National Consciousness and the Evolution of the Civil/Martial Binary in East Asia

Title

National Consciousness and the Evolution of the Civil/Martial Binary in East Asia

Author

Oleg BENESCH

Page

129-171

DOI

Abstract

The binary of martial and civil virtues (wen-wu) is one of the oldest and most pervasive concepts in East Asian thought. This paper examines the transmission of Chinese wen-wu thought to Japan, and its subsequent independent development in that country. Whereas in China and Korea, primacy has traditionally been given to civil virtues over martial ones, the unique warrior-centered social and governmental structure that developed in Japan led its thinkers to more strongly emphasize the martial. As a result, at least in the context of wen-wu, many Japanese were willing to accept, rather than invert, the China/barbarian binary that marked continental interpretations. In comparison, many Japanese Confucians and related schools of thought had otherwise tended to revise ideas imported from China in ways that removed them from their source and relocated the moral center to Japan. The identification of Japan as the "martial country" and China/Korea as the "civil countries" came to be broadly accepted by intellectuals in all three societies. At the same time, the exact nature of Japanese "martiality" varied greatly among different thinkers, often to the extent that definitions of the concept could be polar opposites. This paper argues that it was this vagueness and flexibility of the wen-wu binary that ensured its continued prominence as the concepts were adapted to new situations, and further led to movements by Chinese and Korean thinkers to introduce Japanese martiality into their own nations around the turn of the twentieth century. In this process, Japanese bun-bu (wen-wu) theories were variously packaged with the teachings of Wang Yangming and the modern martial ethic of bushido (the way of the warrior), and this paper considers the roles of the reformers Liang Qichao and Pak Un-sik in the dissemination of bun-bu thought in China and Korea, respectively.

Keyword

bun-bu, wen-wu, bushido, martial and civil, Japan, China, Korea, nationalism, Liang Qichao, Pak Un-sik

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