Japanese National Identity Research Articles

Buried Discourse: The Toro Archaeological Site and Japanese National Identity in the Early Postwar Period

Buried Discourse: The Toro Archaeological Site and Japanese National Identity in the Early Postwar Period

Contesting the Centre: International Sources of Japanese National Identity

Any state wishing to place itself in the context of its international environment must have a conception of the structure of that environment, a vision of the way international order operates, and of the way it ought to operate. When states order the same physical international space according to differing conceptual frameworks, international conflict is often the result. It could be argued, for example, that the deterioration in relations between the United States and Japan in the period between the Washington naval conference and the opening of the Pacific war was the inevitable consequence of the two powers' mutually irreconcilable sets of assumptions about the structure of international order, both about how it did work, and about how it should work. Leaving aside the question of whether either of these visions was correct, it is beyond doubt that Japan's vision of international order was one that was both hierarchical and Japan-centred. This vision found expression in Prince Konoe's 'New Order in East Asia', and the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere', and in countless pronouncements intended as much for domestic as for international propaganda. The pre-modern sources of this conception of Japan's place in the world, however, have not been clearly enough delineated, and to the extent they have been examined, it has been principally as a problem in the history of ideas, rather than as an exploration of the interaction between empirical diplomatic experience and ideas themselves.

Nihonjinron - teorias da japonicidade

The discussion about Japanese national identity can be observed in the Nihonjinron, that is to say: theories about the Japaneseness which usually are related to the Japanese cultural and social uniqueness. In this text, we will verify how this debate developed and varied in the Japanese Humanities, in the modem historical context of Japan throughout the 20th century.

From Nature to Nation

This article critically examines the history of Japanese ideas and images of nature, particularly how those ideas and images relate to the production of the modern Japanese nation-state and Japanese national identity. Drawing crucially upon Julia Adeney Thomas’s historical work on the politics of nature in Japan, while examining the lives and work of Shiga Shigetaka, Yanagita Kunio, and Watsuji Tetsur¯o, the link between nation and nature, and how those two concepts have been fashioned together throughout Japan’s modern history, is explored. This article identifies the context in which the Japanese “love of nature” is constructed through these key figures, arguing that this understanding of nature took precedence precisely because it serves to inform the Japanese national imaginary, giving voice and distinction to the Japanese nationstate. Ultimately, it is argued that this close relationship between nation and nature is undeniably a modern one, and it exemplifies but one expression in a multitude of Japanese reactions to modernity and the concomitant threat of western influence and hegemony that began during the Meiji period.