Re: [tlug] OT: interesting NY times article:High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

Shin MICHIMUKO wrote:
> Ah, I guessed that we should improve the situation actually...
>
> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>
> Sent: 2008年05月20日 14:00:32
>
> > it's the so-called "elites" and the bureaucracies and their rules and
> > policies.  
>
> Ah, they are! And it's because some of those people are following the 
> way of "Confucius". Not so many people clearly indicated this before, 
> but the effect of "Confucius" seems to be deeper and stronger in Japan 
> rather than China or Korea which are the countries "Confucious" 
> originally comes from.

This is an interesting interpretation, but it is completely incorrect. 
It also has very little to do with what we're talking about, but this 
may give some background.

Japan follows the Neo-Confucian (Daoxue) school of thought epitomized by 
Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren, Ou shoujin, Yangming-zi, Yangming Xiansheng 
[1472-1529]).  The Wang Yangming school was the means by which the 
Chinese (Han) Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) sought to eradicate the effects 
of the Yuan Dynasty (1278-1368) which had been imposed by the Mongols 
under the Great Khan.  It was the last time China was ruled by Chinese 
until 1948.  In Japan, Neo-Confucianism was brought in by Oda Nobunaga 
(although some say it was Uesugi Kenshin) and the Matsudaira family (of 
which the best known sub-family were the Tokugawa) to eradicate the free 
thinking of the late Muromachi Period and the decline of the Ashikaga.

> You know that China was fighting with "Confutious" for long time from 
> the age of First Emperor. 

At the time of the Yellow Emperor (Qinxi Huangdi) all of the original 
writings of Confucius (Gongfudze) were destroyed and all scholars were 
killed.  As far as anyone knows, there are no original Confucian texts 
extant nor were there any survivors to write them back down after 
Xihuang died and his empire collapsed in the face of a peasant revolt 
that became the Han Dynasty.  "Confucianism" is something the Chinese 
governments made up to keep the people in place and docile.

> I don't think Chinese government is always good, 
> since they are excluding the religeous groups sometimes, but at least, 
> they are familiar with the negative aspects of Confucius than Japan.

The teachings of Gong are once again permitted and, in some places, 
encouraged in China.  The Gong family temple in Shandong has been restored.

> And the number of Christians are growing in Korea so quickly than Japan. 
> It means that Korean people succeeded on controlling the effect of 
> "Confucius", I guess.

This is a matter of more than a little interpretation.  Of course, there 
is the old story about how Hangul was developed so that the Korean 
people could translate the Bible, but my Korean friends tell me that it 
is something that Christians seem to know a whole lot more about than 
Korean scholars, who thought Hangul was developed to enable the Korean 
kings to disseminate education, which in old Korea was superior to that 
of China and was a system copied by the Japanese, who used kana.

There are a lot of nuthatch fundamentalist Protestant splinter groups in 
Korea who all together claim about 65% of the Korean population, but 
marriages and funerals are still mostly Buddhist or the local animist 
religion.  Like so many other places in North Asia reports of 
"Christianity" are a very thin veneer over reality and the numbers are 
suspect.  And, as the husband of a Japanese Catholic from a family that 
can trace their belief back to Sengoku-jidai, I hear the same thing from 
Japanese priests all the time.

> This is assumed to be a cultural differences of Japan, but those elite 
> people (who loves samurai style, or belongs to bureaucrat hierarchy) are 
> following the Confucius style, because it was the standard for more than 
> 1,000 years. They were educated to follow what they are told by 
> employers or parents (bosses), and first priority belongs to their 
> bosses. Those people don't care about the problems in front of them, but 
> care what their boss feels.

The "samurai style" has nothing to do with China.  Samurai are a product 
of the Gandara Dynasty of modern-day Afghanistan of around the sixth or 
seventh century A.D. and the thought appears to have come to Japan via 
present-day Fujian (China) or Hue (Vietnam) through Dazaifu.  You may 
also find another theory that says it came to Japan across the Gobi and 
entered via one of the ancient Korean proto-states.  The only problem is 
that there is no historical record of a samurai-style of activity in 
North China or Korea, but there are traces among the historical records 
of the Cham (early [pre-Dai-ren] Thai and Javanese Khmer).

HTH

--
CL