The selective reinterpretation of Confucian ideas by political actors in China and Japan during the 1930s reveals how traditional philosophical concepts could be mobilised to define political loyalty, justify state violence, and construct alternatives to Western ideologies. These appropriations demonstrate that Confucianism was far more than a relic of dynastic times. Looking at two similar yet different moments shows how seemingly traditional ethical systems can be transformed into tools of modern political extremism. The rise of fascist movements in China and Japan during the 1930s, along with recent support for Confucian constitutionalism, demonstrates this ideological flexibility and its profound historical impact.
The most extreme political use of Confucian ideas occurred within China’s Nationalist Party (NP) and the Japanese imperial state during the turbulent interwar period. NP factions, notably the Blue Shirts and CC Clique, pursued what historian Frederic Wakeman describes as “Confucian fascism” through a domestically rooted fascist ideology rather than mere imitation of European models1 . After Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, figures like Dai Jitao promoted native culture as essential to revolutionary nationalism. Chiang Kai-shek expressed this synthesis in 1933, asserting that Sun’s principles “inherited the morality and vital spirit of ancient China from Emperors Yao and Shun, Kings Wen and Wu, the Duke of Zhou and Confucius” to “lead the revolution and revive the nation” (Clinton, Revolutionary Nativism, 407)
This nativist turn provided ideological justification for the White Terror between 1927 and 1937, during which the Nationalist government murdered and imprisoned Communists, liberals, and critics.2 Violence was depicted as moral purification rather than political repression. The New Life Movement of 1934 represented a practical implementation of this philosophy, aiming to militarise everyday life through reinterpretations of Confucian precepts.3 Chiang mandated that in homes, factories, and offices, everyone’s activities must resemble those in the army, explicitly seeking to turn the population into components of a vast social machine.4 This mechanistic vision combined traditional hierarchical relationships with modern industrial discipline.5 The movement promoted four core Confucian virtues but interpreted them through an authoritarian lens compatible with modernisation while claiming unbroken civilizational continuity.
Nationalist Party groups distilled Confucianism into a transhistorical national spirit that abstracted it from feudal contexts, made it compatible with modernisation, while claiming unbroken civilizational continuity.6 Blue Shirts openly advocated fascism in their publications through control of party media during the 1930s.7 As historian Maggie Clinton demonstrates, these groups rendered “Confucianism compatible with a path of modernisation” by linking it to national revolutionary culture and industrial modernity.8 The CC Clique, dominated by civilian bureaucrats Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu, worked alongside the militarily focused Blue Shirts to cement a one-party ideological state through cultural production and nationalist literature. Together, these factions intensified a Janus-faced glance toward both past and future, evident in all nationalisms.9
Japanese intellectuals pursued parallel appropriations of Confucian philosophy during the same period, though with distinct ideological aims. The Shibunkai, a Confucian scholarly society, wielded influence in government policy during the 1930s, serving as “China advisors” and submitting recommendations for joint research institutes and Confucian universities in occupied territories.10 They asserted that Japan’s Confucian-Shinto synthesis represented the Kingly Way of virtuous governance practised in its highest form through its unbroken line of emperors and unparalleled unity of filial piety and loyalty.11 This provided spiritual justification for Japanese expansionism by arguing they were engaged in a paternalistic undertaking, exhorting the Chinese to restore the Confucian Way and monarchical order.12 The transformation of Confucianism into an ideological tool of totalitarianism ironically began with the Meiji Restoration’s authoritarian state suppression of Confucian institutions and religious practice during the 1870s and 1880s, followed by its resurrection within the cold frame of Western philosophy.13
Both Chinese and Japanese appropriations shared fundamental characteristics. They extracted Confucian concepts from their original contexts and deployed them as instruments of state power rather than as ethical systems that constrained authority. Traditional emphasis on hierarchy, social harmony, and cultural continuity was weaponised to justify modern totalitarian projects. The intellectual apparatus constructed to promote this vision represented a profound reversal because the historical Confucian tradition had always maintained that rulers were subject to moral constraints and that Heaven’s mandate could be withdrawn from unrighteous governments. The role that Confucian philosophy played in legitimising fascist organisations demonstrates that gender relations and political systems cannot be reduced to ideological prescription alone. This historical pattern demonstrates that traditional cultural resources can be weaponised for any political project when decoupled from their original institutional contexts and ethical commitments.
- Frederick Wakeman, ‘A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade’, The China Quarterly, 1997 (150), pp.395-432 [↩]
- Ibid, 159 [↩]
- Ibid, 131 [↩]
- Ibid, 135 [↩]
- Ibid, 129 [↩]
- Ibid, 84 [↩]
- Ibid, 66 [↩]
- Clinton, p. 199 [↩]
- Ibid, 65 and 84 [↩]
- Paramore, ‘Japanese Confucianism’, 177-178 [↩]
- Ibid, 154-155 [↩]
- ibid, 154 [↩]
- Ibid, 141 [↩]