Published on February 16, 2020.
Based on a work by Kō Bun’yū, this essay discusses the deeply rooted Chinese “culture of deception.”
Through Confucius, Laozi, The Culture of Deception, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it examines the stratagems and deceptive social structures of China, warning that distinctly Japanese assumptions such as “heart-to-heart understanding” and “speaking frankly will lead to understanding” do not work in China and may instead make Japanese people easy prey.

2020-02-16
The idea that “if we speak frankly and openly, we will understand each other” is also a tendency peculiar to the Japanese.
Such thinking does not work in China.
It only makes one “easy prey.”
That is why the Japanese, “even after being deceived, are deceived again.”
The following is from a work by Kō Bun’yū, one of the world’s foremost scholars thoroughly versed in China.
It is a book that not only the Japanese people but people all over the world must read.
The preceding passage is omitted.
“Deception” Is a Distinctive Culture of China
The world was so full of upheaval from below, so disorderly and chaotic, that Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals and, as a theory for setting right a society full of swindlers, advocated the idea that “to overcome oneself and return to propriety is benevolence.”
However, Laozi saw that “when the Great Way is abandoned, there appear benevolence and righteousness; when wisdom emerges, there appears great hypocrisy,” and concluded that “benevolence and righteousness” were born from the roots of a chaotic age.
He denied Confucius’s attempt at social reform and explained the structure of a society in which “only swindlers are genuine.”
Moreover, he preached “cut off benevolence and abandon righteousness,” in other words, “throw away benevolence and righteousness!”
He advanced a kind of antithetical argument that if these were discarded, fraud would disappear and the world would become peaceful.
Because it is a society in which “only swindlers are genuine,” the scholarly analysis of fraud naturally becomes a hot field of study.
Why, then, is “deception” taken up as a subject of cultural research?
For example, The Culture of Deception, by Professor Lin Qiquan of Xiamen University, a historian, published by Taiwan Commercial Press, is one of the representative excellent works on this subject.
Professor Lin analyzes the scope, history, content, techniques, significance, and value of deception from the fields of sociology, or the study of human relations and communication, and deals not only with “deception” as a social phenomenon, but also with how to prevent oneself from being deceived by those around one, and even with the future of deception.
As Chinese culture, beyond the Confucian culture of Confucius and Mencius promoted by Confucius Institutes, the culture of Laozi and Zhuangzi, and the various schools of thought that each formed their own doctrines, should we not also know and study the “learning of deception” for understanding what is false and what is real, as one of China’s ancient traditional cultures?
Japanese people are not only capable of “heart-to-heart communication,” but, as the saying goes, “the eyes speak as eloquently as the mouth,” they place importance on the expressive power of the eyes.
However, this does not work in Chinese society.
The idea that “if we speak frankly and openly, we will understand each other” is also a tendency peculiar to the Japanese.
Such thinking does not work in China.
It only makes one “easy prey.”
That is why the Japanese, “even after being deceived, are deceived again.”
For Chinese people, it is most welcome when Japanese people speak frankly and openly.
That is because they do not need to probe the other party.
Middle section omitted.
In China, where “only swindlers are genuine,” it is not the case that China was contaminated for the first time after reform and opening-up by the “poison of capitalism.”
The “seven evils” and “eight poisons” discussed later are merely the resurfacing of a traditional society.
What brought together the Chinese way of life based on schemes and stratagems into a novel, and what won popular resonance through street tales, was none other than the popular historical epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Chinese society, in which one can survive only through such a way of life, has remained unchanged for thousands of years, whether in the age of empire or in socialist society.
Even in society after reform and opening-up, the “culture of deception,” as a national custom and national soul, became the core of Chinese culture and civilization, and came to symbolize the tradition of Chinese culture.
No matter how much the national polity or political system may change, if there is one thing that remains consistently and absolutely immovable, it is surely the “culture of deception.”
The following passage is omitted.