Liam Bright

Reading about spread of Confucianism in early modern Japan, amused by translators’ habit of discussing idea that ruler has Mandate of Heaven but literally not mentioning the further fact that if one lacks benevolence and humane rule then one loses mandate and may be replaced.

It worked in the short run, but not in the long. In the period before the Meiji Restoration the intelligentsia were appealing to the now thoroughly culturally endorsed persona of Mengzi to argue that the world must be rectified and that may well indeed involve new government.