Introduction

In April 1935, a now forgotten international conference took place which turned out to be the high-water mark of Japanese Confucianism’s national influence. It was organized by the Shibunkai (斯文会), the national organization dedicated to the study of Chinese Learning and Confucianism. The Conference on the Confucian Way in Honor of the Restoration of the Yushima Sage Hall (湯島聖堂復興記念儒道大会 Yushima Seido fukkō kinen judō taikai) was held following the reconstruction of the Confucian Yushima Sage Hall in Tokyo, which had been damaged in the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and rebuilt with funds raised by the Shibunkai. Its organizing committee comprised a glittering cross-section of Japan’s political and scholarly world. It included Prince Tokugawa Iesato, head of the Tokugawa clan, former President of the House of Peers, chairman of the Shibunkai and a noted internationalist; Hattori Unokichi, distinguished Sinologist, philosopher, director of the Japan-China Educational Association, and the moving force behind the formal establishment of the Shibunkai as a corporate organization in 1918; Prince Tokugawa Kuniyuki, historian, scion of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa clan, President of the House of Peers and future chairman of the Shibunkai; and Baron Sakatani Yoshiro, a former Meiji-era finance minister and House of Peers member, and former vice-chairman of the Shibunkai.

The conference gathered together over sixty scholars from Japan, China, Germany, colonial Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. Attendees and speakers at its preliminary ceremonies also included Minister of the Imperial Household Yuasa Kurahei, Education Minister Matsuda Genji and Puyi, Emperor of the Japanese puppet-state “Empire of Manchuria” and former emperor of the Qing Dynasty. The presence of representatives of the ancient Kong (孔) and Yan (顏) Confucian lineages at the conference itself also lent tremendous legitimacy to the image of Pan-Asian spiritual and cultural unity its organizers hoped to cultivate.

The organizers’ hopes were clearly expressed in the prefatory “record” for the conference’s proceedings: “We believe this conference will not only play a part in the promotion of Confucianism; it will also fortify the solidarity of East Asian peoples (民族 minzoku) and, furthermore, contribute to world civilization and serve the cause of world peace.”