This article focuses on the complex relationship existing between interpretation of Confucian classics and political power in China, Japan, and Korea. A wide range of materials is contained for discussion, namely, East Asian scholars' commentaries on the Analects (《論語》) and Mencius (《孟子》),questions extracted from the Book of Mencius in the civil-service examinations in the Ming (1368-1644) China, reminders which a Tokugawa Japanese scholar marked on Mencius against imperial reading, and quotations from Confucian classics appearing in the dialogues between emperors and courtiers in the Han (206 B.C.-A.D.220) and Tang (618-907) dynasty. It is pointed out that the dual role played by the East Asian interpreters - as Confucians and as administrators- had closely connected the interpretation of c1assicsto political power. Briefly speaking, three forms of relationship are observed: inseparability, competition, and the balance to be struck between the interpretation of classics and political power. To sum up, the East Asian Confucians read and understood the classics through their own “existential structures,” at the same time endowing the classics with new “existential” content; they were not just playing “intellectual games.”