This article discusses two kinds of “interpretive tension” exhibited in the Confucian hermeneutic tradition in East Asia. First tension lies between the universal values in Confucian classics and the tempro-spatial conditions of its interpreters in imperial China and Tokugawa Japan. The second tension exists between the cultural identity and political identity of the interpreters of classics. In analyzing these two sorts of “interpretive tension” in Confucian hermeneutics, the author demonstrates that hermeneutics in East Asian Confucianism is at once political and economic in nature. It is concluded that Confucian hermeneutics is praxis hermeneutics rather than ontological hermeneutics.