Identity In Japan Research Articles

Ishii Hakutei on the Future of Japanese Painting

Increasing exposure to Western art, calling into question long-standing artistic assumptions and institutional practices, caused upheaval throughout the Meiji art world.1 During this era of cultural uncertainty, the creation of new standards of Japanese painting that could simultaneously revitalize traditional art and enhance Japan's identity as a culturally sophisticated nation-state became a major concern. Many artists were actively involved in the process of formulating what might well be described as a new artistic canon.

Modernism and cultural identity in Japan

(1989). Modernism and cultural identity in Japan. Asian Affairs: Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 45-56.

The Silent Power. Japan's Identity and World Role.

The Silent Power. Japan's Identity and World Role.

Nagai Ryūtarō and the “White Peril,” 1905–1944

It is often said that the nationalism of the 1930's was more “narrow,” more “parochial,” more “isolationist,” and more “pathological” than the nationalism of Meiji. In the earlier period, men like Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ōi Kentarō, who had ingested the liberalism of the late Victorian West, defined Japan's identity and role in the world in cosmopolitan, even revolutionary terms. By contrast, it is said, the nationalists of the 1930's were “frogs at the bottom of a well,” whose vision of the nation was clouded by folkish myths of national superiority or who were moved at most by narrow concern for national self-interest. The men of Shōwa, unlike those of Meiji, lacked a conception of Japan's role in the world which admitted the claims of higher goal or value than the nation itself.