Nichiren’s Teachings in Modern Contexts – Tanaka Chigaku and Sōka Gakkai’s Misapplications of Nichirenism

The teachings of the thirteenth-century Buddhist thinker Nichiren inspired numerous twentieth-century intellectuals, who drew on his steadfast belief in the all-encompassing Lotus Sūtra to advance their contemporary agendas. However, their application of Nichiren’s teachings to modern contexts led to reworkings of their core principles and revealed inconsistencies with the Buddhist Dharma, which stemmed from Nichiren’s disloyal relationship with the Buddhist Dharma and that which he preached.

Nichiren believed that he was born in the ‘Final Dharma age’ prophesized by the Buddha, which meant that only the Lotus Sūtra could lead to Buddhahood.1 He regarded Japan as an ideal place to be born, as it had ‘an affinity for the Lotus Sūtra’, and sought to extend the teachings of it ‘worldwide’.2 However, in Nichiren’s time, Japanese expansion was unrealistic as they posed no ‘threat to other countries’.3 Moreover, Christine Naylor argues that many of his teachings opposed Buddhist principles, since Nichiren understood that ‘false teachings’ were leading the world to disaster, and could not ‘promise peace to his followers in this life’.4 Because of this opposition, he believed Japan and the world’s reluctance to follow solely the Lotus Sūtra had resulted in this ruin. Furthermore, Nichiren’s contradictions undoubtedly led to more difficulty in modern interpretations. For example, he initially believed the Japanese kamis protected the ‘devotees of the Lotus Sūtra’, but then ‘threaten[ed] them with punishment’ once he convinced himself they had betrayed him.5 Finally, adding to interpretation confusion, Naylor contends that the misunderstandings partially derive from Nichiren not following ‘the first of Śākyamuni’s precepts, which forbids the taking of life’, as he ‘sanctioned both secular and religious wars’.6

Tanaka Chigaku’s utilization of Nichirenism for imperialist Japan reworked its core principles as they were not intended for the modern context in which Tanaka employed them. As Japan struggled ‘to assume a place among the world’s powers’ during the Meiji era, Tanaka looked to Nichiren’s argument for Japan to globally spread the Lotus Sūtra as a means for expansion.7 Jacqueline Stone argues that Tanaka was possibly the ‘first person in modern Nichiren Buddhist history’ to believe that the worldwide spread of Nichirenism and the kaidan was truly achievable.8 Nichiren, confined to the contexts of his time, had not even thought such a thing to be genuinely realistic.

The major contrasts between Nichiren and Tanaka become apparent when considering the relationships of their principles with the imperial family. Where Nichiren disrespected both Amaterasu and Hachiman, a ‘tantamount irreverence to the emperor’, Tanaka connected Nichirenism with Shinto nationalism, making him ‘indissolubly linked to the modern imperial state.9 Nichiren’s principles opposed the imperial family, whereas Tanaka’s supported them. Moreover, Naylor argues that Tanaka read Nichiren’s passages out of context, which led him to believe Nichiren was ‘an ardent believer of the imperial system’, citing the confusion.10 The fact that Nichiren’s principles support Japanese imperialism ‘only if torn out of context’ supports the notion that Tanaka’s ‘loyalty was to Japan and the emperor, not to Buddhism’.11 Ultimately, the ‘tangled strands of [Nichiren’s] personality and ideas’ made his writings difficult to interpret and even more difficult to appropriately apply to modern contexts.12

Sōka Gakkai, a lay Nichiren Buddhist organization, in the postwar era interpreted Nichiren’s concept of kaidan not from an imperial perspective, but instead from a modern perspective within the limitations of the postwar parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Its second president, Toda Jōsei, believed it was the organization’s responsibility to prevent the ‘sufferings epitomized by the recent war’ from repeating through the supposed peace preached by Nichiren.13 Similar to Tanaka, the third president, Ikeda Daisaku, sought a true nationwide acceptance of Nichirenism and the Lotus Sūtra; he believed this could be achieved if two-thirds of the country supported Sōka Gakkai.14 However, despite these efforts, its core message of peace contradicts Nichiren’s teachings, as seen earlier in this post. Thus, both the imperialist and militaristic interpretations by Tanaka, and the peaceful interpretations by Sōka Gakkai, ultimately fail to understand Nichiren’s teachings, as they are nearly impossible to apply to modern contexts.

  1. Jacqueline I. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree’, in Steven Heinen and Charles S. Prebish (eds), Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition (Oxford, 2003), p. 194. [↩]
  2. Christina Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism, and the Peace Movement’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 18: 1 (March 1991), p. 67. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 66. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 70. [↩]
  5. Ibid., pp. 61-62. [↩]
  6. Ibid., pp. 70-71. [↩]
  7. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, pp. 198-199. [↩]
  8. Ibid., p. 200. [↩]
  9. Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, p. 63. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 203. [↩]
  10. Naylor, ‘Nichiren, Imperialism’, pp. 64-65 [↩]
  11. Ibid., pp. 73, 60 [↩]
  12. Ibid., p. 56 [↩]
  13. Stone, ‘By Imperial Edict’, p. 205 [↩]
  14. Ibid., p. 211 [↩]

Navigating the Grey Zone: Buddhist Adaptation and Critique in Modern East Asia

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, East Asia was reshaped by the forces of modernity. The rise of the nation-state and Social Darwinism, which framed international relations as a brutal struggle for survival, challenged traditional societies.1 Within this environment, East Asian Buddhist traditions confronted an existential crisis, widely dismissed by modernisers as “superstitious and useless for national survival”.2  In response, Buddhist thinkers adopted a pragmatic strategy of navigating a “grey zone” between outright collaboration and futile resistance.3 This was not a passive position but an active space of negotiation and critical engagement. Through this approach, they sought to ensure the survival of their tradition while safeguarding its ethical core, strategically appropriating modern ideologies and repurposing their own transcendent ideals to critique state power.

This is exemplified by the Korean monk Han Yong’un (1879–1944). Recognising that Buddhism had to prove its relevance against rivals like Protestant Christianity, Han borrowed from the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao. He used Liang’s argument that Western evolutionary theories were inherent in the Buddhist principle of cause and effect.4 However, his critical innovation was his refusal to fully surrender to Social Darwinism’s harsh logic. While acknowledging its descriptive power in the material world, he subordinated it as a provisional, lesser truth, ultimately subordinate to the higher, universal ethics of Buddhism. For Han, the “survival of the fittest” was a phase in a larger spiritual evolution whose ultimate end was a world of transcendental equality and peace.5 This philosophical framework provided a moral foundation to withstand the coercive pressures of Japanese imperialism.6

A parallel, yet distinct, strategy emerged in Japan, where secular intellectuals wielded Buddhist concepts as instruments of political critique. Here, the strategy was not to subordinate a modern ideology but to weaponise a traditional Buddhist ideal itself. The modern distinction between inner belief and outer practice allowed these thinkers to approach Buddhism as a philosophy, rather than a faith. They utilised the resources in the tradition’s transcendent visions, particularly  Pure Land. This is a transcendent realm defined not by what it possesses, but by the absence of suffering. Thinkers like Ienaga Saburō recognised in this ideal a form of “negative thinking”.7  By envisioning a perfect world defined only by what it was not (i.e., not full of suffering), the Pure Land concept provided a moral standard from which to judge and “negate” the existing political order.8  The use of Buddhist concepts by Japanese leftists thus contained a profound irony. While the institutional Buddhist establishment often aligned with the state, secular intellectuals adopted the same tradition to uncover a radical, critical philosophy. This highlights a key division in modern Buddhism where the ‘grey zone’ could be a space for state collaboration for some, and a source of state negation for others, all within the same national and religious context. Thus, a traditional Buddhist image was transformed into a philosophical foundation for challenging the Japanese state’s rising totalitarianism.9

In conclusion, East Asian Buddhism navigated the challenges of modernity by operating within a strategic “grey zone.” Whether by domesticating Social Darwinism within a Buddhist framework in Korea or by radicalising utopian ideals from within the tradition in Japan, thinkers discovered a path to ensure their tradition’s continuity. Their collective legacy is one of intellectual agility, demonstrating that strategic engagement, not isolation, was key to preserving an ancient tradition’s critical relevance in a modernising world.

  1. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1880s-1910s), (Leiden, 2010), p.134 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p.117 [↩]
  3. Schickentanz, Erik, ‘Forum Introduction. The Chrysanthemum, the sword, and the dharmakcakra: Buddhist Entanglements in Japan’s wartime empire (1931-1945’, Modern Asian Studies, 58: 6 (2024), pp.1460-1464 [↩]
  4. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea, p.123 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.114 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.135 [↩]
  7. Curley, Mellissa A.M, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination, (Honolulu, 2017), p.16 [↩]
  8. Ibid. [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.6 [↩]

Shifu’s Purist Anarchism: How His Beliefs Separated Him from Other Anarchists

Although Shifu’s introduction to anarchism followed similar paths of his fellow anarchists, his later articulation of a pure anarchist ideology and critiques of various anarchists differentiated him from others.

Born as Liu Shaobin in 1884, Liu grew up in a supportive, prosperous family. His father encouraged progressive ideals, such as educating his daughters and advocating to end foot binding.1 Liu performed well in school, and he eventually went to study abroad in Japan. There, he encountered revolutionary ideas, which served as the preface to many other contemporary anarchists as well. Following this introduction, Liu changed his name to Liu Sifu and joined Sun Yat-Sen’s Revolutionary Alliance, which promoted assassination as a means for reform. After a failed assassination attempt, Liu lost his left hand and was arrested. In prison, Liu’s conceptualizations of anarchism would foster, ultimately leading to his rejection of violence as the path for reform and to the creation of his own understanding of anarchism.2 

In 1912, three years after his release, Liu and three others established the Conscience Society. The twelve points of this society serve as the basis of Liu’s anarchist ideology, which members must follow. Despite the inclusion of a loophole for members to join while not precisely following the twelve points, Liu committed to them fully.3 His change of name to Shifu, rejecting the patriarchal power of a family name, most clearly represents his strict adherence to the points. His refusal to eat meat and ride in rickshas, even in his ailing health, further depicts his devotion. Shifu understood anarchism as a rejection of politics. Politics caused corruption in humanity, and the only way to rid this corruption from society was to take on social revolution. Shifu reasoned that ‘government would be replaced by people’s voluntary self-regulation’, which would depend on people’s management of their consciousness and behavior.4 The problem with society was politics; only with the complete eradication—not a mere replacement—of all forms of government could China be free. And in order to initiate this eradication, one must strictly devote themselves to dismantling the structure which society was built on by holding themselves to these specific standards.

His critique of fellow anarchists illustrates how Shifu’s strict belief in a pure anarchism separated him from other contemporaries. Shifu condemned multiple people for a failure to uphold anarchist ideology, including Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui of the Paris anarchists and Sun Yat-Sen and Jiang Kanghu of the socialists. For Shifu, to maintain the anarchist ideology, one must reflect on themselves to completely reject the current structure of society: politics. Restructuring is difficult to do, for a complete reimagination of the foundation of society is often impractical. So, many anarchists accepted offices in the new Republican government, such as Zhang Ji and Wu Zhihui, under the pretense that these offices would allow them to strengthen their beliefs through government-backed organizations.5 However, Shifu contended that this acceptance of governmental office fundamentally went against the concept of anarchism and leaders of the Paris anarchists failed to moderate their own behaviors. Thus, Zhang and Wu could no longer be considered anarchists, for they did not align with Shifu’s strict anarchism.

Furthermore, Shifu discredited socialism as anarchism, on the basis of socialism’s narrowness. Shifu’s explanation that socialism concerns only the economy, while anarchism concerns all politics, sets the foundation for his criticism. In this explanation, anarchism is the broader concept which socialism fits under.6 Socialism argues for social policy to economically equalize society, not social revolution and the elimination of politics. Moreover, socialism works within the government to enact these policies; it simply replaces one government with another sympathetic to its ideology. Therefore, socialists should not portray themselves as anarchists, for they do not follow all of the requirements of anarchism. From this separation between socialism and anarchism, Shifu cements his concept of anarchism, which is strictly followed, as true anarchism. Thus, Shifu’s pure anarchism distinguishes Shifu from other contemporary anarchists.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham, 1998), p. 2. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 7. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 115. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 119. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 121. [↩]
  6. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, 1991), p. 142. [↩]

Ideology vs. Practice: The Contested Terrain of Women’s Property in Song China

The Neo-Confucian movement of the Song dynasty (960-1279) articulated a vision of social order founded on a profound dismantling of the robust economic rights community exercised by women. The ambitious reforms imagined by prominent Neo-Confucian thinkers and officials pursued these goals but inadvertently exposed the resilience of the legal and social practices they sought to erase. In its attempt to forge an ideal female subject devoid of economic agency, the movement laid bare its own fundamental instabilities, revealing acute tension between ideological aspiration and social reality.

The philosophical core of the Neo-Confucian agenda, championed by figures like Zhu Xi (1130-1200), was the revival of a rigid patrilineal structure centred on termed the “descent line system.”1  This system demanded that “ancestral property must as a rule be divided only among sons, not given to daughters,” and that women’s control of personal assets be severely constrained to prevent them from “undermining the authority of the household head” and siphoning assets away from the patriline.2 Within this framework, a woman’s control of personal assets was perceived as profoundly subversive because property represented lineage continuity rather than individual wealth. The ideological ideal was thus a woman subjugated entirely to male relatives, legally incapable of owning property independent of her husband’s patriline.

This prescriptive vision clashed decisively with the established legal and customary landscape of the Song. Tang and Song law explicitly recognised a wife’s dowry and other personal property as “conceptually distinct from that of her husband,” granting her the right to remove this property upon divorce or widowhood.3 Furthermore, the legal principle of “bereft households” provided that orphaned daughters without brothers could inherit substantial portions of family estates, in some cases up to half their father’s share of undivided family property4 . Song judicial practice consistently protected women’s property rights in inheritance disputes and dowry claims, reflecting a legal culture that viewed female economic agency as legitimate rather than aberrant. The Song state itself had fiscal motivations to maintain these practices, as dowries facilitated marriage alliances among the elite and generated tax revenue from property transfers.

The contradiction between Neo-Confucian ideology and actual practice became particularly acute regarding widow remarriage and property retention. Zhu Xi and other prominent Neo-Confucians vigorously opposed widow remarriage, promoting instead a “cult of chastity” that idealised lifelong fidelity to deceased husbands5 . Neo-Confucians criticised the practice of women keeping their dowries and returning to their natal families after widowhood, viewing this as a dangerous assertion of female autonomy. Yet Song legal codes and social practice told a different story. Women routinely drew upon their dowries to support themselves as widows or to finance remarriages, and legal documents record widows successfully defending their property rights against male relatives who sought to appropriate their assets6 .

Lacking the immediate power to rewrite statute law during the Song, Neo-Confucian elites turned to the tools of social and moral suasion. A primary instrument was the compilation of ritual manuals, most notably Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals, which sought to “instruct and admonish the family” by embedding Neo-Confucian values into quotidian life7 . These texts prescribed elaborate patrilineal ceremonies that excluded women from positions of ritual authority, granted males exclusive control over ancestral worship, and emphasised female subordination within the household hierarchy.

Understanding this contradiction requires moving beyond simplistic narratives of inexorable patriarchal domination. Instead, we must recognise that ideological movements, even those endorsed by state orthodoxy, operate within complex social contexts where legal precedent, economic incentives, and customary practice create substantial barriers to radical transformation. The role that Song women’s property rights played in elite marriage strategies, household economics, and state fiscal policy demonstrates that gender relations cannot be reduced to ideological prescription alone. The tragedy lies not in the inevitability of patriarchal victory but in recognising how persistent ideological campaigns eventually succeeded in constructing legal disabilities that transformed women from property holders into dependents.

  1. Birge, Bettine, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960-1368), (New York, 2002), 143. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩]
  3. Ibid, 41 and 52 [↩]
  4. Ibid, 52 [↩]
  5. Ibid, 146 [↩]
  6. Ibid, 147 [↩]
  7. Minzhen, ‘Song Dynasty Family Rituals and the Reconstruction of Confucian Daily Life’, Journal of Chinese Humanities, 2023 (9:3), 304 [↩]

From Saikaku to Today: A Literary Lens on Japan’s Queer Identities

“‘Why in the world did ‘the man who loved love’ waste such vast quantities of gold and silver on his myriad women, when the only pleasure and excitement to be found is in male love?”1

The concluding words to Ihara Saikaku’s introduction of his work The Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Okagami) encapsulates his message. Why love women when you can love men? His work, which chronicled forty stories of male–male sexuality, enjoyed broad appeal and faced little controversy at publication.2 In today’s Japan however this is difficult to imagine, with contemporary lawmakers describing same-sex relations as ‘unproductive’ and threatening a ‘breakdown of the family.’3

Through various literary works, Sabine Frühstück surveys the iterations of queer identities that ‘ultimately lead to today’s LGBTQIA+ community,’ arguing that today’s queer communities in Japan variably ‘insist on an ordinariness’ and ‘normalisation’.4

Frühstück’s starting point, Ihara’s The Great Mirror of Male Love, provides an insight into the long tradition of male–male sexual culture present in the warrior class, Buddhist monks, and in the entertainment world. Ihara attempts ‘to reflect in this mirror all of the varied manifestations of male love.’5 In premodern Japan, popular literature incorporated male love as a natural part of the broader literary theme of sexual relationships within society, and as a marker of sophistication and culture.6 For Ihara then, the central tension was not to prove male–male love as natural, but as superior to male–female love.

From The Great Mirror of Male Love, Frühstück takes us to Mori Ōgai’s Vita Sexualis (Wita Sekusuarisu). Published in 1909, reception to Mori’s novel marked a change in attitudes to same-sex love. The semi-autobiographical novel which detailed the sexual history of the protagonist received backlash and was banned.7 The novel’s title marks this shift as well, with the title being derived from Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, which describes same-sex attractions as sexual anomalies and mental degeneration.8 Frühstück describes this change in attitude as a result of an increase in Western influence.9 Indeed, Mori seems to be influenced by a range of European authors. In a two-part article published in 1902 to 1903, he mentions more than fifty European scholars of sexual psychology, including Sigmund Freud.10 By the 1900s, the ‘love of beautiful boys’ illustrated by Ihara was replaced by ‘hentai seiyoku’ or ‘perverse sexual desire’ which emphasised the physicality of relationships over their spirituality.

Next in Frühstück’s survey is Yoshiya Nobuko’s works. Yoshiya was Japan’s first public figure in the twentieth century to openly identify as a lesbian. Notably, she published Flower Tales (Hana Monogatari, 1916–1924), a collection of short stories centering female romantic friendships, and a novel, Women’s Friendship (Onna no Yūjō), serialized in Fujin Kurabu (1933–1935). The author in her own life delayed ‘adopting’ her partner as a means to civil union to advocate for same-sex marriage.11

Miyatake Gaikotsu’s Hannannyokō (Thoughts on Hermaphroditism, 1922), was a collection of stories that centered sexually and gender nonnormative individuals from a mix of rumors and legends. Distributed under the counter and aimed as much at entertaining readers as at imagining a utopian future of universal hermaphroditism, it echoed contemporary European sexology, such as the works of German researcher Magnus Hirschfeld.12 Reflecting a transnational exchange of ideas, the text shows how early twentieth-century thinkers in both Japan and Europe were beginning to question binary gender and sexual norms.

Approaching the present day, Being Lesbian (‘Rezubian’ to aru to iu koto, 1992) by Kakefuda Hiroko critiques ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ and gave impetus to genres of media specifically catering for sexual minorities. The text preceded the HIV/AIDS epidemic which enabled network building between previously disparate gay and lesbian groups, as well as reframing discussions about queer identities as a human rights issue.13

Today’s Japan faces a range of issues concerning LGBTQ+ rights. While public sentiment increasingly recognises the discrimination queer people face, and both corporations and lawmakers move toward institutionalising anti-discrimination measures, same-sex marriage remains unrecognised. Stagnant policies continue to shape the ruling parties’ approach to explicit prohibition of sex and gender-based discrimination.14 The recent election of conservative Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae further signals limited prospects for progressive reform.

  1. Ihara Saikaku, The Great Mirror of Male Love, trans. Paul Gordon Schalow (Stanford, 1990), p. 56. ↩
  2. Sabine Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan (Cambridge, 2022), p. 144. ↩
  3. Ibid, p. 159. ↩
  4. Ibid, p. 60. ↩
  5. Ihara, The Great Mirror of Male Love, p. 56. ↩
  6. Ibid, p. 6. ↩
  7. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 146. ↩
  8. Yoshiyuki Nakai, ‘Ōgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis’, Monumenta Nipponica, 35:2 (Summer 1980), p. 228. ↩
  9. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 146. ↩
  10. Nakai, ‘Ōgai’s Craft: Literary Techniques and Themes in Vita Sexualis’, p. 229. ↩
  11. Jennifer Robertson, ‘Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose,’ in Same-Sex Cultures and Sexualities: An Anthropological Reader, ed. Jennifer Robertson (London, 2005), p. 164. ↩
  12. Frühstück, Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japan, p. 149. ↩
  13. Ibid, p. 152. ↩
  14. Ibid, pp. 154–156. ↩

Hong Xiuquan’s Historical Revisionism

Hong’s Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping was the driving ideology of the Taiping Rebellion. The rebellion has been central to historical study for its scale, brutality, and the mass socio-political upheaval it triggered.1 The ideological vision at its core has been interrogated by historians to determine the nature of intellectual engagement between East and West and map the nature of influence and exchange.2 Understanding Hong’s articulation of the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping as a teleological narrative of Chinese history is useful to highlighting both the Christian and the Confucian elements of his vision as well as their interaction. The teleological nature of Hong’s narrative was central to establishing a claim to authority – allowing him to draw cultural authority from classical elements of Chinese culture and moral authority from a Christian ethic.

Hong’s articulation of China’s past and future was dependent on Christian narrative elements.3 This narrative temporality was framed within a Christian framework through ideas of salvation and notions of the demonic. He characterised China’s ancient past as Christian in nature – offset by the invasion of demonic forces.2 These demonic forces were associated with a range of influences like the Qing dynasty and Buddhism.4 In response, he presented his Heavenly Kingdom as the means to salvation, the means to set China back onto the course of Christianity.5

Central to his engagement with China’s ancient past was the figure of Shangdi.6 Arguing that the worship of Shangdi was a universal phenomenon in ancient China, he constructed a monolithic depiction of religion and worship.2 Hong’s invocation of Shangdi came from an attempt to construct dialogue with Chinese antiquity. Hong’s first exposure to Christianity was through Liang’s Good Words.7 Pairing the figure of Shangdi with an interpretation of the Christian nature of China’s past was not Hong’s own invention, but one borrowed from Liang.8 However, Hong’s writing drew this connection into a temporal narrative of sin and salvation. Hong’s understanding of Christianity was thus inherently shaped by the cultural contexts embedded in Liang’s interpretations.

The Christian narrative he created was further shaped by cultural context through his medium of articulation. Despite his denouncement of Chinese classical texts, Hong’s narratives drew from this tradition. For example, the three character classic was central to the Taiping instruction of children.6 Hong’s narrative was also constructed within the Chinese language, thus inheriting Chinese cultural contexts. Hong was constructing a novel claim to divine authority. This was a linguistic project and his dependency on terms like tai-ping and tian-zi constructed spiritual and political authority through Confucian ideas embedded in the Chinese language.9 He constructed his authority through notions of familial ties identifying himself as the second son of the Heavenly Father, and as Christ’s younger brother.2 His expressions of Christian obligation were thus tied to the Confucian notion of five relationships.10 He articulated obligation to the Heavenly Father through a language of familial ties and filial loyalty.11 Thus, to convert his Christian visions into transmissible pieces of divine revelation, he was dependent on Chinese narrative forms. So despite Hong’s association with one and rejection of the other, his construction of authority through narrative was thus dependent on both Christian and Confucian elements.

The temporal nature of Hong’s discourse was more than just a narrative device borrowed from the Bible. It was a link between the Christian ethic and cultural authority. This link was central to allow Hong to present not only a vision for religious upheaval but a civilisational ideal that spanned reform across the social and the political realms as well. By historicising the Heavenly Kingdom, he constructed his vision as shaped and driven by the motions of history transcending the earthly not only in the religious sense but in the temporal sense – articulating a mission that was endowed with purpose that transcended the present – a mission that was in service of the past as well as the future.

  1. Richard Lufrano, The Heavenly Kingdom of the Taipings (New York, 2001), p. 246. [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Carl S. Kilcourse, Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64 (New York, 2016), p. 50. [↩]
  4. Ibid., p.55. [↩]
  5. Ibid., p.64. [↩]
  6. Ibid., p.50. [↩] [↩]
  7. Ibid., p.65. [↩]
  8. Ibid., p.52. [↩]
  9. Ibid., p.49. [↩]
  10. Ibid., p.109. [↩]
  11. Ibid., p.125. [↩]

Failure to Reject Tradition – The Evolution of the New Culture Movement’s ‘xiao jiating’

The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation’s young men through periodicals, such as Family Research, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife—one who was educated and politically conscious. However, it lacked the appeal necessary for a socioeconomic revolution, as those young men did not subscribe to all of the Movement’s radical ideas; often, they subconsciously preferred traditionalism despite their ambition to form a modern state. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party retroactively revised and imposed the New Culture Movement’s xiao jiating, or conjugal family, by forcing individuals to devote themselves equally to their emotional relationships and the state.

In her monograph, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, Susan L. Glosser argues that those who started Family Research believed family reform was the ‘necessary first step in China’s modernization’, as individuals must first be ‘happy at home’ in order to provide their full contribution to the urban reform movements throughout China.1 The primary obstacle preventing young men from this domestic happiness, they contended, was the patriarch. Under the Confucian standard, the patriarch held great control over his children’s lives. Thus, to free themselves for their ultimate goal of a ‘transformation of the Chinese economy’ and ‘political structure’, they began by attacking the patriarch due to his control and ‘as a stand-in for the nebulous forces of “power” and “class” that strangled China’.2 It was only then, with the happiness from their new family, that they understood that China could modernize economically and socially.3

As happiness, and thus productivity, was believed to be derived from the family, those involved in the New Culture Movement ‘developed a new set of expectations for their wives’.4 In opposition to traditional arranged marriages, they argued in favor of a concept of marriage based on romantic love, in which the couple involved jointly shared ‘intellectual and political interests’.4 However, Glosser declares, these young men failed to consider what an ideal husband might be, and pushed unrealistic standards onto the women of their time.5 Thus, they thought only of what would make them happy in marriage, while expecting their wives to work independently in the domestic sphere and join other social spheres, revealing a misogynistic core behind their advocacy for women’s rights. 

The surveys of two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin and Pan Guangdan, that Glosser examines, reveal that despite the insistence of the New Culture radicals, many young men appear ‘to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family’.6 The primary family-reform ideals of the New Culture Movement that they supported were the rejection of arranged marriages and the education of women. However, many young couples were not too interested in establishing ‘households independent of their parents’.7 Moreover, despite wanting to choose their own wife, the qualities they looked for in a wife were more traditional than they might have anticipated—over three-quarters of Chen’s respondents did not list any interest in an ideal wife’s talents.8 In conclusion, Chen and Pan found that many of their respondents simply picked and chose certain aspects of the New Culture’s xiao jiating and ‘ignored or modified others’.9

The Marriage Law, passed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1950, promised the right to choose spouses and ensured equality among men and women.10 It was described by the Party as the final step in ‘the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the “feudal” customs of traditional China’.11 However, the Party initially hesitated to enforce the law due to concerns that the peasants might react negatively toward legislation that abruptly hindered tradition. Glosser contends that the Party ‘promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state’ through their ‘version’ of the ideal xiao jiating.12 Although, their method of doing so was to absorb the citizens entirely into the state and make the state the sole legitimizing factor of marriage. Thus, the individuals were forced to jointly devote themselves to their emotional relationships and the state, as marital privacy was stripped away, disguised as the Party’s loyalty to New Culture ideals.

  1. Susan L. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953 (Berkeley, 2003), p. 31. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 38. [↩]
  3. Ibid., p. 44 [↩]
  4. Ibid., p. 49 [↩] [↩]
  5. Ibid., p. 51 [↩]
  6. Ibid., p. 57 [↩]
  7. Ibid., p. 62 [↩]
  8. Ibid., p. 69 [↩]
  9. Ibid., p. 77 [↩]
  10. Ibid., pp. 169, 171 [↩]
  11. Ibid., pp. 169-170 [↩]
  12. Ibid., p. 195 [↩]

Shifu: Can We Consider the Views of China’s Famous Anarchist ‘True’ Anarchy?

Born to an upper-class family as Liu Shaobin, Shifu (1884-1915) lived through the collapse of the Qing dynasty and converted to anarchism while studying in Japan.1 Known for his commitment to living anarchist principles, Shifu’s purist example and devotion to promoting the common good through his educational reforms influenced subsequent generations of Chinese anarchists, attracting others to the anarchist movement which reached its peak in the early 1920s.2 While Shifu’s early career mirrors other anarchists of the time in his support of assassination and revolution-driven violence, some argue that, because his later efforts depart somewhat and are marked by a renunciation of violence, he fell away from anarchy. Furthermore, in his book, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, Krebs argues that Shifu’s later career has a conservative moral quality, because it is inspired by traditional Chinese literature, despite the radical reforms he espoused. So, can Shifu be considered an anarchist given his departure from a violent past and tendency toward cultural conservatism? And does it matter?

The current, popular view of anarchy often mistakenly reduces anarchism to terrorism and violence. According to political theorist John P. Clark, there are many ways to define anarchy and reaching a consensus on a singular definition is difficult. He argues that we should consider classical anarchist theory, history of anarchy movements, and the scholarly debate around anarchy when attempting to define ‘anarchism’.3

Greek for ‘without rule’, in theory, anarchy could apply to anyone who advocates for the necessary abolishment of government.4 For example, Shifu was familiar with Kropotkin and Bakunin’s ideas of anarchy, which Kropotkin defines as ‘a principle or theory of life and conduct in which society is conceived without government’ and Bakunin as the aim of abolishing the state.5 Other scholars define anarchism as the opposition of authority, or even society, itself—which Shifu also advocated for.6 Clark argues that to be a ‘true anarchist’ one must meet four criteria: ‘(1) a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society; (2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this antiauthoritarian ideal; (3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the ideal; and (4) a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of noncoercive, nonauthoritarian, and decentralist alternatives’.7 This definition allows for some flexibility in classifying anarchists (i.e. people that meet some but not all four of the criteria can be considered ‘weak’ anarchists).7

According to Clark, Shifu can be considered a true anarchist because he meets all four criteria, although his later views on anarchism just before his death might be better described as anarcho-communism due to their anti-capitalist rhetoric and communal nature.8 First, Shifu advocated for a classless society in which resources were held in common without government involvement.9 Second, Shifu criticised state socialism and Confucianism for encouraging idealogues to preach an empty ‘fake morality’ while advancing their own self-interest.10 Third, he believed in the capacity for human beings to change, which he argued could only be achieved through educating the masses. Lastly, Shifu developed a comprehensive, twelve-point plan for moral reform across China at a societal level. ((Ibid, 6.)) His solution for the eventual abolition of government (partly inspired by Tolstoy and Kropotkin’s philosophies) included the abstention of the following: partaking of meat, liquor, smoke, marriage, using family names, using servants, riding in rickshaws, serving in the government or military, joining political parties, and religion.11 Another way he hoped to implement his ideal society was through communal living and Esperanto projects.

Although Shifu failed to bring about his ideal society, his critiques of existing social institutions and politics were influential in shaping China’s transition into a modern republic, and he inspired hope in following generations of intellectuals for a brighter future.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 1-2, https://www.vlebooks.com/Product/Index/336439?page=0&startBookmarkId=-1. [↩]
  2. Krebs, Shifu, 13. [↩]
  3. John P. Clark, “What is Anarchism?” in Nomos, vol. 19, (1978), 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24219036. [↩]
  4. Clark, “What is Anarchism?” 4. [↩]
  5. Ibid, 4. [↩]
  6. Ibid, 5. [↩]
  7. Ibid, 13. [↩] [↩]
  8. Krebs, Shifu, 83. [↩]
  9. Ibid. [↩]
  10. Ibid, 102. [↩]
  11. Ibid, 8, 103. [↩]

How Male Reformers Reframed the “Woman Question” in China

The rise of feminist discourse in early twentieth-century China is typically framed as a battle between tradition and modernity. However, this is a simplified view overlooking the constraints of modernity. The modern Chinese legal and political system proved incapable of legislating genuine gender liberation. This is because the hierarchical logic of patriarchy was philologically embedded within the very textual and institutional fabric of the state.

Progressive male reformers appropriated the radical language of female “slavery” and “property” to articulate their own economic and psychological anxieties. In doing so, they minimised women’s constitutive historical oppression, recasting it as a mere symptom of male frustration. Part of the  “enlightenment and national self-strengthening, coded either “male” or “patriarchal”.1 This is a continuity that anarcho-feminist theorist He-Yin Zhen rejected as a “metaphysical-political principle” woven into the fabric of history.2 She demonstrated that this oppression was intrinsically economic, arguing that the “beginning of the system of women as private property is also the beginning of the system of slavery.”3

He-Yin Zhen grounded this theory in philological and historical evidence:

      • The character for “slave” incorporates the radical for “woman”
      • The character for “treasure” or “stored wealth”  had an alternative form meaning “women and children”, explicitly equating them with property.4

He-Yin Zhen concluded that the figure of “woman” embodied the “combined humiliation of being both prisoner and slave.”5 This was a continuous  feature of the Chinese social order and thus the the state was the defender of this property system, making its abolition a prerequisite for women’s liberation.6  Female slavery was a concrete, historical condition from which all subsequent social ills flowed.

Similarly, when male intellectuals addressed the “woman question,” they used the same vocabulary of subjugation but fundamentally reframed its meaning. For them, it was not a problem of systemic female enslavement, but one of national productivity and male identity. The liberal thinker Liang Qichao argued that because women could not support themselves, men were forced to “raise women as livestock or slaves.”7 This framed subjugation as a consequence of women’s economic uselessness, not its cause. Women were recast as consumers who impeded national self-strengthening.

This focus on male economic anxiety intensified during the New Culture Movement. Male reformers like Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei articulated their frustrations in journals like Family Research, placing immense faith in the state and its ability to legislate a new, rational xiao jiating (conjugal family).8  They linked the oppressive patriarch to forces of “power” and “class” that stifled China. Their fight for family reform was driven by a “search for a new identity” and the goal of “economic self-mastery.”9 They argued that patriarchal control over finances was not just shameful, but that it “restricted productivity and stunted the potential of China’s youth.”10. As this was deeply woven into the fabric of authority, law, and language, this validated He-Yin Zhen’s uncompromising view that the only solution was to “abolish all governments” and overturn the category of distinction itself.11 

For example, as Yi Jiayue noted, the patriarch could evade his duty to support children for education by simply claiming insufficient resources, a claim the “court’s investigations are unreliable”.12  Furthermore, one man lamented that divorce was “extremely difficult” and remarriage “against the law”.13 They even required state intervention to “prohibit parents from deciding their sons’ marriages”. demonstrating the practical limits of their individualistic approach. 14 

The central contradiction emerges when these male anxieties merged with the rhetoric of female dehumanization. Their ideal of modern manhood, built on “moral autonomy” and “economic self-mastery,” required educated wives who could provide “enlightened companionship.”15  Confronted with the reality of uneducated, parent-chosen brides, the reformers inverted He-Yin Zhen’s logic. In extreme fictional accounts, the traditional woman was depicted not as a victim, but as a parasitic “ghostly fire” or a “corpse that gets smellier day by day.”16

Thus, the concept of woman-as-property was co-opted and flipped. The male reformers, despite their progressive aims, ultimately recentered their own plight. In reframing female oppression as a barrier to male self-realization and national progress, young men remodelled and “joined” the patriarchy.17 The profound, systemic critique articulated by He-Yin Zhen was thus contained, demonstrating how the language of emancipation can be harnessed not to abolish hierarchy, but to renegotiate the terms of power within it.

  1. Dorothy Ko, Lydia He Liu, Rebecca E. Karl [ed.], The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p.7 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p.21 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p.22 [↩]
  4. Ibid.114-115 [↩]
  5. Ibid, p.118 [↩]
  6. Ibid, p.70 [↩]
  7. Ibid, 24 [↩]
  8. Susan Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, (Berkeley, 2003), p.44 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.36 [↩]
  10. Ibid, p.34 [↩]
  11. Ko, Liu and Karl, The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.107 [↩]
  12. Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, p.43 [↩]
  13. Ibid, p.51 [↩]
  14. Ibid, p.79 [↩]
  15. Ibid, p.52 [↩]
  16. Ibid, p.55 [↩]
  17. Ko, Liu and Karl, The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.159 [↩]

Anarchist Roots vs Authoritarian Reality of Maoism

The relationship between Maoism and anarchism reveals a profound tension that illuminates broader contradictions inherent in Chinese Communist revolutions. The collision between utopian ends and authoritarian means extends beyond the methodological divergence between centralised vanguardism and decentralised spontaneity that Dirlik argues.1 Rather, it lies in the profound reversal within Mao’s own intellectual thought and its implications for understanding revolutionary state formation in twentieth-century China. Mao’s early anarchist sympathies were not merely abandoned but actively weaponised against their former adherents once state power was consolidated.

The intellectual background of early republican China provided fertile ground for anarchist thought to flourish alongside Marxism, creating a revolutionary culture whose internal contradictions would only emerge later. Mao’s pre-Marxist writings reveal an orientation that contemporary observers would recognise as anarchistically leaning. His 1918 marginal annotations to Friedrich Paulsen’s work on ethics celebrated radical individualism that privileged personal autonomy over collective structures, declaring “the value of the individual is greater than that of the universe,” and denouncing the “four evils”: the church, capitalism, monarchy, and the state.2 Writing in the Xiang River Review in 1919 under the banner “The Great Union of the Popular Masses,” Mao articulated a vision of social transformation that owed more to Kropotkin’s mutual aid than to Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?, drawing particularly on the Confucian concept of Datong (Great Unity) to imagine a stateless, harmonious society that emerged from popular mobilisation rather than vanguard diktat.3

The ideological formation was not isolated. The early Chinese reception of Marxism was mediated through anarchist interpretive frameworks, a process most clearly embodied in the intellectual development of Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu. Working at Beijing University, Li Dazhao encountered Western anarchist texts before engaging deeply with Marxist writings, interpreting Marxism not as a blueprint for vanguard party organisation but as a theoretical vindication for anarchist praxis.4 His synthesis perceived fundamental compatibility between Marx’s vision of a classless society and Confucian utopianism, while Marx’s critique of Western imperialism resonated powerfully with anti-imperialist nationalism. Dirlik documents that there were no committed Marxists in China in 1919, with Chinese radicals displaying diffuse radicalism in which anarchist ideas were most prominent and communism was still understood by most as anarcho-communism.5 Between 1918 and 1920, Mao worked closely with Li Dazhao in Beijing, was exposed to anarchist intellectual circles, including the Work-and-Learning Mutual Aid Corps, and developed rapidly toward Marxism while retaining strong anarchist influences, particularly Kropotkin’s concept of mutual aid.

The organisational imperative that emerged from Comintern involvement fundamentally altered this intellectual landscape. When Gregory Voitinsky arrived in Beijing in early 1920, he made clear that a Communist party required the disciplined structure of a Leninist vanguard, not a loose gathering of intellectuals. The organisation of the Communist Party, with its demand for exclusive loyalty, inevitably split the social revolutionary alliance by spring 1922.6 Yet anarchist popularity peaked in 1922 to 1923, with significant influence in labour organisations, particularly in southern China, where communists could not make headway until 1925 due to anarchist strength.7

The tension here is not simply that Mao moved from anarchism to authoritarianism; rather, it is that the intellectual apparatus he constructed to justify peasant mobilisation, mass participation, and radical egalitarianism was forged in the crucible of anarchist thought, even as the organisational structure necessary to implement this vision demanded precisely the centralised state apparatus that anarchism categorically rejected. Anarchists were the first to advocate peasant-based revolution in China, a theory later championed by Mao.8 His concept of the “mass line,” developed during the Yan’an period, attempted to overcome the centralising tendencies of Marxism and Leninism by consulting the masses.9 Yet this synthesis masked a fundamental contradiction: Mao retained centralised party control throughout.

Understanding this tension requires recognising that revolutionary movements are sites of intense intellectual ferment where competing visions of social transformation exist in uneasy coalition until the exigencies of power force their resolution. The tragedy lies in this appropriation, that one of the most compelling critiques of state power in modern Chinese thought was ultimately mobilised to construct one of the twentieth century’s most totalising state apparatuses.

  1. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, 176 [↩]
  2. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, Vol. 1, 1918 [↩]
  3. Schram, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, 1919 [↩]
  4. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, 72 [↩]
  5. Ibid, 15 [↩]
  6. Ibid, 203 [↩]
  7. Ibid, 220 [↩]
  8. Ibid, 89 [↩]
  9. Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China, 1971 [↩]