Preface
Two Tensions and Their Resolution in CulturalInteraction in East Asia＊＊＊

Huang Chun-Chieh

Mr. Chairman, President Tao, Dear Colleagues,
Good morning! On behalf of National Taiwan University, I would like towelcome you once again to this university, the oldest university on this island.
Since 1928 Taiwan University has made every effort to foster and nurture
intellectual growth, so we are most honored to cosponsor the second annual
meeting of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia this year.
Today I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on two tensionsexhibited in the history of cultural interactions in East Asia and the approach
Japanese scholars employed to resolve these tensions. In approaching thistopic, I “discard the bricks to discover the jade”（拋磚引玉）, as the Chinese
idiom puts it. I make this presentation in the hope of sparking your ideas in
the study of East Asian cultural interaction.
The first tension appears in the polarity between the universal values in
the Chinese Confucian classics and the local conditions of peripheral countries, be it Japan, Korea, or Vietnam. In the eyes of Japanese and KoreanConfucian scholars, the so-called “universal values” of the Chinese classics,values such as the kingly way（王道）, loyalty（忠）, filial piety（孝）, and themiddle kingdom（s）（中國）, are all site-specific and time-specific. These“universal values” are nothing but the products of classical China some two
thousand years ago, developed as so-called “universal values” mainly under
the hegemony of the Chinese empire, which dominated East Asia. To makethe Chinese classics more congenial to the political, social, and cultural zeitgeists of their own countries, Japanese and Korean scholars reinterpreted, oreven creatively misinterpreted, the Chinese classics. Yi T’oegye （李退溪,* Presidential inaugural address delivered at the Second Annual Meeting, SCIEA,May 7, 2010.
** Distinguished Professor of History, National Taiwan University; ResearchFellow, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica.

2Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.2 20111502–1571） of sixteenth-century Chosŏn Korea and Itō Jinsai （伊藤仁齋,1627–1705） of seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan are two examples of
those who strove to reinterpret the “universal values” of ChineseConfucianism to suit the contexts of Korea and Japan.
The second tension in cultural interactions in East Asian history is theclash between the cultural identity and political identity of readers of theChinese classics. The most representative case of this tension is the thoughtprovoking dialogue between Yamazaki Ansai（山崎闇齋, 1618–1682）and his
disciples on the possibility of a Qing cultural invasion of Japan headed byConfucius and Mencius. When Korean and Japanese scholars encounteredsuch ideas as the distinction between the Han and barbarians（華夷之辨）and（中國）, they could not but experience
the concept of the middle kingdom（s）
serious inner conflicts. On the one hand, they identified with the lofty spiritual ideals created by Confucius and Mencius. On the other, as Korean orJapanese citizens, they politically identified with their own native lands.
To cope with these two tensions, Japanese and Korean scholars engaged
in an intellectual enterprise that I term the “contextual turn” in cultural interaction in East Asia. Let me explain what I mean by the contextual turn. The
context of the Confucian classics in China was latent, tacit, and almost
imperceptible, but this context became salient and explicit once the Confucianclassics were transplanted into a foreign land, such as Tokugawa Japan（1600–1868）or Chosŏn Korea（1392–1910）. Many a Japanese or Korean
Confucian took ideas and values expressed in the Chinese classics and transplanted them into the context of Japanese or Korean politics and thought, inthe light of which these Japanese or Korean scholars would carry out newinterpretations of the classics. In this sense and to this extent, we arewarranted in referring to this interpretive phenomenon as a contextual turn.
Two steps can be observed in this contextual turn. First, there was adecontextualization: taking the classics out of the Chinese context tacitlyassumed by Chinese Confucians. Second, there was a recontextualization:
situating the Chinese classics in the Japanese or Korean context. As
mentioned above, this transcultural contextual turn was effected at twodifferent levels: the political order（e.g., the Chinese world order）and politicalthought（i.e., the ruler-minister relationship）. And it stirred up many transcultural problems of interpreting the classics, which warrant our attention.
Let us consider the contextual turn in the East Asian world order. Thiskind of contextual turn can be divided into two types: a turn executed to suitthe East Asian world order（realpolitik）, and fresh interpretations executed tosuit the East Asian intellectual context. The most common examples of theformer type are “new” Japanese interpretations of the term “middle kingdom”（中國）. The latter type is best exemplified in the account of the noble kinglyTwo Tensions and Their Resolution in Cultural Interaction in East Asia

3way（王道）presented in the Mencius.
The term “middle kingdoms” appears frequently in the Chinese classics.
In very early classics, like the Book of Odes（詩經）, the term carries mostly
political or geographical meanings. However, in the three commentaries on
the Spring and Autumn Annals（春秋）—the Zuozhuan（左傳）, Gongyang（公羊）, and Guliang（穀梁）—the term also has rich cultural connotations. Theterm “middle kingdoms” always appears in a cultural context distinguishing
between Han and barbarian regions, with “middle kingdoms” denoting theregion with the highest cultural standards. Before the formation of themodern East Asian political order, “middle kingdom” always referred at once
to the Chinese Imperial Court and to the Chinese cultural homeland.
When Tokugawa Japanese Confucians read the Chinese classics, they
faced this idea of a middle kingdom from a Japanese perspective. Hence,
given the classics’ presupposition of a distinction between Han and barbarian
regions based on the East Asian political order and its intellectual content,
they were bound to propose a new interpretation so as to reduce the dissonance between their cultural self and their political self, and to adjust theChinese classics to suit Japan’s overall cultural zeitgeist.
In executing a transcultural contextual turn of the term “middle kingdom,”
Japanese Confucians adopted at least the two following methods:
First, in considering the cultural meaning attached in China to the expression “middle kingdom” in light of the term “middle way”（中道）or the textof the Spring and Autumn Annals, Yamaga Sokō （山鹿素行, 1622–1685）
executed a bold contextual turn from the perspective of his “other” culture.
He regarded “middle kingdom” as referring to Japan, because “the moist earthof the middle kingdom [meaning Japan] is superior to that of the myriad othertribes, and her officials are more refined and elegant than the other men ofrank,” to which, in fact, the “foreign court”（geographic China）could not holda candle.
Second, Japanese thinkers adjusted the Chinese classics out of ideologicalconsiderations to make them more congenial to their native intellectual
milieu. In interpreting Mencius’s “kingly way” as the “way of the former
kings,” Ogyū Sorai（荻生徂徠, 1666–1728）stressed that the king had priority
over the Way. He aimed to disarm the potential risk that Mencius’s political
ideals posed to the Japanese governing authority, thus making it suitable toJapan’s Tokugawa feudal order.
In summary, the two types of contextual turn mentioned above both antecedently require decontextualization. Ideas from the Confucian classics suchas “middle kingdom,” “the Way,” and “kingly way” were lifted from their
original contexts in ancient Chinese politics or in Confucius’s and Mencius’s
thought and were transplanted into the context of the Tokugawa feudal polit-

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol.2 2011

ical order, where they were endowed with completely new interpretations andmeanings. While this kind of decontextualization and recontextualization
yielded completely new views and interpretations, from the perspective of theoriginal linguistic meaning and context of the Chinese classics, they were agreat falling out from the original ideas.
To conclude my presentation today, I would like to suggest that we needto shed more light on what I call the contextual turn that appeared in culturalinteraction in East Asia. The deeper we delve into the methodological issues
and problematiques involved in the contextual turn in East Asian culturalinteraction, the more fruitful research outcomes we may expect in the future.
Thank you very much for your attention.