decided to challenge Confucius who was becoming famous as a sage. Zilu walked into Confucius’ school carrying a rooster and a boar under his arms, intending to disturb the lecture by their squeaking and quacking, and thus provoking Confucius. Unperturbed by the rudeness of this noisy gate crasher, Confucius came out and calmly asked Zilu, What do you like? Zilu answered proudly, I like long swords!

"Confucius could not help but smiling. He saw in the young man’s voice and attitude so much of childish pride. However, this bullish young man’s healthy ruddy face, thick eyebrows, and bright big eyes somehow seemed to suggest underlying likable and earnest nature. Confucius asked again .

How about learning?

What use could there be for learning! Because saying this was the purpose of this visit, Zilu delivered the line with gusto, nearly shouting.

With learning’s authority thus challenged, Confucius could not just continue smiling. He began to explain patiently why learning is necessary. If a king does not have a subject who would remonstrate with him when he errs, he will lose the right way. If a man does not have a friend who offers moral guidance, he will lose moral qualities. Don’t trees need to be bound by a rope to become straight? Just as horses need whips and bows need the instrument to bend them, doesn’t a man need learning to correct his unruly nature? Everything requires straightening, shaping, and polishing to become useful.

Confucius was a very persuasive speaker, which cannot even be imagined from the written record of his words… The young man gradually lost his rebellious posturing and eventually started to listen attentively.

Still, Zilu had not lost the spirit to fight back. But they say that the bamboo of the Nanshan Mountain grows naturally straight without being tied, and, if one cuts and uses it, it will pierce even the thick rhinoceros hide. This proves that naturally superior men need no learning.

Confucius saw no challenge in rebutting such