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The founder of Confucianism was Kong Qiu (K'ung Ch'iu), who was born around 552 B.C.E. in the small state of Lu
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died in 479
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Formed: 500 B.C.E.
Origin: China
Followers: 5,000,000
Deity: None / various gods and ancestors
Sacred Texts: Analects (Lunyu), the Five Classics (Wujing), the Four Books (Sishu) Headquarters None -
Although China controlled portions of the Korean peninsula and the Vietnam region early in the Common Era, by 1000 C.E.
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The Latinized name Confucius, based on the honorific title Kong Fuzi (K'ung Fu-tzu), was created by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries in China.
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The Xin Shenghuo Yundong (New Life Movement) inaugurated by the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), who later ruled independent Taiwan after the victory of his Communist opponents in 1949, combined modern scientific elements -- such as basic hygiene and economic development -- with traditional Confucian moral principles such as li (propriety), yi (righteousness), lian (discrimination), and chi (shame)
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the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) moved publicly to counter the impression that China was too hidebound by Confucianism to meet the challenges of modernity.
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Confucianism was known to the Japanese from the sixth C.E. on; however, it was not until the Edo or Tokugawa period (1600-1868) that it became a leading ideology of state and a pervasive teaching in Japanese society.
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spread of the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods (1868-1945 C.E.)
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Beginning with the restoration of direct imperial rule under the emperor Meiji in 1868, Confucian ideology
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Among the reforms that she sponsored was the abolition of the millennia-old Confucian civil service examination system in 1905.
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the last emperor was deposed in 1912, just four years after her death.
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Despite these setbacks for Confucianism, post-imperial reformers active during the 1920s and 1930s also attempted to breathe new life into Confucian traditions.
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1920 is when they focused of trying to spread the religion into the 20th century
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Later Chinese leaders, such as Singapore's founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew (b. 1923), championed Confucianism as the secret to the economic success attained by ethnic Chinese,
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The links between Confucianism and imperialism in Japan were severed when Japan surrendered to the Allies in August 1945 following the atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Confucianism has played a role in both imperialist and anti-imperialist campaigns during the 20th century
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Japan in the early 20th century C.E. may be the best example of a modern Confucian empire