Confucianism and Civilization: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Views of Japan, the Ryūkyūs, and Tsushima

For most of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910), Koreans ranked the countries and peoples in their neighborhood on a scale from civilized to barbarian, with the more Confucianized ranking higher than the less Confucianized. Using that scale, they put the Ryūkyū kingdom ahead of Japan, and Tshushima below both of them. Tasan Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836) accepted both that equation of civilization with Confucianization and that ranking. However, he was impressed by the level of Confucian writing in Tokugawa Japan and moved Japan a little closer to the perceived cultural level of the Ryūkyū kingdom than most of his fellow Korean Confucians did.