Preface: This article was completed in collaboration with ChatGPT.

In the 4th–5th centuries CE, Confucian texts and the Chinese writing system began to enter Japan in a fragmented manner via the Korean Peninsula. At that time, Japan was in what later came to be known as the Kofun period. Local elite clans each controlled their own land, populations, and armed forces, forming loose alliances through blood ties, marriage, and religious rituals. There was no nationwide legal code, no centralized bureaucracy, and no permanent taxation system, let alone a coherent state ideology. Authority derived primarily from ritual power and military control rather than from abstract institutions. Royal legitimacy was usually established through mediation with deities and ancestors, not through written law or ethical doctrine. Society remained largely oral in nature. Without a mature writing system, memory, genealogy, myth, and ritual served as the main carriers of power and history. Social stratification certainly existed, but it was based on status and force rather than on institutionalized official ranks.

What brought Chinese characters and classical learning into Japan were migrants and technical bureaucrats from the peninsula, especially people from Baekje. Baekje was an ancient state on the Korean Peninsula, generally dated from around 18 BCE to 660 CE, and counted alongside Goguryeo and Silla as one of the “Three Kingdoms of Korea.” Chinese historical sources repeatedly mention toraijin (“people who crossed over”), who were not ordinary migrants but specialized professionals directly absorbed into the core of Yamato power, responsible for diplomatic documents, calendrical science, ritual records, and the explanation of classical texts. The Nihon Shoki explicitly records that Baekje repeatedly dispatched “doctors” to Wa (Japan), including Doctors of the Five Classics, of calendrical science, and of medicine. The “Five Classics” here did not mean learning in general, but specifically the Book of Songs, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, Book of Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals. In addition, the famous Seven-Branched Sword preserved at Isonokami Shrine in Nara bears an inscription written in standard Chinese characters, recording dates, royal titles, and the act of presentation, in a style closely aligned with that of the Southern Dynasties of China and Baekje.

From 592 to 710, the Asuka period, Confucianism entered the level of state construction for the first time. The ruling group represented by Prince Shōtoku introduced Confucian political ethics to integrate powerful clans and regulate official behavior. At this time, Japan did not yet possess a strong state capable of issuing commands across the entire realm. The “emperor” functioned largely as a ritual and alliance-based figurehead, while real control over land, force, and population rested with local elites. Without a form of order that transcended individual clans and could be widely accepted, centralized authority could not emerge. Confucianism entered precisely through this gap. It was not introduced as philosophy, but as a normative template for how to govern, how to obey, and how to coordinate. Shōtoku’s ruling circle understood clearly that blood ties or military force alone could not subdue the clans, but an ethical framework that appeared abstract, supra-personal, and authoritative could re-encode power relations. Confucianism supplied exactly this language: ruler and subject, superior and inferior, proper rank, and ritual.

The Seventeen-Article Constitution, promulgated in 604, was not centered on philosophical argument, but on governing principles articulated through keywords such as “harmony,” “ritual,” and “the ruler–subject order.” At this stage, Confucianism functioned as a language of governance, operating alongside Buddhism and explicitly subordinated to state needs. This “constitution” bears no relation to a modern constitution: it neither defines institutional structures nor allocates powers. Rather, it is a behavioral code directed at officials and powerful clans. Repeated terms such as “harmony,” “ritual,” “obedience to the ruler,” and “placing the public above the private” all pointed toward a single goal: weakening clan particularism and cultivating obedience to the public order. “Harmony” here did not signify abstract concord, but the rejection of open conflict among elites, insisting that disputes be resolved under central authority. “Ritual” functioned as a technical tool, regulating court ceremonies, ranks, movements, and speech, transforming political interaction from something dependent on custom and personal prestige into a set of repeatable, trainable behaviors.

More importantly, the ruler–subject relationship was here articulated for the first time as a political bond that transcended blood ties. In earlier clan society, loyalty was directed primarily toward family and immediate leaders. In the context of the Seventeen-Article Constitution, loyalty was reanchored to the abstract position of the “ruler.” One pledged allegiance not to a particular strongman, but to a central authority representing public order. This provided the ethical precondition for Japan’s later transformation from a confederated alliance into a state with a singular head.

From 710 to 794, the Nara period, the establishment of Heijō-kyō as the capital marked the full deployment of the ritsuryō system. Confucianism was institutionalized as part of state education, supporting centralization and bureaucratic selection. The Five Classics entered the educational curriculum, but their function remained administrative and ritual, not the cultivation of independent moral judgment among scholars. Ritsu referred to penal law, ryō to administrative and organizational law; together they defined offices, appointment procedures, salary grades, taxation, local governance, and court ritual. Whereas Asuka reforms had been experimental, after the founding of Heijō-kyō these rules were treated as the sole legitimate mode of state operation. Confucianism completed its “nationalization” in this period, though it had not yet become the exclusive core of social values.

From the 9th to the 12th centuries, the Heian period, as aristocratic politics and court culture matured, Confucianism’s visible prominence declined, retreating primarily into scholarship and ritual. Buddhism—especially esoteric Buddhism and Pure Land belief—occupied the spiritual center. Confucian learning continued uninterrupted, but its influence was comparatively limited.

From the 12th to the 16th centuries, spanning the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, warrior governments rose to dominance, shifting political leadership from court aristocrats to military elites, marked by the establishment of the Kamakura shogunate. Heian power had rested on bloodlines, marriage, and court hierarchy; politics had been inward-facing. Warrior rule was grounded in land control, military service, and contractual relations, extending politics outward from the battlefield. Samurai gained status not by birth alone, but through military achievement, obedience, and sustained loyalty in exchange for land and protection.

Confucianism was reinterpreted as an ethical resource serving the warrior class. The most fundamental transformation centered on a single concept: loyalty. In traditional Chinese Confucianism, loyalty was embedded within the clan system and intertwined with filial piety, family, and ritual. Loyalty to the ruler presupposed that the ruler embodied moral order and the public good; it was neither detached from kinship nor unconditional, and in principle it could be limited by moral judgment. In warrior society, this logic failed. Samurai confronted not an abstract sovereign, but a concrete lord; not a stable moral cosmos, but a fragile military order. Loyalty was thus stripped of its clan basis and public dimension, becoming personalized and unilinear. One was loyal not to institutions or principles, but to a person. Whether the lord was just mattered less than whether one obeyed, fought, and fulfilled obligations before the relationship collapsed. This was harsh, but effective.

Within samurai ethics, Confucian traditions of remonstration—moral admonition of rulers—were largely absent. Warriors were expected to die in battle or by ritual suicide, but rarely to oppose their lords through moral judgment. Confucianism no longer balanced power; it justified obedience. It reframed submission as virtue and sacrifice as the fulfillment of one’s role. At the same time, Confucianism did not operate alone. It formed a stable division of labor with Buddhism, especially Zen. Zen addressed death and inner discipline; Confucianism structured relationships and order, defining whom to die for and why. Together they formed the ethical foundation later called bushidō. This was not an ancient inheritance, but the product of Confucianism re-encoded by a military society.

From 1603 to 1868, the Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate established Neo-Confucianism (Zhu Xi learning) as the official ideology. Zhu Xi learning refers to the comprehensive interpretive system of Confucianism centered on Zhu Xi (1130–1200), developed in the Southern Song and later becoming the most influential “official” Confucian model across East Asia. Zhu Xi was a Southern Song scholar-official whose career was modest and frequently obstructed; he never reached the core of political power. At his time, Confucianism was in a weak position compared to Buddhism and Daoism, which offered fully developed cosmologies and theories of mind. Zhu Xi reorganized Confucian authority by elevating the Analects, Mencius, Great Learning, and Doctrine of the Mean as the “Four Books” and writing authoritative commentaries. From the Yuan dynasty onward, the civil service examinations were largely based on his interpretations.

At the core of Zhu Xi learning was the reconstruction of world order through the concept of principle (li). Zhu Xi argued that all things possess an objective, preexistent heavenly principle, prior to humans, history, and institutions. Social hierarchies, ethical distinctions, and gender and political relations were not human conventions but natural expressions of principle. Disorder arose because principle was obscured by material force and private desire. Morality thus became objective rather than elective. One did not choose loyalty or filial piety; one conformed to principle or erred. This objectification of ethics made Neo-Confucianism particularly suitable for state adoption. It resisted rebellion, change, and individual judgment.

Zhu Xi learning emphasized investigating things to attain knowledge, meaning disciplined study of the classics and sustained self-cultivation to recognize principle. It rejected sudden enlightenment or emotional outbursts, favoring slow, methodical self-discipline—well suited to bureaucratic elites and institutionalized education. In Edo Japan, Confucianism reached the peak of its social influence, systematically legitimizing status hierarchies, patriarchal families, and social immobility. Education, governance, and ethics were thoroughly Confucianized, while the tradition’s internal critical tension was greatly weakened.

After 1868, in the Meiji era, Japan underwent a superficial revolution of “complete Westernization,” but structurally rebuilt the state with Western institutions while stabilizing society through Confucian ethics. Facing imperialist pressure, unequal treaties, and military inferiority, Japan urgently needed constitutions, parliaments, law, and modern armed forces. Yet these institutions in Europe presupposed individual rights and social contracts, foundations absent in Japan. Wholesale transplantation risked social collapse. The Meiji government therefore adopted an “externally new, internally old” strategy: Western legal, military, and bureaucratic forms combined with Confucian loyalty and filial ethics.

In classical Confucianism, loyalty and filial piety were parallel yet distinct ethical lines directed toward ruler and father. In the Meiji state, these were forcibly merged into one center—the emperor. The emperor was cast as the “father of the nation.” Loyalty to the emperor became loyalty to the state; filial piety toward parents became foundational obedience to national order. Family and state ethics thus became structurally homologous.

The 1889 Constitution of the Empire of Japan embodied this hybrid design. Formally modern, with a written constitution, parliament, and legal system modeled on German constitutionalism, its spiritual logic was deeply Confucian: rights were not innate but granted by the emperor; subjects were defined as “imperial subjects,” not citizens; duties preceded rights. Individuals were protected only insofar as they did not challenge the order itself. This coherence allowed Japan to enter the international system as a modern state while suppressing rights-based domestic confrontation. Meiji constitutionalism was thus Confucian state ethics wrapped in modern institutions.

This structure was made even clearer in the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, a moral proclamation rather than a legal document, emphasizing filial piety, fraternal harmony, loyalty to the ruler, obedience to law, and sacrifice for the nation. Confucian ethics were embedded at the core of national education, teaching obedience as moral virtue rather than coercion.

What remains today? Institutions have democratized, but underlying behavior still bears Confucian traces. In contemporary Japan, this appears less in explicit talk of loyalty or filial piety than in a heightened awareness of role-based obligation. Companies function as quasi-families; superiors are expected to care for subordinates, who in turn are expected to show long-term loyalty and self-restraint. Personal emotion and individual stance often yield to the principle of not causing trouble or disrupting the whole—modern variants of subordinating the private to the public.

In everyday interaction, hierarchy remains palpable. The honorific language system is not merely politeness but a real-time mechanism for situating oneself relative to others. Sensitivity to position, rather than to rights, is a defining Confucian social trait. Rule-following is often treated as a moral issue rather than a legal one. Punctuality, orderly conduct, queuing, and adherence to procedure are internalized as “the right thing to do,” not merely as avoidance of punishment. Even within families, despite extensive de-structuring of traditional patriarchy, the sense that individual behavior reflects on the collective persists. This is not a simple survival of old patriarchy, but a softer form of moral constraint.

The Meiji era did not abandon Confucianism; it translated it from an explicit doctrine into the hidden grammar of national ethics and everyday behavior. Institutions can change, constitutions can be revised, but once loyalty, rank, and role-based obligation are embedded in education, organizations, and daily interaction, they continue to operate quietly yet persistently. This is why contemporary Japan appears highly modern and rights-protective, yet in moments of crisis still displays strong tendencies toward collective priority, role priority, and order priority. This is not a contradiction, but the enduring effect of the Meiji choice of “Western institutions with a Confucian core.”