About the Author

Jeffrey L. Richey is Professor of Asian Studies at Berea College. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he completed graduate studies in East Asian religious history at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley before earning his Ph.D. in Cultural and Historical Studies of Religions with a concentration in East Asian religions at the Graduate Theological Union. He has edited and contributed to several books on Confucian and other East Asian traditions, including Teaching Confucianism (New York: Oxford University Press), The Sage Returns: Confucian Revival in Contemporary China (Albany: SUNY Press), and Daoism in Japan: Chinese Traditions and Their Influence on Japanese Religious Culture (London: Routledge).

Reviews

Jeff Richey has emerged as one of the most important scholars of Confucianism—both historical and contemporary—working today. This concise volume on Confucianism in East Asia provides an engaging overview of the influence the Sage has had across the region, from China and Korea to Japan and Vietnam. Richey presents Confucianism as both integral to the traditional cultures of East Asia, and as a continuing presence in the lives and political affairs of people in each of these lands.
*Kenneth J. Hammond, Professor of East Asian History Director, The Confucius Institute New Mexico State University*

Richey has written an engaging and well-crafted book that clearly delineates the oftentimes fitful development of Confucianism in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. At the same time, he masterfully demonstrates how Confucianism slowly came to dominate politics, thought, and society in each of these places and still continues to inform their assumptions, values, and institutions. Richey also expertly underscores the outsized role that government has played in promoting and sustaining this tradition’s formidable influence.
*Keith N. Knapp, Professor of East Asian History Chairman, History Department The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina*