ABSTRACT
Prior to the sixteenth century any educated Korean, Viet namese, or Japanese knew about Confucianism as an aspect of Chinese high culture. James Grayson and Martina Deuchler have pointed out that the initial transmission of Confucianism to Korea probably took place as early as the first three centuries of the Common Era. During the United Silla period, the Koreans established an examination system based on the Confucian classics, even though the major intellectual trends were dominated, as was the case for most of East Asia, by Buddhist philosophical concerns. As many scholars of Korean Confucianism have noted, the fifteenth century was a period of consolidation of the new Yi dynasty and its Confucian ideology. Although Confucianism had a long history in Japan prior to the rise of Tokugawa rule in 1600, it is incontestable that the golden age of Japanese Confucianism coincides with the rise of the Tokugawa Bakufu in the seventeenth century.
