On the Contextual Turn of Mencius's "Kingly Way" in Wartime Japan (1931-1945)

This chapter explores two epochal “contextual turns” in the reception of Mencius’ Confucian thought in Japan, as Japan’s cultural and political settings stimulated long periods of disputation over the meanings of Mencius’ text, giving rise to new interpretations of his thought adapted to the socio-political conditions of the times. The first contextual turn, spanning the seventeenth through to the mid-nineteenth centuries, saw a more political understanding of Mencius’ ideal of the Kingly Way take shape, and this ideal was also subjected to an infusion of Shinto thought. The second contextual turn emerged in the 1930s, as the once universal ideal of the Kingly Way was distorted into a particularistic Imperial Way which elevated the supreme, infallible authority of the Japanese emperor and rationalized Japan’s expansionism during the Asia-Pacific War.