A Comparative Study on the Image of a Leader in the Traditional Societies in East Asia

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Although China, Korea and Japan have been often summed up as sphere of Confucianism, their images of a leader have varied from a region to another and changed through ages.(1) In China, broadly speaking, the image of a leader transformed from a goketsu type to a type of literati who possessed cultural acquirements, in accordance to socio-political changes as well as to the changes in thought. In response to such changes, images of a specific leader have been repeatedly constructed.(2) Contempt against Japan as barbarian which had been formd since the nineth century in Bokkai reflects their search for their own image of a leader as well as the rise of nationalism among its leaders.(3) In good contrast to China and Korea, a strong tendency to place a stress on authority acquired by military power can be observed in Japanese idea of a leader, although, since the emergence of samurai, Japan have looked for goketsu-type as well as literati-type above.(4) The idea of a leader has undoubtedly an aspect of fiction, but not a few leaders actually have sought for and tried to play an ideal image of a leader, however fictitious it may have been.