Tonghak and Taiping

Filed under: — Jonathan Dresner @ 11:45 pm




2 responses to “Tonghak and Taiping”

  1. Sam says:

    Something I notice is the parallel between Tonghak and the ti/young distinction in China. Yes, Tonghak has the other sorts of religious components that you mention, but the sense of preserving some sort of essential “Eastern Learning” in the face of “Western” onslaught (even if the “West” is Japanese imperialism) is generally what the ti/young idea in China was all about. I usually think of Meiji Japan in these terms as well, only their ti was a lot smaller (reduced basically to the person of the emperor) and their yong a lot bigger than China’s Self-Strengtheners. We could push this to an even higher level of generality, a generic problem faced by all countries/cultures experiencing external imperialist incursion: how do we change to resist the foreigners (xixue wei yong) while also maintaining something essential of our indigenous culture (zhongxue wei ti). Tonghak is obviously a hybrid movement, with its millennial Christianity, but it reaches for an enduring connection to “Eastern learning” against the Westernizing Japanese.

  2. There were Korean thinkers who expicitly address this, most famously Yun Sonhak, who “memorialized urging the adoption of ‘Western implements’ (sogi), while retaining ‘the Eastern Way’ (tongdo).” (Sources of Korean Tradition, v2, 246) In Japan, it’s Sakuma Shozan’s “Japanese ethics, Western technology” which ultimately turns the anti-foreign movement into a reformist one.

    I wouldn’t call the Tonghak “millienial Christianity” — they’re explicitly anti-Christian, for one thing — but there is clearly some influence in their monotheistic approach and language. It’s interesting, though, that the millenial movements — including the Boxers — are anti-foreign, mostly as a result of anti-imperialism.

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