Paper short abstract:

Building on work published in my recent Japanese Confucianism (Cambridge, 2016), and adding further research data (both historical, and fieldwork based), this presentation uses the sociology of Confucianism in Japan to answer the question: is Confucianism religion?

Paper long abstract:

Debates over whether Confucianism is religion have raged since the sixteenth century. The question of Confucianism’s “religiosity” (or lack thereof) played a key role in: 1) wider sixteenth to eighteenth century global political battles of the Jesuits; 2) the nineteenth century modernist characterization of “Oriental” society as static, backward, and timeless; 3) twentieth century liberal and socialist modernizing iconoclasm; and 4) modern conservative cultural essentialism. The relationship between negative or positive characterizations of Confucianism, and its definition alternatively as religion or philosophy, has continued as a major point of tension in discussions on the politics of the tradition across East Asia for five centuries, climaxing in the modern period. Confucian revivalists in contemporary China, the Communist Party organs which regulate religion there, and Japanese philosophy, politics and religion players and academics, have all argued in these terms. This presentation uses the sociology of Confucianism in Japan to engage this longer durée history and politics asking the simple question: is Confucianism religion?

Building on work published in my recent Japanese Confucianism: A Cultural History, and adding data from further research (both historical, and my own field work on contemporary practice in both Japan and Taiwan), this paper emphasizes the plurality of manifestations of Confucianism in all periods of Japanese history, yet asserts a number of commonalities across period: notably the importance of aspects we would today label using the world ‘religion’, and a common thread of local actors treating Confucianism in the same ways as other traditions commonly held to be religions. I argue that, in almost all present and historical manifestations of Confucianism in Japan, it was/is: 1) socially positioned in parallel alongside other traditions universally understood as religions (notably Buddhism, Daoism, Shinto and Christianity); 2) politically controlled, regulated and exploited ‘as a religion’ through exactly the same instruments as other religions; 3) centrally reliant upon core religious practices and methodologies, even when primarily active in other fields like literature, politics, ideas or medicine. I thereby conclude that Confucianism in Japan should be regarded as religion.