I was reading part of Chu Shingura today and I wanted to revive my writing habits. I remembered that a few years ago I had a blog created, and so, now I return to improve my “accountability” for writing. So, what made me want to write were some of the Confucius ethics that I find in many of these plays (the dealing with many complicated relationships that come into conflict with one another where the main characters are brought to a point where they must suffer loss). Here the story revolves around a brothel house. A father has sold his daughter (who is already married) to a brothel without the husband’s knowledge. And so a promise was made that was I think in slight violation of the relationship between husband and wife which becomes some what more prioritized than parent-child after marriage (according to Arai Hakuseki).
But here is what struck me. There is a brothel where women are being put into a sex-slave industry (an evil), yet the values or rules of the Confucius system of honor protects the evil industry. The fact that there turns out to be so much conflict and so much sorrow, I think, points to the fact that there cannot simply be “a way” without a “foundation”. The Confucius system describes how one ought to prioritize each relationship, but what is the base from which these relationships are weighed and established? From where do these bonds come and how is the strength of each bond determined?
So, I first want to admit that I do not know enough about Confucianism to make too many judgments. This is something that would be interesting to explore…what are the foundations for Confucianism? But, I also come away from stories like this where wrong is done and no one seems to be able to stand up against that which is wrong because of a system that freezes everyone. I write this as a Christian, so I believe in ‘good’ and ‘evil’. But when our societal systems have some faults in the foundation, many times the oppressors are protected and the oppressed are without hope, unless they have a hope that comes from without the system. Thus hope in the Creator, though looked down upon in a Confucian setting, protects from such abuses (or rather, helps people from subjecting themselves to such abuses). The downside is that they will then have to bear shame from the community for their lives, but, did not Christ also bear our shame in carrying the cross? We, by following the cross, die in shame, but we also live freely.
Quinby 