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Confucianism and Modernization in East Asia pp 43–103Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Confucianism and Modernization in East Asia Compared (I): The First-Wave Modernization

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Abstract

Kim looks into the historical experience of the first wave of modernization in nineteenth-century China, Korea, and Japan in order to discover its possible relationship with Confucianism. In both China and Korea, where the political systems were quickly disintegrating, neither the regime in power nor the age-old Confucianism was able to hold society together in the face of the challenge of Western imperial encroachment. Occasionally, the regimes attempted to preserve Confucian doctrines or to “politicize” Confucianism for the immediate purpose of maintaining social integration, but they did so mostly in vain. Although Confucianism in Japan did not traditionally enjoy the special status of state ideology, the modernizing elite made selective use of certain elements of its doctrine to consolidate society as it underwent the turbulent process of modernization.

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  1. Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Kim Kyong-Dong

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Kyong-Dong, K. (2017). Confucianism and Modernization in East Asia Compared (I): The First-Wave Modernization. In: Confucianism and Modernization in East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3626-2_2

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