조선유도연합회의 결성과 ‘皇道儒學’

Abstract

As Japanese imperialism brought about the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, it executed a management policy, which made the Korean people be loyal to the Emperor of Japan, standing for assimilation as an ideology to support its plundering Korean human and material resources. Such a policy applied to Confucian scholars. Organizing the Chosun Federation of Confucianism, a nationwide organization of Confucian scholars, on the 12th of March, 1939, the colonial Japanese government tried to form provincial federations and their branches with all force. From the establishment of the Chungcheongbuk provincial federation on 14th of November, 1939 till the establishment of Kangwon provincial federation on 12th of March, 1941 the organization of federation by each province was completed. The Chosun Federation of Confucianism, the last and biggest organization of Confucian scholars, was a body of government circles which actively cooperated with the aggressive war of Japanese imperialism. Under the thorough control policy of the system of a general mobilization some Confucian scholars who still clung to anti-Japanese consciousness could not but go into retirement or keep silent. The Chosun Federation of Confucianism rendered services chiefly to lectures and short training courses including lecture meetings on the situation. This was an intention to control the agitation of the Confucian scholars and the mass of the people as well as to brainwash them to be loyal to the Emperor of Japan. Japanized Confucianism was to support the activities of the Chosun Federation of Confucianism ideologically. Japanized Confucianism became famous to the people in earnest by a Japanese scholar of a national school and colonialist, Dakahashi Doru. Japanized Confucianism that he advocated was Confucianism combined with the religion of the Japanese people and had ideas that “loyalty accords with filial piety”. Its aim was to make the Korean people have the mind and attitude to present their human and material resources voluntarily to the aggressive war of Japanese imperialism. In-Sik Ahn and Myeong-Se Lee who were pro-Japanese Confucian scholars enlarged and paved it all the more. In-Sik Ahn connected Japanese Confucianism with the political thought pursuing a utopian society and rationalized the Sino-Japanese War. Myeong-Se Lee raised the Pacific War to a just war as well as a noble and righteous war for the Orient. In-Sik Ahn, Myeong-Se Lee and others asked other Confucian scholars to abandon Sung Confucianism which ripened during the Chosun Dynasty and accept Japanized Confucianism, and devote themselves to the Emperor of Japan and imperial Japan. Their activities aroused disillusion about Confucianism and imperial Japan. In fact, Confucianism which withered already was hard hit. As Japanized Confucianism maintained by the pro-Japanese Confucian scholars caused a break of high level Confucian ideas which was accomplished in the previous era, it had bad influence on the evolutive flow of Korean Confucian ideas.