Unifying state and nation: modern myths and narratives of Japanese nationalism in times of social change

Abstract

Kokutai (national polity) was notoriously the ideological organising principle of imperial Japanese society in the early twentieth century, but the end of WWII saw it replaced by a more nation-oriented view of the relationship between the state and the people. This change led to an interpretation of the nation that prioritises ethnic nationalism, although its key text, the Postwar Constitution seems to invite a more civic interpretation. This paper argues that the change and this inconsistency should be analysed in terms of two modern myths – the myth of kokutai and the myth of homogeneous ethnos. The key to the influence of these myths lies in their symbolic representation in the 1889 Meiji and 1947 Postwar Constitutions, and how their historically contingent interpretation formalised relations between the people and the state. These interpretations produced contesting narrative articulations of the myths, among which first statist and later ethnic nationalist narratives emerged dominant, but in both cases remained in tension with other narratives.