This online event is co-sponsored by Rutgers Global. It is open to the public, but registration is required. Click here to register.
Abstract
It is commonly assumed that the recent rise to prominence of Confucian philosophy in comparative and normative political thought has its origins in the “New Confucianism” of post-war China and Taiwan. However, a small group of mostly East Asian scholars are rediscovering an early 20th-century genealogy for modern Confucian thought, developing largely in Imperial Japan and radiating out to colonial-era Korea and Republican-era China.
A new edited book Confucianism at War: 1931-1945 (Routledge), presents research on a critical, if now largely forgotten stage for this genealogy, documenting how Confucianism became a potent, and contested cultural-symbolic resource for nation-building, expansionism and collaborationism, between Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and its Pacific War defeat in 1945.
Three contributors to this book, Wenqing Zhao (Baruch College, City University of New York), Shaun O’Dwyer (Kyushu University), and Dongxian Jiang (Fordham University) will present their research on the diverse intellectual, social, and political engagements of Confucian ideologies and philosophies in this era: in moral education for peasant women in occupied Manchuria; in Japanese “Confucian diplomacy” towards the Kong family estate in Qufu in the 1930’s; and in scholarly debates over the role of Confucianism in state-building in the wartime Republic of China.
Bios
