In discussing religion in ancient China and Japan we add to what we know about Buddhism, which came to China from India in the first century CE and then made its way to Japan five hundred years later.  We also meet the Confucian tradition, Daoism, and Shinto.

An initial difference from what we have seen in India is that the focus in China is not at all on immortality.  Reincarnation was a belief that became strong in India because of the manner in which it reinforced the caste system.  In China there was a long tradition of belief in ghosts and spirits but not really the type of mythology found in the Indo-European cultures.  Religious specialists were less likely to be the meditative gurus we meet in the Upanishads and more likely to be the wild exorcists and healers and soothsayers we find in many tribal cultures, and the concern of the individual in India soliciting a path to enlightenment for the sake of future lifetimes becomes instead a more pragmatic effort to bargain with the supernatural for advantages in this lifetime.  To the north, especially in Korea, this shamanism would continue down to modern times.

It is always unsafe to generalize too much in discussing cultural patterns, since there are always many exceptions to test a rule.  However, in looking at China, pay attention to what might be the importance of having a writing system, such as the Chinese characters, that does not depend on sound but on concepts themselves.  If we cannot speak a particular language, we will not understand words written out in our alphabets, even if we can sound them out correctly.   With Chinese characters we have a picture style of writing that does not depend on sound, so that the same character can be understood regardless of whether the reader's own language is any of the Chinese dialects or even linguistically unrelated Japanese.  For instance, in this section from the website linked above, we see how a boxlike image of a mouth combines with other images for a number of different meanings.

The practical value of this is that, despite the years it takes someone to master the characters, it is possible to get at the writings of someone such as Confucius regardless of any differences between what his words sounded like and how someone would say them today.  In the West we cannot read Plato unless his works have been translated from Greek, and translation involves the risk of misunderstanding.  (Translating from Chinese is going to be even more difficult, though.  Taking a sequence of images and attempting to express them in English means that the translator thinks he really does grasp what the concepts express, and in translating some famous texts, such as the Book of Dao, any two translations might well seem to be from completely different sources.)  What this definitely ensures is a high degree of cultural continuity based on the written word.  It also possibly emphasizes a somewhat different approach to reality itself, but just how this works is clearly going to be quite speculative.

Please note that throughout these lectures I am using the updated way of spelling Chinese words.  In the 1800s a system had been devised in which you had to remember, for instance, that the "t" in a word such as "tao" was sounded as a "d."  The People's Republic of China has since replaced this with what is called Pinyin (and this means there can be political overtones in how a Chinese word is transliterated).

The key to what will happen in China is a document composed after the Shang Dynasty was overthrown, at about the same time that the Aryan invaders were consolidating their hold on India.  It is called The Book of History and it justifies what otherwise would appear to go against appropriate reverence for the ruler.  The dominant concept is that of "the mandate of heaven"--the view that a ruler's authority depends on his virtue or worthiness, and whether he has ceased to be virtuous wouild be known by his people when his regime becomes oppressive.

By the time of Confucius in the sixth century BCE the empire won by the founder of the Zhou Dyanasty, who had defeated the last Shang ruler, was badly fragmented into a number of city states, and many local rulers claimed the right to be recognized as the one legitimate emperor.  Since inheritance in the Chinese family was only to the oldest son, just as in medieval Europe there was an incentive for younger sons to attempt to find their own way by becoming mercenary soldiers.  This encouraged an ambitious and ruthless local ruler to attempt to enforce his claims to empire through warfare, paying off his troops with what could be plundered from a conquered area.   The reaction within Chinese literature, as in many of the poems found in The Book of Odes, was not to glorify war and the warrior (as happened in Greece or in India) but to emphasize its destructiveness.

A key point in the development of Chinese culture was the practice of the extended family all living in the same household.  A young man was expected to bring his bride home, where she might be treated as a servant by her mother-in-law (who had come into the family the same way), and remain there.  The oldest brother in time would succeed his father as head of the household, although with women typically outliving their husbands in practice the veto power in family decisions belonged to the grandmother.  In close quarters this put a special emphasis on emotional restraint and the need to display appropriate deference (children to father, wife to husband, younger brothers to older brothers).  These three relationships were not to be one-sided, however, since the father had an obligation to provide for his children, the husband to care for his wife, and the older brothers to look after the younger ones.   The notion of mutual obligations reached even beyond death, since deceased ancestors were buried closeby and were to be honored through ritual offerings in order to assure their supernatural guidance of the family.

Note how this concept of the family with its ancestors buried at the home puts a special emphasis on continuity in a particular place.   This was one of the cultural values disrespected by American forces in Vietnam that led to the victory of the Viet Cong.

At the group level in towns and villages the link with the past was marked through traditional ritual observances for which civic officials acted in effect as priests.  Since these were often intricate rites, there was a need for a cadre of individuals, known as the ru, who were experts in them and could act as advisors (somewhat along the lines of being a master of ceremonies).  The man known as Kong Fu-zi  (Lord Master Kong) or Confucius began his career in just such a role, but his particular genius was in seeing how being an expert in the literature and history of China as well as in the rituals would qualify someone to act as a reformer.  His goal became that of bringing a local ruler to display the type of virtue that would allow him to gain "the mandate of heaven," not just for his own people but possibly for the entire country.  Central to this would respect for the family relationships and for the key values of ren (a concern for others), yi (a sense of moral obligation), and li (a repect for propriety).

In time this goal of Confucius would be imitated, and the next few centuries could be known both as the Era of the Warring States and the Era of the Thousand Schools as his own followers split into different camps and still other thinkers took different approaches to the problem of bringing an end to chronic warfare.  Ironically, a short-lived empire was achieved through an individual who followed a particularly ruthless approach inspired by one version of the Confucian teaching that stressed the innate "evil" of human nature.  After its fall, the succeeding Han Dynasty established a system in which government appointments depended on passing exams in Confucian literature.

This Chinese system was to stay in place until the revolution early in the twentieth century that ended the empire.  It became the inspiration for Prussia to establish a civil service based on examinations in the late eighteenth century, and eventually this was taken over by many Western countries.

Almost predictably the status of Confucius himself changed so that in time he became virtually a supernatural figure himself (even to having had a virgin birth), and the body of rites he advocated as well as devotional practices respecting his memory came to be seen as what we know as the Confucian religion.  The Confucian scholarship required for political advancement led to the development of what was a new social class (the Mandarins), who saw themselves as expressions of the Confucian ideal of "the superior man."

By 500 CE Japan, in contact with Chinese culture through Korea, had begun the adaptation of the characters for its own writing system, and in the next centuries the standards of Confucian learning became the basis for a new school system.  A millennium later, at the end of the violent Shogun era late in the sixteenth century, the samurai warriors who had lived by the sword now also lived by the pen, and Confucianism provided the standards of bushido, the code of honor.

Confucius himself had shown no interest in supernatural issues, commenting only that he gave priority to questions about human beings over questions about spirits, and he might have been considerably bemused had anyone suggested he would become in effect an object of worship in later centuries.  He certainly had no interest in mysticism or in any practices leading to altered states of consciousness. The effect of this was to leave the door open for a full rival tradition, both in philosophy and in religion.  Later legends would even hold that Confucius had been in contact with the mysterious "Master Old Man" (Lao-zi) who authored the often cryptic sayings that make up the Book of Dao, but he had not really been a very good student.

Daoism as a philosophy might be seen either as the complement of Confucianism or as its antithesis.  Where the Confucian stressed family relationships and the notion of a learned "superior man," the Daoist looked to the individual, above all to the uneducated peasant in touch with the rhythms of nature (the interplay of female yin and male yang).  If virtue in government for a Confucian (for someone such as Meng-zi or Mencius, in particular) would have the ruler be a wise and learned king providing for the education of his people, the Daoist saw it in terms of the largely unseen autocrat who, where his subjects were concerned, was "to keep their bellies full and their minds empty."  Society for the Confucian was something natural and beneficial, but for the Daoist it was something artificial and dangerous.

The contrasts of yang (the masculine, depicted as a white circle and denoting cold and light) and yin (the feminine, depicted as a black square and denoting heat and warmth) might also be used to describe the mutual relationship of Confucianism and Daoism.  One saying is that in prosperity a Chinese is Confucian and in adversity Daoist, and ordinary experience suggests the movement between a time for action and a time for patient retreat.  One of the recurrent images in Daoist thought is that of water, which seems the least resistant of substances yet can also be the force that, as in a flood, destroys everything in its path.

Historically both movements influenced each other.  The I Jing (I Ching, the Book of Changes), a divination manual still used today, even came to be attributed to Confucius, and the general concept of an interacting yang and yin expessed in the I Jing permeates many aspects of Chinese culture.  Most recently the old art of feng shui--the arrangement of a building and its contents in order to express the harmony of elements--has even come to play a large part in American popular culture.

Daoist religion, which kept alive all the vibrant folk beliefs and practices of China, became more institutionalized after the Buddhists arrived in China and inspired the formation of monasteries.   The political role of Daoism varied from being the basis for rebel movements to providing advice in alchemy for emperors dreaming of immortality.

One key to Daoist alchemy was a sex magic that relied on the notion that a man's yang was lost in climax.  In Daoist folklore there were vampiric fox women who seduced unwary males to increase their own energy, but the advice of the alchemists was for the male to have nonorgasmic sex  with multiple partners in order to draw on their yin.  This is parallel to the tantric practices appearing in both Hinduism and Buddhism, especially in the northeastern area of India.

An additional point to note on the Book of Dao is the manner in which it came to be read differently once an empire had been reestablished.  The original political advice is disregarded and instead the emphasis is entirely on its metaphysical and mystical aspects.  In this way it resembles Plato's Republic, which was definitely expressing an idealistic program for political reform and yet in the days of the Roman Empire was interpreted stricly as an allegory for the development of the soul.

The somewhat anti-intellectual outlook of the Daoists came to influence one major movement in Buddhism.  This was the tradition that stressed the notion of meditation (dhyana, pronounced as chan in China and later as zen in Japan) as a systematic effort to empty the mind to recover an underlying state of awareness.  A key Daoist notion, the importance of wu-wei (non-action, or no action against nature), also came to permeate a martial arts tradition first associated with the Shaolin Temple, built in the fifth century for the monk Bodhidharma.

In thinking about religion in China and Japan, we need to avoid the familiar Western image of belonging to just a single church or temple. In Japan, for instance, an individual might go to a Shinto temple for a traditional wedding (although it is becoming increasingly fashionable to be married in a Christian ceremony), seek out Buddhist priests for a funeral and at home maintain a Confucian altar.  This "cafeteria religiousness" points out that in Asia, including India, religion is less a matter of what is believed than what is done.  Specific beliefs or dogmas might be argued by the religious specialists--monks, for instance--but for the most part they are not how we would define membership in any one tradition.  It is for this reason that many Asians might also go to Christian services without thinking they need to stop involvement in any non-Christian patterns.

There is considerably more detail in your text than I would expect you to know for a test, so for your notes focus on points that you see repeated in my lectures or on the sites I have you go to in the links.  A good rule is to look at the headings in each chapter and have something in your study notes that sums up the main points, then prepare your note cards with those items that seem to be most important--or possibly most surprising.

There is much more to Chinese philosophy than I have covered here.  In your text you can read more about minor figures from the Era of the Thousand Schools, especially Mo Ti and Han Fei.  Those already familiar with ancient Greek philosophy should note the way in which both cultures developed an essentially secular approach to philosophy that later identified once again with religion (for instance, just as Confucianism became a religious tradition in its own right we have the story of the later followers of Plato--the Neoplatonists--who saw themselves as priests defending pagan ways against Christian political authority).  However, the geography of Greece supported the concept of independent city states stressed in Plato and Aristotle while in China the vision always remained of a united empire.  Arguably, this Greek emphasis on independence put more emphasis on war as something positive while in China war was typically seen as something disruptive.  We can see many such contrasts, and to the extent Greek ideals have shaped Western culture itself we can look at Chinese tradition as offering an interesting counterpoint.