Japanese Confucianism and War

It is a widely held belief that State Shinto was the main indigenous ideological driver of Japan’s descent into ultranationalism and war in the 1930s. However, much less is known today of Japanese Confucian justifications for war in the same era. This article joins a small group of other studies researching a now little-known educational and research association formed in 1918 by Japanese Confucian scholars and Sinologists, the Shibunkai (斯文会) which reached the peak of its influence and patronage from Japan’s political elite in the 1930’s. This article reviews the Shibunkai’s early efforts to revive traditional Confucian morality and promote Chinese learning, its pursuit of “Confucian Diplomacy” with the Kong family estate at Qufu in Shandong Province, and its elaboration of a Confucian Pan-Asian doctrine that accorded Japan, with its supposed purified version of Confucianism, the role of leader and guardian of East Asia’s spiritual and moral culture. Last, this article analyses some of the seldom-studied war-era literature produced by Shibunkai scholars to argue that a modern Japanese “Imperial Way” Confucianism played a role in the moral legitimation of Japan’s war against China in 1937-1945. Based on its analysis of the Occidentalism and self-Orientalism in the Shibunkai’s wartime publications, the article concludes that there is a need for more critical reflection on Occidentalist and self-Orientalist trends in Confucian normative theorizing amidst the troubled geopolitical conditions of East Asia today. KCI Citation Count: 0