Note (return) — Chapter V · - CONFUCIANISM IN ITS PHILOSOPHICAL FORM

Broadly speaking, it may be said that the Japanese, receiving passively the Chinese classics, were content simply to copy and to recite what they had learned. As compared with their audacity in not only going beyond the teachings of Buddha, but in inventing systems of Buddhism which neither Gautama nor his first disciples could recognize, the docile and almost slavish adherence to ancient Confucianism is one of the astonishing things in the history of religions in Japan. In the field of Buddhism we have a luxuriant growth of new and strange species of colossal weeds that overtower and seem to have choked out whatever furze of original Buddhism there was in Japan, while in the domain of Confucianism there is a barren heath. Whereas, in China, the voluminous literature created by commentators on Confucius and the commentaries on the commentators suggests the hyperbole used by the author of John's Gospel,8 yet there is probably nothing on Confucianism from the Japanese pen in the thousand years under our review which is worth the reading or the translation.9 In this respect the Japanese genius showed its vast capabilities of imitation, adoption and assimilation.