Confucianism: China's Influence

Overview of Confucianism

• China saw itself as a central power, influencing its neighbors politically, economically, socially, aesthetically, religiously, philosophically, and in terms of gender.
• "Sino-Japanese," "Sino-Korean," "Sino-Vietnamese," and "Sino-Khmer" cultural forms emerged due to China's influence, but each culture retained unique social customs.
• These customs tempered Chinese ideas on family, governance, ethics, and the sex-gender system that arose with the expansionist Han dynasty.
• Japan only gradually saw matrifocality displaced by Confucian patriarchal structures.
• Korean legislation on widow chastity and remarriage was stricter than in China.
• Practices like foot-binding did not spread outside China.
• Customs originating in China were interpreted, encouraged, or enforced differently in other regions within China's cultural sphere.
• Class and clan identities, urban vs. rural life, and cultural center vs. periphery always affected social practice in China.
• Historical periods varied in their "Confucian," "Taoist," or "Buddhist" orientation.
• China was notably homogeneous on a bureaucratic scale and culturally dominant in East and parts of Southeast Asia until the modern era.
• Gender concepts in China are focused on, with reference to distinctive patterns elsewhere.
• Studies on women's history in China are more abundant than those for Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Origins of Gender Hierarchy

• Du Fangqin suggests that early divination and classification systems like the Book of Changes and Book of Documents were the source for gendered notions of Heaven and Earth.
• By the Western Zhou dynasty (1045–771 BCE), binary oppositions like inner/outer, principal/subordinate, noble/humble, and ruler/minister were established.
• During the Eastern Zhou (770-221 ВСЕ), yang and yin were linked to Heaven and Earth and to divinatory trigrams: qian (Heaven) and kun (Earth).
• Zhou rulers asserted a natural order among Heaven, Earth, and humankind.
• This created a human hierarchy and an ideology of dominance.
• Men were likened to Heaven, the sun, and the ruler, while women were the subordinate Earth, moon, and ministers of state.
• "Vigor" was assigned to yang and "tenderness" to yin, conflating sex and gender in Chinese cosmological thinking.
• Patrilocality and patrilinealism predated Confucianism.
• These pre-existing values mitigated later patriarchal hierarchies.
• Monogamy protected patrilineal property by restricting inheritance to legitimate sons, while concubinage was tolerated.
• A woman's value depended on her role as wife and producer of heirs, though mothers were highly esteemed.
• Filial sons were celebrated for sacrificing themselves for their mothers, protecting patrilineal interests.
• Brideprice indicated the woman's status as property, while dowry showed her role in carrying her natal family's property.
• During the Han dynasty, dowries were significant compared to brideprice.
• Early imperial law recognized dowries as the wife's property, returned in case of divorce.
• Property ownership gave women leverage as wives.
• Women could exercise power by supporting their husbands, caring for in-laws, and nurturing children.
• If a man was unable to provide, a woman could manage the household, including family business and property.

Confucian Complexities

• Women managed domestic affairs like cooking, cleaning, childcare, and ritual preparations.
• Elite women had help, while non-elite women shared duties.
• Textile production, from cultivating materials to finishing, was primarily women's work.
• Elite women might embroider instead of tending silkworms, but all were involved in this gendered work.
• Women formed cooperatives to economize on light and fuel costs for spinning.
• Cloth was used to pay taxes, making women's work valuable.
• Pre-Confucian texts like the Book of Odes document women's lives, with songs and poems showing independent thought and action.
• During the Zhou dynasty and into the Han, Confucianism vied for acceptance alongside other ideologies.
• Early Confucian texts don't inherently suggest women's inferiority.
• Confucius noted that women, like "petty men," are "difficult to deal with" due to their lack of education.
• Mengzi acknowledged the social view of women as subordinate but didn't advocate isolation or oppression.
• Confucianism gained dominance in the Han when decreed the established tradition.
• Texts like the Book of Odes were used for civil service education.
• A tradition of anachronistic political allegories in Confucian classics made it harder to accurately see women of earlier times.
• Real women became difficult to find in the emergent Confucian canon.
• Following civil warfare, the early Han desired stability, discerning how the emperor and ministers might act in accord with Heaven.
• Cosmological speculations and yin-yang theories were melded with Confucian ideas of rulership and hierarchy.
• Yin-yang qualities were catalogued to include every facet of human behavior, from body parts to emotions to military ranks.
• Dong Zhongshu asserted the primacy of yang over yin to construct a model of rulership, associating the ruler with yang and the ruled with yin.
• Yang was linked to strength, growth, light, and life, reinforcing gendered hierarchies.
• Every person harbored both yang-rationality and yin-emotionality, the latter prone to cause confusion.
• Yang-related qualities were accorded moral superiority.
• The Han interest in proper behavior led to the "arranged biography" (liezhuan), displaying exemplary behaviors.
• Liu Xiang's Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan) offered portraits of wise mothers and virtuous wives exemplifying Confucian values.
• Subjects in these biographies urged husbands, sons, and rulers to fulfill their responsibilities.
• Women were not devoid of virtue or talent, but their association with yin undercut perceptions of their abilities, especially intellect,.
• A later redaction of the text included a section on disruptive women, underscoring the perceived nature of most women.
• A sense of women's capacity to disturb order is evident in didactic books for women in the late Han, like Ban Zhao's Instructions for Women.
• Ban Zhao, an imperial tutor, advocated women's education to ensure submission and performance of family rites.
• A woman's goal was to establish a private household supporting men's public endeavors.
• Didactic texts for women and children multiplied, including translations of Chinese texts.
• New texts were developed for local women as Confucianism spread.
• The phrase "men go out, women stay in" (nan wei nü nei) reinforced separate public and private spheres for men and women.
• Farmers, herdspeople, and artisans could hardly afford to lose half their households' labor, showing the elite bias of this dictum.
• Socioeconomic status and climate dictated the honoring of this dictate more in the breach than in practice.
• Women and men were conscripted for corvée labor during rare early imperial periods.
• The phrase "thrice-following" (san cong) in the Book of Rites clarified women's roles as "following" father, husband, and son in ritual dress and protocol.
• The text confirmed that a household's status depended on the male head's social level.
• Later interpretations expanded "following" into submission to male authority, interpreted as "three obediences."
• Divorce was possible but unevenly available.
• Men could divorce their wives on grounds like failure to produce a son or jealousy.
• Women could defend themselves if they had mourned their parents-in-law, been the wife of youth and poverty, or would be rendered homeless.
• Patrilineal demands meant a divorced woman had no claim on her husband's family.
• She would be consigning herself to a life of poverty and isolation unless her natal family would support her.
• Widows from lower socioeconomic ranks might be remarried quickly.
• Sons were prohibited from mourning a divorced mother after her death.
• Confucianism was never the only ideological force in China., with Taoism and shamanism were important for women and gender.
• Local shamanic cults provided women spiritual and communal authority.
• These traditions predated literary traditions, representing early evidence of female authority.
• Shamans, or wu, were ecstatic healers, exorcists, and diviners deriving power from deities.
• Many ritual specialists were female, possibly originally the province of women.
• During the Shang Dynasty (с.1766-1027 BCE), female wu served as chief officiants at rites of supplication.
• An important duty was summoning rain to ensure crop growth.
• Shamans also functioned as diviners, like astrologers.
• Accomplished wu were sought after as personal physicians and fortune-tellers in the Zhou and Han periods.
• Classical Taoism is distinct from local sectarian cults and traditions.
• Liturgical Taoism evolved from the second century CE, with many wu traditions assumed by Taoist priests or coopted into folk tradition.
• Western commentators valorize the Tao Te Ching (Daodejing) for female imagery.
• The Tao is referred to as "mother," and practitioners mimic the "valley spirit."
• A Taoist sage eschewed social prominence in contrast to the Confucian "gentleman".
• The text's intended audience was the literate male population of feudal courts.
• Liturgical Taoism allowed women active, public roles of authority, and was founded in the late Han.
• The Celestial Masters sect admitted women to the priesthood.
• During the Six Dynasties era (222–589 ce), women proliferated as priests, nuns, lay adepts, recluses, and warrior heroes.
• Some sectarian traditions recognized women as receivers of cosmic truth, like the Chingwei tradition founded by a woman receiving celestial thunder rites instruction.
• Confucianism's renaissance in the twelfth century marginalized Taoism.
• The spread of Confucian concepts diminished women's visibility within Taoist traditions.
• “Taoist female deities” and Buddhist celestial beings did not positively affect lived lives.
• Pollution fears surrounding menstruation made temples off-limits to women of childbearing age, so financial authority tended to vest in men.
• Post-menopausal women could freely and daily participate in temple business.
• Following the Han dynasty's dissolution in 220 ce, China entered disunion period.
• Women were regarded with ambivalence, and the strictures placed upon them varied based on locale.
• Exemplary biographies and didactic works continued to be produced, but there was some relaxation of customs isolating women from their natal families.
• Tang dynasty (618–907) legal code recognized married daughters' right to inherit property.
• The Song dynasty (960–1279) saw the population doubled, urbanization grow, literacy expand through printing.
• Neo-Confucianism blended classical Confucian moralism with spiritual techniques from Buddhism and Taoism.
• Women were increasingly identified as the locus of distraction, as men struggled with temptations.
• The Song witnessed status diminution with the gendered association of erectile dominance and submission/dependence strengthening.
• Footbinding spread beyond the courtesan community.
• Legal records confirm that women's property rights expanded in the Song dynasty.
• Women's dowries were deemed their own property and carried commercial value.
• Women controlling textile production had an opportunity for greater wealth.
• Economic expansion increased market demand for maids, concubines, slaves, courtesans, and prostitutes.
• Women were being bought and sold, which threatened kinship structure, and "Confucian” literati struggled to maintain a sense of clear kinship and social roles.
• Confucian scholars since the Han advocated education for women to initiate the education of their sons properly.
• Song's lower-rank literati advocated daughters' education, even as they worried their offspring were troubled about literacy.
• Full force of gender ambivalence was not manifest until neo-Confucianism was established in the later Yuan and Ming dynasties (1280–1368 CE; 1368–1644 ce).

Korea

• Korean culture owes influence of China as a result if writing, education etc
• Korean cultural uniqueness is extent of Korean culture, as well as its independence from chinese Influence
• Korea succeeded in managing its cultural independence
• Native identity and chinese Culture are a result of this.
• The position of woman are being debated based on if they dominated at a period of time and are doing today
• The pre-historic primacy if female shamanic authority holds that the traditions were originally male-dominated
• The woman and mudang worked to not only act in place of the individual - They used both their ancestors power as well as deiteies
• Korea welcomes budhissm and nunneries for women and it housed women of singular ability.
• Sex in Kogryo seems free and men and woman gather and sing.

Southeast Asia: Vietnam

• Trading Routes exist between Vietnam and China
• Vietnamese cultural is more similar to south east asian nations.
• Woman enjoys high property and rights
• water-rice culture led a great culture.

Japan

• Unlike Korea and Vietnam, Japan never suffered invasion by the Chinese.
• Chinese influences were consequently slower and selectively adopted.
• Geographic and social isolation gave rise to a greater consciousness of native identity and its value
• Japan's gender history is a complex mix of indigenization of Chinese mores, and of resistance to them. The sun kami ancestress is worshiped in home by extnesion the entire japanese ppl a strong tradition of female spiritual authority remains evident.

Explore China's significant influence on neighboring countries politically, economically, and socially. Discover how unique social customs in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam tempered Chinese ideas on family, governance, and ethics. Learn about the variations in the interpretation and enforcement of Chinese customs across different regions.