What Is a Nation and Who Belongs? National Narratives and the Ethnic Imagination in Twentieth-Century Japan

Abstract

WHERE, IF NOT JAPAN, are the nation and the state more identical? Often touted as a homogeneous people, the Japanese are frequently heralded as a common-sense example of the natural bond between an ethnic people and their political state. Such an impression is, of course, not merely a reflection of an ethnic or political reality in Japan but the result of impressions created by national narratives and political imaginations. What is striking in the case of Japanese national discourse, however, is the considerable gap between the richness of political imagination in modern Japan and the ways in which that imagination has been understood outside of Japan. The English-language literature on nationalism in Japan has largely overlooked the appeal of ethnic nationalism as a populist attack on the state, especially among Japanese historians and other intellectuals who have had the most influence in shaping national narratives in modern Japan.' The reasons for this state of affairs are many and complex. They derive not only from the specific experience of modern Japanese social life but also from the strategies of conceptualization and representation that historians and others have adopted to make sense out of modern Japanese national life. This interweaving of social fact and historical representation encompasses the historical origins of the modern Japanese state, influence from general theories of nationalism, and even the power of nationalist myths, which have been quite successful in convincing many observers that Japanese society is marked by a high degree of cohesiveness and