Special Issue: “Richard Wilhelm and Globalization of the Yijing”

1 Introduction

Over the past few centuries, the cultural influence of the Yijing as a Chinese philosophical/religious classic has extended throughout East Asia—notably Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—and well beyond to Europe and North America. As Richard Smith rightly argued, the Yijing deserves to be considered “one of the great works of spiritually inspired world literature” and has become a truly “global phenomenon” (Smith 2012, 211). Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930), a German Protestant missionary-cum-sinologist to Qingdao, Shandong Province, published a German translation of the I Ging: Das Buch der Wandlungen in 1924,^[1] a monumental event for the global dissemination and reception of the Yijing.

Becoming a classic in its own right, Wilhelm’s I Ging was subsequently re-translated into more than 10 other European languages and versions. Thanks to its influential English re-translation I Ching (1950) by Cary F. Baynes (1883–1977),^[2] the Chinese canonical text has transcended cultural borders, strikingly well-received, and made a lasting impact on the Anglo-American society and culture. Against the backdrop of the counterculture hippy movement of the 1960s, the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, as Richard Rutt remarked, emerged as a “cult document for the hippy movement of the 1960s, leading to an explosion of popular interest in Yijing throughout the English-speaking world” (Rutt 2002, 79). Edward Shaughnessy affirmed the immense popularity of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation in North America, which emerged as the “bible for the postwar countercultural generation” of the United States (Shaughnessy 2014, 1). Herbert A. Kenny witnessed its overwhelming popularity during the period, “The hippy revolt against the materialism of American culture, the passion for astrology which seems to have succeeded New York’s passion for psychoanalysis, and the rage for Yoga and Zen, were a guarantee that the I Ching, the ancient Chinese classic, would become popular. It has” (Kenny 1969, 16A). In his New York Times book review, Peter Collier made a similar observation: “The ‘Book of Changes’ has become a fad; and if this is not as flattering as being revered as a holy book, it is still the highest honor a consumer culture can bestow” (Collier 1969, 22). According to William McGuire of Princeton University Press, 5,500 copies of the 1950 first edition were sold in about 11 years. A second edition in one volume was issued in 1961; about 19,000 copies were sold in six years. The third edition was published in 1967 in the Bollingen Series of the Princeton University Press.^[3] By 1974, the third edition has been reprinted 10 more times, with about 288,000 copies sold (McGuire 1974, 11).

To commemorate the centenary of Wilhelm’s German I Ging, the “International Conference on Global Yijing Studies—Celebrating the Centenary of the Publication of Richard Wilhelm’s I Ging (1924)” was organized by the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 5–6 December 2024. This Conference brought together some 20 leading scholars from Europe, United States, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as Ms. Bettina Wilhelm (Richard Wilhelm’s granddaughter), to scrutinize Wilhelm’s enormous contributions and multifarious legacies in the translation and globalization of the Yijing.

Building on the Conference, this groundbreaking special issue “Richard Wilhelm and Globalization of the Yijing” aims to investigate the complex process of the translation of the Yijing and its profound influences upon Western society and culture. The six original articles collected in this special issue address an array of fascinating topics, including the threefold collaboration—Wilhelm’s German translation, Jung’s psychological theory, and Baynes’s English prose—in the production of the English I Ching, as well as the fervent search of modern man for a soul in an industrialized and commercialized society (by Tze-ki Hon); the significant impact of Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and theory of synchronicity in shaping Cary Baynes’s interpretation and translation from German I Ging to English I Ching from the 1920s to 1940s (by Wenzhi Zhang); the critical reconsiderations of the history of reception of Richard Wilhelm’s I Ging by reassessing Cary Baynes’s “refractory” de-Christianized I Ching translation in 1950 as well as Wilhelm’s aleatory practices in a period from about 1917 to 1920 (by Lauren Pfister); the nuanced examination of Song-dynasty Confucian philosopher Cheng Yi’s commentary as one of the primary Chinese sources on Wilhelm/Baynes’s translation of the I Ching (by Michael Harrington); the psychological and cosmological connotations of Wilhelm/Baynes’s I Ching and The Secret of the Golden Flower underlying Philip K. Dick’s best-selling science fiction The Man in the High Castle (by John T. P. Lai); the intricate networks of influence of Wilhelm’s I Ging in Scandinavia in the production of artwork, divination methods, music, and theatrical performances (by Bjoern Aage C. Blix).