Author: d24

Intellectuals in Japan and China reawakened principles of Confucianism in response to Western domination of a certain conception of modernity, though their methods and goals would prove quite different. Confucianism had been heavily suppressed in Meiji Japan, with the rise of modern nationalism leading to the irreversible appropriation of spaces that had been hitherto intertwined with Confucian networks of knowledge, values and science.¹ Meanwhile in China, Confucianism was stifled by pushes towards western-inspired systems of education and modernisation, during the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries, particularly as foreign powers sought to assert their economic and political dominance over the weakening Qing government.

Intellectual circles in Japan and China were both distinctly affected by the repercussion of the First World War. The War presented a challenge to liberals, undermining Enlightenment universalist principles of rationality and progress that presented the West as an exemplar of civilisation. Chinese intellectuals such as Liang Qichao and Zhang Junmai, who had toured Europe in 1918-19 as part of a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, posited that the West had become too materialistic, and had much to learn from spiritual Eastern civilization.² This led, for instance, to Zhang Hunmai collaborating with German idealist Rudolph Eucken to produce a book that brought together ethical and metaphysical ideas of China and the West. Others in China sought a constructive dialogue with Western thought out of a belief in affinity between the two. The conservative journal Critical Review, founded in Nanjing, sought to synthesise native Chinese culture with new Western knowledge, while thinkers like Liang used ‘Easternisation’ to assert the East’s complimentary role in modern culture; the West would benefit from understanding Confucianism just as much as China had to learn from the West.³

However, in Japan in the aftermath of the First World War, rather than working in synthesis with Western ideas, Confucian discourse was used by state structures to frame Japanese notions of superiority. Kiri Paramore argues that the War brought significant economic expansion to Japan through trade revenue in war provisions and imperialist expansion in China, which was justified by Japan’s self-representation as the steward of Asian tradition, defending East Asian values against the corruption of western ideologies, unlike the Chinese republicans and communists.⁴ This meant that fears over an imminent breakdown in the social order through labour conflict and capitalist inequality, seen as inherent to high Western modernity, led to a desire to return to non-Western and pre-industrial value systems to thus circumvent this contemporary problem. This conservative movement led to the establishment of Shibunkai, an activist Confucian organisation that oversaw the integration of Confucianism into Japanese society. Confucianism became intertwined with the state alongside Shinto, and adopted into the structures of the state imperial cult through ceremonies associated with national morality, state organs, and the military.⁵ This would later lead to Confucianism being associated with authoritarian and fascist governments, as nationalistic cultural homogenisation policies utilised Confucian statecraft and values.

While this was undermined by a fundamental contradiction between the idea of Japanese exceptionalism and attempts to universalise Japanese perceptions of Confucianism, such associations with fascism meant ultimately Confucianism became a taboo topic in Japan.⁶ In China, the rise of the New Confucians in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution brought elements of Confucianism back into the mainstream discussion. Arguments such as those of Zhang Junmai’s Manifesto, positing that the obsession of modern Western civilisation with progress and expansion stems from a fundamental discontentment that could learn from the East’s deep wisdom, demonstrate that unlike Japan’s new culturalism of the 1930s, such understandings of Confucianism were based around mutually beneficial interactions between East and West.

1. Paramore, Kiri. Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History. of New Approaches to Asian History. (Cambridge, 2016), p.142. [↩]
2. Edmund S. K. Fung, The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity: Cultural and Political Thought in the Republican Era. (Cambridge, 2010), p.66. [↩]
3. ibid. p.75. [↩]
4. Paramore, 2016, p.166. [↩]
5. ibid. p.156. [↩]
6. ibid. p.168. [↩]

Charismatic sainthood was a tool used by redemptive societies in the twentieth century to construct magnetic leadership for emerging salvationist organisations.

‘Redemptive societies’ is a western term for the wave of religious activity that sought to save China and the wider world from social decline and apocalypse. For redemptive societies, sainthood provided a middle ground where modern science and technology could legitimate a religious leader’s authority, while referencing a familiar cultural heritage of sainthood practices, such as establishing a lineage, constructing a hagiography or the practice of spirit writing.¹ In this way, redemptive societies reframed traditional conceptions of religious leadership to survive in the modern context.
David Ownby isolates the systematic construction of charisma in religious leadership, defined as ‘the embodiment of the qualities of leadership, the attraction of followers, the representation of their interests and dreams in real or utopian projects’.² The two leaders discussed in this blog post, Zhang Tianran and Li Yujie, used their charismatic power to influence the actions of the divine and the humans around them. Under Zhang Tianran’s leadership, the redemptive society Yiguandao became the largest religious organisation in China, while Li Yujie successfully guided and established Tiandijiao as a redemptive society organised around spiritual healing and science. Nonetheless, both leaders offer very different forms of charismatic authority, providing a fascinating comparison in terms of their relationship with the divine, their interactions with the political system and their long-term legacy.

Both Li and Zhang were highly skilled at establishing relationships with the secular power structures around them, utilising their charisma to foster support from the state, academia and business. However, while Li maintained a more mediatory role as an interlocutor between the divine and the earthly realm, Zhang consciously assimilated into the traditional religious hierarchy. Zhang claimed to be the reincarnation of the Living Buddha Jigong, a twelfth century Buddhist monk associated in popular religion with eccentricity and spirit possession cults. Jigong’s image has been used extensively as symbolic representation of Zhang, who has thus become deified as a transcendent omnipresent, omniscient figure. This was strengthened after his death when Zhang appeared in spirit writing sessions, directly interacting with his disciples and interfering with the present organisation of the movement. While there is an abundance of documentary evidence of Li, Zhang remains ‘elusive’³, with sources about his life restricted to hagiographical accounts or propaganda pieces against him. This, combined with mystery around the location of his burial site, results in a further intangibleness attributed to his self that elevates him beyond the earthly realm.

On the other hand, Li Yujie’s time as leader of the Tiandejiao movement was grounded in his political principles and institutional ties. While Li would also appeal to traditional perceptions of holy men by preaching about the intimate relationship between god and man, retreating for a few days every year to ascend to heaven and wearing dark glasses to protect others from his blinding healing gaze, he was also engaged in earthly matters to a very high degree, as listed in President Li Denhui’s eulogy in 1994.⁴ He served as a member of the Finance Ministry under the GMD, owned and edited a newspaper that extensively advocated for freedom of the press, and used scientific language to frame his religious treatises. As Ownby argues, this did not appear to be a contradiction for Li, and in fact, his secular contacts served to strengthen his religious goals as in the case of gaining approval from the Taiwanese government to operate as a public religious institution despite their martial law.⁵

This differing use of charisma, the relationship between the leader and their followers, from these two saints demonstrates the abundance of approaches to sainthood amongst redemptive societies at the time, all seeking to aid China and rescue the world from apocalyptic decline.

1. David Ownby, ‘Introduction’, in Making Saints in Modern China, eds. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert, and Ji Zhe (New York, 2017), p.7. [↩]
2. ibid. p.17. [↩]
3. ibid. p.229. [↩]
4. David Ownby, ‘Sainthood, Science, and Politics: The Life of Li Yujie, Founder of the Tiandijiao’, in Making Saints in Modern China (New York, 2017), p.252. [↩]
5. ibid. p.249. [↩]

The Taiping Rebellion was a large-scale civil war in China between 1850-1864, in revolt against the perceived weakness of the Qing dynasty in the face of foreign incursion. Taiping ideology utilised elements of both Chinese and Western tradition to frame their goal of establishing a Heavenly Kingdom on earth, a theocratic monarchy in opposition to the Chinese dynastic empire. This post will discuss the Taiping’s attempts to unite ingrained cultural values with their radical ends, leading to a complex fusion between revolutionary innovation and established structures.

A clear example of this convergence is the structure of authority imposed by the leader of the movement, Hong Xiuquan. Thomas O’Reilly argues that Taiping religion at the time was a ‘form of Christianity influenced in part by Chinese native sectarian traditions’.¹ The Taiping organisational system with the Heavenly Father (God), Jesus (the Heavenly Elder Brother) and Hong (the Heavenly Younger Brother) demonstrates a continuation of Confucian familial hierarchy as a source of power. Hong sought to derive personal legitimation by presenting himself as both a messianic figure and a senior member of the holy family. While it could be said that prioritising loyalty to God and rulers above that to one’s own family inverted the Confucian emphasis on filial obedience, ultimately it is more convincing to interpret this as an intentional coalescence of political and religious moral authority within relatable familial structures that people could devote themselves to.

Furthermore, the Taipings used the traditional vocabulary of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ to frame their argument that the current imperial system needed to be replaced with the new Kingdom of Heaven. Famine and economic depression in the 1840s, harsh taxation, and weakness against foreign interference undermined the authority of the imperial government and opened discussions about the loss of the Mandate. The Taipings could therefore justify their revolution as part of a longer cyclical tradition of uprising and new governance. Their very name, translating to ‘Great Peace’ evoked a time of perfect harmony and order similarly championed by earlier reformers and millenarian movements.² Also, the Tiantiao Shu, the official declaration of Taiping creed circulated in 1852, claimed that ancient monarchs and people in China long ago had also worshiped the Christian God in accordance with the ‘Great Way’ before ‘erroneously follow[ing] the devil’s path’.³ This further demonstrates the perceived need to construct a wider legitimising narrative around the Taiping righteously returning China to its original holy state.

 Moreover, although the Taipings were often critical of Confucianism’s associations with the established elite, there were times when the very organisation and phrasing of their own core texts was in direct reference to traditional Chinese convention. Many of the commandments in the Tiantiao Shu were in line with Protestant fundamentalist advocation of a simple faith, such as prohibitions against opium smoking and gambling, that would have appealed to the inherent puritanism of Chinese peasantry. Furthermore, the Youxue Shi provided simple formulations of the basic Protestant-inspired principles followers of the Taiping were expected to follow. The phrasing and structure of this document is however evocative of the San Zi Jing, a Confucian teaching device for children that was designed for easy memorisation and recitation.⁴  In a similar way to how Confucian tenets were often learnt by rote, the Ten Heavenly Commandments, the core of the Taiping ethical code, were often memorised by Taiping followers for the purpose of self-cultivation, even if they were relatively ill-informed on other scripture or practice. Therefore, although the Taipings were often critical of Confucianism’s associations with the established elite, there were many references in their core texts, not only in terms of social and political values but in the very organisation and phrasing, that was in direct reference and emulation of Confucian and traditional Chinese convention.

This argument must, however, not be overstated, as I do acknowledge that Taiping ideology did take some clear divergences from established Chinese tradition. For instance, the Taiping’s ideas about monotheism drastically diverged from the old cult of Heaven that was traditionally under the remit of the rulers; instead, the religion they offered was one that was more accessible for all, one where the pious individual could have their own direct relationship with God. Furthermore, conservative Confucians like Zeng Guofan would not have approved of the level of economic regulation the Taiping advocated for, including an economic egalitarianism that would predate the later Chinese Communist movement.⁵ This indicates that there was a fundamental incompatibility, or at least an inconsistency, in the Taiping’s attempt to be innovative while adhering to an earlier traditional value system.

The Taiping’s fusion of traditional established values and new conceptions of social organisation was ultimately unsuccessful in creating the utopia they sought. In the end, a failure to enlist external support or maintain a stable political leadership would see the Taiping Rebellion disintegrate and collapse.

1. O’Reilly, Thomas, The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire, (Seattle, 2014), p. 117. [↩]
2. De Bary, W. T., Lufrano, Richard John, Wing-tsit Chan and John Berthrong, Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century, (New York, 2000), p.214. [↩]
3. Tiantiao Shu, quoted in Sources of Chinese Tradition, p.219. [↩]
4. Kilcourse, C. S. Taiping Theology: the Localisation of Christianity in China, 1843-64, (New York, 2016), p.120. [↩]
5. De Bary, p.224. [↩]