Abstract
Even though East Asian nations (China, Japan, and Korea) have undergone radical transformations during the past century and more, their ideals and practices concerning well-being are impossible to understand without taking into consideration their traditional cultures and societies. Despite radical modernization in all three nations, their foundational values, philosophical and medical systems, and religious ideals persist to the present day. The aim of this chapter is to describe the processes operative in the formation of, and throughout the lengthy historical use of, East Asian concepts of well-being and to show how we must take into account these fundamental social, cultural, medical, and religious ideas if we are to comprehend accurately the nature of well-being in the societies of this region.
If we were to choose three key terms to encapsulate the notion of well-being in East Asia, perhaps the trio would be fortune, happiness, and family. The first two are to be realized in the context of the third. This approach is unlike Western ideas of well-being, which focus on the individual. In East Asia, the family-centered notion of well-being, moreover, is interwoven in a matrix of religious values and practices. Again, mirroring the East Asian family-centered concept of well-being, East Asian religions tend to be syncretic, unlike Western religions and cultures, which are largely exclusivist and individualistic. Thus, when it comes to organized religions, in East Asia we have a mix of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, underlying which are folk beliefs, medical ideas, and popular religion. This combination makes for a unique blend of religious practices that, to a Westerner, might appear to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. Whatever achieves the desired effect is considered to be efficacious and legitimate. Although modernity has brought major changes to East Asian societies, and influences from abroad have had enormous impact on them, there is no doubt that traditional values and practices persist because happiness, good fortune, longevity, and well-being remain chief desires.
[T]here are the five (kinds of) happiness (福 fu). The first is long life; the second is prosperity; the third is soundness of body and serenity of mind; the fourth is the love of virtue; and the fifth is ultimately fulfilling one’s destiny. Of the six extreme evils, the first is misfortune shortening the life; the second is sickness; the third is distress of mind; the fourth is poverty; the fifth is wickedness; the sixth is weakness. (The Book of History, Shang shu 尚書 or Shu jing 書經, one of the ancient Chinese Confucian classics, ch. 11.9, our translation; see Waltham 1971)
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Notes
- 1.
Due to limited space, only sources used multiple times or provided as translation examples are cited and included in the bibliography. All other relevant sources, along with additional items, are found in a supplemental bibliography.
- 2.
As a result of war, the despotism of earlier totalitarian leaders, and the outcry of the larger public sphere, Han dynasty leaders chose to adopt an approximation of the teachings of Confucius in order to foster the growth of an ideal, harmonious, social state. Through trade, expansion, and other movements, the Chinese brought Confucianism to Korea by the late second century CE and then to Japan by the third century CE, where it went through phases of acceptance, sometimes directed by military and political powers.
- 3.
At least one version of each of these classics, including the Chinese characters as well as outdated but useful translations in most cases, has been made public by the China Text Project at http://ctext.org/pre-qin-and-han and the Internet Sacred Text Archive at http://sacred-texts.com/cfu/index.htm.
- 4.
When born, a person has a certain amount of qi from both the father and the mother, which allows for the gestation of the embryo and its connection to primordial qi. Different later Chinese medical and religious theories claimed that if the parents lived an unvirtuous life, then this would affect the embryos of future generations and could cause disability, a propensity for illness and weakness, misfortune, and poverty. Conversely, virtuous parents could improve the destiny of their lineage.
- 5.
Chinese medical theory understands the body’s most important organs (the liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys) as yin-functioning storehouses for maintaining healthy levels of qi, and its other organs (the gall bladder, small intestine, stomach, large intestine, and bladder) as yang-functioning transformative organs of the digestive tract. To this they added two organs, the pericardium and triple heater for symmetry. These are understood, not as physical organs, but as internal nexuses of energy (“orbs” that correspond to specific bodily functions) that house the body’s internal administration system (see Engelhardt 2000, p. 98).
- 6.
Grains are replaced by pine bark, pine resin, sesame seeds, roots of orchids, asparagus root, mushrooms, fungus, water, and various other wild-picked ingredients (see Arthur 2013). Zhuangzi writes that ideally, an immortal eventually is able to subsist only on the qi from wind and morning dew. Some reasons for eliminating grains include the facts that grains, although part of a typical diet, are associated with bodily decay, immersion in an oppressive social structure, and the prevalence of intestinal parasites. Supplemented fasting refers to radically decreased normal food intake—typically necessitated by individuals leaving society and living in the wilderness alone or in small groups because of significant civil unrest or engagement in religious-oriented practices—which works to avoid many of the well-known negative side effects of starvation by including enough carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, and minerals that the practitioner is able to live in relative comfort and health for long periods of time with little actual food intake (Arthur 2013: 173–174).
- 7.
The functioning of these three major religions divided in this way provides insight into the social reality of religion(s) in East Asia and some of their major differences from Western religions. For example, Chinese religions each address certain aspects of life, but in an overlapping, inclusivist way rather than in a manner that stresses exclusivism and adherence to only one perspective and set of beliefs. As Christianity and Islam moved into China, the regions and ethnics groups that adopted these also have seen a rise in social and political unrest due in large part to a loss of much social and religious inclusivity.
- 8.
Many of the ethnic minorities in China, such as the Uyghurs and the Tibetans, as well as those found in Japan and Korea, have their own religious and cultural traditions of well-being. Although the Chinese government currently officially recognizes minority groups and provides certain protections under the law, historically, the situation for minority groups across East Asia was often quite different.
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Arthur, S., Mair, V.H. (2017). East Asian Historical Traditions of Well-Being. In: Estes, R., Sirgy, M. (eds) The Pursuit of Human Well-Being. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39101-4_3
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