HIST 363 - East Asian Conceptions of Leadership

Credit Hours: 3

East Asia has a long history of thinking about and promoting good leadership. The Chinese way of centralized rule based on the rule of law was so effective that it lasted over two thousand years. The Daoist idea that government should intervene as little as possible in society and economy probably inspired the idea of laissez-faire. In the first half of the class, to learn about the different East Asian approaches to leadership, we read the Confucian Mencius, the Daoist Laozi, the Legalist Han Feizi, the Sunzi Art of War, and Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure. In the second half of the course, we look at how modern East Asian leaders have applied those ideas to governing the nation. To that end, we read biographies of the Last Samurai, Saigo Takamori and Mao Zedong.