Etnhic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

The Society for Japanese Studies
Ethnic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan Author(s): Kevin M. Doak Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 77-103 Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/133047 . Accessed: 09/08/2013 11:15
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KEVIN M. DOAK
EthnicNationalismandRomanticism in EarlyTwentieth-Century Japan
In recentyears, studies on nationalismhave benefitedfrom a varietyof new approachesthat have called attentionto the subtle and complex ways nationalism has historically interwovenissues of state structure,culture, and ethnic identity. Hobsbawm and Ranger uncovered the artificial nature of nationalidentities, revealinghow the nation is constructedand contestedin a varietyof forms.' Benedict Andersonwent even furtherto show not only that the state was able to mobilize its resources to constructan imaginary community arounditself, but that others did avail themselves of the same basic proceduresto constructalternative forms of nationalismat the popular level which then often were regardedas a threatby the state.2Anderson's work suggested a more complex approachto the issue of nationalismby revealinghow ambiguousand polysemic nationalismwas, particularlyfor late-developing societies in Asia, and it called for more attention to the uneasy relationshipbetween what he called popular and official forms of nationalism.And JohnBreuillyhas presenteda sweeping analysisof nationalism in the modernworld that demonstratesconclusively how nationalism has often served historically as an ideology of culturalidentity mobilized againstthe state.3 But contributionsto the understandingof nationalism have come not only from English-languagetheorists.T6yamaShigeki has been at the forefront of Japanesescholarsof nationalism,writing for over half a centuryon nationalismboth as a generaltheoreticalproblemand in the specific context of Japanesehistory. Reflecting on the course of Japanesehistory since the
1. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1983). 2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflectionson the Origin and Spread of Nationalism(London:Verso, 1983), esp. pp. 80-128. 3. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester:ManchesterUniversity Press, 1982; second ed., Universityof Chicago Press, 1994).
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encounterwith the West in the 1850s, Toyamahas arguedthatnationalism in Japanhas carriedwith it two distinctstrains:a "reactionary nationalism" identifiedwith the capitaliststate, and a "pro(handotekinashonarizumu) thatembodiedmore pogressive nationalism"(shinpotekinashonarizumu) These two forms of nationalismarose from the social pulist aspirations.4 historicalencounterwith the West.Toyama mechanismsthatshapedJapan's argues that since peasant rebellions in late TokugawaJapanwere focused inwardagainstJapan'sown social elite, ratherthan outside againstthe foreign threat,Japanesepolitical elites were able to transferthe potentialoppressionfrom "outside"to repressionof the Japanesepeople from "above" with considerableease.5 Political opposition to this state nationalismcollapsed,T6yamaconcludes,with the end of the FreedomandPeople'sRights Movement around 1890, when public elections were first held under the new constitution.Thereafter,alternative,more populist concepts of nation and nationalidentitybecame the provinceof literature, especially for those intellectualswho were attracted to romanticism.6 While T6yamamakes explicit the relationshipbetween reactionarynationalism and progressivenationalism,these categories remainedflexible, indeed ambiguous,enough to incorporatewhatevermovements seemed to Conhim to promotethe interestsof the "people,"very broadlyconceived.7 sequently, a first step in reconsideringJapanesenationalismwould be to of what these differentforms of nationeffect a more precise understanding
no taiko: sono rekishitekik6satsu," in 4. Toyama Shigeki, "Futatsuno nashonarizumu (Tokyo: IwanamiShoToyamaShigekichosakushi, Vol. 5: Meiji no shiso to nashonarizumu ten, 1992), p. 213. Here, it should be noted, T6yamawas simply applying Lenin'stheory on nationalism(i.e., that therewas a good nationalism["oppressed-nation nationalism"]as well nationalism" as a bad nationalism[ "oppressor-nation ]) to Japan.On Lenin'stheoryof nationalism and Stalin'scontributionto it, see Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR as a CommunistApartSlavic Review,Vol. 53, No. 2 ment, or How a Socialist State PromotedEthnicParticularism," (Summer 1994), pp. 414-52. no taik6,"p. 216. 5. Toyama, "Futatsuno nashonarizumu 6. T6yama, "Kindaibungakukeisei no rekishitekizentei: bungakuto seiji no mondai," Bungaku,Vol. 17, No. 10 (October 1949). Reprintedin ToyamaShigeki chosakushti,Vol. 5; see pp. 198-200. See also CarolGluck'sconclusion thatthe process of nationaldefinition(in was largely completedby 1890 in her Japan's the sense of the nation-stateor kokka/kokumin) Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1985), especially pp. 17-26. of two types of nationalismis super7. Toyama candidly admits that his understanding imposed by the experienceof the polaritiesof postwarJapanin the Cold War.His "two kinds of nationalism"are essentially "capitalistnationalism"(reactionary)and "Marxistnationalism" (progressive),an argumentthat seems less persuasivenow that Marxismgenerally has come to new terms with ethnic nationalismsince the collapse of Stalin's attemptto control ethnic nationalismwithin a soviet political structure.Moreover,T6yama'sargumentthat nationalismis merely a tool of otherpolitical interests,while remainingfaithfulto Stalin'sinterpretation,elevates nationalismbeyond the pale of history by denying it any historicalcontent its powerfulappealas nationalism. of its own, while seriously underestimating
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alism meantand, simultaneously, to reveal how imaginativeacts of identity productionoperatedat varioussocial levels to constructcontestingforms of nationalidentities. Most studies of Japanesenationalismhave focused on what Anderson has called "official nationalism,"or what I will call below "state nationalFew have developedthe distinctionbetween a political ism" (kokkashugi).8 nationalism centered on a transcendentalstate and an ethnic nationalism conceived in opposition to it.9 Several studies discuss culturalissues, particularly Carol Gluck's social and culturalapproachto Meiji nationalism, but none fundamentally disagreeswith KennethPyle's definitionof nationalism as "a process . . . by which large numbers of people of all social
classes are psychologically integratedinto active membershipin and positive identificationwith the nation-state." '0 The state remainedat the core of social identity,and cultureonly served to mediate the relationshipbetween individualsubjectsand the state. In the end, such approaches have provided compelling evidence for the preeminenceof the power of the state over the rights of the individualcitizen in Japan,but little in the way of an explanation for the compelling attraction of nationalismfor many Japanesepeople. What has been lacking is an approachto the problemof nationalismin Japanthat helps to explain how so many Japanesepeople could have been attractedto nationalismin the early twentiethcentury,given several previous decades of heavy statistinterventionin theirlives. Statisteducationcertainly succeededin encouragingmany to identify with the modernstateand its military exploits. But neither statism nor militarismcan be completely
8. Examplesare legion, but would have to include:Delmer Brown, Nationalismin Japan: An Introductory HistoricalAnalysis (New York:Russell and Russell, 1955), a workthatbegins its focus well before the modern period but sees early Japanese history leading inexorably towardthe state nationalismof the Meiji period;IvanMorris,Nationalismand the Right Wing in Japan (London:OxfordUniversityPress, 1960); Maruyama Masao, Thoughtand Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1951); Byron K. Marshall, Capitalismand Nationalismin Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite, 1868-1941 (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1967); George M. Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki, 1883-1937 (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1969); Gluck, Japan's ModernMyths;and KennethB. Pyle, The New Generationin Meiji Japan: Problems in Cultural Identity,1885-1895 (Stanford: StanfordUniversityPress, 1969) and TheJapanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Age (Washington: AEI Press, 1992). 9. A recentexception is GermaineHoston'sTheState, Identity,and the National Question in China and Japan (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1994) which recognizes the theoretical distinction between the nation as "ethnos" and the state, but eventually agrees with IshidaTakeshi'sconclusion (cited below) thatno meaningfuldistinctionbetween ethnic nation and state emerged in prewarJapan. 10. KennethB. Pyle, "Introduction: Some RecentApproachesto JapaneseNationalism," Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (November 1971), p. 6. There are some suggestive reflectionson the term "minzoku"scatteredthroughout AndrewBarshay'sinsightful Stateand Intellectual in ImperialJapan: The Public Man in Crisis (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1988), especially pp. 106, 218-19.
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equated with nationalism.Many patriotic and nationalisticJapanesewere not militarists,and some nationalistswere even critical of the state." And for some Japanesewho were less then enamoredwith the military,the modern Japanesestate, wrappedin Westernconstitutionaltheories and parliamentary structures,seemed to hold a dubious claim on Japanesecultural identity.To these culturalnationalists,the modernstate seemed less legitimate as an expressionof nationalculturethe more it relied on Westernculturalforms. In orderto graspwhy the solution to this modernparadoxthat the "new generation"of Meiji youthhad devised in the late nineteenthcentury was no longer working 30 years later, we need to expand our understandingof what nationalismis and whatkinds of relationshipsnationalism has had historicallywith the state. WalkerConnorhas contributedgreatlyto clarifying the relationshipof nationalismto the state by demonstrating that, historically,the nation has been much more closely associatedwith ethnicity than with loyalty to the state. The terminologicalconfusion of nationwith stateis a recentdevelopment and one Connorshows derivesin partfrom postwarAmericanscholor arshipthatreflectedthe United States' own experienceas a transnational, multinational,state.It also derives,significantlyfor scholarsof Japan,from a heavy emphasisin theories of nationalismon Japanand Germanyduring the wartimewhen a more perfectunion of nation and state occurredin the naIn orderto clarify this fundamental form of the militaristnation-state.12 tureof nationalismas loyalty to one's ethnic group,Connorhas emphasized in his writings. the term "ethnonationalism"
11. One famous example of a patriotwho was not a militaristis DietmemberSaito Takao, whose 1936 speech on the purge of militaryactivists and 1940 speech on the handlingof the "ChinaIncident"led to his ousterfrom the Diet and to a widespreadconclusionin the postwar years that he was a "progressive."But Saito's writings do not bear this out, and Yoshimi Yoshiakihas revealed that Saito was merely expressing the belief of many ordinaryJapanese that the militaryhad strayedfrom the pursuitof nationalinterestsin Asia. See Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kusa no ne nofuashizumu(Tokyo:Universityof Tokyo Press, 1987), pp. 3-21. While Saito was indeed a statist,if not a militarist,the focus of this paperis, of course, on those who sought to assert a distinctionbetween nationalism,on the one hand, and patriotismand militarism,on the otherhand,as emblems of the modernstate. The Questfor Understanding(Princeton:Prince12. WalkerConnor,Ethnonationalism: ton UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 95-100. The emphasis on Germanyin studies on Japanese nationalismalso seems to have led Ishida Takeshito conclude that Japanwas differentfrom had no historyof a clear concepGermanyin his (mistaken)belief thatJapan,unlike Germany, tual distinctionbetween minzoku(Volk) and kokka(Staat). See his Nihon no seiji to kotoba, Vol. 2: "Heiwa" to "kokka"(Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai,1989), p. 208. Ishida's views on the subjectseem to have had a tremendousinfluencein the field and are reproduced in GermaineHoston's Marxismand the Crisis of Developmentin Prewar Japan (Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1986), especially her citation from a former Marxist, Kobayashi Morito, who arguedthat in Japan "minzoku(nation or ethnic people) and kokka(the state) were one" (p. 32).
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Connor'stelling assessment of scholarshipon Japanesenationalismis correct:there has been an underlying assumption that national loyalty in Japanhas always centered on the state. Those who have sought to contest this form of nationalismhave often pointed to subgroupsthat seem ethnically distinct from an equally pure "Yamato"race to suggest the existence, however marginal,of otherethnic groupswithin the Japanesestate.'3Without denying the existence of ethnic minorities in Japan,it is also true that such approacheshave derived their models of "ethnicity" from the same body of postwar,and largely American,scholarshipthat Connoridentified. It is importantto recognize that the association of minzokuwith "ethnic minorities"in Japanis a ratherrecent development.Marxistscholarshipin the immediatepostwaryears sharedwith prewarnationalistsan interpretation of minzokuas referringto a Japanesenation distinct from the modern Japanesestate.'4The actual existence of multiple and large ethnic groups within the modern state has not been necessary for the mobilization of a discourseon ethnic nationalismin Japan. In the remainingpages, I hope to show how ethnicity,never to be taken for grantedas a naturalform of identity, was at the heart of the struggle over how to representthe Japanesepeople and, consequently,the nation itself. Ethnicnationalismbegan to take on a new significancein Japanafter the turn of the century,just as the concept of the ethnic nation (minzoku) enteredJapanesepolitical discourse.15 1 will begin with a brief overview of
13. See, for example, YazawaK6suke, "Ta-minzokushakaito shite no Nihon," in RekiandNihonshi Kenkyiikai,eds., KozaNihon rekishi(Tokyo:Tokyo Daigaku shigaki Kenkyfikai Shuppankei,1985), Vol. 13, pp. 25-47; see also the essays in Arano Yasunoriet al., eds., Ajia no naka no Nihonshi,Vol. 4: Chiikuto etonosu (minzoku)(Tokyo:Universityof Tokyo Press, 1992), especially KikuchiIsao, "Ky6kaito etonozu (minzoku),"pp. 55-80. 14. See, for example, T6yama Shigeki, "Futatsuno nashonarizumu,"Chuo koron, June 1951; Inoue Kiyoshi, "Nihon minzoku keisei to Meiji Ishin no igi," in Nihon gendaishi (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai,1951), Vol. 1; Eguchi Bokuro, "Nihon ni okeru minzokuteki na mono," Chuo koron, April 1952. Inoue's essay is particularlyhelpful: he offers an extended footnote that demonstratesthat minzokuis best translatedinto English as "nation," not as "race." All three essays were reprintedin Band6 Hiroshi, ed., Minzokuno mondai: rekishi kagaku taikei, Vol. 15 (Tokyo: Rekishi Kagaku Kyogikai, 1976). This work (which ought to be requiredreadingon the subject of nationalismin Japan)also includes two essays from the prewarMarxistappraisalof minzokuby Matsubara Hiroshi and HayakawaJiro, both of whom explicitly identifiedminzokuwith the English word "nation." 15. The word "minzoku" was not completely unknown in Japanprior to the twentieth century, and one of the earliest uses appearsto have been Miyazaki Muryu's in "minzoku kaigi" to translatethe French "AssembleeNationale" in his adaptationof AlexandreDumas's kakumeiki: Ange Pitou, "Furansu jiyfuno kachidoki,"that appearedin the Jiyii shinbunfrom August 12, 1882 to February8, 1883 (cited in YasudaHiroshi, "KindaiNihon ni okeru 'minzoku' kannenno keisei," Shiso to gendai, Vol. 31 (September1992), p. 62). But Yasudaadds that the specific use of "minzoku"to mean nation, as distinct from the nation defined as "kokumin,"dates from no earlierthanthe 1890s (ibid., p. 66), while Yun Kon-chaarguesthat the
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how ethnicity and nationalismevolved in the political discourse of early Japan,but focus mainly on the 1930s, for it was during twentieth-century that decade that ethnic nationalismreemergedas an especially pressing issue. As T6yamanoted, nationalismwas taken up by a group of critics and literaryfigures,many of whom had been exposed to Marxistandproletarian writings before turningto romanticismin their attemptto develop a new ethnic identityin ways they form of culturalproductionthatcould represent initially hoped would not be coopted by state nationalism.Whetherthey were successful (and, as I argue below, they were not), they did highlight the complex relationshipbetween ethnicity,culture,and the state by insisting on the possibility of a creativeapproachto the problemof nationalism throughan emphasison producingcollective forms of identitythatwere not immediatelyreducibleto the state.And in the process,they sketchedout the contours of an ethnic nationalismthat would survive the collapse of the wartimestate to remaina problemtoday,especially as increasingnumbers of Japaneseseek a closer relationshipwith theirAsian neighbors. EthnicNationalismin Twentieth-Century Japan The rise of ethnic nationalismin Japanneeds to be understoodwithin the context of a series of historical and political developmentsduring the of early twentiethcenturythat began to challenge previousunderstandings the relationshipbetween nationalidentityand state development,as well as the role of the West in Asia. Earlyculturalnationalistsin Meiji Japan,such as Miyake Setsureiand Shiga Shigetaka,had also emphasizedthe particularityof Japaneseculture,but they locatedthis need for culturalappreciation and saw culturalnationalismas within the largerparadigmof state-building the state.'6In the early years of the twentiethcentury, ideally strengthening for waragainstRussia,ethnicnationalism(minzokushugi) as Japanprepared began to appearin powerfulif still inchoateform. One of the earliestnationalist groupsto appealto ethnicityin twentieth-century Japanwas the Amur Foundedin 1901 by Uchida Ry6hei, the SociRiverSociety (Kokuryukai). of "the ety announced,as one of its guiding principles,the encouragement andtheirresistanceto legalism, which Asian ethnicnations"(Ajia minzoku) they felt had restrictedthe people's freedom.17 Yet, in spite of the potential for this critiqueof "legalism" to encompassa critiqueof the modernJapaconsciousness of "minzoku"was not fully establishedin modernJapanuntil the turn of the century.See his "Minzokugenso no satetsu:'Nihon minzoku'to iu jiko teiji," Shiso, No. 834 (December 1993), p. 17. 16. Yun Kon-chahas pointedout thatthe use of "Yamatominzoku"by Shiga Shigetaka the "nucleus of the state" (kokkano shutai) on the foundations was an attemptto restructure of ancientJapanesehistory,tradition,and culture.Ibid., p. 14. 17. Ino Kenji, "Uyoku minzoku-haundi o tenb6 suru," in Ino Kenji, ed., Uyokuminzoku-hasoran (Tokyo:Nijiisseki Shoin, 1990), pp. 72-73.
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nese state,the AmurRiverSociety workedclosely with the militaryin various forms of "continentaladventuring," therebyunderminingany incipient sense of a tension between the ethnic nation and the Japanesestate. Subsequentdevelopmentsin the discourse on ethnic nationalismin Japan came from two general directions:changes in Marxisttheory concerning the role of nationalismin the global proletariatmovement, and rising popularmovementsagainstthe Japanesestate afterthe disappointingterms of the Portsmouthtreatythat concluded the Russo-JapaneseWarof 19045. Shumpei Okamotohas demonstratedthat the Hibiya riot, which broke out in September1905 afterthe modest teims of the Portsmouthtreatybecame known, was closely relatedto a rising sense of alienationbetween "the people," broadlyconceived, and the Japanesestate.18 While nationalistsand others in Japangroped for the means to account for this new political force, socialists from aroundthe world gatheredat the fifth general meeting of the Second Internationalin Stuttgartin 1907 to debatewhethernationalismwas an appropriate responseto imperialistwars. Although the debate ended in a deadlock, largely over differences in the ways socialists from wealthycountriesand those from developingcountries appraisednationalism,the issues of colonization and nationalismit raised receiveda warmreceptionin Asia, where hopes had been stirredby Japan's At the same time, Stalin'sdefinition of ethnic navictory against Russia.19 tionalism as a social and historicalcategory in his 1913 "Marxismand the National and Colonial Question" (translatedinto Japaneseas "Marukusushugi to minzokumondai") provideda strongeridentificationof the ethnos (minzoku)with nation, distinct from the anthropologicalcategory of race (jinshu), and thereforehighly attractiveto Asian nationalistswho sought to distinguish various nationalist movements among the "yellow race" and, collectively, against the dominationof the imperialismof the "white
race."20
18. ShumpeiOkamoto,"The Emperorand the Crowd:The HistoricalSignificanceof the Hibiya Riot," in Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann,eds., Conflictin Modern Japanese History (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1982), pp. 258-75. 19. Eguchi Bokur6, "Gendaini okeruminzokuoyobi minzokushugi,"in IwanamiYuijiro, ed., Iwanami koza gendai shist, Vol. 3: Minzokuno shiso (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1957), pp. 19-21. 20. Ishimoda Sho, Rekishi to minzokuno hakken (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1952), pp. 104-6; on the ways in which the ethnic nation (minzoku)and race (jinshu) were understoodat the time, cf. the definitionsof the two concepts in the Daijiten (Tokyo:Keiseisha, 1917-37). "Race" (jinshu) is defined as "the divisions of humanity.Usually divided into the yellow race, the white race, the copperrace, the black race, and mixed race" whereas "ethnic nation"(minzoku)is "tribalgroupsof people" (jimminno shuzoku).Perhapseven more interAritomo'sfamous letter of 1914 to Okumain which he outlines his belief esting is Yamagata thatworld conflict is turninginto a strugglebetween "the white race" and the "coloredraces." The word he uses for race is jinshu. An English excerpt from the letteris availablein Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition,
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The outbreakof war in Europein 1914 precisely over issues of ethnic nationalismand imperialismdealt a fatal blow to the existing international order.But its impact on Japan,which played a ratherdistantrole overall in the war itself, may very well have been in bringingthe issue of ethnic nationalistliberationto the forefrontof intellectualandpoliticaldebate.Prince Saionji Kinmochi's delegation to the Versailles Peace Talks found itself contradictory caughtbetween two apparently positions of the leading powof peoples" ers. WoodrowWilson had decided that "the self-determination must be an essential componentin the postwarworld order.This principle, given ambiguousexpression with the English word "peoples," was transof ethnic lated into Japanesewith greaterfocus as the "self-determination members of the if nations" (minzoku Yet, jiketsu). Saionji delegation concluded thatWilson's supportfor the equal claims of ethnic nationsmeant a toleranceof racial diversity,they were soon disillusionedby Wilson'sjoining in the rejectionof the Japaneseproposalfor a clause in the League of Nations' charterdenouncingracial discrimination(jinshu sabetsu kinshi). Things were changing, and were Japanto pursuesuch national(as distinct from state) interestsas Japaneseimmigrationto the United States, it would seem more advantageousto representthem in ethnic nationalterms, ratherthan state interests(whose boundariesexcluded Japanesenaturalized U.S. citizens) or racial terms (which would equate Japanesewith Chinese, naKoreans,and other Asians). To be successful in the post-World-War-I tionalist discourse, Japan,now a full-fledged imperialpower and hardly a colonized nation, neverthelesswould find it advantageousto representitself as the victim of cultural(if not political or economic) colonizationby the West. This is indeed whathappened,in some cases. Yet,in light of this general of ethnic nationmovementthroughoutthe world towarda reconsideration alism in the 1920s, it is not surprisingthatJapaneseintellectualsand critics also began to reconsiderand redefinethe nation.Nor shouldit be surprising that discussions of Japanas an ethnic nation were not reserved for ultrarightists.The liberal intellectualAbe Jiro included a section on ethnic nationalism in his Santaro'sDiary which he publishedin 1918. In it, Abe, or "Santaro," arguedthata trulyhumanistic,globally directededucationmust of how one's identity is always embedded begin with a full understanding in ethnicity.After emphasizingthe importanceof an appreciationof one's ethnic identity,Abe concluded:
the nuVol. 2 (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1958), pp. 206-9. But to understand ances of Yamagata's language, consult the original in Tokutomilichiro, ed., KoshakuYamagata Aritomoden, Vol. 3 (Tokyo:Minyusha, 1933), pp. 923-24. For a commentaryon YamaAritomoto gata's theory of racial competition,see George Akita and Ito Takashi,"Yamagata 'jinshu kyoso' ron," in Nenpo kindai Nihon kenkyi, Vol. 7, Nihon gaiko no kiki ninshiki Shuppansha,1985), pp. 95-118. (Tokyo:Yamakawa
Doak: Ethnic Nationalism I would like to close this memorandum with the following note of caution. WhatI mean here by ethnic nationalism[minzokushugi] is not synonymous with state nationalism[kokkashugi]. What unites the ethnic nation is blood andhistory;but what unitesthe stateis sovereigntyandlaw as an expression of its will. The differencebetween state nationalismand ethnic nationalism will become most clear when one reflects on the political claims made by each.... In political terms, ethnic nationalismopposes imperialistic,state nationalismand is quite consistentwith the claims of cosmopolitanismand humanism.It insists on the liberationof ethnic nations in the world,just as we insist on the freedomof individualswithin a state.21
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Abe was not alone among "liberals" in extolling the virtues of ethnic nationalism. As late as 1934 Yanaihara Tadao tried to preserve this humanistic interpretation of a benign ethnic nationalism in his essay on peace and the ethnic nation, which he published in the highly visible Chuo koron. He too felt that the distinction between the ethnic nation and the state was an essential one, if ethnic nationalism were to maintain a critical stance in the context of an increasing Japanese imperialism. Yanaihara surveyed a variety of theories on nationalism and nationality that were most influential during the 1930s, concluding that "simply put, they all agree that the concept of the ethnic nation [minzoku] should not be equated immediately with the state [kokka] or the Staatsvolk [kokumin]."22 Whatever the nuances between the ethnic nation and the Staatsvolk, it is clear from the rest of Yanaihara's writings that the ethnic nation (minzoku) was not the same as the state. But support for ethnic nationalism on the left was perhaps most characteristic of Marxists and was closely related to developments within the proletarian literary movement which dominated literary discourse in Japan during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Deeply imbedded in the proletarian movement was a critique of universalist principles, particularly the bourgeois notion of individual identity grounded in a universal "ego." When Georg Lukaics declared that "the proletariat is at one and the same time the subject and object of its own knowledge," this and much more was implied.23 Once the rational, universalist constraints to subjective, collective identities had been challenged, if not entirely lifted, a distinction between definitions of the people based on the specific experiences of class or eth21. Abe Jir6, "Shis6jono minzokushugi,"in Inoue Masaji,ed., Santarono nikki(Tokyo: KadokawaShoten, 1950), pp. 335-36. My thanksto Agustin JacintoZavalafor alertingme to this important passage in Abe's work. 22. Yanaihara Tadao, "Minzoku to heiwa," YanaiharaTadao zenshi, Vol. 18 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1964), p. 47. Yanaihara glosses kokuminas "Staatsvolk"on p. 45. To be fair, he often equates both minzokuand kokuminwith the "nation":I have usually added "ethnic" to help distinguish the kind of nation that he means by minzoku,a sense of nation that is much more distancedfrom the state than is "Staatsvolk." 23. Georg Lukacs,Historyand Class Consciousness:Studiesin MarxistDialectics, trans. by Rodney Livingstone(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), p. 20.
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nicity could only be maintainedthroughhistoricalpractice.The history of literaturein Japanis a complex one and lies the rise and fall of proletariat outside the scope of this essay. Here I would like merely to draw attention to how a theoryof culturalproductionthateventuallymeshed with the ethnic nationalismStalin had upheld in his 1913 essay grew out of the proletariat movement's earlier attempt to reconsider the relationshipbetween 24 "politics" and "culture." This debateon "politics" and "culture"can best be seen in the writings of Kamei Katsuichiroand Hayashi Fusao, two influentialmembersof the movementwho laterbecamekey membersof the Japan literature proletarian Romantic School. Particularlysensitive to the dilemma facing politicized writers,they entereda debatewith KobayashiTakiji,MiyamotoKenji, and writersover the contradictionsin contemporary other proletarian interpretations of Marxist theories of cultural production. Hayashi suggested as recordingof early as 1932 thatliteraryactivitywas not merely a transparent an externalpolitical reality,but carriedwith it its own "internal" reality.He arguedthatthe ultimateresponsibilityof an authorwas "the completion of the author'sown internalworld . . . [and then] to drag the readersalong, willy nilly, to that other world.... It is only when this kind of passion is realizedthatan authorhas the rightto expect the gratitudeof the masses."25 two yearslaterin his own Kameifurtherdevelopedthis line of argument He drew from Hayashi's essay on political desire as artistic temperament. works to develop a theory of the artist as a perpetual"rebel" (as distinct from a "revolutionist"who must become partof the new establishmentafter the revolutionsucceeds) whose own sense of identitywas always caught between the rival demandsof skeptical reason and creativepassion. In the same vein, in arguingthat literatureshould not be reducedto politics, he stressed that he was not referringto politics "in the broad sense as manifested in all social class relations (including culture)"but "in the narrow 26Here it would seem sense of politics as manifestedin partisanrelations." his notion of a "revowith that this restrictedsense of "politics," along be seen as no lutionist" who signifying the postlonger rebels, might and own elites their Restorationpolitical specific concept of the national
24. A very useful overview of the proletarian literarymovementmay be found in Yoshio and Iwamoto, "Aspectsof the Proletarian LiteraryMovementin Japan,"in H. D. Harootunian BernardSilberman,eds., Japan in Crisis: Essays on TaishoDemcoracy (Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 1974), pp. 156-82. The debate over politics and cultureis discussed in Takami Jun, Showa bungakuseisuishi, Vol. 2 (Tokyo:Bungei ShunjuShinsha, 1958), pp. 9-37; and some key texts in the debate may be found in OdagiriHideo, ed., GendaiNihon bungaku ronsoshi, Vol. 2 (Tokyo:Miraisha,1956), pp. 135-75. 25. Hayashi Fusao, "Sakka no tame ni," in Hirano Ken, ed., Gendai Nihon bungaku ronsoshi, Vol. 3 (1957), p. 140. 26. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Geijutsutekikishitsu to shite no seiji yoku," in Hirano, ed., Vol. 3, p. 167. GendaiNihon bungakuronsosshi,
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communityas the state (kokka).Both Hayashi'sadvocationof an "internal reality" and Kamei's invocation of "rebellion"against the establishedpolitical orderconverged in laying the culturalfoundationsfor a broaderacceptanceof a subjectivelydefinedconcept of the nationbased on the people and distinctfrom the realityof the modernJapanesestate. While Kamei and Hayashi preparedthe way for the Japan Romantic School through the highly proclaimed "CulturalRenaissance" (Bungei Fukk6ki), one of Japan'sgreatest twentieth-centurynovelists, Yokomitsu Riichi, strongly influenced the subsequentdevelopment of this debate on culturethroughhis 1935 essay, "Junsuish6setsuron." Yokomitsusought to bridge the gap between the realism of mass politics and the romanticismof elite literature through an appeal to his fellow writers to create texts groundedin the Japanese"ethnicnation"(minzoku).This returnto a Japanese "specificity"would liberatewritersfrom a universalrealism and open up the possibility of creativeworks developed in line with the specific conditions of Japaneseculture. Yokomitsuwas too much an artistto believe in a simplistic mimesis of an ethnic "reality";rather,the thrustof his argumentwas directed at the conditions for producinga literaturethat would represent,in literarypractice, a Japanese ethnic identity that was not completely compatible with Europeanrationality.Yet, ironically,Yokomitsuknew that such a position could only be imaginedthroughthe work of Westernwriterssuch as Andre found useful Gide's insights into the mechanisms Gide, and he particularly of self-consciousness and the liberationof the ego. Nonetheless, what most contemporaryreadersof this complex essay rememberedbest must have been Yokomitsu'sconclusion that "the moment has finally arrivedto think aboutthe ethnic nation [minzoku]."27 EthnicNationalismand the Japan RomanticSchool Certainly,the most sustainedattemptin Japanduringthe 1930s to heed the call "to thinkaboutthe ethnic nation"and even to articulatea concept of the ethnicnationas distinctfromstatenationalismwas carriedout by a group of writers and literary critics who styled themselves the JapanRomantic School. From the announcementfor the school publishedin Cogito in late 1934, one gains a sense thatthese Romanticswereaboutsomethingnew,even if theirprecisegoal was still shroudedin heavy doses of romanticambiguity: TheJapan Romantic Schoolis thepresent of theage." poemof our"youth We rejecteverything butthe lofty toneof thesepoemsof youthand,untroubled in searchof tomorrow's customs,move forward by yesterday's truth...
27. YokomitsuRiichi, "Junsuish6setsuron," in Hirano,ed., GendaiNihon bungakuronsoshi, Vol. 3, p. 79.
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TheJapan Romantic theJapan Schoolpaysno attention to history. Rather, Romantic Schoolexcels in all thingsand is the mostpureandbeautiful needssuchartists existence. andthepeoplerequire someone Today, Japan sensetheirdemands.28 whocanmostacutely is remarkably The tone of this announcement similarto thatof many of the early Germanromanticssuch as Novalis who, in this early,prereactionexhibiteda contrivedindifferenceto poliary stage of Germanromanticism, tics, a "lofty unconcernwith the particularform of state life," and sought to grasp the Germannation as a culturalpeople in a way that was closely relatedto the universalistand humanisticideals of modernism.29 The similarity was no accident. Many membersof the JapanRomanticSchool had studied Germanliteratureand culturein higher school and university,and they often expressed their admirationfor such Germanwriters as Novalis, FriedrichH1olderlin, FriedrichSchlegel, and HeinrichHeine. One of the earliestcritics of the day to graspthe significanceof the Japan Romantic School and to criticize the new direction it proposed was Miki for the Kiyoshi. In November 1934, the same monththatthe advertisement JapanRomantic School appearedin Cogito, Miki wrote an article in the thataccusedthe Japan of romanticism" Miyakoshinbunon "the appearance culturalclaims of the RomanticSchool of merelyrepeatingthe universalist, early GermanRomanticSchool, and he suggested that the JapanRomantic School had little new to offer.Miki'scriticismof the JapanRomanticSchool would take up a significantpartof his energies over the next severalyears, but one finds a clue to the laterdevelopmentof his criticismof romanticism in his descriptionin this article of the JapanRomanticSchool as "the protection of 'the artist's disposition' from the disposition of the citizen
[shimin]." 30
In Januaryof the following year, Kamei respondedwith a defense, sugthatthe JapanRomanticSchool was merely an gesting thatMiki's argument exercise in comparativeromanticism"seemed as though he was speaking of someone else." But Kamei did not addressthe question of whetherthe Romanticsfelt threatenedby civic nationalismor whetherthey were proposing a differentconcept of nation or citizen.3' Miki, however, who was drawingcloser to the rationaltechnology of the state as a means of saving Japanfrom fascism, grew increasinglycertainthat "fascism in Japan[was] a style of thought or an emotional mood that stressed emotion over ratio28. YasudaYojur6,"Nihonr6manhak6koku," Cogito, No. 11 (December 1934), p. 149. 29. YadaToshitaka,"Romanshugito minzoku gainen," in Iwanami,ed., Iwanamikoza gendai shiso, Vol. 3, p. 56. 30. Miki Kiyoshi, "R6manshugino taito," Miyakoshinbun,Nov. 8-11, 1934. Reprinted in Miki Kiyoshizensha, Vol. 13 (Tokyo:IwanamiShoten, 1967), pp. 157-67; see pp. 158-59. in Ka31. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Romanshugino imi," Bungei shuto, Jan. 1935; reprinted mei Katsuichirozensha (Tokyo:K6dansha,1971-75), Vol. 3, p. 323.
Doak: Ethnic Nationalism
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nality, and [Miki] implied that writers like those in the Romantic School could fuel its growth."32 This debate between Miki and Kamei suggests how far apartconcepts of the Japanesenation were growing in the mid-1930s. Miki believed that the difference between "Westernknowledge" and "Japaneseknowledge" merely reflected a variance in the topos or "place" where universaltechnology was put into practice,thus assuminga concept of a distinctnational But the JapanRomanticSchool space that was essentially homogeneous.33 sought to contest the notion of a monolithic conflation of state and nation by contesting the claims that a modern, rational state made on traditional Japaneseculturalidentity. In attemptingto sever culturefrom the modern state and relocateit back to the people, the RomanticSchool showed a prescient awarenessof how the modern discipline of history had been mobilized to provide narrativestructuresthat would make the identificationof the state, nation, and Japaneseculture seem naturaland commonsensical. Consequently,the rejection of "history" in the advertisementfor the Romantic School should be understoodin reference to the familiar form of nation-statenarrativesand, particularly,the successful construction since Meiji of a "wealthy state and strong military" (fukokukyohei), while "Japan" seems to have referredto the Romantics' ideal and eternalethnic nation ratherthanto the actualmodernJapanesestate. There is, in fact, a fascinatingif incipientcritiqueof history in the writings of these romanticsthatin many ways foreshadowsthe critiqueof "Hisand tory" offeredmorerecentlyby scholarsdrawingfrom deconstructionist subalterntheories and that sheds light on comparative in how the problems and culture have been understood and nation, state, represented.For example, RobertYounghas suggested, in relationto EdwardSaid's work, that "to the extent that all knowledge is producedwithin institutionsof various sorts, there is always a determinedrelation to the state and to its political
32. Miles Fletcher, "Intellectualsand Fascism in Early Showa Japan,"Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1 (November 1979), p. 49. Although Fletcher does not directly address the problem of ethnic nationalismagainst the state, this importantessay remains an essential startingpoint for understanding how state ideologues could see their defense of the rationalstate as protectingJapanfrom more radicalforms of nationalismand fascism. 33. Miki Kiyoshi, "Nihon-tekichisei ni tsuite," Bungakkai,Vol. 4, No. 4 (April 1937), p. 68. Miki's views were in sharp contrastto those of Tosaka Jun who argued, at about the same time, that "Japan" should be approached"dualistically"(nigen-tekini) ratherthan "monistically" (ichigen-tekini). His proposal,which was quickly dismissed by KobayashiHideo and othersparticipatingin the symposium, was made in the context of wide-rangingand fascinating discussions on topics such as "the dualityof culture"and "the rivalryof internationIn contrast,Miki's commentsat the symposiummainlybemoaned ality and ethnic nationality." the lack of state supportfor a strong cultural policy. See the transcriptsof the symposium in "Gendai bungakuno Nihon-teki d6ko," Bungakkai,Vol. 4, No. 2 (February1937), esp. pp. 210-17.
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Young suggests that "History," as it practices at home and abroad."34 evolved in the Westerntradition,is one of these institutionsand, as such, within the developed a totalistic epistemology that fused all particularities universalmission of an expansive state, where traditionalidentity and the modern world intersected.Recently, Gyan Prakashhas articulatedthe implications of this "WesternHistory" for the non-Westmore forcefully, arnonguing that "the dominanceof Europeas historynot only subalternizes 35 Westernsocieties, but also serves the aims of theirnation-states." Similar argumentsthat positioned Japan as a non-Westernstate oppressedby Westernculturewere enjoying wide circulationin Japanduring the 1930s. KawakamiTetsutaroargued against Tosaka Jun'sbelief in the universalityof science by questioningthe culturalneutralityof history: is saying.I believeyou trust whatMr.Tosaka Well,I thinkI understand real nature of Mr. Tosaka. the what But science, youcall scienceis history. is connected I think of "the thatthisconcept of "historical" to theconcept of theWestcanbe applied West." in Japan, butI have ... Nowthisconcept doubts as to howit is applied.36 considerable Tosakarespondedthat science workedquite well in Japan,as evidencedby oblivious to the culturallimits of scihow well tramsand trains,apparently ence, ran in Japan.Kawakamiand others at the symposiumremainedunmoved. As they saw things, the critical questionwas not the universalityof the naturalsciences, but the relationshipof culturalsciences and national power. For them, and for the Romantics,the most pressing issue was how to restoreconfidence in nationalculturewhen the very future of Japanese of cultureseemed threatened by the modernJapanesestate'sinternalization Westernculturefor its own purposes. Perhapsthe most powerfulcritiqueof history and its role in supporting the statecame from YasudaYojiir, the acknowledgedleaderof the Romantic School. Yasudawas a fundamentallyironic thinkerwho sharedYokomitsu'sinsight thata Japaneseculturalidentitycould no longerbe produced except throughWesternculturesince Japanhad alreadybegun the process Kamei'sdistinctionbetween "poliAfter firstreaffirming of modernization. tics" in the narrowsense (which he too rejected) and politics as cultural practice, Yasudadescribedhis fellow Romanticsas "first-rateand proper to Japanof the spiritof the GermanRomanticSchool in order transplanters to put into practicea political theory-political theoryin the truestsense34. Robert Young, White Mythologies: WritingHistory and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 127. Emphasisadded. Studies as PostcolonialCriticism,"TheAmericanHistori35. Gyan Prakash,"Subaltern cal Review,Vol. 99, No. 5 (December 1994), p. 1485. 36. Remarks attributedto Kawakami Tetsutaro in "Gendai bungaku no Nihon-teki doko," p. 214.
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that would lift the Japanese people to the heights of Goethe." 37He was quite conscious of the contradiction in attempting to create a conception of the people from a knowledge base that was foreign to most of the people themselves, but he saw it as inevitable that "before we can provide what the people seek, we must freely construct the people that we seek." 38This dilemma was merely the result of the post-Meiji-Restoration social and political revolution in which certain forms of Western culture were mobilized by the state to construct a specific version of national identity congruent with its own interests. Consequently, Yasuda noted, nobody yet had told the real history of Japan: We are a world-class ethnic nation with a history and genealogy that we need not discuss. This is why we have not had one historiansince the Meiji Restorationwho really talks about our history.The majorworks of the famous historians at the government universities are mainly middle-brow textbooks.39 How to recover this "history" of the Japanese people from within a modern outlook that equated history with the fortunes of the state remained a critical problem for Yasuda's cultural theory and one that helps explain much of his attraction to the German romantics. Yasuda saw the German romantics as an ideal means of illustrating how culture had been marginalized by the mobilization of historical science in the service of the modern state. This appeal to German romanticism positioned Yasuda within a critique of the modern Japanese state, not as too Western or too universal, but for being too particularistic in rejecting the universalism of human cultural ideals. From romanticism, Yasuda derived a theory of art that promised "to correctly grasp the past" in ways that the modern discipline of history had failed to do.40 In a wide-ranging essay on German romanticism and cultural theory that touched on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, G. W. F. Hegel, and others, Yasuda ultimately concluded that the most accurate "historian" of the spirit of the Romantic Age was Holderlin, a "pure poet" who refused to accept "the affirmation of the alienation of art and life [which is] the capitalist social theory that destroys the pure spirit of an artist."4' Through Holderlin, Yasuda sought to uncover a premodern concept of art as
37. YasudaYojuro, YasudaYojurozenshu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985-89; hereaftercited as YYz),Vol. 3, pp. 407-8. "Konnichino r6manshugi,"in YYz, Vol. 3, p. 48. 38. YasudaYojuroi, 39. YasudaYojuro,"Nihon roman-tekijidai," Yamatoshinbun,Aug. 12-14, 1938. ReVol. 9, pp. 264-69; see p. 264. printedin YYz, 40. KawamuraJiro, "YasudaYojuroron," in Tenbo,No. 93 (September 1966), p. 139. 41. Yasuda Yojiur, "Kiyorakanashijin," Bungakkai, Vol. 1, No. 5 (February 1934), p. 218.
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way of thinkingaboutart... is merely an history since "the contemporary with civil that of ideology appeared society-or at least with the maturation 42 the humanistspiritthatarose duringthe Renaissance." Germanromanticslike Holderlincreatedworks that "drewone's attention to the flow of history,"and from this historicalvantagepoint, Yasuda discerned a contradictionbetween the statism of Bonapartism and the "revolutionof internationalism" offered by the Germanfocus on the culnation: tural/ethnic He [Holderlin] was probably the firstto discover the ethnicnation[mindid notdiscern a dialectic between a constant effort zoku].His sentiments to reach theinfinite andtheblissof a reality thatis conscious of limits.This wassimplybecause he wasnota politician whowroteliterature to instruct the citizens[kokumin]; he hadto be a writer who sangof his own spirit.43 To Yasuda,the Germanromantics,and particularly H6lderlin,remainedthe most significantillustrationof a "spiritualhistory" of the humanquest for liberationthathad been marginalized by a more progressiveform of history that had reducedpoetry and poets to the status of ornamentaldecorations
(tokonoma no okimono).44
Throughhis focus on Germanromantics,Yasudahoped to dislodge a belief in the Japanesestate'srepresentation of Westerncultureas rational, progressive,and supportiveof artificialpolitical forms, and to reveal the polysemy inherentin Westernculture.Thus, he wrote, "I do not reject the the studyof foreign study of foreign culture.It is all we know.Furthermore, literaturehas finally taught us the necessity of determiningthe Japanese
classics."45 Yet, while Yasuda understood the necessity of using Western
culture to access Japanesetradition(the West's invention of the East), he refusedto essentializeWesterncultureas the only locus of universalvalues. Indeed,he sought to transcendthe simplistic oppositionof West (universal) versusEast (particular) thatculturecarriedwith it a universal by reaffirming of polivalue that was only frustrated by the temporallyspecific structures tics (i.e., the nation-state).He looked back to eighth-century Japanas a period of flourishingcosmopolitanismand suggestedthatthis was the time the Japanesetrulyexperienceda universalculture. The nuanceshere of the early stages of Germanromanticismare strong, but we should not overlook the implicit criticism of the modernJapanese state as well. In his critique of "what is Japanese"(1938), Yasudaargued stronglyand passionatelyagainstallegationsby critics such as Aono Suekithathis views shouldbe distinguished chi thathe was a fascist, maintaining
42. 43. 44. 45. Ibid., pp. 218-19. Ibid., p. 228. Ibid., pp. 228, 230. Vol. 3, p. 408. Yasuda,"Gendaihyoronkano tachiba,"in YYz,
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from fascism since he was strongly critical of the Japanese state. The colonization of Japan, he noted, was internal and stemmed from the Japanese state: If we can say thatJapan's conquest of the eighteenthcenturyis still incomit is liberationfrom colonial forms is still incomplete. because plete, Japan's Yet, when we look back on "history" and reflect on the "miracle" of the "Meiji Restoration,"our attitudecannot be so easily rationalized.Simply put, Aono's "miracle"is nothing but gratitudefor what is representedby the name "Ito Hirobumi"[i.e., the modernJapanesestate]. At any rate,our generation,which set its sights on culturefrom a realization of Japan's incompleteconquestof the eighteenthcentury,has startedto write a topographyof the Japanesesoul. Thatthe fascist forms of Japantoday are being directed by the bureaucracyis an abominable disgrace. I have no hopes that a new bureaucracymight bring our Japanin step with Russia which is creatinga "wealthyproletariat"in the West and therebybring us culturalforms. I just cannot bring closer to overcomingeighteenth-century of the current myself to trustthe "history"that is the special temperament bureaucracy.46 Consequently, for Yasuda and his fellow Romantics, the problem confronting Japan in the 1930s was how best to resurrect this "eradicated history" that would reveal the cultural and ethnic foundations for a new Japanese national identity; they often argued, contra Miki, that this attempt to restore a "universal Japanese culture" should not be reduced to fascism which, as Yasuda concluded, was the "eradication of things through state power."47 To fully appreciate the Japan Romantic School's romanticism and its critical orientation to the rational state, one might compare the School's project with the poststructuralist and decolonization theories raised by recent critics. A shared romanticism underlies these critiques of history and the state, as illustrated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's suggestion that postcolonial criticism "consists in saying an 'impossible "no" to a structure, which one critiques, yet inhabits intimately.' "48 In a similarly ambivalent mood, Yasuda announced that the basis of the Japan Romantic School lay in "the irony of a liberated Japan that simultaneously can ensure con46. Yasuda,YYz, Vol. 6, p. 193. Needless to say, Yasudadid not intendto apply Western chronology indiscriminatelyto Japan.To him, "the eighteenth century" was not a universal markerof history,but a specific, historicistreference to the time when he located the origins of the modern state in Europe. It is in this context that he condemns those Japanese who worshipthe foundersof the modernJapanesestate which, of course, appearedin Japannearly one hundredyears after "the eighteenthcentury"had drawnto a close. 47. Yasuda,YYz, Vol. 6, pp. 190-91. 48. GayatriChakravorty Spivak, "The Making of Americans, the Teaching of English, the Futureof Colonial Studies," New LiteraryHistory,Vol. 21 (1990), p. 28; cited in Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as PostcolonialCricitism,"p. 1487.
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structionand destructionwhile Japan'snew spiritis still in its currentchaotic and inchoatecondition."49And Kamei added that the JapanRomantic School arose as a form of "irony opposed to vulgar realism [which] . . .
would build a realism . . . by recovering as fundamental to the spirit of
realism those elements such as an intense subjectivity,an idealistic spirit,a lofty intellectual character,and a scientific cultivationthat had been lost underthe earlierform of 'realism.'"50 In highlightingthe impossibilityof theirnecessaryresistanceto humanstructures, the Romanticsalso were sugtheir within Westernculture and their gesting alreadyimplicatedposition own nationaltraditionthathad constructedthe modernJapanesestate. As suggested above, the role of poetry was centralin this construction of a concept of the Japaneseas a culturalpeople, and it lay at the very heart of the Romanticview of the nation.Poetrywas not merely seen as creating a sense of sharedsocial space thatwould rival, if not negate, the "history" of the post-Meijistate.As the tone of the announcement cited abovereveals, also was associated with some for a new concept of a poetry vague hope national people that would overcome the more recent painful realities of a nation divided by class and regional differences. Romantic nationalists have often turnedto poetry in a belief that "thereis a special kind of contemporaneouscommunity which language alone suggests-above all in
the form of poetry and songs .... there is in this singing an experience of
simultaneity.At precisely such moments, people wholly unknownto each other utter the same verses to the same melody."5' Kamei reflected that Plato's call for poets to be driven from his republic stemmed not from a failure to appreciateculture, but from a recognition that technical artists with no political concernsshould not have a place in his "idealcountry"and Kamei called for a realizationof Plato's2,000-year-olddreamby Japanese poets who understoodthat they were meant to address the nation.52 of the nation Whatremainedto be seen was whethersuch a "poeticization" could resist totalizationsof the nationalspace thatmighteventuallycollapse any distinctionbetween "nation"and "state"underthe aegis of a resurgent "nation-state."
ni okeruromanshugino gaikan,"in YYz, Vol. 11, p. 302. 49. YasudaYojurO, "Wagakuni HashikawaBunzo has noted the similaritiesbetween this passage and Carl Schmitt'sdescription of the political romantic'sbelief that "the reservationof all infinite possibilities lies in irony" in his Nihon romanhahihanjosetsu (Tokyo:Miraisha,1965), pp. 40-41. I have drawn the line from Schmitt from Guy Oakes' translationof Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), p. 72. 50. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Romanshugino imi," in Kamei Katsuichirozenshu, Vol. 3, pp. 323-24. 51. Anderson,ImaginedCommunities, p. 132. "Dorei-nakigirisu no kuni e," Nihon romanha,Vol. 1, No. 2 52. Kamei Katsuichirol, (April 1935), pp. 20-21.
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The Reconciliation of Ethnic Nation and State While Yasuda insisted on the differences between his interest in Japanese culture and the cultural ideologies of fascism, he was mainly concerned with producing a new historical perspective that would redefine the "people" by providing a cultural framework for an alternative view that stressed a more populist concept of the Japanese nation. Yet, ironically, in his view, as in the post-Meiji political culture, the emperor was given a central role in what he called, drawing from Asano Akira, "history as the emperor wants it" (tenshin rekishi). But in contrast to the Meiji state's appropriation of the modern, beef-eating emperor as the cornerstone of its state nationalism, Yasuda represented the emperor in a thoroughly poetic, romantic way.53 He stated his intention as "the clarification of a 'Japan' that must experience the present world historical moment and, in order to bring about such a loftier 'Japan,' the construction through cultural history of a genealogy of the lineage of that 'Japan.' "54 This genealogy presented the emperor, not as a modern individual, but as a collective line of tragic emperors who, imprisoned by political elites, invariably expressed through their poetry a longing to be reunited with their people. Yasuda stopped short of suggesting a return to actual imperial rule, but the implicit criticism of the false Meiji "Restoration" was clear. From Retired Emperor Gotoba and his failed bid at an imperial restoration in the early thirteenth century through the wandering poet Basho of the seventeenth century, Yasuda described an imperial tradition of poetic culture that was defined by its opposition to secular political power. Consequently, he imagined poets as moral voices who best articulated this lost tradition; they were, he wrote, "always at the forefront of history's will and the people's determination." 55What made this poetic genealogy particularly appealing in the context of ethnic nationalism was its absorption of the individual in a collective identity, as each individual emperor was merely the most recent incarnation of the same, enduring cultural tradition. As the unifying principle of the Japanese people, the emperor also suggested, however, the his53. George Akita and Hirose Yoshihirorecently have challenged the long-held view that the modernJapanesemonarchywas constructedon a Prussianmodel, noting that some Meiji elites, such as Inoue Kowashi, had a British model of the monarchyin mind. See Akita and Hirose, "The BritishModel: Inoue Kowashi and the Ideal MonarchicalSystem," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 1994). Both sides of the debate, however, agree on the Westernorigins of the modernJapanesemonarchy,whetherBritish or Prussianin inspiration, and this is the only relevant issue for Yasudaand the JapanRomantic School who saw the redefinitionof the emperorin Westernform as the penultimateexpression of Westerncultural colonization in Japan. 54. Yasuda,"Taikanshijin no goichininsha," YYz, Vol. 5, p. 11. 55. Ibid., p. 12.
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torical and cultural differences that separated the Japanese from other Asians. In spring of 1938, Yasudaembarkedon his first (and only) trip outside for thejournalShin Japan.He joined Sat6 Haruoas a special correspondent Nihon (which Sato, HayashiFusao, and other membersof the Shin Nihon Bunka Kai hadjust foundedin January1938-not to be confused with the earlierjournalShinNihon [1911-18]) on ajourney thattook themto Korea, andnorthern China,wherehe touredBeijing underthe guidance Manchuria, of the Japanesesinologist TakeuchiYoshimi.Whateffect, if any,experience in a foreigncountryhad on this young ethnicnationalistis a matterof debate But it was aroundthis time that a more historically among specialists.56 form of ethnic nationalismin modern Japan,with its ironic relaspecific to other nationalist movements,both Easternand Western,begins tionship to surfacein Yasuda'swritings.Thatis to say, one can detect a shift around late 1938 in Yasuda'sapproachto ethnic nationalismthat reflects the distinctionbetween the "primordial" and "boundary" to ethnicity approaches thatKosakuYoshinorecentlyhas outlined.As Yoshinoexplains,primordial approachesto ethnicity attach "supremeimportanceto the continuityover time of the ethnic communityby emphasizingthese two aspects [kinship and culture] of the primordialties." Boundary approachesto ethnicity to emphasizethat the identity of members downplay culturaldeterminants of an ethnic group can "not be established in terms of their shared cultural traits, but only by considering their relationshipwith neighbouring groups."57Priorto Yasuda'sexperience in foreign countries,his approach but increasinglyhe began to emwas very close to that of primordialism, of the the character unitary Japaneseethnic nation and the state, phasize with threats the mission of this newly synthesized"Japan" while contrasting from outside. Yet, as Yoshino notes, the two approachesare not always mutuallyexnaclusive, and both cultureand boundaryremainedinfluentialin Yasuda's tionalism. His definition of the Japaneseas an "ethnic nation" (minzoku) ratherthanpartof an Asian "race"(jinshu) reflecteda tentativerecognition of the historicallegacy of the Meiji Restorationwhich had both yielded the modern state and alienated the Japanesefrom other Asians. At the same time, Yasudacontinuedto hope thatmodernitymight be overcomethrough
56. See my discussionof the debatein Dreams of Difference:TheJapanRomanticSchool and the Crisis of Modernity(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1994), pp. 14-15. Perdiscussion haps the most provocativeview is thatof OketaniHideaki,who arguesthatYasuda's of the Japanesevictory at Siichow in May 1938 was actuallya carefully coded critiqueof the new constraintsthe state imposed on culturaldebatein Japanwhen the NationalMobilization Law went into effect the same month.See Oketani, YasudaYojfro(Tokyo:ShinchTsha,1983), pp. 79-80. 57. KosakuYoshino,CulturalNationalismin Contemporary Japan:A Sociology Enquiry (London:Routledge, 1992), pp. 70-71.
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the constructionof a collective identity groundedin culturalspecificity. A heightenedappreciationof ethnicity would fuse togetherthe ethnic nation and the state into the nation-state(minzokukokka),58 therebyputtingan end to divisivenessover how the nation ought to be represented:
That we have professional thinkers who maintainthere is a gap between the thinking of those in the nation-statecrowd [minzokukokkagun] and ethnic nationalism [minzokushugi]is really a reflection on the ratherunusual intellectual customs of our country. But with the establishmentof the New Order,the professional principles and tendencies of writers will change.59
Certainlyby 1940 when Yasudapublished this statement,his critical attitudetowardthe statehad moderatedsomewhat.But he still believed that the ethnic nation requiredbetterhistoricalrepresentation, since it was "the 60Consequently,he cultural side [of ethnicity] that must be emphasized." walkeda narrowline between maintaining the unitarycharacter of the Japanese nation and the state and arguingfor a new form of history that would recoverJapan'strue historicalgreatnessfrom the "civilizationand enlightenment ideology" of the "official historiographers" whose work aided in "the dominance of civilization which, since the Meiji period, had turned 61 Japaninto a place of colonial culture." It was a delicate balancingact. Ethnic nationalismwas to suggest both
58. This equation of minzokukokka with "nation-state"may strike some readers as strange, since the precise definition of the nation-statehas largely been lost in the Englishlanguage literature.We now often use the terms "nation-state,""nation,"and "state" interchangeably,even though the terms originally referredto quite discrete entities. (See Walker Connor, "A Nation is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group,Is a ... ," reprintedin Connor, Connor'sanalysis, importantenough in its own right, takes on added sigEthnonationalism.) nificance when compared with prewarJapanese theorists of nationalism such as Yanaihara Tadao, who make almost identical arguments,tracing the definition of the nation (translated into Japaneseas minzoku)to the Latinroot nasci (cf. Connor,"A Nation is a Nation," pp. 9495, and Yanaihara Tadao, "Minzokuto kokka," YanaiharaTadao zenshu [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965], Vol. 18, pp. 273-354, at pp. 278-79). Yet,withouta clear understanding of the distinctionbetween the nation and the state, Yasuda'spoint is hardto follow. For a brief summary of some strategies the state employed to coopt the ethnic nation (minzoku) within a renewed emphasis on the nation-state(minzokukokka), see my chapter on "Nationalismas Dialectics: Ethnicity,Moralism, and the State in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,"in James Heisig and JohnMaraldo,eds., RudeAwakenings:Zen, the KyotoSchool, and the Questionof Nationalism(Honolulu:Universityof Hawai'i Press, 1994). 59. YasudaYojuro,"'Bungaku no tachiba'oboegaki," YYz,Vol. 7, p. 269. Yasuda'sargument on the unique Japanesetraditionof distinguishingbetween nation and state contrasts nicely with IshidaTakeshi'sargument,noted above, thatprewarJapanwas unlike Germanyin not having a traditionof distinguishingnationfrom state. 60. YasudaYojuro,"Minzokuno yuetsusei ni tsuite," YYz,Vol. 11, pp. 79-80. 61. YasudaYojuro,"Nihon rekishigakuno kensetsu:kokushikakuninno mondai," Minzoku-tekiyfietsukan,in YYz,Vol. 9, pp. 29, 39. See also "Atarashiikokushi no kensetsu," pp. 66-72, in the same volume.
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a culturaldifferencefrom the West and, simultaneously,a recognitionthat no otherAsian nationhad yet achievedwhat Japanhad: theessenceof Japaneseness evJapanists todaydo notexplain by rejecting of European of foreign culture. erything originorall elements Theyexplain howJapan aloneaccepted andAmerican butdigested it culture, European in a waythatenabled it to spiritually theWest. What wasthisspiriconquer tualconquest? It is evidentin the fact thatJapan resisted the invasion of the West;preserved its dignityas the only independent, civilizedcountry in Asia;prevented the complete destruction of Asia;andis now a unique nation thatpreserves Asia'shopes,history, andbloodline.62 island-empire This sense of culturalisolation is essential to Yasuda'sinsistence that the which he tried Japanesemust arriveat a "truesense of ethnic superiority," to separate from the current (modern) forms of ethnic superiority that stemmed from the "ideology of global politics of the white peoples." Yasuda's "ethnicsuperiority"was meantto apply againstboth East and West. A "true sense of ethnic superiority,"he promised, would also restorethe confidence of the many Japanesewho "traveled"(as Yasudaput it, conveniently overlookingthe realitythat most Japanesewere thereas draftedsoldiers, not sightseers)to the Asian continentin the early 1940s only to conclude mistakenly that the "shallow civilization" of "Chinese despotism" 63 was superiorto Japan's own "courtlyculture." Needless to say, Yasudaheld little sympathyfor other Asian ethnic nationalist movements, denouncingKoreanethnic nationalismas little more than longings for a modernitywhose materialbenefits would displace traditionalcultureand morality,as only the Japaneseknew so well. Reflecting on his time in Korea, he wrote: "This is what I told the Koreanyouths. I won't express one iota of sympathyfor your ethnic nationalism,nor am I any more inclined now to adopt a sentimentalview of your independence 64 Nor was Yasudamore favorably disposed toward Chinese movement."
62. Yasuda,"Nihon roman-tekijidai," YYz,Vol. 9, pp. 265-66. Although Yasudagenerally prefersthe term minzokuwhen discussing the Japanese,and this term dominatesin this article as well, there is an exceptional use of the wordjinshu (race) in this essay in reference to the Chinese thatdeserves attention.Yasudauses the word for "race"to arguethatthe Japanese are a race that is breakingnew ground with a world-historicalidee (minzoku)and are thereforea more "progressive"race thanthe Chinese. But he also arguesthatthe Chinese, by illogical, failing to develop their ethnic nationalismin the modernworld, "are an uncultured, nonidealisticpeople who seem to be a completely differentrace from the classical Chinese" (p. 266). That is, in both cases the word "race" emphasizes aspects of the Japaneseand Chinese that Yasudaascribes to modernity,while serving (like ethnicity) to furtherdistinguish between Chinese and Japanesepeople. WhetherYasuda'sunusualuse of the word for "race" is intentionalor whetherit reflects the natureof this piece (it was writtenfor a newspaper)is unclear. 63. Yasuda,Minzoku-teki yuetsukan,pp. 12-13. Vol. 11, p. 352. 64. Yasuda,"Kokugono fukyu undo ni tsuite," YYz,
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nationalism.He called China "an ethnic nation that lost its idee" and even went so far as to arguethat "it is Japan'smission to pulverize Chiang Kaishek'sNew Movementwhich is the last holdoutof Anglo-Americanculture in China."65 There was a palpableirony to this argumentfor Japaneseleadhis position as ershipin Asia, however,for even while Yasudacharacterized it clear should be that he was "beyondmodernity," quite merely projecting onto his Asian neighbors what Henri Baudet has identified as one of the centraltraditionsof the West: the myth of the noble savage.66 Chinese and Koreannationalismcould only be redeemedby renouncingWesternculture and retainingtheir culturalpurityby cooperatingwith Japanin its mission to preservethe authenticityof a traditionalAsia from the banefuleffects of modernity. Even as Yasudatried to erase the ironic tensions between modernJapanese "statenationalism"as a legacy of Westernization and "ethnicnationalism" as partof its reimagination of an Asian heritage,the problemdid not In fact, one findsthe issue resurfacingin a remarkable completely disappear. series of debateson "OvercomingModernity"held in Tokyoon July 23 and who openly 24, 1942. The debateswere moderatedby KawakamiTetsutaro confessed his hopes that the Japanesedebate on modernity,sponsoredby the JapaneseCouncil on IntellectualCooperation,would succeed in accomplishing what the League of Nations' sponsoredconversationson the universality of Europeanculture(1932-38) had not. That is to say, if the Europeanconversationspromoteda view of civilized cultureas rooted in the Greco-Romantradition,thereby denying culturallegitimacy to nationalist movementsin non-European the Japanesesymposiumcould be countries,67 seen as an effort at encouragingrebellionsagainstthe West, so long as other Asian nations accepted the intellectual and political guidance of Japan's
65. Yasuda,"Nihon no roman-teki Vol. 9, p. 267. jidai," YYz, 66. Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of NonEuropeanMan, trans.by ElizabethWentholt(Middletown,Conn.:WesleyanUniversityPress, 1988), pp. 10-11. 67. Drawing from Sato Masaaki'sJapanesetranslationof two of the League of Nations' International Instituteof IntellectualCo-operationmonographswhich appearedin 1936 and 1937, WatanabeKazutaminotes that the "conversations"became mired between "the European mind" and "nationalism"and never overcame the division. (WatanabeKazutami,Nashonarizumuno ryogisei [Kyoto:JinbunShoin, 1984].) This interpretation is borne out by the recordsof the institute,which reveal that many influentialleaders within the instituteincreasingly turnedagainst the nationalismof colonial areas. The institutebegan with investigations into the "futureof civilization"(Madrid,1933) and "the futureof the Europeanmind" (Paris, 1933), but by 1936 found its work increasinglydominatedby the problemof assuring "Peaceful Change." For example, Emanuel Moresco, who was responsible for Colonial Questions and Peace (Paris:League of Nations, 1939), one volume in the institute'sseries on Peaceful Change,cited Jules Brevie'sassessmenton Indo-Chinathat "nationalistaspirations,legitimate in themselves, might not be adoptedto the needs of the life of nations" and then added that "these words have an applicationto othercountriesthanIndo-China"(p. 272).
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wartime leadership. Yet, in order to succeed in "overcoming modernity," "modernity" itself first had to be effectively dislodged from association with contemporary Japan. This proved to be an extremely difficult matter, and ultimately led to a general consensus at the conclusion of the Japanese debates that they had failed in this goal. There is much to learn from this attempt at "overcoming modernity," and particularly from the contributions of members of the Romantic School to it. While Yasuda declined to participate, Kamei and Hayashi did, and they offered some of the most sanguine assessments of the Japanese attempt to overcome modernity.68 This was not surprising, given the Romantic School's belief that a culturally constructed "ethnic nation" (minzoku) could eventually displace the modern reality of the Japanese state. Hayashi, in fact, could now connect his earlier cultural theories with a cultural nationalism centered on the emperor as the sole legacy of a Japanese nation that predated the modern state. He appealed to a spirit of devotion to the emperor (kinno no kokoro), which he protested could not be equated with either Western or Chinese concepts of loyalty, but which was the essential cultural attribute that defined the Japanese as more than merely a biological "race" and without which patriotism was impossible.69 Neither Kamei nor Hayashi made much reference to the ethnic nation (minzoku) in the discussions on "overcoming modernity." 70But both emphasized the need to establish a "national literature" (kokumin bungaku) that drew from elements of culture, ethnicity, and the state. Kamei described the way that such a national literature would bring together the cultural claims of ethnicity and the political reality of the state most explicitly: is now our single commitment.... Whatis this commitNationalliterature to dissolve one's sense of self as ment we speak of? It is the determination a writer or intellectual and to steep oneself in the depths of feeling as a to want to become one of the common people [somo no citizen [kokumin], tami], a martyrto the ethnic nation [minzokuno ichi giseisha].7'
68. See KawakamiTetsutaroand TakeuchiYoshimi, eds., Kindai no chokoku (Tokyo: Fuzamb6, 1979), pp. 200, 264. 69. HayashiFusao, "Kinnono kokoro,"in ibid., especially pp. 83, 98, 110. The English word Hayashicontrastswith kinno, "Royality,"must be a misprintfor "Loyalty."Minamoto " in Ryoen agrees this was a misprint.See his "The Symposiumon 'OvercomingModernity,' Heisig and Maraldo,eds., RudeAwakenings,p. 214, note 32. 70. One exceptionalreferenceto the ethnic nation is at the end of Kamei'sessay, where he suggests that the fate of the ethnic nation (minzoku)will be determinedon the battlefields. Of course, this argument only furtherreinforcesthe ties betweenthe ethnicnationandthe state that was conductingthe war. See Kamei Katsuichiro,"Gendaiseishin ni kansuruoboegaki," in Kawakamiand Takeuchi,eds., Kindaino chokoku,p. 17. 71. Kamei Katsuichir6,"Minzoku no giseisha: kokumin bungaku no juritsu e," origishinbun,February28, 1941; reprintedin Kamei Katsuichirozennally publishedin Yomiuri sho, Vol. 4, p. 323.
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For romanticssuch as Kamei and Hayashi,the developmentof this national literaturewould enable the Japanesenation to shake off the debilitatingeffects of a culturalcolonizationby the West. Their reunificationof state and nation was premisedon the belief that the wartimeJapanesestate was well on its way toward"overcomingmodernity." Other participants,such as KobayashiHideo, a leading literarycritic, at TokyoImperialUniandNakamura Mitsuo,professorof Frenchliterature to whether could ever "overcomemoderdoubts as Japan versity,expressed of to believe the the Romantics that Japancould do nity." Yet, willingness so stemmed,at least in part,from theirultimatesuspensionof the separation between ethnic nationand state. Whetherthis was due to theirforgetfulness to of the artificialnatureof the ethnic nation as their own representation, their romanticconviction that the "nation"must be a coherent totality,or simply to a desperatehope thatthe Pacific Warwould liberatethe Japanese people from Westernculturaldominancemattersvery little: in either case, once the ethnic nation was superimposedon the state, whatevercritical impulses it might have possessed earlierquickly gave way to a very effective, even if unintentional,supportof the Japanesenation-state's expansivepolicies in East Asia. A Prospectuson Nationalismin Contemporary Japan I suggestedat the outset thata morecomprehensive of the understanding of dimensions Asian nationalism in with a multiple general might begin reconsiderationof the specific case of Japanesenationalism.At least since Japan'smilitarydefeat of Russia in the early twentiethcentury,nationalists throughoutAsia have often looked to Japanas a model for their own aspirationsfor nationalistliberationfrom Westerncolonialism. Some are again looking to Japantoday as a possible new leaderin Asia, afterthe presumed decline of U.S. influence in the Pacific. A closer look, however,at the various historicalforms of nationalismin modernJapan,as I have tried to present them here, reveals some of the difficultieswith this model of Japanas the "liberator of Asia." While much scholarlyattentionin the past has focused on the cause and effects of statenationalismin modernJapan,this essay has arguedthatmuch of the appeal of nationalismfor many Japaneserested on a belief that the nation could also be reconceived as an ethnic people that might resist the exploitationsof the Japanesepeople by their political elites carriedout under the concept of the modernstate. Such a belief carriedwith it the suggestion that Japanesenationalismmight be relocatedwithin a broader,Asian nationalistmovementfor liberationfrom Westernimperialism,althoughinvariablyJapanesenationalismwas to accept its historicallyfated position at the apex of Asian resistanceagainstthe West. That is to say, implicitly,and
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at times explicitly,in this constructionof Asian nationalliberationfrom the West there was a recognitionof the presenceof modernitywithin the Japanese stateitself along with a very ambivalent attitudetowardthatmodernity. of to Ultimately, course, attempts escape such domestic oppressionof the Japanesepeople by their modern, Westernstate by establishing some culturalrelocationwithin a largerAsian whole exposed a paradoxicaland painfulawarenessof the fact thatculturalnationalismas well as the modern state had alienatedJapanfrom the rest of Asia. The very fact that Japan,of all Asian nations,was the firstto successfully constructan independentand powerfulstate also meantthatJapanhad internalizedall the problemsassociated with other powerfulmodernstates in the early twentiethcentury,as evidencedby Japan's own imperialismand colonizationin Asia. Romanticismwas particularlyappealing as a means of mediating the dilemma between East and West, traditionand modernity,for a variety of reasons.First,modernintellectualssuch as Yasudaand his colleagues were quite aware that the very longing for culturaland ethnic identity was part and parcel of the modern world ("the eighteenthcentury") and therefore Germanromanticismcould be effective, if not essential, in providing the necessary tools for producingan alternativeconcept of the nation around claims of ethnic similitude. The JapanRomantic School's astute grasp of surely "modernity"as a polysemic conceptrife with internalcontradictions grew out of its adherents'own experienceas modernJapaneseand atteststo the modern natureof their own attemptto escape modernity.Second, the and heightenedawarenessin romanticismof the process of representation offered a powerful intellectual the gap between reality and representation traditionof subjectivelyproducingthroughimaginativeacts what modern reality seemed to foreclose. Third, Germanromanticismseemed to carry with it its own negation. By calling attentionto the specificity of national experiences, German romanticism made possible the Japan Romantic School's eventualbelief that the Japanesenation had "overcome"the modernityof the West and had envisioned a new culturalorderthat could be representedthroughthe non-West.This required,however, a double irony of forgettingthe specific conditions of the Romantics' own representation of "Japan,"a forgetfulnessthat also collapsed any meaningfuldistinction between "ethnic"and "state"nationalisms. In light of this history of a rathercomplicatedrelationshipbetween ethnic and statenationalismin prewarJapanesehistory,it is reasonableto conclude that the problem of ethnic nationalismhas not disappearedin the postwarperiod.Indeed,given the wealthof scholarlywork on ethnicnationalism from the 1950s throughthe explosion of writings on Nihonjinronin the 1970s and 1980s, and the currentresurgenceof interestin ethnic nationalism that enveloped much of the globe after the dissolution of the Soviet
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Union, it would seem that ethnic nationalism in Japan may have gained momentumin recent years. Surely changes in postwar Japanneed to be taken into account when assessing the specific lines of continuity in ethnic nationalistdiscourse in Yet, in the last few decades, surprisingcontinuities with the Japantoday.72 In his socioearlierdiscourseon ethnic nationalismhave become apparent. on of the literature cultural nationalism (Nihonjinron)in logical analysis a Kosaku Yoshino has demonstrated that considerable postwarJapan, body of this literatureoriginates from and is supportedby privatebusinessmen And the legacy of an and others who situatethemselves outside the state.73 ethnic nationalismcritical of the state seems to have survivedon both ends of the political spectrumin the postwarperiod.Althoughpolitically at odds with each other,both right and left wings of the postwarethnic nationalists sharea common antagonismto the capitalistpostwarJapanesestate. As Ino Kenji (b. 1933), the "godfather"of the "right-wingethnic nationalists," declared, "We must completely rejecteverythingthe postwarera has given us-its cultureand morals,the political parties,the new left, the established rightwing, and of course, the constitutionandthe securitytreaty."He added that "capitalismis also our enemy."74 Have the lessons of wartimemilitarismand statismyielded, not a resurgency of the exact same kind of prewarstate nationalismamong a more prosperouspostwargeneration,but a growing sense thatit was state nationalism, not ethnic nationalism,that was discreditedby the war and occupation? How have the experiences of foreign occupation and American cultural influence in the postwar years providedsupportfor a sense of ethnic nationalismas rebellion against Westerncolonization? And is this ethnic nationalismagain sliding quickly, almost effortlessly, into Nakasone's renewed calls during the 1980s for an ethnic nation-state(minzokukokka), with all the attendant problemsthis createsfor the growing numbersof foreigners living in Japan?These questionswill confrontany attemptto understand the political possibilities of nationalismand the attemptto critically reexaminequestions of culture,politics, and Asian identity as they are taking shape in Japantoday.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 72. See Aoki Tamotsu, "Nihon bunkaron" no henyo (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1990), and the especially his discussion on pp. 30-52 of how Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum Sword helped invent a new traditionfor postwarJapanese. 73. Yoshino, CulturalNationalismin Contemporary Japan, esp. pp. 133-57. 74. Ino, "Uyoku minzoku-haund6 tenbo suru,"pp. 101-4.

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