Page 12 - 2022(1) International Confusion Studies

Int. Confucian Stud. 2022; 1(1): 5–6

Yasuo Fukuda*
Confucianism Is Food for Thought in Building
a More Beautiful World

https://doi.org/10.1515/icos-2022-2002

On September 26, 2020, major media in Japan published an amazing piece of news
at the same time. A copy of Annotations on The Analects, handwritten sometime
during the sixth–seventh centuries reemerged in Japan. It consists of 20 pages
glued together, the pages being 27.3 cm in length. The book was first purchased by
the Keio University library from an old bookstore. The research group organized by
the university and some other institutions believed that it was probably written at
some point from the end of the Southern and Northern Dynasties to Sui Dynasty.
Through comparison with relics unearthed earlier, the newly-emerged copy is
believed to be the most ancient.
The Analects was introduced to Japan in about the third–fifth centuries and
has since left a huge impact there. In Japan’s first written statute, the Seventeen
Article Constitution, the very first article began with “harmony being most
precious” to elaborate the content. This was a typical example demonstrating that
Japan recognized the spirit of Confucianism in its governance. Up to the present
day, textbooks for compulsory education in Japan still take Confucian classics as
sources of knowledge and cultivation.
Confucianism has always functioned as a channel for heart-to-heart commu-
nication between Japan and China, as shown in the case of the Annotations on The
Analects, which got lost during the reign of Emperor Wu (武帝 464–549) of the
Liang Dynasty in the twelfth century and was transmitted from Japan back to China
during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (乾隆 1711–1799) of the Qing Dynasty.
In 1998, the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State and Government, co-
founded by my father Takeo Fukuda, former prime minister of Japan, and former
German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, proposed the Universal Declaration of Human
Responsibilities to the United Nations, which passed it. The declaration defined “do
not do to others what you do not want others to do to you” as a “golden rule.” This
was not only because the key idea originated from The Analects, but also because it
was bred and rooted in other cultures as well. That’s why it is recognized world-
wide and strikes a common chord.

*Corresponding author: Yasuo Fukuda, Chairman of International Confucian Association, Tokyo,
Japan, E-mail: icos@fltrp.com

Open Access. © 2022 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.