Confucianism

Just finished Confucianism by Jennifer Oldstone-Moore. I know that Confucianism and Shinto influenced each other, and I'm reading fairly brief descriptions of the religions, but they seem to have a lot of similarities. Although Shinto does have way more types of spirits.

Confucianism seems to have a somewhat unusual story since a lot of it was established long before Confucius came around. It seems like a lot of the spiritual side was already established as well as some of the social theory. Then Confucius promoted a view of government and family relationships and all together it became Confucianism (Confucius was not actually that into talking about the spiritual side). On the spiritual side, spirits are dead ancestors and the spirit world in many ways mirrors the living world and the two interact. The concept of yin-yang comes from Confucianism as well as qi (chi). And the book didn't talk about it much, but divination is also somewhere in there. On the social side, families and the government are supposed to have well defined roles. Children are supposed to be respectful of their parents. Parents are supposed to educate their children and be compassionate. The role between the government and the people is supposed to be a lot like the role between parents and children. Part of the tradition is exams to determine who gets government jobs. Like most religions some of the ideas sound great (promoting education for everyone and compassionate government), but some aren't so hot (very unequal gender roles and obedience to a monarchy).

The connection between the emperor to the spirit world is a lot stronger than for others and there are a lot of rituals that only the emperor could perform. I think that a lot of the big tourist sites in China are Confucian temples where the emperor would perform ceremonies.