This continuation of Kō Bun’yū’s essay, published in Bessatsu Seiron 26, analyzes Chinese dynastic change, religion and massacre, Confucian justification of genocide, and the mentality of twentieth-century China from a civilizational perspective.

2016-10-11
This is a continuation of an essay written by genuine intelligence, unlike the ignorance of the world.
What follows is a continuation of an essay by Kō Bun’yū, published in Bessatsu Seiron 26 released in March, written by genuine intelligence unlike the ignorance of the world.
All emphases in the text, except for headings, are mine.
During periods of dynastic change through the Yi-xing Revolution (dynastic replacement by Heaven’s mandate) in successive Chinese dynasties, the realm collapsed and popular uprisings centered on cult groups never ceased.
In reality, many cases involved secularized Han Chinese massacring other ethnic groups under the guise of religion.
According to the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, this constitutes “cultural genocide.”
The mass slaughter of Manchurians after the Xinhai Revolution and the large-scale purge of the Mongolian “Revolutionary People’s Party” by the People’s Republic also involved religion and ideology.
China’s religious problems are, in most cases, conflicts between the secular and the religious.
The famous anti-Buddhist persecutions of the “Three Wu and One Zong” involved not only Taoists but also Confucians.
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a mutual slaughter between secular Confucian local militias and a Christian-based cult group called the “God Worshipping Society.”
The previously mentioned “Xihui” massacres were of the same nature.
Ethnic massacres occur in conjunction with cultural destruction such as religion, taking the form of secular versus religious conflict.
The Tibet issue and the Uyghur issue are more essentially understood as conflicts of Confucius versus Buddha, and Confucius versus Muhammad, respectively.
Confucian thought that justifies massacre.
There are two major currents in Chinese thought.
They are the Confucian thought of Confucius and Mencius, which speaks of “human action,” and the Taoist thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi, which teaches “non-action” and “nature.”
Confucian thought is regarded as the spiritual and ideological offspring of Yellow River civilization, while Taoist thought is that of Yangtze River civilization.
More than two thousand years ago, during the reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing of the Han dynasty, Taoist thought played the central role, and the laissez-faire “Huang-Lao techniques” produced the peaceful “Rule of Wen and Jing.”
However, after the next emperor, Wu, adopted policies of “suppressing the hundred schools” and “exclusive reverence for Confucianism,” Confucianism became the state religion and national doctrine.
In reality, Confucian “rule by virtue” is impossible, and in successive dynasties it became merely an official ideology of appearances.
The great Oriental studies scholar Tachibana Shiraki pointed out that “officials are Confucian, the people are Taoist,” going so far as to describe them as “truly two different peoples.”
The essence of Confucian thought is an antiquarianism that believes “the past was better,” and through excessive faith in human agency, it strongly promotes the idea that “humans can overcome nature.”
Unlike Lao-Zhuang Taoism, it rejects coexistence with nature and possesses an intense Hua–Yi consciousness.
The Spring and Autumn Annals, attributed to Confucius, strongly advocates “revering the king and expelling the barbarians” and the “distinction between Hua and Yi,” forming the ideological basis of the Chinese concept of the “Spring and Autumn great righteousness.”
As seen in the Qin Great Wall, the primary threats to the Chinese world were northern barbarians such as the Xiongnu, but in Confucius’s time, the enemy was rather Chu in the south, which followed the stream of Yangtze River civilization.
Especially after Chu swallowed Wu and Yue, these southern barbarians became the greatest threat to the Central Plains states.
Why, then, did Confucianism become a rationale for massacre.
Not only early Confucianism of Confucius and Mencius, but also Neo-Confucianism from the Song to the Ming dynasties strongly asserted the distinction between Hua and Yi in opposition to the barbarians.
Zhu Xi’s school and Wang Yangming’s school were the same in this regard.
In particular, Wang Yangming learning designated the massacre of barbarians as “heavenly punishment” or “heavenly killing,” thereby justifying genocide.
Neo-Confucianism after the late Ming great scholar Wang Fuzhi generally taught that “benevolence and righteousness apply only to humans; barbarians are beasts, so killing them is not unbenevolent, and betraying them is not unfaithful or unrighteous,” becoming the national learning that justified massacres in modern and contemporary China.
The mentality and behavior of twentieth-century Chinese.
After the Xinhai Revolution, China changed its national form and political system three times in only about forty years, from empire to republic and then to the People’s Republic.
Of course, it is “common knowledge” that even the People’s Republic differed in political system between the Mao Zedong era and the post–Deng Xiaoping period.
Why was twentieth-century China so shaken and unstable.
To understand “the mentality and behavior unique to twentieth-century Chinese” is also to understand present-day China.
This, in turn, enables Japanese people not to be manipulated by them.
By extending the historical span slightly, one’s perspective also broadens.
For example, the Ming dynasty was a Han Chinese dynasty, and both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic were also dominated by the Han ethnic group.
The Qing dynasty ruled by the Manchus, particularly during the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, for the first time in history even reduced the poll tax, and is said to have been the happiest period for the Chinese people.
Conversely, the Ming period is said to have been the darkest age, with not only officials’ human rights but the entire population tightly bound under surveillance by secret police.
Cultural and civilizational historical comparisons of the Qing dynasty and the subsequent Republican period have not progressed.
In Japan, only “Japan’s invasion of China” is widely circulated, so many essential aspects are not discussed.
I wrote One Hundred Deceptions of the Republic of China (Zen’ei Publishing) in classical Chinese with the intention of saying, “Turn your eyes more toward the truth about China.”
The “common knowledge” that the Republic of China was an unprecedented age of chaos surpassing the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in Chinese history is rarely discussed in Japan.
After the An Lushan Rebellion, the Tang dynasty fragmented into around fifty states, and even after consolidation into the Song through the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, it was threatened by the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongols from the north, under which international environment Neo-Confucianism was reborn.
Edo-period Zhu Xi scholars, subsequent Orientalists and Sinologists, and postwar China scholars all came to know China through Chinese characters and classical Chinese texts.
As for the People’s Republic, it is difficult to know it without the endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party, and moreover, since the state and the people have long been in opposition in this country, the image of the state inevitably becomes a “prejudice.”
Twentieth-century China was not only an unprecedented age of turmoil, but also a period in which the mentality and behavior of “slaughtered subjects” among the Chinese themselves were exacerbated.
This was because there were too many regimes.
Even within the Nationalist Party alone, influential figures and factions arbitrarily established governments in Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, Beijing, and elsewhere, and in the internal struggle known as the Central Plains War alone, 1.5 million troops were mobilized, resulting in 300,000 deaths.
Bandits constantly outnumbered government troops by a factor of ten, and continuous killings among armed groups led to the society being called a “bandit society” or even a “bandit republic.”
To be continued.