Confucius in Modern China 


Lu Xun Written in Japanese and dated April 29, 1935; first published in the June 1935 issue of the Japanese monthly Kaizō. Translated by Vero Publishing from the standard Chinese text included in Lu Xun's Essays from the Qiejie Pavilion, Second Collection. Translator's notes are at the end.

Recent Shanghai newspapers reported that, on the completion of the Confucian temple at Yushima in Japan, General He Jian, chairman of Hunan Province, sent as a gift a portrait of Confucius he had long treasured.[1] To be honest, the ordinary people of China know next to nothing about what Confucius looked like. Since ancient times every county has had its sage's temple, the Temple of Culture, but as a rule there is no image of the sage inside. When painting or sculpting figures who ought to be revered, the general principle is to make them larger than ordinary people. Yet when it comes to the figure most deserving of reverence, a sage like Master Kong, it seems that even giving him a form would be a profanation, and better to have none at all. This is not without reason. Master Kong left no photographs, so naturally his true appearance cannot be known. The written records occasionally describe him, but that may well be nonsense. And if one were to make a new statue, there would be nothing to go on but the sculptor's imagination, which is even less reassuring. So in the end the Confucians had no choice but to adopt Brand's attitude of "all or nothing."[2]

Still, one does occasionally come across a painted portrait. I have seen three: one an illustration in The School Sayings of Confucius; one the frontispiece of the Qingyi Bao, published in Yokohama while Liang Qichao was a refugee in Japan, which thus found its way back into China from Japan; and one a picture of Confucius meeting Laozi, carved on a Han dynasty tomb stone.[3] To judge from the impression of Master Kong these pictures give, the gentleman was a very thin old man in a long robe with wide sleeves, a sword tucked into his sash or a staff under his arm. He never smiled, and was most imposing. If you had to sit in attendance beside him, you would have to keep your back ramrod straight, and after two or three hours every joint would ache. An ordinary person would probably be unable to resist the urge to run away.

Later I traveled in Shandong. While suffering from the bumpy roads, I suddenly thought of our Master Kong. When I pictured that sage of solemn and dignified mien jolting about these parts in a crude cart, rushing hither and thither, it struck me as rather comical. Such a thought is of course improper; in short, it borders on disrespect, and no true disciple of Confucius should ever have it. But in those days there were a great many young people with unruly feelings like mine.

I was born at the end of the Qing dynasty. By then Master Kong already bore the fearsomely grand title "Greatly Accomplished and Most Sagely Late Teacher, King of Culture Proclaimed,"[4] and it goes without saying that this was an age in which the Sage's Way ruled the whole country. The government made those who studied read certain books, namely the Four Books and the Five Classics; made them follow certain commentaries; made them write a certain kind of essay, the so-called "eight-legged essay";[5] and made them express certain opinions. But these Confucians, all cast from the same mold, knew all about a square earth with four corners, and nothing whatever about a round globe. So they went to war with France and England, which are not recorded in the Four Books, and were defeated. Whether because they decided it was better to save their own skins than to die worshipping Master Kong, or for some other reason, in any case it was the government and the bureaucrats, who had revered Confucius with all their might, who began to waver first, and they spent public funds translating the books of the foreign devils on a grand scale. Among the scientific classics were Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, Lyell's Elements of Geology and Dana's Manual of Mineralogy,[6] which even now occasionally turn up in secondhand bookshops as relics of that age.

But there was bound to be a reaction. Then appeared Grand Secretary Xu Tong, the crystallization and representative of the so-called Confucians of the late Qing.[7] He not only denounced even mathematics as the learning of the foreign devils; though he admitted that countries called France and England existed in the world, he absolutely refused to believe in Spain and Portugal. These, he maintained, were names that France and England had made up at random because they were embarrassed at coming so often to demand concessions themselves. He was also the instigator behind the scenes, and the commander, of the famous Boxers of 1900. But the Boxers failed completely, and Xu Tong killed himself. The government then decided once more that foreign politics and law, learning and technology, had much to recommend them. It was at that time that I longed to go and study in Japan. I achieved my aim and entered the Kobun Institute in Tokyo, founded by Mr. Kanō.[8] There Mr. Misawa Rikitarō taught me that water is made of oxygen and hydrogen, and Mr. Yamanouchi Shigeo taught me that a certain part of a shellfish is called the "mantle." Then one day the dean, Mr. Ōkubo, assembled us all and said: "Since you are all disciples of Confucius, today we shall go and pay our respects at the Confucian temple at Ochanomizu!" I was astounded. I still remember thinking: it was precisely because I had despaired of Master Kong and his disciples that I came to Japan, and now we are to worship him again? For a moment it seemed very strange. And I believe I was by no means the only one who felt that way.

But Master Kong's lack of recognition in his own country did not begin in the twentieth century. Mencius called him "the sage who was timely."[9] Rendered in modern language, there is really no other way to put it than "the modern sage." For Confucius himself this was certainly a safe honorific, but not an altogether welcome title. In reality, though, it may not have been so. Master Kong became firmly established as "the modern sage" only after his death; while he lived, he had a very hard time of it. He rushed from place to place. Though he once rose to the eminence of chief of police in the state of Lu,[10] he was soon out of office and out of work. He was scorned by powerful ministers, mocked by rustics, even surrounded by a mob and left starving. He took three thousand disciples, yet only seventy-two were of any use, and only one could truly be trusted. One day Master Kong said indignantly: "The Way does not prevail. I shall board a raft and float out to sea. The one who would follow me, would it be You?"[11] From this despondent plan one can glimpse how things stood. Yet even this You later had the strings of his cap cut through while fighting his enemies. True to form, even at that moment he did not forget the lesson he had learned from the Master. Saying "A gentleman does not take off his cap even in death," he tied his cap strings, and was hacked into mincemeat.[12] Having lost even his one trustworthy disciple, Confucius was naturally grief-stricken. It is said that as soon as he heard the news, he ordered the minced meat in his kitchen to be thrown out.

After his death, I would say, Master Kong's luck was somewhat better. Since he could no longer nag, the powerful of every kind made him up with every kind of white powder and raised him to a frightening height. Yet compared with Shakyamuni Buddha, who was imported later, he was really quite pitiable. True, every county has its sage's temple, the Temple of Culture, but they have a lonely, deserted air. Ordinary folk never go there to worship; if they go anywhere, it is to a Buddhist monastery or a temple to the gods. If you ask common people who Master Kong was, they will of course answer that he was a sage, but that is merely the phonograph of the powerful. They also treat paper with writing on it with respect, but that is because of the superstition that whoever fails to do so will be struck by lightning.[13] The Temple of the Master in Nanjing is certainly a bustling place, but that is because of all the other amusements and teahouses there. It is said that when Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals, rebellious ministers and traitorous sons trembled with fear;[14] yet hardly anyone today knows the name of a single rebellious minister or traitorous son whom he condemned with his brush. Speak of rebellious ministers and traitorous sons, and people probably think of Cao Cao, but that was taught them not by the Sage but by the anonymous authors of novels and plays.

In short, Master Kong in China was raised up by the powerful. He was the sage of those in power or those who wanted to be, and had nothing much to do with the ordinary people. And even the powerful were enthusiastic about the sage's temples only for a time. Since they already had other aims in revering Confucius, once the aim was achieved the tool was of no further use; and if it was not achieved, it was even more useless. Thirty or forty years ago, everyone who sought to gain power, that is, everyone who hoped to become an official, read the Four Books and the Five Classics and wrote eight-legged essays. Other people called all these books and essays together "the brick for knocking at the door." That is to say, as soon as one passed the civil service examination, these things were forgotten at once, just as the brick used to knock on a door is thrown away once the door opens. In fact, ever since his death, Confucius himself has always served as a "brick for knocking at the door."

Recent examples make this even clearer. Since the beginning of the twentieth century Master Kong's luck has been very bad, but in the time of Yuan Shikai he was remembered anew. Not only were the sacrificial rites restored, but strange new sacrificial robes were made for the celebrants to wear. What followed hard on this was the monarchy.[15] But that door never did open, and Yuan died outside it. What remained were the Beiyang warlords, who, sensing that they were nearing the end of the road, also used him to knock at other doors to good fortune. General Sun Chuanfang, who occupied Jiangsu and Zhejiang and cut down common people in the streets at will, revived the ancient ritual game of pitch-pot. General Zhang Zongchang, who burrowed into Shandong and could not himself count his money, his soldiers or his concubines, had the Thirteen Classics reprinted, and, treating the Sage's Way as something like a venereal disease that could be transmitted through physical relations, took some descendant of Confucius as his son-in-law.[16] Yet the door to good fortune still opened for none of them.

All three of these men used Master Kong as a brick, but the times had changed, and so they all failed, plainly and obviously. And not only did they fail themselves; they dragged Confucius into an even sorrier plight. They were men who could barely read, yet they insisted on holding forth about the Thirteen Classics and the like, which made people find them ridiculous. Their words and deeds were also too much at odds, which made them all the more detestable. "Hate the monk, and you hate his robe too":[17] and now the use of Master Kong as a tool for one purpose or another was seen anew with special clarity, so the desire to overthrow him grew all the stronger. Thus whenever Confucius is decked out in great solemnity, essays and works pointing out his flaws are sure to appear. Even Master Kong had flaws, of course. Ordinarily no one pays them any attention, for a sage is a human being too, and that is forgivable. But when the Sage's followers come out with all sorts of nonsense, insisting that the Sage was like this or like that and therefore you must be too, people cannot help laughing. Five or six years ago the staging of the play Confucius Saw Nanzi caused a stir.[18] Master Kong appears on stage in it, and as a sage he is perhaps a little lacking in gravity and rather slow-witted, but as a human being he is a lovable, good fellow. Yet the Sage's descendants were furious and took the matter all the way to the authorities. For the play happened to be staged in Master Kong's home town, where his descendants have multiplied prodigiously and form a privileged class that would put Shakyamuni and Socrates to shame. But that, perhaps, is exactly why the young people there who are not his descendants felt compelled to stage Confucius Saw Nanzi in the first place.

The ordinary people of China, especially the so-called ignorant masses, call Confucius a sage, but do not feel that he is a sage. Toward him they are respectful but not intimate. But I think that nowhere in the world is there anyone who understands Master Kong as well as China's ignorant masses. It is true that Master Kong devised excellent methods for governing the country, but they were all methods devised for those who govern the masses, that is, for the powerful. For the masses themselves there was nothing at all. This is what is meant by "the rites do not extend down to the common people."[19] That he became the sage of the powerful and ended up as a "brick for knocking at the door" is really no injustice. One cannot say he had nothing to do with the masses, but to say there was no intimacy between them is, I think, putting it very politely. It is only natural not to draw close to a sage who is not close to you. Try it any time you like: put on ragged clothes, go barefoot, and walk up into the Hall of Great Accomplishment[20] to have a look. You will probably be thrown out at once, just as if you had wandered by mistake into a first-class cinema or a first-class tram car in Shanghai. Everyone knows these are things that belong to the great lords and gentlemen. The "ignorant masses" may be ignorant, but they are not as ignorant as all that.

April 29

Translator's Notes

About the text. Lu Xun wrote this essay in Japanese for Japanese readers. On April 28, 1935, he wrote to Xiao Jun: "I am writing an article for a Japanese magazine attacking Confucius, because they are busy revering him." The Chinese text from which this translation is made was rendered from the Japanese by Yiguang and published in the magazine Zawen in July 1935, then included in Lu Xun's Essays from the Qiejie Pavilion, Second Collection. The essay belongs to a moment when Japan was promoting "the teachings of Confucius" as the basis of a new order in East Asia, while the Nationalist government had decreed in 1934 a revival of official worship of Confucius and was promoting its Confucian-flavored New Life Movement.