Questions on the Reading

Week 9

Introduction to "Neo-Confucianism in Late Imperial China, Korea, and Japan."

As imperial patronage of Buddhism waned, monks were replaced with Confucian scholars in diplomatic exchanges, and sutras with Confucian texts. When Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Confucian canon were adopted in 1241 as the standard interpretation for the imperial examinations in China, Korean scholarship followed suit. Later trends in Neo-Confucian scholarship were equally debated by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scholars alike.

But communications between China, Korea, and Japan were not confined to diplomatic and scholarly exchanges. From the middle of the thirteenth century through the middle of the fourteenth century, the Mongols built an empire of unprecedented proportions that stretched from Eastern Europe to Korea (two naval expeditions to Japan failed, in 1274 and 1281), thereby creating new trade routes and new diplomatic relations. In the late sixteenth century, the Japanese general Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) not only battled scores of feudal lords in order to unify the Japanese empire, but he sought to conquer the Ming empire (1368-1644). The resulting Imjin wars (1592-1598, in which Ming imperial armies were dispatched at great cost to support Korean troops in resisting the Japanese invasions) destroyed Korean agriculture and commerce, and contributed to the fall of the Ming dynasty. During the sixteenth century, European nations began to stake claims in East Asia, and thus began the integration of East Asia into an increasingly complex world economy.

1. What differences and similarities do you perceive between Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism in their development over time and in their adoption and adaptation throughout East Asia?
   
   
2. How does the "Neo-Confucian East Asia" differ from the "Buddhist East Asia" in its conception of body, space (buildings, landscape), gender, family, state, national identity, and "East Asia"? How do the detailed admonitions about body, gender, and family in the admonitions for women and in Yi Hwang's writings relate to the larger context of Confucian and Neo-Confucian texts?

3. How do Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu legitimize their government and their policies? How do they view their territory, their subjects, and other countries?