Mega-Asia Research Project Outcomes: Articles

​This article is a critical essay on Hiroshi Watanabe’s work and methodology, focusing on his various books. He analyses the history of Japanese political thought in a ‘historical context’, emphasising ‘comparisons’ with Japan’s past and its neighbours. For him, power in Edo Japan was rule by force, a politics of the ‘image of power’. In peacetime Edo Japan, the power of the samurai was maintained through the use of intimidating imagery and elaborate rituals to represent it. In the Edo image of violence, Neo- Confucianism took root in a unique form that would later shape Nihonism, or the Meiji Restoration’s drive to learn from the West. It also paved the way for the revival of the emperor. Confucianism never became a mainstream idea in Edo Japan, but it had an unexpected influence. Meanwhile, Joseon, the “nation of Li[理]”, had a very different historical trajectory from Japan.

In Joseon, Confucianism was the central ideology of politics and society, and the “universality of Li” allowed for the control of arbitrary power and the enlightenment of all people. Unravelling the light and dark sides of this ideal, which is that “everyone can become a wise man[君子], but not everyone becomes a wise man”, has become an important task in the diverse history of Joseon reality.