Mark McNally - Like No Other - Exceptionalism and Nativism in Early Modern Japan-University of Hawaii Press (2015)

LIKE NO OTHER
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LIKE NO OTHER
Exceptionalism and Nativism
in Early Modern Japan
Mark Thomas McNally
University of Hawai‘i Press

Honolulu
© 2016 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McNally, Mark, author.
Like no other : exceptionalism and nativism in early modern Japan / Mark Thomas McNally.

pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-5284-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Kokugaku. 2. Exceptionalism—Japan—History. 3. Nativistic movements—Japan—
History. 4. Japan—Intellectual life—1600–1868. I. Title.
B5243.K6M39 2015
181'.12—dc23
2015019332
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on

acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by George Whipple

For Ciara and Cian
Contents
List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Prologue xiii
Introduction: Nativism, Exceptionalism, Emics, and Etics 1

Chapter One
Kokugaku, Nativism, and “Exceptional” Japan 26
Chapter Two
Sonnō-jō’i: Nativism and Bakumatsu Japan 69
Chapter Three
Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority:
The History of Exceptionalism 104
Chapter Four
Seventeenth-Century Tokugawa Exceptionalism 141
Chapter Five
From Exceptionalism to Nativism: Mitogaku and
Nineteenth-Century Japan 171
Conclusion: Transcending Confucian Hierarchy
with a Logocentric Binary 193
Epilogue 223
Notes 227
Glossary 261
References 267
Index 277
vii
Tables
Table 1. The Salient Aspects of Three Distinct Concepts of Nativism 62

Table 2. Sonnō-jō’i as Nativism 71
Table 3. The Two Forms of Exceptionalism 107
Table 4. Objective-Evidential Exceptionalism 126
Table 5. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (Tokugawa Japan) 172
Table 6. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (China and Japan) 191
Table 7. Nativistic Exceptionalism 191
ix
Ack nowl edgm ents
I conducted much of the research for this book during a calendar-year sabbatical
in 2005, most of which I spent at the Shiryō Hensanjo (Historiographical Institute)
of the University of Tokyo. I would like to thank Professor Ishigami Eiichi for serv-
ing as my sponsor at the institute, as well as all of the other staff who made my stay
there as productive and pleasant as it was. During my sabbatical, I was supported
by a research grant from the Center for Japanese Studies of the University of
Hawai‘i–Mānoa (UHM) and a Fulbright research fellowship. I was able to travel
to Japan for subsequent research related to this book in the summers of 2009
and 2011, and these trips were funded by the Office of the Dean of the College of
Arts and Humanities (UHM) and the Center for Japanese Studies. I have pre-
sented various papers on topics related to this book, including at UHM’s Center
for Japanese Studies and Center for Okinawan Studies, Kokugakuin University
(2003), the East-West Center (Honolulu, 2007), the University of Tübingen (2008),
and UCLA (2013), in addition to conference presentations in 2008 (the annual
meeting for the Southwestern Social Science Association), and 2009 and 2011
(the annual meetings for the Association for Asian Studies).
I have been the recipient of much useful feedback and advice over the years
from friends and colleagues and would like to thank them for their support: Klaus
Antoni, Jerry Bentley, Tom Bingham, Joyce Chinen, Marcus Daniel, Wayne Farris,
Peter Flueckiger, Wilburn Hansen, Peter Hoffenberg, Bob Huey, Jackie Kim, Jim
Kraft, Kurozumi Makoto, Matthew Lauzon, Mary MacDonald, Michel Mohr,
Herman Ooms, Dick Rapson, Gay Satsuma, David Stannard, Michael Wachutka,
Wang Wensheng, and Jun Yoo. I am truly grateful for Pat Crosby’s helpful edito-
rial guidance and the comments of the two anonymous readers for UH Press. I
would like to express my special thanks to David Kaczorowski: where would this
book be without all of those espresso-f ueled chats?
Finally, I am profoundly grateful for the love and support of my family. I
dedicated my first book to my wife, Elaine, and my (at the time only) daughter,
Phoebe, and I dedicate this book to the two additions to our family who w ere
born as it took shape: my daughter, Ciara, and my son, Cian.
xi
Prologue
This project is an outgrowth of issues raised while writing my first book, Proving
the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism (2005). The first
of these was how to define, in a precise and meaningful way, just what Kokugaku
was. The argument that I made in my first book was that the institutional forms
that Kokugaku assumed in the nineteenth century had both an ideological and a
sociopolitical dimension, and that Kokugaku’s intellectual coherence (or lack
thereof ) during the previous century had much to do with the political conflicts of
its scholars. Thus I focused mostly on the life and career of Hirata Atsutane (1776–
1843), a figure who sought to enhance his own standing among his colleagues by
claiming to inherit the mantle of a tradition that existed more in his imagination
than it did in reality. That is to say, Kokugaku existed in the nineteenth century,
but its status in the eighteenth century is much less clear. Kokugaku as a term sig-
nifying the study of Japanese antiquity emerged at some point in the eighteenth
century, but it existed in the absence of the institutional context that developed in
the nineteenth; thus, one could say that Kokugaku did and did not exist in the
eighteenth century, by comparison with its various forms during the Bakumatsu
(1853–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) eras. I believed that more needed to be done
to explain Kokugaku’s status during the eighteenth century, a project beyond the
scope of my first book, but one that could become the basis for another project. A
second issue had to do with the assertions of Edo-era scholars, chiefly Murata
Harumi (1746–1811) and Oyamada Tomokiyo (1782–1847), that Wagaku and
Kokugaku signified different things. I found these assertions useful in my efforts to
delineate the ideological cleavage between scholars belonging to what I called the
Norinaga School and those who were members of what modern scholars have
called the Edo-ha. Other than acting as a boundary between two distinct groups of
intellectuals, the distinction between Wagaku and Kokugaku, which I knew centered
around Sinocentrism, seemed more trivial than not, or so I thought at the time. I
wanted to explore this issue in more detail in the context of my follow-up project.
In 2003, I gave a talk at Kokugakuin University (McNally 2004a) that ex-
plored the issue of translation when dealing with Kokugaku materials. Without
xiii
xiv Prologue
having read anything relevant to emics and etics,1 concepts that later became
critical to the present work, I argued that Japanese concepts were, more often
than not, not completely covered by the Western concepts to which they were
assigned in the process of translation, and I used the example of “nativism” to
make this point. In preparing for this talk, I had read about American nativism
and was struck by just how wide the gap was between nativism and Kokugaku, a
gap that seemed wider than was the case with other translated terms in Japanese
studies. In 2007, after having spent most of 2005 doing research in Tokyo,2 I gave
a slightly revised version of this talk at the East-West Center (Honolulu), again
noting how far apart nativism and Kokugaku seemed to be. My colleague, Matthew
Lauzon, suggested that Kokugaku struck him as more similar to exceptionalism
than nativism, although he confessed to knowing very little about the latter term.
I had, like many, heard of exceptionalism, but assumed that it was an “American
thing” that had nothing to do with Japan, in a way similar to my explanation for
the intellectual chasm between nativism and Kokugaku as proof that Kokugaku
defied Western categorization. In other words, I assumed that incommensurabil-
ity was the reason why an American concept had nothing to do with Japan, and
why a Japanese institution had no legitimate Western analogue.
I decided to set aside the Japanese materials I had collected and began read-
ing about American exceptionalism; at the same time, I resumed reading about
nativism (American and otherwise). These readings had profound implications
for both Wagaku and Kokugaku, and even resonated with things I had never
thought of before, like Nihonjinron, kaikoku, sonnō-jō’i, and Mitogaku. In 2008,
I began writing early versions of several chapters. While writing what later be-
came chapter 4, I read Peter Dale’s (1986, 1988) works and came across emics and
etics for the first time. I collected books and articles that dealt with emics and
etics more directly and decided that I would have to address materials related to
nativism and exceptionalism but which were not related to Japan. By that time,
I no longer viewed the gap between nativism and Kokugaku as proof of in
commensurability but as evidence of a mistaken conceptual categorization. Since
that appeared to be the case, I could not simply undermine the identification
of nativism with Kokugaku without offering a new interpretation in its place;
following Thomas Kuhn, I knew that dismantling one paradigm could only be
achieved by creating a new one.
The present work became comparative and transnational by methodological
necessity, which was certainly not something that I had envisioned at the outset.
I had to overcome my own unexamined assumptions that Japan was funda
mentally different, and therefore incommensurable, with Europe and the United
States. I had believed that Western categories would always fall short of Japanese
Prologue xv
phenomena, and that the existence of a conceptual gap between the two was axi-
omatic. Comparison was something that I was told to avoid, not only because
of this conceptual gap, but also because it was something that Europeanists and
Americanists undertook to enhance the perception of Western superiority over
the cultures of the Other, a role filled by Japan while I was a college student in the
1980s, a time when I was exposed to the postcolonial ideas of Edward Said (1978).
The field of world history, it seemed to me, was an extension of this trend, since
its member ranks seemed dominated by Europeanists. By reading about emics
and etics, I realized that comparative study did not have to end in a celebration of
everything Western as glorious and superior and a denigration of everything
non-Western as deficient or even backward. Comparative study was part of an
ongoing process of honing the conceptual applicability of etics. Thus, the exis-
tence of gaps between Western etics and Japanese emics did not indicate that the
latter were somehow culturally pathological and in need of a Western cure. In-
stead, they signified either that more effort needed to be spent on closing the gap
by assigning more relevant etics to the emics in question, or that the etics them-
selves were in need of revision so as to accommodate, rather than exclude, more
non-Western case studies. Japanologists, I believe, were trained to think of West-
ern categories as unchanging, even though their universal validity was merely
illusory, since they emerged only on the basis of Western data, an epistemologi-
cal sleight of hand that Europeanists and Americanists were perhaps not so eager
to reveal to their colleagues working on the non-West. Emics and etics, the theo-
retical handiwork of Western anthropologists, demonstrate that the latter were
not so ossified after all, an insight that relegitimizes comparative study, the
necessity of which was all too apparent in Japanese studies, taken as its scholars
were with their emic-centered approaches.
As I worked on understanding the literature on exceptionalism, I also did
the same for emics and etics, thinking that the two w ere mutually exclusive.
However, it gradually occurred to me that emic-centered approaches fostered a
perception of incommensurability that was so foundational for exceptionalism;
rather than being completely unrelated, emics/etics and exceptionalism were
actually closely intertwined with each other, intellectually speaking. Consequently,
any effort to undermine the legitimacy of exceptionalism would be more effica-
cious if it relied on the use of etics, and any such effort that depended on emics
would be far less so. The imperative to undertake a comparative analysis was not
limited, therefore, to beginning the process of establishing a new paradigm based
on a reassessment of the conceptual classification of Kokugaku, but was also the
key to questioning the exceptionalist assumptions that are at the heart, it seems
to me, of Japanese studies itself.
Introduction
Nativism, Exceptionalism, Emics, and Etics
Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868) has fascinated scholars, both within and outside
Japan, ever since it came to an end with the overthrow of its last shogun, Tokugawa
Yoshinobu (1837–1913). As the era immediately preceding the modernization of
the Meiji period, the Edo period was remarkable for a host of reasons, including
its political centralization, its internal economic integration, the rise of a power-
ful merchant class along with its unique urban subculture, and the emergence of
rural elites whose wealth and power rivaled that of their urban merchant counter
parts, to name just a few. The era of Edo was rich in terms of its political, social,
economic, and cultural histories, but it was also noteworthy for its intellectual
developments. Westerners have viewed traditional Japanese society as one that was
dominated by Confucianism, and there is more than a little merit to this view;
Japanologists generally associate the strongest influence of Confucianism, out of
all of the periods that comprise premodern Japan, with the Tokugawa period.
Whereas the analogous period for Buddhism was perhaps the Kamakura period
(1192–1333), the Tokugawa period represented, without a doubt, the height of Con-
fucianism’s development. While the narrative of Confucianism during the first
century of Tokugawa rule was marked by the ascent of a body of knowledge as-
sociated with the Song scholar, Zhu Xi (1130–1200), which Western scholars com-
monly refer to as Neo-Confucianism, to the status of orthodoxy, this was not the
only significant development within Tokugawa intellectual history. What made
the intellectual history of the period so interesting, rather, w ere the various re-
sponses to Neo-Confucianism, such as the so-called Ancient Learning (Kogaku)
“school” of Confucianism, Dutch (or Western) Learning (hereafter referred to as
Rangaku), and National Learning (otherwise known as Kokugaku). These three
distinct forms of scholarship w ere the most significant rivals of Neo-Confucianism
in Japan; of the three, scholars have focused their particular attention on Kokugaku,
due to its historiographical utility as the ideological forerunner of Japanese na-
tionalism. Indeed, the special place accorded to the development of the Japanese
nation in narrative histories of Japan is undergirded by Kokugaku: the devel
opment of nationalism is unthinkable without Kokugaku, and the centrality of
1
2 Introduction
Kokugaku to standard narratives of Japanese history is meaningful only in the

context of nationalism.
As scholars in the field of Japanese studies know all too well, Kokugaku was a
form of scholarship that emerged during the Tokugawa period, and its seminal
thinkers and their adherents focused on the articulation of the Japanese identity
through the rigorous examination of canonical literary works, mostly from Japan’s
ancient and early medieval eras. Confucianism, in all of its various Tokugawa
forms, was a critical component in the development of Kokugaku, as a set of
foreign teachings that had to be reconciled with Japan’s own customs and tradi-
tions, or, more commonly, the main reason for their decline and the chief im
pediment to their appreciation and revival. While those scholars who were both
associated with Kokugaku and believed that scholarship on Japanese antiquity
was not necessarily at odds with Confucianism were certainly important in the
history of Kokugaku, their “voices” have largely fallen on the deaf ears of those
who studied and wrote about Kokugaku in the modern era, and this is especially
true of researchers outside of Japan. If Kokugaku were to fulfill its role in the re-
alization of the Japanese nation, scholarly efforts to harmonize the investigation
of Japanese matters with the foreign creed of Confucianism would only compli-
cate such a narrative and needlessly distract readers from what really mattered
about the Tokugawa period. Antagonism and hostility toward Confucianism,
and Buddhism as well, w ere more ideologically useful in the construction of the
Kokugaku narrative, and so it only made sense that those scholars associated
with Kokugaku, and who expressed such antiforeign views, took center stage,
historiographically speaking.
For Japanese historians, Kokugaku, whether they viewed it as a general intel-
lectual movement with no special cohesion or as a narrower school with rules of
inclusion and exclusion, was simply Kokugaku, so there was no need to assign it
to a larger cultural or institutional category. Kokugaku was one form of scholar-
ship in an era in which many other forms developed, even though Confucianism’s
dominance was never seriously threatened. The need to classify Kokugaku was
most keenly felt among researchers outside of Japan, especially by American schol-
ars or by scholars based in the United States. Since the leading intellectuals who
were associated with Kokugaku espoused critical views of Chinese culture, with
Confucianism as the primary object of their rhetorical ire, “nativism” emerged
as the classification that most accurately, it was believed, captured the true ideo-
logical essence of Kokugaku. This view resonated among researchers who were
looking for some device to help nonspecialists understand just what Kokugaku
was; consequently, nativism caught on, and the association of Kokugaku with
Introduction 3
nativism reached paradigmatic proportions. Kokugaku was nativism, and nativ-

ism, for many Japanologists at least, was Kokugaku.
The concept of nativism, while not overly complex, was so seemingly self-
evident that Japanologists thought that any further investigation of its meaning
and usage outside of the context of Japanese studies was unnecessary. After all,
they were in the midst of attempting to wrest the study of Japan away from out-
right comparisons with Europe and America that, by and large, made Japan and
its people seem deficient, if not worse than that. In response to such comparative
approaches, scholars sought to study Japan on its own terms, rather than on any
Western terms. There were, however, problems with such thinking, as noble as it
perhaps was. First, nativism was a term that was not generally used or understood,
even among academics, a situation that continues to this day. So, by classifying
Kokugaku as nativism, a grasp of some essential aspect of Kokugaku did not ac-
tually emerge; one specialized term, in another language no less, was simply re-
placed with another such term from (American) English. Second, the meaning of
nativism is not as obvious as some likely thought. It seems to imply a dichotomy
between natives and nonnatives, and this is true, but it has nothing to do with an
opposition between what is native and what is not native. In other words, nativ-
ism is predicated on the nominal meaning of “native,” as opposed to its adjectival
one. It was this latter imagined and invented usage of nativism that Japanologists
assigned to Kokugaku.
If Kokugaku was not a kind of nativism, then what was it? Scholars who iden-
tified, or w
ere identified, with Kokugaku universally esteemed Japan’s ancient and
classical literary works, such that literature was a sine qua non for its adherents.
The emphasis on literary works included both prose and poetry, with an empha-
sis on the latter; the focus on poetry included not just its academic analysis but
also its composition. Literary studies and productions dominated the field of
Kokugaku during the eighteenth century, the era of Kokugaku’s emergence, and
they carried over into the early nineteenth century as well. Among the esteemed
works of Japan’s glorious literary past were texts that were venerated by the schol-
ars and priests of Shinto as scriptural, so that the religious dimension of these
literary works, although latent, was not forgotten among intellectuals even in the
eighteenth century. This religious aspect of Japan’s canonical works shifted from
the background to the foreground during the early decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury, and the character of Kokugaku shifted as well, from an orientation toward
literature to one focused on Shinto. A fundamental commonality between the two
forms of Kokugaku was the denigration of Chinese (and later, all foreign) culture,
with its accompanying accolades of all things Japanese. It was this basic opposition
4 Introduction
between the native and the foreign that Western researchers have stressed in
their discussions of Kokugaku, so that it is easy to see how the analytical cate-
gory of nativism might seem fitting and appropriate. While the condemnation of
the foreign was vital to the ideology of those who identified themselves with
Kokugaku, this was no less true of their praise for Japan. In fact, the condemna-
tion of China always implied praise for Japan, even when such praise was not stated
outright; similarly, praise for Japan implied a belief in China’s subordination to
it. Of the two, praise and condemnation, the latter had no meaning apart from
the former, while the former could stand on its own. In the end, it was more im-
portant to those scholars who identified themselves with Kokugaku to articulate
the specific ways in which Japan was great, rather than enumerate the ways in
which China (and also India and later the West) was not. Thus, the assertion,
articulation, and praise of what was native were more critical to the Kokugaku
ideology than was the description, denigration, and condemnation of what was
not native. For this reason, exceptionalism can accommodate this critical aspect
of Kokugaku more effectively than nativism.
What Western (mostly American) scholars have identified as nativism in
Kokugaku is more appropriately conceived of as exceptionalism, in my view, as
such a misclassification betrays a misunderstanding of nativism. This is not to say
that there is no family resemblance, ideologically speaking, between nativism and
exceptionalism, a subject that Americanists have seemingly avoided, but which
the Tokugawa case highlights to a strong degree. As we will see, nativism has a
strong sense of rejection associated with it, while exceptionalism has a strong sense
of self-praise associated with it. While both rejection and self-praise were certainly
characteristic of Kokugaku ideology, it would be a mistake to classify this ideol-
ogy as somehow nativist and exceptionalist at the same time, an observation that
may have been true of the Know-Nothings in the American context. Rejection in
the case of Kokugaku, especially during its formative years in the eighteenth
century, meant opposition to an idea or image of China, rather than Chinese
people themselves. Rejection, therefore, was the necessary first step in the process
of articulating and then asserting Japanese culture, which was the ultimate goal
of the rigorous philological work of Kokugaku scholars. This goal has more in
common with exceptionalism than it does with nativism.
While nativism has been a part of the lexicon of Japanologists, especially those
based outside of Japan, exceptionalism has only recently come to their attention,
but its usage does not rise to nearly the same proportions as nativism. Like nativ-
ism, exceptionalism is a term that emerged within the context of American history,
and some Americanists have applied it to cultures and societies outside of the
United States, including Japan. So the connection between exceptionalism and
Introduction 5
Japan has already been made, mostly by Americanists looking at developments

in the postwar period, especially Nihonjinron. No one, to date, has looked at ex-
ceptionalism in earlier periods of Japanese history, especially not Japanologists,
and certainly not Americanists. This study seeks to apply exceptionalism to
Tokugawa history, using Kokugaku as its point of embarkation and Mitogaku as
the point of its disembarkation. While the term nativism implies the centrality
of the native, exceptionalism implies the centrality of the exceptional. In this
context, “exceptional” has two basic definitions, and both of these are relevant to
exceptionalism: “exception to a rule” and “superior.” The former has been mostly
relevant to postwar studies of American exceptionalism, while the latter has been
the focus of studies of pre-1900 American history. In some ways, the Japanese case
is an inversion of the American one, since assertions of superiority have domi-
nated discussions since the Allied Occupation ended in 1952, while the exception-
to-a-rule form was central to Tokugawa exceptionalism. However, I will show how
Tokugawa arguments concerning Japan as the exception to a rule that otherwise
governs the rest of the world w ere made alongside arguments for its superiority,
an observation that I believe is valid even in the postwar American case.
In addition to the misinterpretation of nativism in its classification of
Kokugaku, there is also the issue of its misapplication as well. As American his-
tory amply demonstrates, nativism came in a number of different incarnations
since the invention of the word in the 1840s. Nativism emerged in every era since
then, and existed even before there was a special term for it, among individuals
and groups of varying backgrounds; nativism had its historical moments in which
it assumed the form of a coherent movement, such as Know-Nothingism, but na-
tivism itself was not strictly limited to the status of such sociopolitical move-
ments. Americanists do not confine their understanding and analysis of nativism
to the movement of one historical era. This is not the case with the ways in which
Kokugaku has been interpreted as Tokugawa Japan’s version of nativism. For most
Japanologists, Kokugaku was Tokugawa nativism; when discussing Tokugawa na-
tivism, one need not look any further than Kokugaku. Despite the fact that other
forms of scholarship during the Tokugawa period had strong resemblances to
Kokugaku, like Mitogaku in the nineteenth century and Confucian Shinto in the
seventeenth century, only Kokugaku has borne the label of nativism, generally
speaking. In Japan’s modern era, Nihonjinron’s affinity with Kokugaku, which its
own authors acknowledge, has not swayed scholars from thinking of Japanese na-
tivism in ways beyond a narrow focus on Kokugaku. Thus, not only is Kokugaku
synonymous with Tokugawa nativism, it is synonymous with Japanese nativism.
I argue that there is a way of terminologically capturing these intellectual resem-
blances among these otherwise disparate cultural institutions, and that would be
6 Introduction
exceptionalism. By conceptualizing these institutions as branches on a trunk

called Japanese exceptionalism, no one institution would bear the exclusive mark
of exceptionalism. In this way, the story of Japanese exceptionalism, indeed
Tokugawa exceptionalism, would not begin and end with Kokugaku, as it did un-
der the label of nativism. At the same time, we need to acknowledge the richness
of Tokugawa intellectual history so that terms like exceptionalism or nativism im-
pose no restrictions on our understanding of Japanese cultural institutions like
Kokugaku. While the writings of scholars in traditions such as Mitogaku and
Kokugaku were often filled with exceptionalist ideas, they were also oriented
toward matters that were unrelated to exceptionalism, so that the category of
exceptionalism should add to our understanding of Tokugawa institutions with-
out overshadowing their complexity. The example of Transcendentalism, a literary
and philosophical movement of nineteenth-century American history that is in-
cluded in the history of American exceptionalism, illustrates this principle well.
The Nation, Nationalism, and Tokugawa Japan

As its very name would suggest, Kokugaku seems to have had some relationship
to both the Japanese nation and to Japanese nationalism. As is the case among
Europeanists, Japanologists do not universally agree on the ways in which the con-
cepts of nation and nationalism apply to Japanese history. A brief discussion of
how these concepts are understood outside of the Japanese context would be use-
ful before attempting to apply these terms to the Japanese case. First of all, a na-
tion used to signify nearly any “human group that boasted a collective proper
name, a distinctive culture, and the possession of a territory,” according to Anthony
Smith.1 The concept of nationalism, therefore, signified a people’s “devotion and
loyalty” to their nation.2 If such crucial concepts as nation and nationalism still
retained these usages among scholars today, we would not need to dwell overly
long on analyzing them in the Tokugawa context, since we could conclude that
Tokugawa Japan was a nation and that discourses such as Kokugaku constituted
early modern Japanese nationalism. Unfortunately, studies of the nation and na-
tionalism among Europeanists have proceeded beyond these, admittedly useful,
conceptualizations, thereby requiring a more engaged analysis on the part of
Japanologists today.
According to Smith, historians began to change their views of the nation in
the aftermath of World War II, when modernity became the overriding concern
in the development of the nation. The paradigm that emerged from these post-
war debates was dubbed the “modernists’ thesis,” in which “nations are a modern
construct. . . . If nationalism creates nations, and if nationalism is a modern phe-
The Nation, Nationalism, and Tokugawa Japan 7
nomenon, then it follows that there can be, by definition, no pre-modern nations,”
according to Atsuko Ichijo.3 While the emphasis on modernity certainly compli-
cated the broader “old” definition articulated by Smith, it also simplified matters
somewhat, since any feelings for one’s own social or cultural group were elimi-
nated from consideration as nationalism; nationalism, therefore, was only a
modern innovation. Europea nists analyzed specific case studies, such as France,
Spain, and Great Britain, distilling from these cases traits that were common to
them as constitutive of all true nations in the world. Smith outlines five traits of
nations in the modernist view: the nation must be “a territorial unit,” “a legal-
political community,” “legitimated by a nationalist ideology,” “international” in
orientation, and “a mass community.” 4 When the modernist view of the nation is
applied to Tokugawa Japan, it becomes difficult, and even impossible, to conceive
of it as a nation. While there was a territorial unit, its borders were not always
clearly defined, as the situations in Ezo to the north and Ryūkyū to the south am-
ply illustrated. One could argue, however, that the so-called Bakufu-domain or
bakuhan system comprised a “legal-political community,” even though domains
were largely autonomous, which is linked to the absence of any nationalist ideol-
ogy advanced by the Shogunate’s (or Bakufu’s) leadership. While Ron Toby has
persuasively argued that the Bakufu was more oriented to the external world of
East Asia than its so-called sakoku (closed realm) policy would indicate, it would
be a stretch to argue that this orientation was in any manner international, and
Toby rightfully avoids making such a claim.5 Finally, the issue of a “mass com-
munity” in the development of a nation is an interesting one for scholars of
Tokugawa Japan. Eiko Ikegami’s work on the aesthetic networks of Edo Japan and
Laura Nenzi’s work on Tokugawa pilgrimages and travel indicate that either such
a mass community had developed by the end of the Tokugawa period or that one
was in the process of development by that time.6 In the end, the modernist view
of the nation, a view that enjoys wide support among historians in general, indi-
cates the specific ways in which Tokugawa Japan falls short of the status of a na-
tion. While Tokugawa Japan was certainly close to developing into a nation, the
credentials of the Meiji state were certainly stronger in that regard, such that
Tokugawa Japan helps account for the anticipatory “success” of the Meiji state
as a nation.
In opposition to the modernist view of the nation, there are alternative views
that emphasize attributes similar to those of the modern nation, but existing
among premodern states. Rather than making the distinction between modern
and premodern nations, many historians refer to the divergent types of nations
as “civic” and “ethnic,” respectively. Anthony Smith observes that historians who
have written about the subject of nations and nationalism only reluctantly
8 Introduction
acknowledge the legitimacy of ethnic nations, and deny any direct connection
between them and their more legitimate civic counterparts.7 Smith finds this
grudging admission of the existence of ethnic nations, by historians of the civic
nation, somewhat ironic, since the examples of ethnic nations constitute a “numer-
ous category,” as opposed to civic nations, which he characterizes as a “minority
form.”8 Unlike the conceptualization of the civic nation, the category of the ethnic
nation is divided into at least two basic subcategories, namely, primordial and
perennial. In the primordial view, the nation “is defined as a ‘natural’ social phe-
nomenon that has always existed,” such that the modern nation is simply the
nation’s most recent incarnation.9 While the primordial view of the nation has
exerted some cultural and political influence within even contemporary contexts,
it is a view that has largely been dismissed by serious academic historians. For
this reason, Smith refers to the primordialist idea that “nations [exist] in all peri-
ods everywhere, without qualification” as “uncritical perennialism,” which he
contrasts with a more rigorous and academic form of “perennialism.”10 This kind
of perennialism stems from the work of historians who specialize in ancient and
medieval eras, and whose research has uncovered notions of nationhood in the
primary sources, at least among the elite classes of the premodern period. Al-
though the perennial view of the nation that scholars of ancient and medieval his-
tory have advanced is more analytical and less subjective than the “uncritical” va-
riety, otherwise known as primordialism, it is still plagued in Smith’s mind for its
insistence on the continuity of the nation over time. The assertion of continuity
between the modern nation and its medieval counterpart goes against the funda-
mental tenet of the modernist view of the nation, namely, that there is no direct
connection between premodern states and modern nations.
Smith proposes a new view of the nation that seeks to bridge the conceptual
gap between perennialist and modernist views, what he calls the “ethno-symbolic
paradigm.”11 Although he acknowledges the myriad groups upon which to estab-
lish a part icu lar “collective cultural identity,” including “clans, tribes, and city-
states,” he argues that ethnies have provided groups with “the symbolic and social
elements” necessary for the development of ethnic nations.12 Rather than deny-
ing continuity between premodern states and modern nations, Smith asserts that
ethnic nations today, which outnumber those that are strictly civic, have a clear
link to their premodern pasts. “The significance for the formation of nations of
names, myths and memories,” he writes, “should not be underestimated; they
represent the inner symbolic foundation of many nations, and their absence
makes it well-nigh impossible to turn a modern state into a nation.”13 Smith is
undaunted by the issue of multiple ethnicities in states that have asserted homo-
geneity, for as long as there was a “dominant cultural ethnie,” there was also “a
pre-existing (and relative) sense of unity over several centuries” that could form
the basis for a nation.14 The “key to the [ethno-symbolic] approach,” for Smith, is
“to differentiate ethnies from nations.”15 He admits that this is not an easy thing
to do, since “an ethnie” is “a named community of shared origin myths, memo-
ries and one or more element(s) of common culture, including an association
with a specific territory,” while a nation is “a named community possessing an
historic territory, shared myths and memories, a common public culture and
common laws and customs.”16
Smith’s new paradigm is more accommodating of developments among non-
Western cultures, since one of the significant weaknesses of the modernist view
is its obvious ethnocentric bias.17 The implications for Japan are undeniable. If we
accept the premise that the Meiji state successfully developed into a modern, al-
beit thoroughly ethnic, nation, then the Tokugawa state assumes the pivotal role
as its ethnie forerunner. Such a conceptual scheme forces historians to acknowl-
edge that there was a continuity between Meiji and Tokugawa, even if this con
tinuity was not the succession of one nation by another or the perpetuation of
the same nation. Smith cautions historians against attempting to draw “the line
between ethnies and nations . . . too sharply.”18 For nationalists, he observes, the
nation “is never fully and finally attained,” forever relegated to the status of “an
ideal” that justifies the constant struggles against the enemies of “their” nation.19
Smith’s caveat on the distinction between the ethnie and the nation is important
when thinking about the Japanese case. We should not view the end of the
Tokugawa Bakufu, and the declaration of the Meiji Restoration, as the end of the
ethnie and the beginning of the nation. Rather than an abrupt emergence,
the Japanese nation developed over many decades, not just from 1868 onward,
but even earlier than that, since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Smith’s ethno-symbolic paradigm has two other implications for the Japanese
nation. First, after looking over Smith’s analysis of ethnie and nation, one could
argue that the Meiji state and the Tokugawa state had attributes of both. The task
of the historian, therefore, would be to examine the extent to which the Tokugawa
state was a nation and the extent to which the Meiji state was an ethnie, and ulti-
mately to conceive of the categories of ethnie and nation as overlapping with each
other in a way that makes the Japanese case unusual and even unique. In other
words, interpreting the change from Tokugawa to Meiji as an ethnie giving way
to a nation, even if this development was a gradual one, may be an oversimplifi-
cation of the Japanese case. Rather than arguing for an interpenetration of ethnie
and nation for the Tokugawa and Meiji states, one could argue such a conceptual
blurring was evidence that Tokugawa and Meiji were neither ethnies nor nations.
New categories, therefore, need to be created in order to accommodate the Japanese
10 Introduction
case. In any event, Smith’s ethno-symbolic paradigm generates interesting pos-

sibilities for the analysis of both Tokugawa and Meiji Japan.
Smith’s emphasis on the “symbolic” dimension of both ethnies and nations is
especially relevant to the analysis of Kokugaku. If the Tokugawa state was not a
nation, then it becomes difficult to argue that Kokugaku was a form of Japanese
nationalism. Such thinking, in fact, is prevalent among most scholars of Japa
nese history today, who argue against any conceptualization of Kokugaku as
nationalism. In the case of Mitogaku, Kokugaku’s close ideological rival, Bob
Wakabayashi uses the classification of “proto-nationalism,” a term that signifies
both its similarities and differences with modern Japanese nationalism.20 This is a
term that is commonly associated with Eric Hobsbawm, who was keen to point
out that it had no “necessary relation” to modern nationalism.21 For Smith, termi-
nological accuracy is of secondary concern compared to the larger issue of analyz-
ing the function of the “symbolic and social elements” that sustained “the persis
tence of collective cultural identities over la longue durée.”22 It was the articulation,
description, and analysis of these elements that defined the scholarly traditions of
Mitogaku and Kokugaku. Once one has established this function for Kokugaku
within the ethno-symbolic paradigm, one would expect to see ideologues during
the Meiji period put the writings of Kokugaku scholars to use in the serv ice of
the Meiji state’s nationalistic agenda, and this was the case. The application of the
ethno-symbolic paradigm to nineteenth-century Japan demonstrates, counter to
the modernist view of the nation, the existence of a connection between proto-
nationalism and nationalism. The fact that Meiji intellectuals, like Haga Yaichi
(1867–1927), could so easily deploy the ideas of his Kokugaku forebears in order to
promote an image of the nation, of which they had no conception, is telling, and
only buttresses the validity of Smith’s paradigm and his analysis of the ethnie.23
While Smith’s ethno-symbolic paradigm addresses, in a significant way, the
ethnocentric biases of the modernist view of the nation, which enhances his par-
adigm’s applicability to Tokugawa Japan, it still harbors some of the intellectual
rigidity of the modernist view. “For our purposes,” he writes, “a nation can be said
to exist if, and only when, a collectivity manifests the above five features [a name,
a history, a public culture, laws and customs, and a territory]. . . . We may say that
if one or more of the these features are lacking or barely discernible, we cannot
(yet) speak of that formation as a ‘nation.’ ”24 In order to undermine the status of
either the Tokugawa or Meiji states as bona fide nations, one need only argue
successfully against the existence of any of these five features. Against this way of
thinking, some historians support a view of the nation that does not overly dwell
on “constituent elements of the nation,” opting instead for “defining the social pro
cesses that create [the nation].”25 An emphasis on processes, rather than discrete
aspects or features (“constituent elements”), promotes a certain skepticism among

historians regarding “the definition of the nation,” since it “is extrapolated from
the definition of a nation in a particular historical period.”26 As nations vary across
time and space in the composition of their constituent elements, historians
can only link such elements to specific cases, but they “cannot be considered as
an ideal-t ypical definition,” since such universals as “the nation” can only be
described in terms of processes.27 Thus, if people in nineteenth-century Japan
believed that Japan was a nation by virtue of a common language, history, terri-
tory, and so on, then it was a nation, no matter what later historians may have
thought. This emphasis on process, then, would lead historians to ask themselves
why and under what conditions these elements were emphasized over others in
describing the nation.
When applying the insights of Europea nists on the issues of nationalism
and the nation to nineteenth-century Japan, the results are conflicting and
contradictory. The Tokugawa state was both a nation and not a nation,28 and the
same could be said even of the Meiji state. If the Meiji state was a nation, and the
Tokugawa state was not, then we can conceive of the advent of nationalism as a
post-1868 development that was connected to Kokugaku, using the ethno-symbolic
paradigm, even if Kokugaku itself was not a form of nationalism. On the other
hand, if the Tokugawa state was a nation, then the classification of Kokugaku as
nationalism becomes possible. While the majority of Europeanists subscribe to
one form or another of the modernist view of the nation, there is clearly no
universal agreement as to the definition of the nation. This characterization is
reflected by their colleagues who study Japan, since most of them are also mod-
ernists themselves, and support the modernist view of the nation, but there are
still dissenting opinions among them.29 This partiality might explain why Japa-
nologists have not been hesitant to discuss Kokugaku in the context of nativism,
as opposed to nationalism. As we will see, nativism in its original American con-
text is very much connected to the nation; in fact, a twenty-one-year residency
requirement was one of the fundamental goals of American nativists before the
Civil War. Thus, when one approaches Kokugaku (as Tokugawa “nativism”) from
the perspective of American nativism, one might think that the question of the
Tokugawa state as a nation has been settled in the affirmative. Any confusion,
fortunately, is diffused when approaching the issue of nativism from the anthro-
pological perspective, which does not demand the context of a nation. This termi-
nological applicability in the absence of the nation is something that we find with
exceptionalism as well. In its original American context, the term “exceptional-
ism” arose in the context of the Cold War, such that it postdates the emergence of
the nation by more than a century and a half. Moreover, scholars who have analyzed
12 Introduction
exceptionalism in American history have found important examples of it in peri-

ods that predate the formation of the nation. In light of these commonalities
between the usages of nativism and exceptionalism, the fact that the debate regard-
ing nationalism and the nation for Tokugawa and Meiji has yet to be settled one
way or the other should not impede efforts to apply them to the Japanese case.
The confusion caused by historiographical debates outside of the field of
Japanese history might prompt, indeed, has prompted some scholars, both within
Japan and elsewhere, to question the application of terms, analytical categories,
and such to Japan. After all, as the supporters of this view perceptively assert, such
seemingly universal categories were generated after the analysis of European
examples. Japanese case studies are given only short shrift by Europea nists, if
they even bother to look seriously at them at all. If European categories cannot
accurately describe and account for Japanese phenomena, then they should be
revised, and if they cannot be revised, then perhaps Japan is unique and incom-
mensurable.
Emics and Etics

While some scholars, Japanologists or otherwise, may not feel too uncomfortable
with the idea of Japanese incommensurability, there are many who do not share
this feeling. While historians have traditionally grappled with the issue of tran-
scending both time and space in their work, understanding the ways in which
their scholarly efforts are usually twice removed from the thoughts and actions
of the people they analyze, the dichotomy of observer and observed fundamen-
tally informs the discipline of anthropology. While anthropologists’ separation
from the cultures they study is more spatial than temporal, the theoretical insights
of their discipline are nonetheless resonant with the work of historians. Anthro-
pologists have tried to overcome the conceptual pitfalls of binary oppositions that
result from the original opposition of observer and observed, such as the general
and the particular and the subjective and the objective. The result is a theory based
on a new set of binary terms, emics and etics, which supplement and complement
one another more than they oppose each other.
While enabling analytical sophistication, both emics and etics are not in and
of themselves difficult concepts to understand. The emic (also known simply as
emics), according to one of the chief proponents of this theory, Marvin Harris, is
“oriented to the participants’ point of view. . . . Participant-oriented studies result
in emic descriptions and interpretations.” He continues, “emic statements describe
social systems of thought and behavior whose phenomenal distinctions, entities,
or ‘things’ are built up out of contrasts and discriminations sensed by the par-
Emics and Etics 13
ticipants themselves as similar or different, real or meaningful, significant, or

appropriate.”30 Emics, then, are associated with the conceptual categories of the
observed. Etics, by contrast, are “oriented to the observers’ point of view. . . .
Observer-oriented studies result in etic descriptions and interpretations.”31 These
two terms w ere coined by the linguist Kenneth Pike in his 1967 work, Language
in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior.32 Pike created
the terms emic and etic for “all socially meaningful human behavior” from the
linguistic terms phonemic and phonetic, respectively.33 Phonology, as the study
of phonemes, is focused on the meaning and function of sounds to those who pro-
duce them as words or parts of words. On the other hand, phonetics is the study
of the physiological production of sounds; since similar sounds are produced in
similar ways by human beings sharing a common physiology, phonetics cannot
be based solely on any one part icu lar language. On a fundamental level, etics
describe general phenomena that are common to all cultures, and emics describe
those that are particular to a given culture.34
Anthropological analyses that focus on emics must pay close attention to the
categories of those individuals or groups who belong to a culture that has become
an object of study. Supporters of emic-centered approaches believe that cultural
insiders have a privileged point of view regarding the mental and behavioral as-
pects of their own culture; participants within a given culture should, therefore,
be deemed by outside observers as “ultimate judges” in the interpretation of their
culture.35 By setting aside their own analytical categories, anthropologists are bet-
ter able to concentrate on the perspectives of a given culture’s participants, not-
ing in the process that “many emic descriptions are models of ‘structures’ of which
the informant is not conscious.”36 The advantage of an emic-centered approach
is not the application of universal categories, generated in unrelated cultural
contexts, but in the revelation of these structures, the analysis of which leads
to ethnography.37
The categories and classifications of thought and behavior that an anthropol-
ogist brings to bear on the analysis of a given culture, other than their own, are
the conceptual foundation of an etic-centered approach. The emphasis in the
application of etics is on the observer’s comprehension and apprehension of
the thought and behavior of cultural insiders, even if that means developing an
analysis that is at odds with the interpretations or views of the insiders them-
selves. “Rather than employ concepts that are necessarily real, meaningful, and
appropriate from the native point of view,” Harris writes, “the observer is free to
use alien categories and rules.”38 Typically, anthropologists conduct interviews
of cultural insiders, eliciting from their informants “descriptions of the events
they have observed or participated in. When the description is responsive to the
14 Introduction
observer’s categories of time, place, weights and measure, actor types, numbers
of people present, body motion, and environmental effects, it is etic.”39 Depend-
ing on the context, these informant descriptions are usually emic in nature, but
they can also be etic ones from their own perspective. The final arbiter in the use
of etics is not the informant as cultural participant, however; it is the anthropol-
ogist as cultural observer.
Within the structural binary that characterizes the relationship between
anthropologist and informant, emics are “always already” implicit even in etic-
centered approaches, and the same is true of etics in emic-centered approaches.
Kenneth Pike viewed the inescapable connection between emics and etics as one
in which the latter eventually yields to the primacy of the former. In other words,
the anthropologist begins the analysis of a given culture with etics, as “the start-
ing point of analysis,” an analysis that should end with a description of emics.40
Pike was critical of the belief in an absolute exterior position relative to the study
of a part icu lar culture that could produce objective knowledge of that culture.
Anthropologists, in other words, believed that they had successfully set aside their
own emics in favor of a set of etics that they used to describe the emics of another
culture. Emics and etics were connected for Pike in the sense that etics were really
only the emics of the observer, which they then “incorrectly applied to a foreign
system.”41 By undermining the privileged status of etics in this way, Pike was able
to emphasize emics within anthropological analysis.
Soon after Pike articulated his theory of emics and etics, other anthropolo-
gists tackled the problem of determining the relationship between the two con-
cepts in quite a different way. Rejecting Pike’s idea that etics are essentially the
emics of the observer, Marvin Harris and Ward Goodenough, two anthropologi-
cal theorists, argue that any legitimate anthropological analysis cannot privilege
one over the other; anthropologists must acknowledge the roles of both emics and
etics in their fieldwork and research. “The emics of the observers,” Harris writes,
“must be categorically distinguished from the emics of the participants, and that
is why we need the term etics as well as emics.”42 Shortly after the appearance of
Pike’s groundbreaking work, Goodenough similarly refused to believe that etics
are merely a misrecognized form of emics. For Goodenough, Pike’s work demon-
strates the need to devote even more effort to “doing many good etic descrip-
tions.”43 Aware of Harris’s own emphasis on the importance of both emics and
etics, Goodenough distinguishes his position from that of his colleague by argu-
ing that Harris overly privileges etics at the expense of emics.44 For Goodenough,
Harris’s emphasis on etics represents the inverted image of Pike’s emphasis on
emics. This characterization is somewhat exaggerated, as Harris, like Goodenough,
Emics and Etics 15
argues that sound anthropological research demands the use of emics and etics,
since one was unthinkable without the other.
Anthropologists have been aware of their precarious moral position with
regard to the cultures that they study. Pike’s emphasis on emics, as an attempt
to view a culture through the eyes of its members, was a response to “the strug-
gle of participants who are emerging from oppressive colonial and neocolonial
subordination”; as such, these participants “demand exclusive control over the
interpretation, description, and reconstruction of their lifeways and histories.
Anthropologists seeking access to the world of the participants recoil in horror at
the prospect of being identified as arrogant expropriators of other people’s matri-
patrimony—as stealers of cultures.”45 Ultimately, both the inherent strength and
weakness of the etic-centered approach is comparative analysis. For anthropolo-
gists sensitive to the colonial experiences of their informants, the transformation
of their emic accounts into etic categorizations is simply another form of vio-
lence, albeit symbolic in nature, as emic particulars give way to etic universals.
The response of anthropologists like Goodenough and Harris is to minimize
such trauma by carefully applying etics to emics in such a way as to “describe the
emic cultural forms under consideration in all their variation.”46 However, these
two anthropologists differ over the issue of where and under what conditions
etics emerge. Goodenough argues that etics must always develop from the analy-
sis of emics; universals, in other words, only emerge after the exhaustive analysis
of particulars.47 Harris takes issue with Goodenough on this point, arguing that
etics can have an existence separate from emics.48 It is for this reason that Good-
enough makes the observation that Harris privileges the use of etics at the ex-
pense of the study of emics, even though Harris acknowledges the utility of both
to the cultural anthropologist. Harris’s insistence on the primacy of etics in cultural
anthropology is linked to the methodological innovation that he pioneered and
with which he is mainly associated, namely, cultural materialism. As its name
implies, cultural materialism stresses the material context within which cultural
change and development occur, rather than locating such change within the in-
tentions and desires of cultural participants. Since cultures that are otherwise
unrelated can still share commonalities among their respective material contexts,
an etic-centered approach must prevail over an emic-centered one, as one would
expect that similar cultural developments emanate from similar material condi-
tions, but that the descriptions of these developments likely diverge. While schol-
ars who support cultural materialism focus on both behavioral and mental
aspects of cultural change and development, the former takes precedence over
the latter: “Cultural materialists do not seek to eliminate emic and mental accounts,
16 Introduction
but rather to explain the relation of these accounts to behavioral and etic
a ccounts.”49 Once stripped of their emic particularities and promoted to the sta-
tus of etics, cultural developments are ready for the next step; that is to say, they
are now ready for comparative analysis.50 While the expectation is that compara-
tive analysis will foster new insights into the specific cultures under review, this is
not necessarily the ultimate goal of cultural materialism. The goal is to advance
the frontiers of what Harris calls “a science of society and culture.” 51
Although Goodenough diverges from Harris over the extent to which etics
take priority over emics, he agrees that “etic concepts” are necessary “for general
science.” 52 Harris asserts that etic concepts are the foundation of a scientific
approach to human behavior, so long as they maintain “their status as productive
elements in a corpus of scientific theories.” 53 For Goodenough, cultural anthro-
pology as a scientific discipline depends on the extent to which the etics that
emerge from research are systematized so as accurately to accommodate emics “in
all their variation.” 54 The advantage of a scientific approach is that it “[satisfies] the
criteria for a comparative study of cultural forms free of ethnocentric or specific
cultural bias.” 55 Writing a generation after Goodenough’s above observation,
Harris sees science as the only viable alternative to an emphasis on emic-
centered approaches, which understandably developed in response to the biases
that emerged from paradigmatic colonial encounters. He sees the turning away
from etics to an emics-only approach, in order to appease those who have been
colonized, as both inherently dangerous and overly zealous. Such an approach,
for Harris, “constitutes an open invitation to epistemological chaos.” 56 The pro
cess of relativizing universals into particulars or, as Harris puts it, “the mind-
numbing collapse of etics into emics,” can never result in the production of sci-
entific knowledge.57
While Goodenough champions science for bestowing upon its practitioners
the ability to neutralize their own individual biases in research, Harris hails the
underlying rigor of science as especially promising for the discipline of cultural
anthropology. Scholars who have undergone sufficient training in the proper
methods and theories of anthropology have, at the same time, been conditioned
to embrace objective inquiry and to recognize the intrusion of their own sub
jective opinion, he believes. To reject etics in favor only of emics is tantamount to
questioning science “as a special way of knowing.” 58 The privileged status of sci-
ence, for Harris, emanates from the testability of its knowledge. Scientific claims
can be and must be constantly tested and retested in order to determine their
truthfulness and legitimacy. The rigors of testability do not apply to emics, which
is why emic-centered approaches can never be scientific. The legitimacy of etics,
however, must be proven by “their ability to generate scientifically productive
The Case of Tokugawa Japan 17
theories about the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities.” 59 Logically,

then, if an etic concept does not pass the test of such scrutiny, it should be either
abandoned or changed. Goodenough makes similar observations regarding the
testability of etic concepts, whose “adequacy is judged by [their] ability satisfac-
torily to describe all the emic distinctions people actually make in all the world’s
cultures in relation to the subject matter (whether functionally or otherwise
defined) for which the etic concepts were designed.” 60
The Case of Tokugawa Japan

Although the development of emics and etics occurred primarily within the con-
text of cultural anthropology, there are important implications for other disci-
plines, including history, which even Harris recognized.61 In the case of Tokugawa
Japan, both Japanese scholars and their non-Japanese colleagues employ emics and
etics in their research on that era. This study is primarily concerned with the ways
in which emics and etics have been used by scholars writing in Eng lish on
Tokugawa Japan. By now, it should be clear that “nativism” is a concept with both
emic and etic aspects. As an emic concept, its roots are thoroughly grounded in
American history, where it is a nineteenth-century term signifying resistance
to Catholic immigration. American scholars in the twentieth century began the
process of transforming nativism as an emic concept into an etic one, signifying
resistance to immigration in general, not just to Catholic immigration. Interest-
ingly, the eticization of nativism occurred along two separate tracks, one advanced
by American historians and the other by American anthropologists. Before apply-
ing the rigors of testing, as called for by Goodenough and Harris, Japanologists
must come to grips with these two distinct etic forms of nativism; the subsequent
usage of nativism in the Japanese context depends on a fundamental reconcilia-
tion of these two etic forms of nativism. The blending of anthropological nativism
with historical nativism results, of course, in a third etic form of nativism, which
can hopefully accommodate the other two and make the eticization of nativism
more coherent for those working outside of American history and anthropology.
The analysis of the emic concept of nativism, as well as its transformation into
two different etic concepts, is a useful if not indispensable endeavor in the on
going effort to test its legitimacy. Such an analysis is the first step in determining
the degree to which nativism has been accurately applied to Tokugawa Japan. As
expected, the emic version of nativism has nothing in common with Tokugawa
Japan or with the intellectual institution of Kokugaku with which nativism is
commonly associated. Even on the etic side of things, the resemblance between
nativism and Kokugaku is difficult to see. At best, the anti-immigrant feelings
18 Introduction
that are at the heart of nativism echo the antiforeignism of Kokugaku, even
though Kokugaku was not especially anti-immigrant and nativism (in either of
its etic forms) was not especially opposed to foreign cultural influences. In addi-
tion to the questioning of Kokugaku’s classification as nativism, the analysis of
nativism as both an emic and an etic concept is also useful for Japan scholars
seeking to apply it more accurately to Tokugawa Japan. If nativism is truly a le-
gitimate etic concept, then it should apply in some way to Japanese history, even
to Tokugawa Japan. True universality should include examples from Japanese
history, rather than apply everywhere except to Japan; calling into question the
appropriateness of classifying or identifying Kokugaku as nativism need not im-
ply that there were no instances of nativism during the Tokugawa period. Not
surprisingly, nativism does, in fact, occur during Tokugawa; specifically, we can
use it to describe the Japanese response to the arrival of Westerners in the 1850s
and 1860s. Such a conceptual identification is only possible after a sustained
analysis of both the emic and the etic forms of nativism.
Despite the serious doubt that such an analysis casts on the association of na-
tivism with Kokugaku, Japanologists who have referred to Kokugaku as nativism
have recognized something that seems to link the two together. In other words,
both Kokugaku and nativism seem to exhibit affinities with another conceptual
category, rather than directly connecting to each other. In order to see how they
only indirectly relate to each other, we must move away from the rhetoric of pro-
tecting the country to the rhetoric of praising it. The rhetoric of national self-praise
was implicit among American nativists, even if it was superseded by their hatred
of immigrants. For Kokugaku scholars, the reverse was true; namely, they were
more engaged in asserting Japan’s superiority than they w ere in asserting the
Other’s inferiority. The critical concept, then, that resonates with both nativism
in the American case and Kokugaku in the Japanese case is exceptionalism. It is
exceptionalist ideology that produces the practice of nativism, just as Kokugaku
rhetoric was an important part of the ideology that justified the violent expulsion
of Westerners from Japan.
While the application of nativism to Japanese history demands an examina-
tion of emics and etics, the same is also true of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism
originally signified the resistance to Marxian historical development that the
United States seemed to exhibit. In other words, the United States was the exception
to the Marxian rule of historical development that seemed to prevail everywhere
else in the world. As expected, this concept of exceptionalism is fundamentally
emic and bears little resemblance to Japanese history, despite the fact that Japan
has arguably defied Marxian development as well. The etic utility of exceptional-
ism emanates from the value judgment that is implicit within the view that the
The Case of Tokugawa Japan 19
United States is the exception to a Marxian rule, namely, that it is therefore

exceptional, in the senses of both uniquely different and also superior. For this
reason, exceptionalism, like nativism, assumes two etic forms, one centered on
American uniqueness and the other on its superiority. Generally speaking, the
former etic view has its advocates among social scientists, while the latter view’s
supporters are primarily historians. The focus of this study is on exceptionalism
as the assertion of superiority, since the supporters of exceptionalism as the as-
sertion of uniqueness are resistant to the inclusion of other cultures and societies
within it. While carrying out the comparative work that is so critical to cultural
anthropologists, the advocates of exceptionalism as the assertion of uniqueness
use comparative analysis to demonstrate the ways in which exceptionalism does
not apply outside of the American example. Such a view undermines the etic
status of exceptionalism in such a way that it actually transforms it back into an
emic conceptualization. Comparison as a method for undermining etics and
supporting emics was perhaps beyond the imagination of anthropologists like
Goodenough and Harris.
While the analysis of the emic origins and etic usages of concepts generated
outside of the Japanese context is useful, we should not forget that this same
context is replete with its own legion of emic and etic concepts. For the discus-
sion of Tokugawa nativism, the key term is Kokugaku, whose status with respect
to nativism is emic, but it has also been applied by Tokugawa and Meiji scholars
in etic ways as well. Specifically, the scholarship of some Tokugawa intellectuals
on Japanese antiquity has been labeled by twentieth-and even nineteenth-
century researchers as Kokugaku, in some cases over the disavowal of Kokugaku
by the same Tokugawa intellectuals. The Japanese have also assigned Kokugaku
their own etics, such as gakumon (scholarship) or oshie (teachings), among oth-
ers. In any case, this study is focused on Kokugaku as an emic concept whose
Western eticization has been confined largely to nativism. Since the application
of emics and etics to the study of the history of another culture has its inherent
difficulties, and produces its share of academic controversies, some might ques-
tion the need to apply them at all, or call for the application of emics only and for
the abandonment of etics, which is essentially the same thing. Such a view has its
supporters in much the same way that some anthropologists rallied behind
Kenneth Pike’s original emphasis on emics. As Edward Said has famously dem-
onstrated, Western interpretations of the “Orient” w ere closely linked to West-
ern attempts to control and dominate it. By generating knowledge of the Orient,
Europea ns reproduced, in the realm of academe, the colonial and semicolonial
dominance of the Orient in the realm of geopolitics.62 At the same time, the
writings of Orientalist scholars were influential in European and American
20 Introduction
policymaking, such that Orientalism supported and perpetuated Western domi-

nance. Within such a context, the emergence of a resistance to etics is both natu-
ral and even understandable.
Unfortunately for Japanologists who are sympathetic to an emics-only ap-
proach, the use of etics is already a fait accompli in two important ways. First, as
the example of nativism amply demonstrates, scholars within the field of Japa
nese studies have decided that etics can be (and should be?) applied to analyses of
Japanese history and culture. Despite the support among some Japanologists that
Japan is incommensurable with other societies, a view that emic-centered ap-
proaches foster, the application of nativism to Tokugawa Japan undermines the
view of incommensurability, or it creates the impression that Japan is unique in
some ways but rather ordinary in others. Although the usage of nativism within
Japanese studies has achieved the status of orthodoxy for many Japanologists, one
cannot argue that etics-only approaches predominate in Japanese studies. In fact,
it is commonplace for Japanologists, perhaps excepting those writing in the Japa
nese language, to use emic concepts alongside etic concepts in their work. For
example, most scholars today refer to leaders of the warrior government of the Edo
era as shoguns, instead of generals or commanders, and refer to this warrior gov-
ernment itself as a bakufu, so as to avoid confusion with the civilian institutions
of the imperial government in Kyoto. Interestingly, it is common to associate this
civilian government with “imperial,” since tennō is almost always assigned the etic
category of “emperor.” The point is that Japanologists routinely incorporate emics
and etics in their work, a conceptual blending that Harris, Goodenough, and others
have asserted is critical to the field of cultural anthropology. One could argue that
Japanologists generally exhibit a slight preference for emics over etics, since they
cannot universally agree on the usage of certain etic concepts, such as feudalism,63
in which case the usage of emics has prevailed. For this reason, Goodenough’s
vision of cultural anthropology resonates more deeply with Japanologists today
than does Harris’s emphasis on etics.
A second reason for the enduring usage of etics in Japanese studies is related
to the centrality of the Japanese language to the field. Specifically, Japanologists
are confronted with the issue of translation in their work in ways that their col-
leagues in other disciplines may not be. For practical reasons, Japanologists can-
not realistically defer to Japanese terminology every time in their work; they must
make reasonable judgments regarding when it is warranted and appropriate to use
a translated term and when it is not. Translations for terms and concepts are by
their very nature etic, and the original terms and concepts for which they serve
as substitutes are, of course, emic. Consequently, the use of Japanese terms and
concepts, intermixed with Western terms and concepts, is essentially the same
Chapter Overview 21
methodology as the blending of emics and etics as called for in cultural anthro-
pology. Whether or not one is sympathetic to the imposition of Western etics upon
the emics of the Other, as is the case with Orientalism, Japanologists have already
decided, as a field of professionals, that the application of etics to the study of emics
is epistemologically acceptable.
Chapter Overview
Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the paradigm prevailing in Japanese studies within
which Kokugaku is associated with nativism. Chapter 1, “Kokugaku, Nativism,
and ‘Exceptional’ Japan,” demonstrates the extent to which this paradigm prevails
among Japanologists with only a few exceptions. The association of Kokugaku
with nativism assumes one of two forms, either as a broad concept that, when
applied to Tokugawa Japan, has only one representative example (Kokugaku), or,
since Kokugaku is exclusively identified with nativism, as translated and trans-
posable terms. Both of these conceptual associations of Kokugaku with nativism
should inspire Japanologists to raise questions, since the association in either case
is exclusive in a way that scholars rarely see in history. Indeed, when examining
the concept of nativism outside of the Japanese context, one discovers that its roots
are thoroughly American and nineteenth century.
As an emic concept, nativism signified resistance to Catholic immigration into
the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. Many Americans of the time be-
lieved that the United States was a nation of people descended from the Anglo-
Saxons, and founded by Protestants seeking to flee the politic al turmoil and
intrigue in Europe caused by opposition to the Catholic Church. For these Ameri-
cans, Catholicism itself was anathema to American nationhood, and nationhood
in general, since the Catholic Church was led by a pope to whom all Catholics
pledged their obedience. In fact, rumors circulated at the time that Catholic im-
migration into the United States was part of the church’s plan to achieve world-
wide domination. Nativism, like all such concepts, began as emics, but could only
begin its etic life once certain particularities had been removed so as to empower
it with a more general applicability. Interestingly, this effort occurred on two sep-
arate fronts. Beginning with Ralph Linton in his essay “Nativistic Movements,”
the emphasis on the anti-Catholicism of emic nativism was transformed into
general reactions to the arrival of newcomers by the natives, usually in the con-
text of European colonialism. The strength of this first attempt at the eticization
of nativism was its utility in analyzing the encounters between colonizers and
indigenous peoples around the world. The weakness, however, was that nativism
became too all-encompassing, since it included not only the hostile reactions and
22 Introduction
rejection efforts of the natives but also the ways in which they accepted their colo-
nizers;64 moreover, Linton also includes within nativism those reactions of the
colonizers themselves, including both their acceptance and rejection of those
they colonized.
The second attempt at the eticization of nativism came roughly a decade fol-
lowing Linton’s anthropological work, in the form of an influential monograph
by John Higham, Strangers in the Land. Without resorting to comparison, which
was so critical to Linton’s analysis of nativism, Higham distilled from a close
examination of American history commonalities between the hostilities of the
Know-Nothings against Catholics in the antebellum period and those of their
twentieth-century counterparts, the Ku Klux Klan. Higham concluded that anti-
Catholicism was too narrow as a definition of nativism, so he broadened it to
signify hostility against immigrants in general. Two strengths of Higham’s etic
concept of nativism over Linton’s w ere, in the first place, the exclusion of most re-
actions of the natives to the arrival of foreign people, focusing only on hostility,
and his complete exclusion of the reactions of the foreign arrivals. Second, Higham
emphasized the extreme hatred that immigrants experienced at the hand of nativ-
ists in American history, a visceral reaction that can result only from the physical
proximity of natives and immigrants.
In the end, the most important commonality between Linton and Higham,
for Japanologists interested in Tokugawa applications, was their shared assumption
that nativism exists only within the context of encounters between two different
societies. Nativism is not merely another form of antiforeignism; it is essentially
antiforeigner. It is this common assumption that, when applied to the Tokugawa
case, begins to undermine the exclusive association of Kokugaku with nativism.
Not only does the analysis of the emics and etics of nativism yield this insight,
it also invites both a new effort at an etic classification of Kokugaku and a more
informed application of nativism to Tokugawa Japan. The latter task is the subject
of chapter 2, “Sonnō-jō’i: Nativism and Bakumatsu Japan.”
After undertaking a sustained analysis of the emics and the etics of nativism
outside of the Japanese context, and casting doubts on the ways in which Japa-
nologists have applied nativism to Kokugaku, one might be tempted to conclude
that nativism is a concept that otherwise does not apply to Tokugawa Japan. Lin-
ton himself suggested that scholars could analyze the sixteenth-century arrival
of the Spanish and the Portuguese in Japan as nativism, a project that no one seems
to have attempted. If an encounter between Westerners and the Japanese serves
as the springboard for an analysis of nativism, as Linton believed, then the arrival
of Commodore Matthew Perry (1794–1858) and the Americans in 1853 should be
no less appropriate than the arrival of the Europeans three centuries earlier. As
Chapter Overview 23
Japanologists are well aware, the arrival of the Americans led to similar incursions
by the British, the French, and the Russians, and the imposition of the “unequal
treaties” on the Tokugawa Bakufu. The powerlessness of the Japanese to resist the
demands of the Westerners led to the political backlash that the Japanese called
sonnō-jō’i (glossed as “revere the emperor [in order to] expel the barbarians”).65
Interestingly, sonnō-jō’i typified two important aspects of Linton’s etic view of
nativism, namely, revivalism in the form of restoring the emperor to actual
power, and rejection, as symbolized by the forcible expulsion of Westerners from
Japan. Analyzing sonnō-jō’i as nativism preserves the fundamental criterion that
nativism only results from the actual interaction of different societies. Rather than
viewing Kokugaku as Japan’s emic example of nativism, scholars should look
to sonnō-jō’i as connected to just one emic example from the Tokugawa period that
can contribute in a meaningful way to the ongoing eticization of nativism.
There are two caveats that scholars must acknowledge in the analysis of
sonnō-jō’i as nativism. First, while it is an important example of nativism from the
Tokugawa period, it is not the only one from that era nor the only one from Japa
nese history in general. While sonnō-jō’i can serve as a first step in the analysis of
Japanese nativism, it certainly should not be the end of it, and the exclusive iden-
tification that the field of Japanese studies has generally assigned to Kokugaku as
nativism should not be repeated with sonnō-jō’i. Second, while many of the most
canonical figures of sonnō-jō’i expressed nativistic sentiments, there w ere some,
like Aizawa Seishisai (1781–1863), who did not. Consequently, nativism is a use-
ful concept for describing a major component of sonnō-jō’i, namely, the idea of
the forcible expulsion of Westerners from Japan, but sonnō-jō’i was a broader con-
cept than that. In fact, after the Shimonoseki war of 1863–1864, sonnō-jō’i ceased
to signify, to many Japanese of the time, the actual military expulsion of Western-
ers from Japan, signaling instead opposition to the Edo Bakufu. In any case, sonnō-
jō’i, rather than Kokugaku, can and should be Tokugawa Japan’s emic contribution
to the ongoing process of the eticization of nativism, a process that requires the
analysis of specific examples from different cultures throughout the world and
from different eras throughout time.
While cultural rejection was certainly an important aspect of Kokugaku
ideology, the fact that it was directed at an image of China that was supported by
other Japanese people makes it difficult to classify as nativistic, strictly speaking.
Cultural rejection was one side of a more important ideological project, namely,
the assertion of Japan’s uniqueness and superiority. Such claims seem to resonate
more with the ways in which exceptionalism is understood by scholars today,
and an exploration of its usages and meanings is the subject of chapter 3, “Prov-
ing Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority: The History of Exceptionalism.” This
24 Introduction
chapter focuses on the development of exceptionalism from an emic concept that

was coined by Marxian historians during the early decades of the twentieth cen-
tury to an etic concept during the 1950s that signified America’s status as the
world’s only “outlier” nation. The initial eticization of exceptionalism was a curi-
ous one, since it was a category within which only one nation, the United States,
was included, and the efforts of scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006)
and others were brought to bear on proving, using the methods of the social
sciences, that no other nation was qualified for inclusion. An etic concept that
applies to only one culture or society is essentially an emic one, such that com-
parison only deepens this re-emicization rather than furthering the process of
exceptionalism’s eticization. American historians have attempted to wrest ex-
ceptionalism away from the exclusive analysis of these social scientists and have
looked to the past for the intellectual roots of American exceptionalism. Their
efforts have produced a more genuinely etic version of exceptionalism that has
broad applicability outside of the American context, and their work has sug-
gested usages in other parts of the world, including Japan. The American applica-
tion of exceptionalism to Japan, however, is entirely confined to postwar Nihon-
jinron, rather than to the rich intellectual heritage of Nihonjinron, most of which
originates in the Tokugawa period. Interestingly, Nihonjinron advocates and
their observers have long acknowledged the affinity and outright connection be-
tween it and Kokugaku, such that the classification of Kokugaku as exceptional-
ism has already been made, at least indirectly, by contemporary scholars.
In order to portray more effectively the fact that Kokugaku was one part of
Japanese exceptionalism, rather than Japanese or even Tokugawa exceptionalism
itself, it is necessary to analyze other Japanese institutions, especially those out-
side of Nihonjinron, an institution that has already been linked to exceptional-
ism by Americanists. This is the topic of chapters 4, “Seventeenth-C entury
Tokugawa Exceptionalism” and 5, “From Exceptionalism to Nativism: Mitogaku
and Nineteenth-Century Japan.” It is within the history of Confucianism that the
full richness of Tokugawa exceptionalism emerges, especially the intellectual
developments of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Interestingly, the
connection between Confucianism and Chinese exceptionalism created a more
difficult ideological challenge for the Confucian exceptionalists of early modern
Japan than was the case with the scholars of Kokugaku. Adherents of Kokugaku
routinely denounced Chinese cultural influences, as well as Buddhism and later
Western institutions, but the blanket refutation of all things foreign was not a
viable option for Tokugawa Confucians who supported exceptionalist ideas.
Finessing the issue of the Chinese origin of Confucianism, and the implicit sup-
port for Chinese exceptionalism that accompanied it, required the development
Chapter Overview 25
of a bold creativity among Tokugawa intellectuals. During the seventeenth cen-

tury, Yamazaki Ansai (1619–1682) questioned the connection between China and
Confucianism by suggesting that the Japanese of remote antiquity were Confu-
cians even before the Chinese were, a notion that cleared the ideological path
for a Confucianism-based form of Tokugawa exceptionalism. Ansai’s contem-
porary and Confucian rival, Yamaga Sokō (1622–1685), was similarly undaunted
by the Chinese-ness of Confucianism in the formulation of his own exceptional-
ism, focusing on the fall of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) as proof that the Japa
nese had finally surpassed China as the world’s paramount culture. The writings
of Kumazawa Banzan (1619–1691), however, were especially significant in the
history of Confucian exceptionalism during the Edo era. He did not try to under-
mine the connection between China and Confucianism, like Ansai, nor did he
focus on the decline of China’s last Han Chinese dynasty like Sokō. For Banzan,
Confucianism was merely one approach among many others for apprehending
the Way, a notion that diverted attention away from Confucianism and focused it
instead on Shinto, as Japan’s native attempt to grasp the Way. Banzan’s innova-
tive resolution to the exceptionalist conundrum posed by the Chinese origins of
Confucianism was influential for subsequent generations of scholars and intel-
lectuals, notably the Mito scholars of the nineteenth century.
The most important Tokugawa incarnation of Confucian exceptionalism
was the form of scholarship that developed during the late eighteenth century
by individuals sponsored by the Mito domain, and which Japanologists today
commonly refer to as Mitogaku. From its inception as exceptionalism under the
leadership of Fujita Yūkoku (1774–1826), Mitogaku flourished for more than half
a century, nearly until the end of the Tokugawa period. This was a time in which
exceptionalist rhetoric developed into nativist practices in the expulsion activi-
ties associated with sonnō-jō’i. An analysis of Mitogaku suggests that there was
a connection between exceptionalism and nativism, a potentially important
insight in the eticization of both concepts. The strong and unambiguous link
within Mitogaku between nativism and exceptionalism indicates an avenue of
inquiry for the analysis of other cultures and societies. The connection between
the two in the Tokugawa case might indicate that the same kind of connection
existed even in the American case as well.
C HA P T E R ON E
Kokugaku, Nativism, and “Exceptional” Japan
As postwar Western scholars began their studies of Tokugawa Japan, it is not

surprising that Kokugaku was a cultural institution with which they felt they
had to contend. Japanese scholars had identified Kokugaku as one of the ideologies
that contributed to the Meiji Restoration, an interpretation that made it an institu-
tion that no one could afford to ignore. The compilers of the Sources of Japa
nese Tradition (1958) chose to classify Kokugaku as Neo-Shintoism, chiefly be-
cause of the strong interest in Shinto exhibited by Motoori Norinaga and Hirata
Atsutane.1 Although the category of Neo-Shintoism is not inaccurate, it lacks
much of a comparative dimension that any useful analytical category possesses.
Beginning perhaps as early as the 1960s, scholars rectified this shortcoming with
the category of nativism. Not only did nativism lend itself more easily to com-
parison, it was a category with origins in American history, which may have only
seemed appropriate at the time, given the emerging dominance of American re-
search in Japanese studies. By the 1980s, nativism was the most common term
used to identify Kokugaku in English secondary literature.
However, in endeavoring to examine this implicit comparison between nativ-
ism and Kokugaku, problems arise. First, one is confronted with the fact that
the concept of nativism has two major forms, what I will call for the time being the
anthropological and the historical; a comparative analysis must first grapple with
the issue of which one is connected to Kokugaku. Fortunately for Japanologists,
these two forms have one important commonality, namely, antiforeignism.
However, antiforeignism alone presents problems of its own when analyzing
Kokugaku in a comparative context. At the same time, certain distinctive char-
acteristics of Kokugaku, such as its scholarly identity, have no analogues in either
form of nativism. The root of the problem with the classification of Kokugaku as
nativism is the assumption that Kokugaku has a singular equivalent in the West-
ern tradition. Just as nativism has had myriad forms, even within American his-
tory, the institution of Kokugaku encompassed a range of diverse approaches to
Japanese antiquity, some of which do seem to bear at least a passing resemblance
to nativism, and others not at all. We need to abandon its singular classification
26
Nativism, Native Learning, Neo-S hintoism, and “Nothing” 27
in favor of a range of categories in accordance with historical circumstances. Just

as studies of nativism unrelated to Japan exhibit diversity, so too do phenomena
in Japanese history that bear the label of nativism more appropriately. In other
words, the classification of Kokugaku as nativism has diverted the attention of
scholars away from moments in Japanese history that really did demonstrate
nativistic tendencies.
Nativism, Native Learning, Neo-Shintoism,

and “Nothing”
Nativism is the dominant classification for Edo Kokugaku due to the publication
of two major monographs, Peter Nosco’s Remembering Paradise: Nativism and
Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan (1990) and Harry Harootunian’s Things
Seen and Unseen: Discourse and Ideology in Tokugawa Nativism (1988). As these
titles indicate, both authors use nativism to describe the ideas and practices
associated with Kokugaku, such that the two terms become synonymous and
interchangeable in their analyses. Although this particu lar usage of nativism has
endured since the appearance of these books, some scholars have added more
nuanced interpretations without discarding the category altogether. While the
view of Kokugaku qua nativism existed prior to these books, earlier attempts to
analyze Kokugaku at least anticipated the emergence of nativism as a conceptual
category in Japanese studies.
While the editors of the first edition of Sources of Japanese Tradition settled
on Neo-Shintoism as a suitable category within which to locate Kokugaku, per-
haps as a parallel phenomenon to Neo-Confucianism, Donald Keene, writing at
much the same time, eschewed any categorization in favor of a brief description
of Kokugaku as “native learning.”2 Keene discusses the eighteenth-century con-
text from which Kokugaku emerged, noting how the dominance of Confucian
scholarship was challenged by Western and Japanese forms of learning. Since Japa
nese scholars asserted the primacy of Japanese knowledge over all others, mostly
because of their foreign origins, Keene chose the term “native” to describe their
scholarship. While the rejection of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western learn-
ing by Kokugaku scholars is certainly implied in Keene’s analysis, he ultimately
does not describe Kokugaku as nativistic. Similarly, Matsumoto Shigeru, in his
1970 monograph on the life and thought of Motoori Norinaga, avoids a general
classification of Kokugaku. In his overall description of Kokugaku, he does use
“indigenous” and even “native” to discuss the efforts of scholars to separate Japanese
cultural aspects from foreign mixing.3 Although Matsumoto avoids describing
this effort as a rejection, he does refer to it as “reaction.” Thus, while both Matsumoto
28 Kokugaku, Nativism, and “Exceptional” Japan
and Keene use the word “native” in their descriptions of Kokugaku, as well as
discussing the abstract confrontation between Japan and foreign cultures, nei-
ther uses the term nativism as such; however, it is possible that their analyses
facilitated the adoption of nativism as a category for Kokugaku.
While Harootunian’s monumental work, Things Seen and Unseen, helped se-
cure nativism as the paradigm for Kokugaku, his connection between the two
dates to as early as 1970 with the publication of Toward Restoration: The Growth
of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan. In this work, he translates kokugaku-
sha as “nativists” and kokugakuron as “Tokugawa nativism,” and these are usages
that we see in his 1978 essay “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New
Realism of Kokugaku,” as well as in his 1988 monograph.4 Even in his 1970 work,
however, there are indications that he did not envision a complete equivalence
between Kokugaku and nativism. By referring to Aizawa Seishisai as having “re-
turned to nativism” in his political theory, Harootunian seems to admit the pos-
sibility that the category of nativism as applied to Tokugawa Japan encompasses
more than just Kokugaku. In fact, he translates Shinto as “nativism” in the same
work.5 We can see a similar tension between the notion of Kokugaku as nativism
and the conceptualization of nativism as a broad category that includes Kokugaku
in Peter Nosco’s 1990 monograph as well. He refers to Motoori Norinaga as “the
most important nativist of the eighteenth century” and “the rupture between na-
tivism and Confucianism.”6 While Nosco does not directly provide nativism as a
translation for Kokugaku, in the way that Harootunian does, his usage of nativ-
ism certainly implies that it was the English (or more properly, American English)
equivalent for Kokugaku. However, in the conclusion of his monograph, he notes
how National Learning (Kokugaku) was the result of “the adversarial relationship
between nativism and Confucianism.”7 This statement implies that Kokugaku and
nativism were not, in fact, the same thing; as was the case with Harootunian’s 1970
monograph, Nosco seems to allow for the possibility that nativism was a general
category that could accommodate the salient aspects of Kokugaku. The fundamen-
tal problem with these usages of nativism, which characterize the works of two
scholars who more than any others have solidified the paradigm of Kokugaku as
nativism, is that a discussion of what nativism itself actually is, irrespective of any
relationship to Japanese history, is never provided. Harootunian does give his
readers the tantalizing idea that Shinto has some relationship to nativism, but he
does not develop a further analysis of this connection. Nosco, on the other hand,
implies that Kokugaku somehow fits within the category of nativism, but he does
not furnish his readers with other non-Kokugaku examples that conform to na-
tivism as well. It is for these reasons, I argue, that the idea of Kokugaku as nativ-
ism emerged and achieved the status of a kind of orthodoxy today.
Subsequent to Nosco and Harootunian, a few scholars have formulated views

slightly at odds with them, although not at the expense of nativism as a concept.
For example, Helen Hardacre, in her book Shinto and the State, 1868–1988 (1989),
describes Kokugaku as becoming nativism: “After Hirata’s time, National Learning
[Kokugaku] ceased to be a type of scholarship and instead acquired the rudiments
of a nativist movement.”8 By implication, therefore, Kokugaku was not a form of
nativism prior to Atsutane’s death in 1843. Interestingly, Hardacre cites Haroot-
unian’s 1988 monograph for this statement, despite the fact that Harootunian
says nothing about a prenativistic form of Kokugaku. Similarly, Susan Burns
observes in her monograph, Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of
Community in Early Modern Japan (2003), that “kokugaku [sic] practitioners” of
the early Meiji period were “nativists,” implying that their Tokugawa counterparts
were not.9 In the absence of any substantive statement on how the notion of na-
tivism is being used, readers are left to infer what exactly Kokugaku was either
prior to 1843 or prior to 1868, and, more importantly, what happened subsequently
that transformed it into nativism. In the case of Hardacre’s statement, the arrival
of Perry and the Americans in 1853 (ten years after Atsutane’s death) could have
begun the process of Kokugaku’s transformation. The same cannot be said for the
analysis of Burns. Since her work deals at length with the connection between
Kokugaku and the establishment of Japan as a nation-state during the Meiji pe-
riod, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that her more careful usage of the term
nativism is related to this theme of modernity. Nativism and nationalism, there-
fore, may have some kind of fundamental relationship in her view.10
Another observation about Kokugaku and its relationship to nativism was made
by Conrad Totman in his Early Modern Japan (1993). Like Hardacre and Burns,
Totman does not view Kokugaku ideas as originally nativistic: “nativist ideas that
derived from Mitogaku and Hirata Atsutane’s kokugaku [sic] flourished during
the years 1859–64, acquiring the policy rubric sonnō-jōi.”11 In such a short space,
Totman provides his readers with a concrete time frame for Kokugaku’s transfor-
mation into nativism, namely, following the arrival of Perry and the Americans,
and he specifically identifies sonnō-jō’i with nativism. I explore this insight in more
detail in chapter 2. In addition, he does not follow the lead of Nosco and Harootu-
nian in almost exclusively linking Kokugaku to nativism; for Totman, Mitogaku
was connected to Japanese nativism as well. Of all of the authors surveyed here,
Totman demonstrates the best grasp of what nativism really means outside of
Japanese studies today. The question of what classification for Kokugaku, if any, is
appropriate for its prenativism past is one that Totman, like Burns, leaves open.
John Breen demonstrates a more nuanced interpretation of nativism as well.
Like Totman, he argues for a more careful application of nativism to Kokugaku,
and he questions the simple equation of Kokugaku with nativism.12 He surveys

the major theorists of nativism and concludes that Harootunian’s assertion regard-
ing the decline of nativism during the Meiji period does not fully account for the
importance of Japanese encounters with Westerners, acknowledging that such en-
counters are fundamental to nativism, as I discuss later. Breen deserves credit for
drawing the attention of scholars to the problems with Kokugaku as nativism. It
is important to note, however, that he does not abandon the term nativism for
Kokugaku, not even for the Tokugawa period; thus, nativism for Breen is still
largely synonymous with antiforeignism. He does not see any difference between
opposition to foreign cultures and opposition to foreign people. He also does not
deal at all with American nativism, which is the original conceptual form of na-
tivism, since the term itself was coined in the United States during the first half
of the nineteenth century. As we will see, American (or historical) nativism, and
the anthropological nativism that Breen cites, have their significant differences
as well.
Nativism is a term that scholars working on modern Japan use as well, but their
understanding of nativism is largely informed by the usages of their colleagues
working on the Edo period. For example, Kevin Doak’s study of the Japan Ro-
mantic School mentions the role of “Motoori Norinaga’s nativism,” which Kamei
Katsuichirō (1907–1966) viewed as “not a simple call for a return to the past but
truly a ‘modern archaism.’ ”13 Here we see a conception of nativism as connected
to nostalgia, a view not unlike the one described by Peter Nosco in his 1990 mono-
graph. Similarly, Nina Cornyetz connects nativism to Kokugaku, but she does
so in a more exclusive way.14 She also connects nativism to nostalgia, by observ-
ing how “Meiji folklorists” exhibited an “authentic nativism” via their rejection of
“the Western (ethnically) racialized Other to modernity.”15 Marilyn Ivy, like Cor
nyetz, equates nativism (“nativist studies”) with Kokugaku, but she places less
emphasis on the role of nostalgia.16 Instead, she argues that “much of Tokugawa
nativist scholarship was . . . concerned [with] defin[ing] the native as unique.”17
Neither nostalgia nor articulations of uniqueness are especially characteristic
of nativism, as we will see, but they do emerge within studies of exceptionalism,
to which we turn in chapter 3.
Before the publication of either of the authoritative monographs on Kokugaku
written by Harootunian and Nosco, Carol Gluck invoked, briefly and in passing,
a comparison between American and Japanese nativism during the nineteenth
century by citing John Higham. This citation is important, because it is the only
direct reference to an authority on nativism outside of Japanese studies other than
John Breen’s article discussed above, in which there is no discussion of Higham
at all. Unfortunately, she also sees a one-to-one correspondence between “late
Tokugawa nativism” and Kokugaku, noting how its influence lingered well into
the Meiji period.18 Moreover, her brief discussion of Higham is confusing and no
specific reference within Higham’s monograph is provided: “Not unlike Ameri-
can nativism of the same period, late Meiji ideology insisted on social conformity
as the binding principle of national loyalty.”19 Although Higham discusses the
decline of the Know-Nothings after the Civil War,20 he places more emphasis on
the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the years following World War I. The Meiji pe-
riod, of course, ended before the outbreak of World War I, and the Ku Klux Klan
can hardly be likened to the Meiji state. In fact, Higham’s focus on the rise of rac-
ism and the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan has nothing to do with “social con-
formity,” since members of minority groups could never be fully assimilated as
far as white supremacists were (and are) concerned. By making American nativ-
ism conform to Kokugaku, Gluck misses its anti-immigrant and antiminority as-
pects that Higham sees as the defining characteristics of American nativism.
In his study of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Ken Ito notes how “nativism
was emerging as a powerful force in Japanese culture” such that “by the middle of
the 1930’s it would be the ruling ideology of the nation,” and that the cosmopoli-
tan values of the Taishō period (1912–1926) w ere supplanted by “a xenophobic
nationalism.”21 By setting nativism against cosmopolitanism, Ito uses a common
conceptual binary in examinations of nativism outside of Japanese studies, and
one that none of the other Japanologists discussed here have mentioned in their
work. In fact, his invocation of “xenophobic nationalism” in the context of nativ-
ism is reminiscent of Higham, as we will see, even though he does not cite Higham
directly. Interestingly, Ito avoids any mention of Kokugaku or the Edo period
in this discussion, unlike his colleagues studying the modern era who associate
Kokugaku with Japanese/Tokugawa nativism. Just as Totman’s usage of nativism
resonates at least partially with the ways in which nativism is understood outside of
Japanese studies, the same can be said of Ito’s understanding of nativism. Even
with Ito, however, our attention is drawn to a rejection of “the foreign” as opposed
to a rejection of “foreigners,” and the critical contexts within which nativism
develops were conspicuously missing from the early decades of Japan’s twentieth
century, namely, colonialism. Thus, even with Ito, we are presented with a kind of
nativism that is particular to Japan and one that is at odds with the etic concepts
developed in the fields of anthropology and American history.22
As the above discussion indicates, scholars of Japanese studies, mostly in the
United States, generally apply nativism to Tokugawa Japan, whether they are fo-
cused on the Edo period or on the modern era, in one of two ways. It is either a
translation for Kokugaku or it is a broad category inclusive of it. Unfortunately,
nativism is a term that scholars of Japanese studies, myself included, have used
too loosely. Generally speaking, in situations where members of two different

societies meet, the term nativism signifies the rejection of newcomers from abroad,
a conceptual commonality shared by both anthropological and historical
(American) nativism. In Japanese history, there are several examples of inter-
action between Japanese people and those of other cultures. However, the case of
Kokugaku is, for the most part, not one of them.
Nativism in Anthropology
Nativism has been the subject of analysis in the field of anthropology since the
1940s, and its scholars have made important contributions to our understanding
of it. Ralph Linton published the foundational contribution to the etic category
of nativism in 1943 with his article “Nativistic Movements.” Such movements arise
when members of one culture perceive the presence of those from another cul-
ture as a threat, leading to “any conscious, organized attempt on the part of a
society’s members to revive or perpetuate selected aspects of its culture.”23 Na-
tivism (“nativistic movements”) is, therefore, fundamentally revivalistic, and
a response to the perception of a crisis precipitated by the confrontation of
cultures. Cultural encounters can assume the form of either actual or potential
domination. When discussing the latter case, Linton invokes a Japanese example
by citing the arrival of the “European[s]” (likely the Portuguese) during “the early
period of European contact” (likely the sixteenth century), in which the Europe
ans demonstrated their technological superiority without actually conquering or
militarily subduing the Japanese.24 In situations like the Japanese case, superior-
ity and inferiority are objective truths recognized by the members of both soci-
eties; in the absence of domination, however, the “inferior group” simply seeks
to adopt elements of the superior group, awaiting the moment when “cultural
differences have been obliterated.” Linton’s use of a Japanese example to illustrate
his concept of nativism is important to the field of Japanese studies for two rea-
sons. First, in the English secondary literature on Japanese history, the Japanese
encounter with the Europeans is rarely, if ever, characterized as nativism. Yet in
the first foray into the analysis of nativism as a theory, a Japanese example is used,
and it is unrelated to Kokugaku. Second, Linton says nothing about that other
important encounter with Westerners, namely, Commodore Matthew Perry’s
(1794–1858) expedition, the unequal treaties, and the arrival of Westerners, who
took up residence in Japan in the years immediately before the Meiji Restoration.
One could argue that pol itic al and military domination were more important
in the 1850s and 1860s than it was in the 1550s and 1560s. Perhaps for Linton, sce-
narios of actual domination are more directly colonial in character than was the
Nativism in Anthropology 33
case with Bakumatsu Japan’s semicolonial one. It is not an exaggeration to say

that the paradigmatic scenario for such confrontations in Linton’s estimation is
the colonial context in which indigenous peoples recognize their inferiority
(especially with regard to technology) as they defer to the superiority of their
colonizers. It is at this point in the discussion that Linton makes an important,
and even overlooked, observation regarding the attitudes of colonizers. Colonizers,
keenly aware of their superiority, exhibit nativism themselves, either by admiring
the culture of the colonized, or by clinging steadfastly to their own cultural tra-
ditions and resisting the urge to emulate the culture of the colonized. He refers
to this form of nativism as the “perpetuative-rational type.”25 Although it is not
central to his general observations regarding the phenomenon of nativism itself,
as a response to cultural encounters, Linton’s argument for the existence of na-
tivism among even the (European) colonizers is one that subsequent studies of
nativism do not invoke. The idea that everyone is a potential nativist in any inter-
cultural encounter dilutes the usefulness of nativism as a category of analysis.
In situations of actual domination, the dominated also develops a form of
rational nativism, but one that is founded on the revival of cultural institutions
viewed as dormant or defunct. It is not uncommon for such dominated societies
to assert their own superiority to the outsiders via an emphasis on the revival of
certain cultural institutions: “The more distinctive such elements are with respect
to other cultures . . . t he greater their potential value as symbols of the society’s
unique character. . . . [It becomes a form of nativism] which involve[s] an attempt
to revive extinct or at least moribund elements of culture.”26 The feelings of supe-
riority, interestingly, are not by themselves constitutive of nativism; rather, it is
the explanation or rationalization of a society’s domination, in spite of the fact
that it is inherently superior: “A dominated group which considers itself superior
will normally develop patterns of rational nativism from the moment that it is
brought under domination. . . . One of the commonest rationalizations for loss of
a dominant position is that it is due to a society’s failure to adhere closely enough
to its distinctive cultural patterns.”27 Thus, it is clear that Linton’s seminal contri-
bution to the anthropological theory of nativism is his observation regarding the
centrality of revivalism. However, by drawing attention to the connection between
assertions of superiority and revivalism, he unknowingly stumbled upon a criti-
cal link between exceptionalism and nativism, a subject I examine in chapter 5.
More than a decade after Linton’s article, two other articles crucial to our
understanding of nativism appeared, “Revitalization Movements” by Anthony
Wallace (1956), and “Reaction to Stress: A Comparative Study of Nativism” by
Michael Ames (1957). These scholars added to Linton’s work in important ways,
by both reinforcing some elements of his theory and focusing emphasis on others.
Wallace’s work places nativism within a larger continuum of societal reactions to

acute stress. Thus, nativism per se is not his only or perhaps even his primary
object of interest. All “phenomena of major cultural system innovation are char-
acterized by a uniform process,” he writes, “for which I propose the term ‘revital-
ization.’ ”28 Nativism is but one type of “cultural system innovation,” but there are
others, such as messianic movements. In a departure from Linton, Wallace sees
nativism and revivalism as distinct phenomena, although they both fall under
the category of revitalization. Nativism, for Wallace, is also more straightforward
than it is for Linton: “ ‘Nativistic movements’ . . . are revitalization movements
characterized by strong emphasis on the elimination of alien persons, customs,
values, and/or materiel.”29
Before addressing how Wallace defines revitalization, it is necessary to briefly
discuss the behavioral model within which it operates. Wallace shares with Linton
the view that nativism is more a group or societal phenomenon than an individual
one, but Wallace’s model focuses on the individual nonetheless. Specifically,
individual actions are informed by a certain “mental image” that he calls the
“mazeway,” which encompasses “nature, society, culture, personality, and body
image, as seen by one person.”30 Individuals navigate their way through life by
trying to handle various psychological stresses (though they must be “physiolog-
ically measurable”) that affect their mazeway. If the stress level becomes intoler-
able, individuals must attempt some kind of stress reduction by altering their
mazeway.31 The effort to reduce the stresses plaguing the mazeway signifies re
vitalization, in Wallace’s view. While Linton emphasizes the role of cultural
revival within nativism, Wallace’s idea of revitalization is not limited just to
revivalism, although it can also accommodate it. In theory, therefore, nativist
responses for Wallace can take other forms, although he does not describe what
these might be.
At nearly the same time as the appearance of Wallace’s piece, Ames published
another important treastise for the study of nativism. Ames agrees with Wallace
that nativist reactions to the introduction of outsiders, and the resulting stress that
their presence elicits, are not always aggressively hostile. As his research on en
counters between Westerners (“Whites”) and indigenous peoples demonstrates,
nativist responses can take either “resistive” or even “reformative” forms. The
former category includes the rejection of “the beliefs, values and practices of the
dominant society,” while the latter “is a relatively conscious attempt . . . on the part
of the subordinated group to obtain a personal and social integration through a
selected rejection, modification, and synthesis of both traditional and alien cul-
tural components,” citing the work of Fred W. Voget (1913–1997).32 Ames, how-
ever, does not focus on beliefs in cultural superiority as a catalyst for nativism; it
Nativism in American History 35
is the stress of the foreign presence that induces nativist reactions, rather than pre-
contact feelings of superiority.33
Neither Ames nor Wallace advocates a view of nativism as nuanced as Linton,
who, we will recall, included reactions of those belonging to the dominant culture as
no less nativistic than those of the dominated. Admitting that nativist responses
come in myriad forms, Ames articulates a definition of nativism that is elegantly
simple: “Nativism . . . means, in effect, the favoring of the in-group as opposed to
the out-group. Nativism, then, could be said to be any relatively conscious more
or less organ ized attempt by members of a society to revive or perpetuate
selected aspects of their culture or to construct a new more satisfying one.”34 Any
emphasis on the culture of the in-group by its own members, in a context of
contact with another culture, is nativism for Ames. With this view of nativism,
one could approach Japanese history and find perhaps dozens of significant
instances of nativism, not just sixteenth-century contact with the Europeans, as
suggested by Linton.
The essays by Linton, Wallace, and Ames are useful for historians individu-
ally and in different ways, but they also have an impact collectively. At a fun-
damental level, nativism is the result of cultural interaction. Members of one
culture react to the arrival of those from another. While hostility is certainly
one potential outcome of this encounter, nativism is not limited to anger and frus-
tration for the anthropologists. Nativism can also serve as the impetus for adapta-
tion and even cultural transformation. While these insights are by themselves useful
for historians, we must remember that nativism, as a signified and as a signifier,35
was born in an American context. No discussion of nativism, no matter how brief,
can be complete without an analysis of nativism in American history. While there
are major commonalities and also differences among the anthropologists whose
work we have discussed, the same is true for historical nativism by comparison
with its anthropological sibling.
Nativism in American History

As mentioned above, the recognition of a distinct condition known as nativism
has its origins in American history. Some scholars have argued that nativism is
perhaps even quintessentially American, a view with which the above anthropol-
ogists would doubtlessly not concur.36 Although negative views of new arrivals
in the colonies likely predate the formation of the United States, the key period in
the history of American nativism is the two or three decades before the outbreak
of the Civil War. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word
“nativism” was coined in 1844.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the first half of the nineteenth

century was the scope and pace of immigration into the United States. The two
largest groups of immigrants during this period w ere ethnic Germans and the
Irish. Of the two, however, the latter group arrived in much greater numbers be-
fore the outbreak of the Civil War. By 1850, nearly half of foreign-born Americans
w
ere Irish.37 As the above discussion of nativism in anthropology demonstrates,
the reaction of the “natives” to the arrivals (the in-group rather than the out-group,
to borrow Ames’s terms) is the locus of the nativistic reaction, and the case from
American history is no different. It was not uncommon during this period
for Americans to react negatively to the scale of immigration to the United
States. Although anthropologists insist that hostility is but one reaction among
others that is possible within nativism, it was clearly the predominant one among
Americans. It is for this reason that intolerance and bigotry are values associated
with American nativism during this period, and this remains the case even to
this day. Ira Leonard and Robert Parmet define nativism in the following way:
“Nativism, then, is defined by historians and sociologists as a deep-seated Ameri-
can antipathy towards internal ‘foreign’ groups of various kinds—cultural, na-
tional, religious, racial—which has erupted periodically into intensive efforts to
safeguard America from such perceived ‘threats.’ ”38 American nativism, like its
anthropological cousin, has two fundamental components, namely, a reaction
(“antipathy”) and a response (to “safeguard”).
As was the case with nativism in anthropology, nativism in American history
has its own foundational scholarly works that have shaped the usage of nativism
as an analytical category (both emic and etic). Unlike anthropology, these works
assume the form of lengthy monographs. The first of these is Ray Billington’s The
Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism, pub-
lished in 1938.39 The other major monograph on nativism is John Higham’s Strang-
ers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, published in 1955. To-
gether, these books cover more than a century of American history and comprise
the definitive studies of nativism in American history. While Billington’s work re-
mains within the confines of nativism as an emic concept, namely, something that
only applies to American history, Higham’s work indicates avenues of potential etic
usages of nativism, which is obviously more directly relevant to Japanese studies.
Billington and Anti-Catholicism

The title of Billington’s monograph is perhaps misleading to those who are not
Americanists, as it sounds like a work focused on American religion, and it is only
in the subtitle that the word nativism appears. While Billington analyzes the
Billington and Anti-C atholicism 37
cultural and political history of anti-Catholicism in the United States, it is not

immediately obvious to nonspecialists what the connection is between nativism
and anti-Catholicism, and he does not directly address or discuss this connection.
One would expect that immigration would assume the role of a catalyst for nativ-
ism, especially given the work of the anthropologists discussed above, but this is
not the case for Billington. While acknowledging the historical importance of
immigration during the nineteenth century, Billington believes that anti-
Catholicism was already firmly embedded in the minds of Americans prior to
these immigrant waves. It was this anti-Catholicism, he asserts, that provided the
energy for the vigorous anti-immigrant feelings of that period. Anti-Catholicism,
for Billington, is nativism, and its chief incarnation was Know-Nothingism in
pre–Civil War America.
In the period prior to the Revolutionary War, Americans firmly believed them-
selves to be a Protestant people, and this was a cultural legacy of both England
and the Reformation.40 The Eng lish feared the Catholic Church because of its
“antinational character”; rather than going to war against another sovereign state,
the English had to fight an opponent that had a rogues’ gallery of nations upon
which to call to do its bidding, including France and Spain.41 Naturally, the earli-
est colonists in the sixteenth century harbored these views as they took up resi-
dence in America. These feelings turned into direct action in America when the
first Catholics began arriving, mostly in Massachusetts and Maryland.42 Protes-
tant colonists fixated on the figure of the pope, referring to their movement as
No-Popery.43 The No-Popery movement became so unpleasant for Catholics that
many fled their homes and sought refuge in either Rhode Island or Pennsylvania.
By 1820, Billington argues that anti-Catholic feelings began to reemerge fol-
lowing roughly two generations of dormancy with the large-scale influx of im-
migrants from western Europe. Although he admits that the largest single group
of immigrants during this period w ere from Ireland, he does not emphasize this
point.44 One of the leading opponents of immigration during the first half of the
nineteenth century was Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), the renowned painter and
inventor. Morse believed, as did many if not most ordinary Americans, that Prot-
estantism was “our religion,” and that it “and Liberty are identical.”45 Fundamen-
tally, Catholics were not genuine Americans, even if native born, and this was even
more true of Catholic immigrants. Immigration and Catholicism, for Morse, were
essentially the same thing; to oppose one automatically meant opposing the other
(Billington 1938, 123). The latent anti-Catholicism of the previous century had
returned stronger than ever before.
During the colonial period, there was a general feeling among Protestant
Americans that the pope had plans to stamp out American freedom using his
minions, France and Spain, each of which had colonies of their own in North
America. After independence, these general anxieties morphed into accusations
of anti-A merican conspiracies that Protestants leveled at Catholics. The first
important manifestation of this fear emerged in the 1830s, when Protestants
asserted that the sheer number of Catholic immigrants to the United States
was part of a plot by the Catholic Church “to bring about the destruction of the
United States.” 46 In an atmosphere of such rhetoric, it is not surprising that
violence was often the result of encounters between Catholics and Protestants,
particularly in major American cities.
In order to illustrate the depth and pervasiveness of nativism qua anti-
Catholicism, Billington examines the penetration of such sentiments into the
middle and lower classes of American society. Interestingly, he chooses not to fo-
cus on the views of American elites.47 Irish immigrants during the first half of
the nineteenth century generally flocked to cities on the East Coast, especially
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The largely unskilled and uneducated Irish
had to compete for factory jobs with native-born workers. In places with workers
seeking to unionize, the Irish were especially appealing to capitalists, since the
Irish were more agreeable to lower wages than the native born. Billington observes
how the conflict caused by immigrant labor during this period affected the Amer-
ican working classes more directly than the rest of American society (Billington
1938, 322). Working-class Americans were probably not fond of the Catholic re-
ligion either, a feeling they shared with other Americans, but it was this direct
economic competition that pushed their support in the direction of nativism.
The story of the middle class was very different from that of the working class.
As a literate and propertied class, these Americans did not see immigrants as
threats to their economic livelihoods. While working-class Americans were not
as troubled by Catholicism as they were by cheap Irish labor, the same cannot be
said for the deeply religious members of the middle class. Protestant leaders,
desperately looking to galvanize the middle class in support of their anti-Catholic
efforts, made inflammatory speeches, accusing Catholics of being anti-biblical,
largely to no avail (Billington 1938, 142–143). Protestants made the charge that
Catholics hated the Bible out of fear of “Popery’s” exposure, but still were unable
to stir the religious passions of middle-class Americans. This situation changed
significantly in 1842. A Catholic priest in upstate New York had grown tired of
defending the Catholic theological position and decided to collect copies of the
King James Bible, which he publicly burned (Billington 1938, 157). Protestant lead-
ers w
ere enraged, and rumors spread of Bible burnings in other states. The mid-
dle class had been roused into anti-Catholic action. One of the important results
of this incident in 1842 was the effort to create a pan-Protestant unity among
Billington and Anti-C atholicism 39
American churches, a project that was largely completed by the end of the decade
(Billington 1938, 265).
As the epicenter of Irish immigration during the first half of the nineteenth
century, New York saw the rise of the first nativist political organization, the Na-
tive American Democratic Association, which formed in 1835 (Billington 1938,
131). From 1835 to 1840, two goals of the association emerged. First, they wanted
to prevent foreigners from participating in the pol itical process; they sought to
deny voting rights to immigrants.48 The second fear was that the legion of poor
and destitute among the immigrant waves would create a profound drain on
state resources.49
In 1843, the Native American Democratic Association was succeeded by the
American Republican party, another nativist organization that formed within the
context of New York politics (Billington 1938, 200). As the American Republicans
became more prominent and influential in the early 1840s, they settled on a fun-
damental plank in their platform, one that influenced subsequent nativist poli-
tics, namely, the requirement that all immigrants reside in the United States for a
period of twenty-one years before becoming naturalized citizens (Billington 1938,
203). The period of residency at the time was five years, but as recently as 1802, it
had been fifteen. The Alien Sedition Acts of 1798 had raised the requirement to
fifteen from five; after a brief period, it was simply lowered to the number that it
had been previously.
Billington’s monograph culminates in the most successful of the nativist
parties in the era before 1860, the Know-Nothings. Billington confesses that the
exact origins of the Know-Nothings are a subject of debate among historians, but
he credits Charles B. Allen of New York with providing the Know-Nothing move-
ment with its “nucleus by forming a secret patriotic society known as the Order
of the Star-Spangled Banner” in 1849 (1938, 381). Political anger, however, was not
the sole, or even the most important, motivation for joining the order; many mem-
bers simply could not resist the lure of its secrecy. As Billington describes, “Grips,
passwords, signs, phrases of recognition, signals of distress, and other well-tested
formulae were successfully used by the Order during its formative years and prob-
ably lured many curious Americans into its ranks” (1938, 381). This secrecy, which
in the beginning made the order and later the Know-Nothings so appealing, ulti-
mately spelled their undoing on the eve of the Civil War, when nativists were
attacked for it (Billington 1938, 419).
The order evolved into the Know-Nothing party, which officially did not
exist, owing to this secrecy.50 While the “native” parties of the 1830s emerged
in response to the arrival of immigrants, such that Billington acknowledges
the growth of anti-i mmigrant sentiment within nativism, the Know-Nothings
reverted back to anti-C atholicism, since the problematic immigrant groups

(the Irish and the Germans) were mostly Catholic (Billington 1938, 387). Anti-
Catholicism, in other words, included opposition to immigrants. The Know-
Nothings vowed that Catholics must be prevented from access to public office and
“if possible, driven back to the priest-ridden lands from whence they had come”
(Billington 1938, 386).
It is generally believed that the failure of the Know-Nothings was attributable to
the issue of slavery. As indicated above, there was a little more to their failure than
just slavery, such as their secret society practices that many Americans eventually
found to be off-putting. The Know-Nothings were also not above using fisticuffs
to advance their pol itic al agenda (Billington 1938, 420).51 For Americans who
were outside of party politics, these factors began to foster an overall negative
image of the Know-Nothings by 1860, but it was the issue of slavery that caused an
internal corrosion within the party and ultimately ended its political relevance.
On the issue of slavery, the Know-Nothings were officially neutral, and proslav-
ery former Whigs and Democrats felt comfortable in joining the party for this
reason. However, antislavery Republicans were deeply opposed to this position
of the Know-Nothings, and the prospect of their exodus from the party loomed
throughout the 1850s. At the same time, Southerners were disturbed that the
Know-Nothings had not publicly declared their support of slavery, so that their
concerns over a quiet takeover of the party by abolitionists only grew worse. These
centrifugal forces eventually prevailed, so that Northern Know-Nothings bolted to
the Republican Party, while Southern Know-Nothings overtook the party and
transformed it into a southern institution beginning in 1855 (Billington 1938, 427).
The national ambitions of the Know-Nothings came to an end with the presidential
election of 1856.52
Higham and “Racism”

Billington’s monograph was a kind of pole star for studies of American nativism
until the publication of John Higham’s Strangers in the Land in 1955. Although
the temporal scope of Higham’s work might indicate that it resumes the story of
nativism begun by Billington, this is only partially true. In the first place, Higham
presents a significant critique of Billington, so that it is not an exaggeration to
characterize Higham’s monograph as a corrective of Billington’s work. Moreover,
it also supplements Billington’s work, chiefly by offering definitions of American
nativism and even nativism more broadly conceived. In other words, Higham ini-
tiates the transition within American history between the emic and etic versions of
nativism. It is for these reasons and others that Higham oversaw the republication
Higham and “Racism” 41
of his book in 1988, more than three decades after its initial appearance. Higham
structures his book in a similar way to Billington. Like the earlier volume, his also
culminates at a certain historical moment; with Billington, it was the formation of
the Know-Nothings, while Higham looks to the rise of the modern Ku Klux Klan.
Similarities aside, Higham’s book has long since eclipsed Billington’s as the au-
thoritative study of nativism, and it continues to exert influence in the American
field to this day.
Since Billington ends his analysis at the beginning of the Civil War, he never
addresses another important implication of American nativism, namely jingoism,
to which Higham devotes more than a little attention in his book. As Americans
recovered from the Civil War, the United States began to assert itself internation-
ally. Following the example of the European powers, the United States came to
acquire its own colonial possessions by the end of the nineteenth century. The
drive to become an imperialist power was fueled by jingoism, which Higham
calls “the most aggressive expression of late nineteenth century nationalism.” 53
A lthough jingoism and nativism are fundamentally different, since the former is
outwardly focused as opposed to the inward focus of the latter, Higham (1988,
76–77) views the two “anti-foreign movements” as complementary, even though
supporters of one were not always supporters of the other. Thus, the view that
Higham presents is one in which the hostility of nativism found a new outlet in
jingoism as the political urgency of immigration subsided after 1860. With the
advent of the “new” immigration by the 1890s, nativism reemerged and assumed
a position alongside that of jingoism. It was in the context of the new immigra-
tion that jingoism increased “the depth and intensity of . . . nativism” (Higham
1988, 77).
Billington mentions the role of immigrant waves during the early decades of
the nineteenth century in his book, although he is not especially concerned with
its ethnic breakdown, as he wants to emphasize the deepening of anti-Catholicism
with the arrival of foreigners in America. The Irish and ethnic Germans were the
two largest groups of arrivals during this period, with the Irish arriving in larger
numbers than the Germans. While the presence of Catholic Irish and Germans
in America supported Billington’s argument, he makes no mention of Protestant
immigrants during this time, especially those from Canada, Britain, and Scandi-
navia. Together, these pre–Civil War immigrant groups became known as the
“old” immigrants by the end of the nineteenth century. Having lived in the United
States for at least a generation or two, these immigrants were viewed by ordinary
Americans as mostly assimilated, including the Catholics, and even the Irish
(Higham 1988, 26). The recognition of the old emerged only with the arrival of
the new immigrants, most of whom came from eastern and southern Europe. One
of the reasons for the easing of anti-Catholic feelings at the end of the nineteenth
century was that many of the new immigrants were not Catholics; in fact, many
eastern European immigrants were Jewish. A second reason was that the rumors
of a papal takeover of America never actually materialized. Americans compared
the new with the old, and acknowledged the phenotypic similarities of the latter
to themselves: “By Western European standards, the masses of southern and east-
ern Europe were educationally deficient, socially backward, and bizarre in
appearance” (Higham 1988, 65). In a time before what Higham calls “racism,” an
issue to which I return later, Americans could “easily open to question” the “white-
ness” of the new immigrants, since “on the whole, [they had] an exotic look about
them for ethnological as well as cultural reasons” (168).
The racial attitudes of Americans during the nineteenth century have
complex origins. The most significant source of racial ideas came from Anglo-
Saxonism, according to Higham, and it emerged as the most virulent and
inspirational one for Americans by the beginning of the twentieth century.
Anglo-Saxonism was an intellectual and literary movement that began in the early
nineteenth century under the influence of European romanticism. European
intellectuals associated with romanticism, including G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831),
Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803), and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–
1814), 54 believed that nations w ere organic entities comprising people sharing a
common language, culture, and history. It was the destiny of these people to form
nation-states, regardless of the political boundaries that usually separated them
from one another. American intellectuals eagerly read the works of romantic
scholars and writers and began to ponder the ways in which their ideas related to the
American experience. In the eighteenth century, Eng lish intellectuals asserted
that the Goths w ere the forerunners of the Eng lish. The Goths were a blanket
term that included “Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and the other primitive tribes that
invaded the Roman Empire” (Higham 1988, 9). Ideas associated with Gothicism
came over to America with the colonists, and were known among American
intellectuals by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thus, it was Gothicism
combined with romanticism that produced the movement known as Anglo-
Saxonism. Americans were an Anglo-Saxon people, who themselves were “the
finest offshoot of the Teutonic branch of the Goths” (Higham 1988, 10).
In the pre–Civil War era, Anglo-Saxonism failed to have much of an impact
on nativism, according to Higham, and it would be a grave mistake to equate it in
any way with nativism at this point, as Japanologists might be tempted to do with
Kokugaku in mind. Higham cites two reasons for Anglo-Saxonism’s latency. First,
its connection with romantic nationalism lent little, if any, “intellectual and
emotional pungency essential to a serious, nativistic appeal” (Higham 1988, 11).
Views of ethnic difference and even superiority simply did not inspire the fear
and hostility that Higham believes must be present in order to invoke nativism.55
Second, Anglo-Saxonism, associated as it was with literature, philosophy, and his-
tory, was largely known only to the most educated and cultured elite in American
society. For this reason, Higham refers to it as “patrician nationalism” (1988, 32).
Since Higham’s monograph concentrates on the period after 1860, these remarks
only contextualize Anglo-Saxonism during the period analyzed by Billington,
as it highlights and foreshadows its full historical impact in Higham’s analysis.
While large numbers of new immigrants had been arriving in the United States
since the end of the Civil War, they generally escaped the scorn of native-born
Americans, as nativism itself had declined. By the end of the nineteenth century,
Americans had begun to refocus their attention on immigration once more. By
fixating on obvious physical differences, Anglo-Saxonism enjoyed a resurgence,
and it seemed more relevant than ever. One of the intellectual leaders of Anglo-
Saxonism was Henry Cabot Lodge (1850–1924), who completed a doctoral thesis
at Harvard on Anglo-Saxon law in the 1870s. Lodge believed that Americans were
an Anglo-Saxon people, which made them a superior race; immigrants from east-
ern and southern Europe, of course, not only were inferior peoples, but also rep-
resented a significant threat to the United States. Lodge took these views with him
to Congress, where he, for more than thirty years in both the House and Senate,
famously championed immigration restriction, among other political causes.
The popularity of Lodge’s positions on immigration cannot fully account
for the appeal of Anglo-Saxonism, nor does it adequately explain its overall lack
of influence in the antebellum period. Higham observes how the development of
naturalism infused Anglo-Saxonism with a scientific air that enhanced its charm
with elites as it spread to all regions and social groups within the United States.
The most prominent of the naturalists was Charles Darwin (1809–1882), whose
work describing his theory of evolution by natural selection, On the Origin of Spe-
cies (1859), stirred the imaginations of Anglo-Saxonists in the United States. As a
vestige of early nineteenth-century romantic nationalism, Anglo-Saxonists looked
to history and literature for evidence to prove the existence of “national races”;
naturalists focused on “the great ‘primary’ groupings of Homo sapiens and used
physiological characteristics such as skin color, stature, head shape, and so on, to
distinguish them from the other” (Higham 1988, 134). Specifically, naturalists un-
der the influence of Darwin’s work argued that the characteristics of individual
organisms changed only gradually over very long periods of time; characteristics
that enhanced survival were naturally selected for perpetuation, while those that
did not resulted in the death of organisms and, eventually, the extinction of their
species. For those who w ere so inclined, these ideas could be applied to human
beings, since humans were also natural organisms, especially the idea of the
“survival of the fittest.” The success of the United States and its overwhelming
plurality of ethnic Anglo-Saxons were proof that Americans were a “fit” people.
Darwinism seemingly sanctioned and supported Anglo-Saxon assertions of
racial superiority.
Ideas inspired by nineteenth-century science had the salutary effect of
confirming what followers of Anglo-Saxonism had already known. At the same
time, it made the prospect of unrestricted immigration even more alarming. The
presence of less “fit” peoples, therefore, was a threat to the survival of all native-born
Americans. The news only got worse with the introduction of “the new science of
heredity” symbolized by the work of Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) at the beginning
of the twentieth century. Mendel proved that the individual traits of organisms
were passed from one generation to the next in a mathematically predictable way.
The combined influence of Darwin, Mendel, and others gave rise to the eugenics
movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Eugenics supported the “race thinking” of Anglo-Saxonism in a “scientific
rather than romantic” way (Higham 1988, 152). Supporters of eugenics believed that
the desirable traits of a population could be manipulated via selective reproduction
in order successfully to perpetuate these traits over time. Conversely, undesirable
traits could similarly be “bred out” of populations, or those populations plagued
with these traits would be forbidden from reproducing in order to ensure the ex-
tinction of their traits (and by extension the problematic population itself ). Like
much of the American populace, eugenicists were disturbed by the new immi-
grants; they w ere convinced that these people were clearly “inferior” to the Anglo-
Saxon natives, and believed that their movement could supply the needed remedy
for the national ailment (Higham 1988, 275). The Anglo-Saxonists were inspired
by naturalism and eugenics to formulate a new discourse on race that had a
decidedly sharper edge to it than the somewhat benign racial ideas of the past.
This new racial thinking, they believed, enjoyed the status of one of the “proved
truths of science” (Higham 1988, 276).
A New York intellectual and eugenicist, Madison Grant (1865–1937), penned
what Higham (1988, 155) calls the most influential work of nativism “in recent
American history,” The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Grant was mostly con-
cerned with the impact of the new immigrants on American society. Like many
intellectuals of the early twentieth century, Grant’s views of race w ere informed,
at least partially, by the ideas of William Z. Ripley (1867–1941). Ripley argued that
there were three European races: Teutonic, Alpine, and Mediterranean (Higham
1988, 154). With distinct traits and characteristics, each of these races hailed
from different parts of Europe. When applied to the history of immigration to
the United States, Ripley’s ideas confirmed that the perceived differences between
the old and the new immigrants were substantive and real, and that many of the
old immigrants, as well as the native born, w ere Teutonic in origin, as opposed to
the Alpine and Mediterranean origins of the new immigrants. Grant applied
these same ideas to argue for a separation of the races in the United States. “The
general mixture of European races under way in America,” Higham (1988, 156)
writes, was simply unacceptable to Grant. Naturally, Grant was also a strong ad-
vocate for immigration restriction, in addition to his opposition to the practice of
miscegenation. Higham sees Grant’s ideas as important for two basic reasons.
First, they w
ere symbolic of a general resurgence of nativism in America; specifi-
cally, the decade leading up to the publication of Grant’s book saw “the return of
nativism” (Higham 1988, 159). Second, by elevating the concept of race to “the su-
preme value,” Grant was responsible for a fundamentally new development in
race thinking: “This, at last, was racism” (Higham 1988, 157).
The new heights reached by nativism around the time of World War I spawned
racism in the minds of Americans regardless of region or class, and the rise of a
new Ku Klux Klan signified the advent of this modern era. The KKK’s first incar-
nation emerged after the Civil War, when ex-C onfederate soldiers and their
sympathizers tried to advance the Southern cause even in defeat. The terror tactics
that they used targeted, of course, the newly freed Southern blacks, and members
of the KKK hoped to thwart any attempt to integrate blacks into white society.
The familiar cry of states’ rights was another aspect of the Southern agenda
before and during the Civil War for which members of the KKK continued to
struggle. Higham observes how this version of the KKK became a victim of
history when it became clear that the goals of the old South would never be real-
ized. With the rise of racism, and its u nion with Anglo-Saxonism during the first
two decades of the twentieth century, a new KKK arose as the most notorious
offspring of the two.
There are two important legacies of this new KKK for American history. First,
the South became the geographic center for American nativism (Higham 1988,
288). While Americans may not express much surprise at this observation, Higham
argues that this is only a relatively recent development. Other regions of the coun-
try, especially the northeast, were more relevant to the history of nativism in
previous eras. For example, New England was the birthplace of Anglo-Saxonism,
a key ingredient in the ideological soup of the KKK (Higham 1988, 139). The Irish
settled in large numbers in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and it was New
York that Madison Grant called home. During much of the nineteenth century,
Southerners were less troubled by immigration than their Northern counterparts,
most likely because they w ere exposed to much less of it. It is perhaps for this
reason that anti-C atholic sentiment was also not as vehement as it was in the
North. In fact, in some places, such as Louisiana, some Catholics even joined
the Know-Nothings. The second legacy of the new KKK was its complete and
utter embrace of every aspect of American nativism (Higham 1988, 139). They were
antiblack, anti-i mmigrant, and anti-Semitic; they were also pro–A nglo-Saxon
and pro-Protestant. By standing for Protestantism, they were also vigorously anti-
Catholic, a feeling that “grew to surpass every other nativistic attitude” (Higham
1988, 291). When one considers Billington’s earlier work on nativism in tandem
with Higham’s, it is not an exaggeration to say that the KKK completes the story
of American nativism by making it come full circle, and it is with the advent of
the KKK that Higham ends his book.
Billington versus Higham: Implications

for Japanese Studies
Billington’s work, while significant for our understanding of American nativism,
is of limited historiographical use, as he never defines nativism outside of identi-
fying it exclusively with anti-Catholicism. For this reason, we can confidently say
that Billington’s concept of nativism is emic with little potential for development
into an etic.56 This is not the case with Higham, who provides his readers not only
with definitions of nativism, but also observations, insights, and historiographical
analyses that are useful for scholars working in contexts other than the American
one. Higham’s concept, therefore, has an etic potentiality (and intentionality)
that Billington’s does not. At the outset of his monograph, Higham asserts that
nativism is not a singular category; there are, in fact, three distinct forms,
namely, anti-Catholic, antiradical, and racial nativism. The first category, anti-
Catholicism, was the focus of Billington’s work, and Higham acknowledges its
role in the history of American nativism. As stated previously, he disagrees with
the sole identification of nativism with anti-Catholicism, since it “truly [became]
nativistic . . . and reached [its] maximum intensity . . . when the Church’s adher-
ents seemed dangerously foreign agents in the national life” (Higham 1988, 5). In
other words, it was only at the point when native-born Protestants found them-
selves in the midst of Catholic immigrants that their hatred of Catholicism
morphed into nativism. While the two phenomena have this historical linkage in
the American context, one does not necessarily imply the other. The second and
third forms of nativism are ones that Billington’s work completely ignores, yet they
played central roles in American history. Catholicism, while problematic to
working-class Americans, was less of an issue for industrialists, who were more
supportive of immigration. This support does not mean that industrialists had no
Billington versus Higham 47
reservations about their immigrant employees. Radicalism, as an outgrowth of

the French Revolution, represented a significant threat to the American capitalist
system (Higham 1988, 8). Industrialists were concerned that some of their immi-
grant workers might harbor radical ideas and spread them among the others in
the factory or workplace, both foreign born and native born. Higham observes,
“The first two traditions [anti-Catholicism and antiradicalism] declared what
America was not. . . . They aimed from the outset to define the nation’s enemies
rather than its essence” (1988, 9). The final form of nativism, racial, was distinct
by comparison with the other two in that “it began the other way around. . . . [It
was] the concept that the United States belongs in some special sense to the Anglo-
Saxon ‘race’ . . . [as a] source of national greatness” (Higham 1988, 9). It is racial
nativism to which Higham wants to draw the most attention in his work, as we
have seen.
Another important contribution of Higham’s work are the definitions for and
insightful observations of the general characteristics of nativism that provide use-
ful avenues for comparative analysis. Nativism, he writes, “should be defined as
intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign . . . con-
nections” (Higham 1988, 4). This definition provides historians with a chance to
apply nativism as a category to other contexts, a possibility that Higham himself
acknowledges when he asks rhetorically, “Does it [nativism] extend to every oc-
casion when native inhabitants of a country turn their faces or raise their hands
against strangers in their midst?” (1988, 3). As we saw in the discussion of Susan
Burns’ work on Kokugaku, Japan scholars have long looked to nativism as con-
nected in some way to nationalism, perhaps as a precursor, and Higham also sees
a link between the two: “In every guise, the nativist stood always as a nationalist
in a defensive posture. He chose a foreign adversary, and defined him, in terms of
a conception of the nation’s most precious and precarious attributes” (1988, 169;
emphasis in original). As these remarks demonstrate, Higham does not simply
argue for a connection between nativism and nationalism; nativism, in his anal-
ysis, is a specific form of nationalism. It is not enough to dislike foreigners for
their “personal and cultural traits,” since it only becomes nativistic when these
“unfavorable reactions” are “integrated with a hostile and fearful nationalism”
(Higham 1988, 24).
Dislike, rather than esteem, is the hallmark of nativism for Higham, but
he seeks to emphasize the intensity of negative emotions in the development
of nativism. “Nativism,” he writes, “cut deeper than economic jealousy or social
disapproval. It touched the springs of fear and hatred; it breathed a sense of crisis”
(1988, 162). Such intense feelings only make sense in a context whereby people
interact, as was the case with American nativism. It is difficult to imagine such
intense negative emotions directed at abstract concepts or images. In his discus-

sion of the connection between jingoism and nativism, Higham (1988, 77) observes
how both were “anti-foreign movements,” whereby the former was directed ex-
ternally and the latter internally. Here again, it is clear that conquest over foreign
peoples abroad is informed by a contempt and sense of superiority that parallels
the treatment of immigrants domestically. Higham’s definition of nativism and
his general observations of it prove quite useful for historians interested in con-
texts other than the American one. Higham, while focusing on the history of
American nativism, opens up possibilities for comparative analysis that are as useful
as the theories formulated by anthropologists working during the same era.
Higham’s work not only supplements that of Billington but supercedes it in
important ways. However, just as Billington chose to spare the American people
his moral rod, Higham’s observations concerning the development of American
racism perform a similar ideological function. Higham criticizes Billington for
his skewed definition of nativism, but his own definition of racism as emerging
only after Madison Grant’s work around the time of World War I is perhaps equally
problematic. As we saw, Grant’s theories of race were more concerned with divi-
sions among Europeans and apparently had little to say about non-Europeans. In
the context of calls to limit Asian immigration, especially from Japan, it was not
long after the appearance of Grant’s theory that it was applied to non-Europeans,
as the work of Lothrop Stoddard (1883–1950), a “disciple” of Grant, demonstrates
(Higham 1988, 272). The obvious weakness of this argument is the implied
dismissal of American attitudes and practices regarding slavery. By definition, the
institution of slavery itself is not technically racism for Higham. In fact, the inhu-
mane institution of slavery is barely analyzed at all in Higham’s work, perhaps
because it falls almost completely out of the book’s temporal scope (though it
falls within Billington’s, and he completely ignores it). Higham’s observations
concerning racial attitudes in the era before Madison Grant fall under the cate-
gory of Anglo-Saxonism as racial nativism. It is worth mentioning, however, that
Anglo-Saxonism was a product of the interests of American intellectuals in
German romanticism. Historicist observations such as Higham’s pass no judg-
ment on something as notorious as slavery. Racism (before 1916), in other words,
was not even racism, and was still not even racism after it was (concerned as it
was only with Europeans).
Eric Kaufmann and American Hypocrisy

Recent scholarship has begun to question the assumptions made by American
historians that located the source of American identity chiefly in a liberal cosmo-
Eric Kaufmann and American Hypocrisy 49
politanism connected to Protestantism. Scholars have assumed that while other

nation-states emerged from ethnic nations, as was the case with Japan, the United
States has always been a civic nation. The sociologist Eric Kaufmann has chal-
lenged this view by advancing the provocative notion that an ethnic identity,
while latent during the colonial period, prominently emerged during the first half
of the nineteenth century.57 This development not only paralleled the rise of
nativism but also informed it in very profound and important ways. Nativism,
therefore, was not an aberration but the logical extension of American notions
of ethnicity. The development of ideas of American ethnicity is important be-
cause it draws pre-1900 America closer to Tokugawa Japan rather than serving as
the analytical wedge that prevents any comparison between the two. While cos-
mopolitanism is closely associated with the American identity today, Kaufmann
shows how this was not always the case.
Kaufmann makes the insightful observation that the term “nativism” is mis-
leading, since native birth in the United States was actually irrelevant to nativ-
ists, serving as “a shorthand for membership in the dominant national ethnic
group.” 58 Thus, the status of being foreign born was not by itself the source of na-
tivist scorn; similarly, the status of being native born did not free a person from
their hostility either. Kaufmann cites examples of “British (and Anglo-Canadian)
Protestant” immigrants at whom the nativists “barely blinked.” 59 Catholics dur-
ing this time, even if born in the United States, were still the target of rejection
and exclusion. Orestes Brownson (1803–1876) called attention to this hypocrisy
as well in 1845: “The Native American party is not a party against admitting
foreigners to the rights of citizenship, but simply against admitting a certain class
of foreigners. It does not oppose Protestant Germans, Protestant Eng lishmen,
Protestant Scotchmen, nor even Protestant Irishmen. It is really opposed only to
Catholic foreigners. The party is truly an anti-Catholic party, and is opposed
chiefly to the Irish, because a majority of the emigrants to this country are prob-
ably from Ireland, and the greater part of these are Catholics.”60 It is for this
reason that Kaufmann describes nativism as a kind of “ethnic nationalist phe-
nomenon,” which is arguably the simplest of the explanations for nativism that
we have seen to this point in the present discussion.61
Like Higham, Kaufmann sees the rise of Anglo-Saxonism as an essential
ideological foundation for American nativism. Higham acknowledges that Anglo-
Saxonism was an important aspect of American intellectual history in the ante-
bellum period, but it was a minor one that was confined to “patrician” intellectuals
in New England. While not necessarily challenging this observation, Kaufmann
believes that the foundational ideas of Anglo-Saxonism were very prominent
before 1860, captivating all social groups and regions even during the eighteenth
century. Just as Billington had argued for the very early roots of anti-Catholicism,
locating their origins in the precolonial period, Kaufmann similarly sees the
foundational ideas for Anglo-Saxonism as already developed by the end of the
sixteenth century.62 These ideas focused on the mythical origins of the English,
whose German ancestors were believed to have developed a notion of and great
esteem for freedom, which they took with them in their migration to Britain. It
was there that the freedom-loving Anglo-Saxons were conquered by the French-
speaking Normans and forced to live under their “yoke” for the next five centu-
ries.63 Settlement in the American colonies represented a chance for intrepid
English people to rediscover and reactualize this Anglo-Saxon value of freedom.
Whig Eng lish historians advocated this myth in their writings, so it is perhaps
understandable that eighteenth-century colonial Whigs applied it to North
America, “defin[ing] the genealogy of the New Republic.”64
These attitudes were pervasive among a pre–Revolutionary War population
that was mostly English (over 60 percent) and overwhelmingly British (80 per-
cent) and Protestant (98 percent).65 Kaufmann is undaunted by the prevailing
view of American identity in the pre-1776 period that asserts ethnic diversity
among Americans had superseded any transregional consciousness. Specifically,
there w ere four distinct regions among the American colonies that began as
ethnic enclaves; they were initially American destinations for British colonists,
with each British group bound for a specific American region. It was not long,
Kaufmann (2004) observes, before these regions lost their British ethnic identi-
ties as they converged into a common cultural identity. The cultural adhesive
that fused the regions in this way, he argues, was “the rise of a New England-
inf luenced, pan-Anglo-Protestant ethnicity” (Kaufmann 2004, 14). This develop-
ing awareness, coupled with the Anglo-Saxon myths articulated by British
Whig historians, became “the cultural precursors of an incipient American na-
tion” (14). Kaufmann agrees with Billington that the presence of Catholic terri-
tories to the north and south of the American colonies deepened the sense of
anti-Catholicism, and the French and Indian War did the same, with the added
effect of heightening awareness of their “inherited British . . . sensibilities” (13).
As the Anglo-Saxon myth overtook any other British identity among Ameri-
cans, whether they were of Eng lish descent or not, the “cultural markers” of
an American ethnicity began to take shape. “They knew themselves,” Kaufmann
writes, “by the cultural markers of the white race, [American] English language/
surname, nonconformist Protestant religion, and liberal ideology” (2004, 13).
In other words, most Americans w ere becoming WASPs by the late colonial pe-
riod. Perhaps the most crucial part of this emerging identity was the idea of the
yeoman, an independent and self-sufficient farmer glorified by American intel-
lectuals, including Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) (Kaufmann 2004, 21). An im-
age of Americans as an Anglo-Saxon race of yeoman farmers began to emerge

in the eighteenth century. It was the myth of the yeoman, Kaufmann believes,
more so than the Whig histories, that exerted an influence that transcended region
and class in American society. In this way, Anglo-Saxonism filtered down to the
most ordinary American.
Jefferson’s link to the promotion of Anglo-Saxon ideas is not limited to his
esteem for the yeoman farmer. Jefferson was perhaps the most erudite intellectual
of his day; he was keenly interested in a wide range of subjects, history among
them. He was certainly aware of and influenced by the Whig historians who had
argued that Anglo-Saxon ideals, germinated in the forests of Germany, had been
suppressed for centuries under the “yoke” of their Norman conquerors. Jefferson
and others added to this myth and gave it epic proportions by believing that
“the Anglo-Saxon English had self-selected themselves through immigration to
escape the British . . . Norman yoke and bring the torch of freedom to Amer-
ica” (Kaufmann 2004, 138). In a famous episode in American history, Jefferson is
believed to have remarked to John Adams (1735–1826) that Americans w ere “the
children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night; and on the other side, Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs from whom we
claim the honour of being descended, and whose political principles and form of
government we have assumed” (quoted in Kaufmann 2004, 17–18).
Ideas regarding an American ethnicity did not develop into a full-fledged eth-
nic identity until after 1776. Kaufmann does not challenge the standard view in
American history that a civic identity emerged after independence; instead, he ar-
gues that this American identity had always been a civic one. Not only were the
foundations for an ethnic identity laid in the pre-1776 era, but also this ethnic iden-
tity fully flowered alongside the emergent civic identity after 1776.66 The univer-
salist and cosmopolitan rhetoric that informed the development of the American
civic identity came from the same WASP ethnic identity that it was tasked with
rendering invisible. That is to say, Americans were not comfortable with the admis-
sion that their identity was an ethnic one, as that would make the new American
nation irredeemably similar to, not fundamentally different from, Europe. Cosmo-
politanism was the antidote to the ethnic excesses of their European counterparts,
and it lent itself more easily to the crafting of a civic consciousness, since there w
ere
supposedly no ethnic barriers to overcome. In fact, Kaufmann asserts, the evi-
dence for a common cultural identity in the colonies, followed by a nascent ethnic
one, is clear, and it was this “dominant ethnic group [that] furnished the ‘core’
myths, symbols, memories, and homeland maps that gave birth to the modern
nation” (2004, 11).
Kaufmann emphasizes the work of Americanists who have examined the
emergence of ascriptive discourses of Americanness as compelling evidence for
the latent ethnic identity among American colonists. Ascription in sociology is

the practice of associating characteristics and behaviors with members of a partic
ular group. These characteristics are viewed as natural and therefore immuta-
ble. Although ascription is not exclusively identified with the assertion of ethnic
differences, this was the case with the American colonists who “developed a sense
of ‘ascriptive,’ as opposed to civic, distinctiveness during the colonial period. This
ethnic distinctiveness was forged through conflict with the non-white Africans
and native Indians, and Catholic French (to the north and west) and Spanish (to
the south and west).”67
Kaufmann asserts that national identities, whether civic or even ethnic, do not
simply emerge as monoliths for all to see and to which anyone can refer in per
petuity. “The re-creation,” he writes, “of nations, therefore, rather than their mere
origin, must be an object of discussion.”68 In the American case, it was the influ-
ence of European romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century that
stirred the ethnic imaginations of Americans. Kaufmann cites the work of Herder,
Hegel, and Fichte as having an especially deep influence on American thinking.
These were scholars, Kaufmann argues, who “developed the idea that nations are
organic outgrowths of nature whose natural destiny is to express themselves
through independent statehood.”69 Naturally, these intellectuals had the German
people in mind, as none of them lived long enough to see a unified German state,
but their ideas confirmed, even as they gave shape to, the more amorphous sense
of American identity from the eighteenth century. Hegel was a particularly pop
ular intellectual among American elites during the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury; some Americans were so moved by his ideas that they undertook the study
of German in order to read his work in the original. It is perhaps difficult to
overstate his influence in America. On the issue of states as the realization of the
Idea, Hegel writes, “What is the material in which the final end of Reason is to be
realized? . . . This essential being is the u
nion of the subjective with the rational
will; it is the moral whole, the State.”70
The romantic idolization of nature was an important theme during the first
half of the nineteenth century in America. In the European context, the idea of
nature was a foil used by intellectuals to critique not only the near deification of
reason among Enlightenment intellectuals, but also the squalid and ugly con
sequences of urbanization. Nostalgia for the ways things used to be, before the
growth of large cities with their social and economic problems, followed closely
behind nature in the minds of romantics. When nationalism is mixed with ro-
manticism, the result is an image by which an intellectual “views the present as
an age of decline and seeks to use the idealized past to revive the virtues that
supposedly characterized the national ethnic group during its Golden Age.”71 If
the idealized past is associated exclusively with the “national ethnic group,” then
immigration becomes associated with the national decline. Once large-scale
immigration became an issue after 1820, Kaufmann writes, “This nostalgia even-
tually fired the ethnic nationalist phenomenon known as nativism” (2004, 23).
Kaufmann’s work has important implications for the history of American
nativism, despite the fact that nativism itself is not his primary interest. He has
focused in recent years on the history of America’s dominant ethnicity, which he
refers to as “Anglo-America.” Not surprisingly, American nativism, as the asser-
tion of a native-born identity, becomes an important testament to the existence
of a dominant American ethnicity; rather than ending in the nineteenth century
or in the early decades of the twentieth, he carries his analysis through the rest of
American history to the present. One of the many insightful analyses he offers in
his work is his observations concerning the rise of particularist discourses such
as Anglo-Saxonism, the intellectual foundation for nativism, at the same time as
universalist ones, chiefly cosmopolitanism. While some Americans in the nine-
teenth century w ere especially fond of one over the other, Kaufmann focuses on
those who espoused both. Using the phrase “double-consciousness,” coined by one
of the most famous American intellectuals who himself was an advocate of both,
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882),72 Kaufmann notes how this tension between
particularism and universalism, or, as he puts it, nativism and cosmopolitan-
ism, has been resolved only very recently, in the 1960s (2004, 308). “Double-
consciousness,” as Emerson observed, according to Kaufmann, is “a dualist state of
mind that allowed liberal cosmopolitanism and ethnicity to exist in the same
space” (2004, 31). It is the key to understanding the disconnect between American
ideas and practices.73
The process by which Americans lost their Britishness is an important one to
which Kaufmann has devoted his analytic attention. The assertion of liberalism
was one, if obvious, way that they did this. Ethnic groups, he observes, are formed
in either of two basic ways, fusion or fission, and he refers to the emergence of an
ethnic group as ethnogenesis. The development of an American ethnie followed
the model of fission, he argues (Kaufmann 2004, 18). Interestingly, Kaufmann
observes how the Japanese are an example of the ethnic fusion of peoples from
northern Asia and south and southeast Asia, an observation that is not especially
controversial for scholars of early Japan. The assertion that all ethnic groups are
the result of one process or the other has implications for a comparison of the
American and Japanese cases, something that Kaufmann himself does not
do. Americans today generally deny that they comprise an ethnic group, while
the Japanese generally deny that they are in any sense a hybrid (fused) people.
Kaufmann casually observes that the Japanese are a hybrid ethnicity, in the sense
that all ethnies are, as he forcefully argues for the existence of an ethnic conscious-
ness among Americans that was there at the beginning, the vestiges of which are
not difficult to find even to this day. The belief only in the existence of a civic iden-
tity among Americans, despite their assertions of a liberal Anglo-Saxon identity,
is symptomatic of “double-consciousness.”74
The window of lucid self-reflection, represented chiefly by Emerson, did not
remain open for long. With Emerson’s death, any prospect of resolving double-
consciousness during the nineteenth century faded. Although Anglo-Saxonism
as a literary movement declined over the course of the nineteenth century, the core
belief that Americans w ere an inherently Anglo-Saxon people endured. Before this
idea was relegated to white supremacists, however, it enjoyed one more glorious
moment in the work of historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932).75
Kaufmann argues that the process in which the tension between Anglo-
Saxonist ethnic discourses and cosmopolitanism was finally resolved began in
the 1920s and was completed by the 1960s. The supporters of cosmopolitanism
overcame “their Anglo-Saxonist opponents,” and alongside the idea of a civic na-
tional identity for Americans, it was enshrined as orthodoxy in the United States
(Kaufmann 2004, 70–71). This narrative represents an intellectual sequel to
Higham, whose work ends in the 1920s. Higham tries to assure his readers that
the end of his monograph on nativism is not as gloomy as it might seem. Writing
in the 1950s, Higham may have felt that intellectual change was in the air.
Kaufmann assures his readers that change did, in fact, occur. There are two impor-
tant consequences of this change. First, it relegates Anglo-Saxonist assumptions
regarding American ethnicity to ethnic extremists in the United States; such
assumptions are no longer considered to be mainstream. Second, it gives Ameri-
cans the ability to deny the racist beliefs and practices that are integral to the
American past. The rhetoric of universalism and cosmopolitanism does date to
the eighteenth century, and it is not difficult to find it espoused in the writings of
that period. The triumph of cosmopolitanism in recent decades gives some Amer-
icans license to ignore the ethnic-racial discourses that existed alongside cosmo-
politanism.76 Kaufmann’s work, in a sense, restores the past to America’s history.
When viewing Kaufmann’s insights against anthropological nativism, it
should not come as a surprise that ideas regarding an American ethnicity arose
in response to the arrival of immigrants during the first half of the nineteenth
century. The American case, even if we think of it as the original one, conforms
to the anthropological model at this basic level. Kaufmann expresses some frus-
tration that many Americanists have not studied nativism in this way: “Scholars
have often ignored the role of national ethnicity in the American case, believing
that the nativism of an exceptional nation requires an exceptional explanation.
Anthropological and American Nativism 55
Hopefully, this oversight can now be corrected.”77 Exceptionalism, the subject of

chapter 3, is the cause of a certain intellectual myopia with regard to American
history as it is written by American scholars. It is also a useful explanation, I be-
lieve, for why nativism has been wrongly applied to Tokugawa Japan, although
not in the cause of American exceptionalism, but in the cause of a kind of Japa
nese exceptionalism. Kaufmann’s work shows how studies of American nativism
have changed since the appearance of Higham’s monograph. Nativism, of course,
has not disappeared from the analytical radar of Americanists completely, but has
become contextualized among broader American intellectual trends.
Anthropological and American Nativism

The existence of disparate concepts of nativism, one developed from its original
American historical context and the other from anthropology, contributes to an-
alytical confusion for scholars and researchers, even those working in fields out-
side of Japanese studies. In the absence of any direct references, it can be unclear
which conceptual version is in play, and therefore equally unclear whether that
version is correctly applied. While there are areas of commonality between the
two, discussed below, it is important to foreground that discussion by observing
that the two concepts of nativism actually undermine and contradict one another.
Setting aside Billington’s conceptualization of nativism, which he likely never
envisioned as an etic one, both Linton (and his anthropological successors) and
Higham did endeavor to delimit a concept of nativism with broader applications
as etics. By emphasizing the encounter between technologically superior Euro
pean colonizers and indigenous people around the globe, Linton’s concept of
nativism cannot accommodate the immigrant context within which American
nativism developed in the first place.78 Higham’s nativists, therefore, would not be
nativists in Linton’s scheme, and Linton’s nativists (whether in-group or out-group)
would not be nativists in Higham’s. Consequently, strict adherence to one con-
cept can only be realized at the expense of the other. What the humanities and
the social sciences need is a new concept that is synthesized from these two com-
peting versions of nativism, and a discussion of the areas of intellectual overlap
between the two can become the foundation for this effort.
Not surprisingly, it is not always clear in studies of Kokugaku which meaning
of nativism is being invoked.79 For this reason, we are left having to glean its mean-
ing via usages among Japanologists. However, since anthropological nativism
can only be discussed in general terms, due to its numerous case studies, American
nativism lends itself better to historical comparison, even though the two forms
sometimes conflict with one another. Nonetheless, the two forms are connected
in three significant ways. First, the assertion of a native identity is important to

both. Second, in both the anthropological and American contexts, the term nativ-
ism carries negative connotations. And last, we see this assertion of a native iden-
tity in the context of an encounter between two distinct groups of people.
The invocation of a native identity is a crucial element in the identification
of nativism. By isolating this issue as a commonality, however, a critical weakness
of anthropological nativism is revealed, since it assumes both broad and narrow
forms. For those who view the term more narrowly, nativism is applied only to
the true natives or indigenous peoples, and this is likely the usage that prevails
among Japanologists. For other anthropologists, chiefly Linton, it applies both to
members of the indigenous group and to their European would-be colonizers. As
a result, nativism for these anthropologists is the set of responses to an encounter
between two groups of people in which the identity of either group is asserted.
The broad view of nativism within anthropology is not an analytical strength but
a profound weakness because it makes a strict adherence to Linton, as one of na-
tivism’s key conceptual formulators in the twentieth century, impractical. Since
American nativism has yet to be reconciled with anthropological nativism, it con-
stitutes an analytical category all its own, and this conceptual divergence gives
rise to significant differences between the two. First, the reaction of only the native
side is important in American nativism, not that of the immigrants themselves,
putting American nativism at odds with the broad view of anthropological
nativism. As we saw with Linton, anthropologists can invoke nativism in their
analysis of reactions by the out-group, namely, European colonizers. The struc-
tural analogue to these colonizers, as the out-group, are the immigrants, whose
reactions to their American reception are never discussed in the history of Amer-
ican nativism. Second, this assertion of a native American identity almost always
claims inherent superiority to that of the immigrants (the superiority of immi-
grant culture is never mentioned). Last, in anthropological nativism, the out
siders in the encounter are the ones with power (technological and otherwise),
while the natives are weak. In the American situation, it is the opposite case:
immigrants were often the victims of discriminatory practices at the hands of the
natives. Consequently, while the articulation of a native identity is an important
commonality between American and anthropological nativism, it is the source of
significant differences at the same time.
The work of Higham and Kaufmann shows that Americans w ere hardly above
attempts to describe American identity in racial and ethnic terms. Higham, in fact,
observes how some intellectuals did so with more than a little enthusiasm. Anglo-
Saxonism was the chief ideological culprit in the views of both scholars, but it
would be a mistake to identify Anglo-Saxonism with nativism. The most signifi-
cant reason for viewing the two separately is that Anglo-Saxonism as a literary
movement has its origins in the importation of European romanticism at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. It predates, therefore, large-scale European
immigration. As Higham observes, Anglo-Saxonism during the antebellum pe-
riod was confined mostly to New England “patrician” elites, and can hardly be
characterized as a national movement. The link between these articulations of
the national identity, as a response to the presence of foreign immigrants, was
eventually made by supporters of Anglo-Saxonism, but not until after the Civil
War. Kaufmann pushes Anglo-Saxonism even further back into the eighteenth
century, arguing that latent views of Americans as essentially an Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant people predated romanticism; romanticism, therefore, simply amplified
these feelings and bolstered their intellectual footing. Assertions of a native iden-
tity, by themselves, do not necessarily constitute nativism among Americanists.
A second commonality between these two forms of nativism is the inherent
negativity and perhaps even disdain that many Americans feel when discussing
nativism. These feelings influence, in turn, the ways that scholars use the term
“nativism” in their work. They either use the term after careful thought and per-
haps with reluctance, or apply the term uncritically as a kind of condemnation.
Nineteenth-century American nativists were bigots and even racists (although not
for Higham). They believed that they were members of a distinct ethnic group, so
that immigrants to the United States w ere always essentially different. Although
northern nativists, chiefly the Know-Nothings before the Civil War, were mostly
opposed to slavery, their stance on this issue is perhaps not enough to rescue them
from their well-earned negative historical portrayal. This negative image is strong
in Billington’s monograph, since he identified nativism with anti-Catholicism. The
celebrated religious tolerance of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Americans
becomes an irrational intolerance in Billington’s narrative. Higham’s work, how-
ever, is more sharply critical of nativism, culminating as it does in the rise of the
Ku Klux Klan. It is for this reason that nativism is so rarely claimed by present-
day Americans; nativism is a label that is applied to people by their critics, if it is
used at all. In anthropological nativism, there is a similar pejorative connotation.
For those who subscribe to the broad definition of nativism, the assertion of a
native identity by members of the in-group or the out-group may not always have
tragic consequences, but it at the very least strikes some scholars as irrational
and perhaps even silly. For those who view nativism as applying only to native
peoples, the invocation of their identity is not just irrational; it is irrational in a
way that only indigenous peoples can be. For scholars who subscribe to this view,
nativist responses are phenomena that belong solely to such people. Euro-
American colonizers, Linton notwithstanding, are never nativists themselves.
As one anthropologist observed in the 1950s, nativism was a response among

“primitive” people.80 Thus, the invocation and application to scholarly analyses
of nativism amount to nothing more or less than an utter condemnation of
another culture.
While the assertion of a native identity helps to simplify and, at the same time,
complicate our understanding of nativism in general, a point upon which both
forms of nativism converge is the encounter between at least two social groups.
The analysis offered by Ames demonstrates this very well; concepts of in-group
and out-group become nonsensical unless they refer to culturally distinct groups.
The work of Anthony Wallace and of Simone Clemhout, whose essay “Typol-
ogy of Nativistic Movements” is also foundational for anthropological nativ-
ism, provides even more details for the critical context of nativism identified by
Linton, namely, colonialism. Although nativism is not his primary interest, Wal-
lace characterizes it as a frequent component of revitalization: “Because a major
part of the program for revitalization movements had been to expel the persons or
customs of foreign invaders or overlords, they have been widely called ‘nativistic
movements.’ ”81 Clemhout echoes this view: “Such stress of culture occurs when
two different cultures come in contact with each other, through conquest, inva-
sion, colonialism.”82 Clemhout’s argument, while not dramatically different from
Wallace’s, does not seem immediately relevant to Tokugawa Japan, even to the
Bakumatsu period. This is not the case with Wallace’s view. His phrase “expel the
persons or customs of foreign invaders” recalls jō’i, the Tokugawa slogan that was
interpreted to mean the expulsion of Westerners from Japan in the nineteenth
century. It would appear that Totman’s instinct to somehow incorporate the
“expel the barbarian” movement into the discussion of nativism is a good one.
With the attention of American scholars diverted to Kokugaku as nativism, it
has not yet received any substantive analysis as such. I address this issue at length
in chapter 2.
One possible explanation for the confusion of Japanologists in the United
States with regard to nativism is an essay written by Vittorio Lanternari called
“Nativistic and Socio-religious Movements: A Reconsideration” (1974). As has
been the case with all of the other articles examined under the rubric of anthro-
pological nativism, this essay is also crucial to the ways in which scholars have
understood nativism as a category. Lanternari observes that nativism (or nativis-
tic movements) is “defined as responses to culture contact.”83 Although it is not
difficult to imagine that the standard bearers of any given culture would have to
be its people, whether individually or in groups, one could interpret Lanternari’s
phrase as not actually requiring social interaction. If this were the case, then na-
tivism could potentially apply to Kokugaku, since Chinese cultural institutions,
chiefly Confucianism, intermingled with Japanese ones, especially Shinto, even

if the advocates of both w ere equally “Japanese.” Despite this seemingly valid in-
terpretation, it is clear that even Lanternari had actual social interaction in mind
when he made this observation. In fact, Lanternari is not attempting to make any
new or controversial assertion in this part of his essay; instead, he merely para-
phrases Ralph Linton’s 1943 article.
Linton’s essay, as we have already seen, is perhaps the first attempt to apply
nativism to contexts other than those in American history. Although some of his
ideas, such as nativist feelings among the colonizers, seem not to have had a last-
ing impact, it is clear that he also envisions actual encounters between different
peoples as a prerequisite context for the development of nativism. Nativistic move-
ments are “conscious, organized efforts to perpetuate a culture,” he writes, when
“a society becomes conscious that there are cultures other than its own and that
the existence of its own culture is threatened.” This awareness only emerges as
a result of “close and continuous contact with other societies.”84 Thus, nativism is
not the result of knowing about the existence of other cultures, or even the pres-
ence of institutions thought to be foreign or alien. It emerges from contact between
members of different societies. As was the case with Linton’s observations con-
cerning the nativism of colonizers, he also asserts the necessity to assess the
views of both societies, not just that of the weaker or colonized side: “nativistic
movements are unlikely to arise in situations where both societies are satisfied
with their current relationship. . . . A lthough the immediate causes of nativistic
movements are highly variable, most of them have as a common denominator a
situation of inequality. . . . Such inequalities may derive . . . from the attitudes of
the societies involved.”85 Actual social encounters are so important to Linton, in
fact, that the example he cites to illustrate a “contact situation” is the Japanese
encounter with the “Europea ns,” as discussed above.86 This assumption of con-
tact, which is so prominent in Linton’s essay, is also assumed in the essays by
others writing on anthropological nativism. It is also crucial to understanding
American nativism as well. Consequently, the assertion of a cultural identity
among members of the same culture is not, strictly speaking, nativism at all.
American nativism has social interaction at its core, as is the case with an-
thropological nativism. This is particularly true of the 1840s and 1850s when
immigration was at the forefront of American politics; as mentioned above, the
term nativism itself was coined in 1844. Higham observes how nativism is fun-
damentally a defensive reaction that is characterized by hatred and fear. Such
intense feelings and emotions only make sense in a context of interaction; im-
migrants, especially the Irish, lived among the “natives” in the major urban areas
of the north and northeast. Billington’s monograph on nativism, however, is less
reliant on the hostility engendered by social interaction. Americans w ere not hos-
tile to Catholicism only after droves of immigrants began arriving in the United
States. His point, as we saw, is that Americans were already vehemently anti-
Catholic before then; he goes so far as to say that the very first colonists, freshly
arrived from a British homeland still under the sway of the Reformation, were
even anti-Catholic at the very beginning. Nineteenth-century immigration simply
energized feelings that were perhaps dormant but had never actually disappeared
(Billington 1938, 33). Since the Church of England had already broken away from
the Catholic Church by the time of the first settlements in America, Catholicism
was perceived as a foreign creed, and the Catholic Church (the papacy) was a for-
eign power. Seventeenth-century colonists despised Catholicism, even if Catholics,
as de facto foreign subjects, were not present. In a similar way, eighteenth-century
Kokugaku scholars, such as Kamo no Mabuchi, denounced Confucianism as a
foreign set of teachings, even though he did not live among Chinese people.
Nativism, it would seem, does not actually require the presence of both an in-group
and an out-group, as the anthropologists and Higham believe. Nativism would
still seem to be an appropriate categorization for Kokugaku, at least in this way.
Upon closer examination of Billington, social interaction does actually have
a role in early American history. He notes how anti-Catholicism was strongest in
states with the most Catholic colonists, Maryland and Massachusetts in particu
lar (Billington 1938, 5). During the seventeenth century, the hostility directed
at these Catholic colonists reached a point whereby many fled to states with more
tolerant attitudes, like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania (Billington 1938, 9). When
these events of the seventeenth century are analyzed with those of the nine-
teenth century, even Billington’s conception of nativism follows the axiom of
social interaction as a prerequisite for its presence. Higham, of course, destroyed
nativism’s sole identification with anti-Catholicism in his work, such that nativ-
ism and anti-Catholicism are no longer viewed in this way anymore.
Kokugaku as “Nativism”
As stated above, Japanologists, writing in English, primarily associate nativism
with the Tokugawa period and sometimes use the term as a rough translation of
Kokugaku. The word Kokugaku is typically written as a two-ideograph compound:
the first ideograph (国) can mean nation, land, realm, country, or province; the
second (学) can mean to study or to learn. A more literal translation of Kokugaku
would be National Learning or National Studies, and these terms do in fact
appear in works published during the 1970s (and even sporadically among more
recent publications). Even if not as a translation, other scholars believe that nativ-
Kokugaku as “Nativism” 61
ism is still useful in discussions of Kokugaku as a categorization or classification.

For this argument to have merit, nativism must be applied to groups and ideas
that are not necessarily identified with Kokugaku, and this is largely not the case.
Consequently, translation and categorization in the study of Kokugaku as nativ-
ism are collapsed into one, and from this perspective, Kokugaku is nativism.87
While American scholars find something generalizable in Kokugaku, namely,
as etic nativism, the same is not always true for Japanese scholars of Japanese his-
tory who want to maintain its particularity (as an emic). While nativism occupies
an important position within American history, the same is also true of Kokugaku
in Japanese history. Unlike nativism, Kokugaku has not always carried negative
connotations; in some cases, it has been viewed in a positive light. In either case,
Japanese scholars have not attempted to identify Kokugaku in other cultures.
Instead, they have classified Kokugaku either generally as a form of scholarship,
or more narrowly as philology.88
A comparison of Kokugaku and nativism reveals the ways in which neither
adequately describes the other (see table 1). The most significant resemblance be-
tween the two is in the assertion of a unique cultural identity. In the case of Amer-
ican nativism, this assertion is linked to race and ethnicity, a connection that
signifies the difference between nativism and patriotism. Scholars of Japanese
studies also usually avoid using the term patriotism to describe adherents of
Kokugaku. Similarly, the other side of this assertion of identity is the denigration
of the Other. In the American case, ethnicities that have suffered from nativist
discrimination include Germans, Chinese, Japanese, and, of course, the Irish. In
the case of Kokugaku, individuals of other ethnicities w ere not targets for dis
crimination or attack prior to 1856. Foreign residents for much of the Tokugawa
period were confined to specific areas, such as Nagasaki, and were not allowed to
intermingle with the rest of the Japanese population. As foreigners (excluding
Koreans, Chinese, and perhaps Ryūkyūans) took up residence in Japan beginning
in 1856, they still w
ere not targets of discrimination, but instead were occasionally
assassinated (in other words, “targets” of another kind). Instead of individual peo-
ple, the image of the Other created by Kokugaku scholars was more abstract; the
Other was simply a set of cultural traits and values. Until the nineteenth century,
the Other for Kokugaku was primarily China via Sinocentrism; by 1800, Europe
joined China as a source of pernicious foreign influences in Japan.
For both American nativism and Kokugaku, religion played a role in the as-
sertion of cultural identity. In the United States, Americans asserted the central-
ity of Protestantism to American identity against the Catholicism first of the
Irish and later of other immigrant groups. If we view Shinto as a religion, some-
thing that the Japanese specifically denied during the latter half of the nineteenth
Table 1. The Salient Aspects of Three Distinct Concepts of Nativism
Assertion
Face- of a
Theorist/ Anti- Immigration to-Face Native Negative Hostility/
Thinker Catholicism Colonialism (Noncolonial) Contact Identity Connotation Nostalgia Violence
Billington Y N N N Y Y N Y
Linton Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y/N
Higham Y N Y Y Y Y N Y
Kokugaku N/A N N N Y N/A Y N
Scholars
*Relevant concepts are indicated with a “Y” (yes), and irrelevant or unrelated concepts are indicated with an “N” (no).
century, then the assertion of religion seems to have an important place in

Kokugaku as well. With the increased focus on Shinto beginning in the early
nineteenth century, Kokugaku scholars like Hirata Atsutane attacked Buddhism,
in the form of textual critiques and later the sacking of temples, as opposed to
attacking Buddhists (which eventually did occur during the Meiji period). In the
American case, the attacks on Catholicism were intended to further strengthen
the assertion of difference between “real” Americans and others. In Japan, of
course, the Buddhists were Japanese and the assertion of Shinto was not meant to
articulate an insurmountable ethnic or cultural difference. Quite the contrary:
the point of the Kokugaku critique of Buddhism was to encourage Japanese peo-
ple to repudiate Buddhism in favor of Shinto, since such an action should have
been a relatively “easy” thing to do.
Major differences between Kokugaku and American nativism include both
gender and sexuality. While one could argue that even the suppression of gender
and sexuality in nativism indicates its centrality in the minds of nineteenth-
century Americans, both gender and sexuality were issues that followers of
Kokugaku discussed openly. Motoori Norinaga asserted that Japan’s authentic
culture was essentially feminine. Norinaga linked this feminine quality with na-
ture, which he opposed to the masculine but artificial Chinese culture. In theory,
at least, many followers of Kokugaku believed in a gender hierarchy of female over
male. Atsutane and his followers focused their attention on sexuality in the nine-
teenth century. Specifically, they asserted that the kami had given the Japanese a
divine mandate to procreate. As Miyahiro Sadao (1767–1837), a student of Atsu-
tane, said, “Men are born with a phallus. By the feelings between men and women,
children are born, and the people multiply. [Procreation] is a sign that we have
received the commandments of the kami.”89 Erotic feelings were natural; any
Conclusion 63
suppression of such feelings, such as taking the tonsure (joining the Buddhist
priesthood), was not only unnatural but also contradicted this divine com-
mandment. Thus, issues of gender and sexuality were central to the discourse
of Kokugaku in a way that was not the case with American nativism.
As outlined above, scholarship was central to the identity of Kokugaku ad-
herents. Kokugaku scholars engaged in rigorous studies of classical Japanese
literature, which is why some intellectuals, such as Haga Yaichi, identified it with
philology at the beginning of the twentieth century.90 Even Hirata Atsutane, who
was not a great philologist, pursued research into the supernatural using eviden-
tiary techniques.91 American nativism, in contrast, was more of a political phe-
nomenon than an intellectual one. Although there were American intellectuals
who wrote nativist treatises, nativism never achieved the status of serious
scholarship in the way that Kokugaku did during the Edo period. In other words,
Kokugaku as nativism was a scholarly source of ideological constructs during
the late Edo period, while nativism in other contexts tended toward the practi-
cal rather than the ideological.
Perhaps the most obvious difference between Kokugaku and nativism was the
issue of immigration, whether within a colonial context (Linton) or not (Higham).
Although the followers of Kokugaku were not supporters of immigration, the fact
is that entry into Japan was prohibited by the Tokugawa government during the
seventeenth century. Thus, by the time Kokugaku had begun to develop, the
Bakufu had already precluded the possibility of immigration. Kokugaku scholars
directed their antiforeignism against cultural abstracts, represented by Confu-
cianism, Buddhism, and later, Rangaku/Yōgaku,92 as opposed to actual foreigners
in Japan. It is the case with American nativism that its xenophobia was directed
primarily toward immigrants and their minority descendants and not against
foreign cultural influences among Americans. In the case of anthropological
nativism, nearly any reaction in the case of intercultural interactions counts as
nativism, especially for Linton. What is missing, then, is the colonial context
during the era of Kokugaku’s canonical figures.
Conclusion
The association of nativism with Tokugawa Japan is generally common among
scholars of Japanese studies outside of Japan. This association is largely exclusive
to the early modern movement known as Kokugaku, such that the English term
and the Japanese one are often used interchangeably. As we have seen in the ways
in which nativism has been used in the fields of anthropology and American
history, nativism is not assigned to any particu lar cultural institution. Even in
the case of the Know-Nothings, they were an important manifestation of nativism,

but others preceded and followed them, like the Ku Klux Klan. The true breadth
and scope of nativism for Americanists is crucial to grasping its importance to
American history. Similarly, its global ubiquity is essential to understanding
nativism for social scientists, especially anthropologists. These are insights from
which Japanologists have yet to derive substantive benefit. Kokugaku was certainly
an important part of Japanese history, for some even the most important, but it
was one strain among many others in the rich panoply of Tokugawa intellectual
history. There is certainly breadth in the study of Tokugawa intellectual history,
yet the usage of nativism seems to work against that by limiting the discussion to
Kokugaku. The study of nativism in the field of anthropology suggests that it is a
common outcome in the interaction of members from distinct cultures. By con-
fining nativism to Japan’s early modern period, the potential analysis of instances
of nativism in earlier and even later periods is foreclosed. One is led to believe
that the Japanese have had precious few moments of encounters with people from
abroad in their long history, a belief that isolation or sakoku supports. This is not
the case, however, as the Japanese have had abundant interactions with other
cultures, from the arrival of Koreans and Chinese during the Asuka era (592–710),
to the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, to the arrival of the Europeans
in the sixteenth century (to which Linton obliquely refers in his landmark article
on nativism). Even in the modern period, Japanese history has significant mo-
ments of foreign arrivals, such as the Allied occupation, to say nothing of the
issue of immigration itself, especially workers from South America and southeast
Asia. It is difficult to imagine that nativistic reactions among the Japanese were
only seen in the early modern period, a time characterized by little to no immi-
gration and a policy of international isolation.
After the discussion of nativism outside of Japanese studies presented in this
chapter, it should be clear that its exclusive connections to Kokugaku and to
Tokugawa Japan are problematic. That leaves us with the task of reassessing both
nativism and Kokugaku, and these are topics of later chapters. Even during the
Edo period, there were moments that exhibited the hallmarks of nativism in more
obvious ways than Kokugaku. At the same time, the more notorious aspects of
Kokugaku appear so familiar to us that identifying it with nativism seems almost
comforting. While the Japanese have used Kokugaku as a blanket term that cov-
ers most, but not all, studies of Japanese antiquity during the Edo period, that does
not mean that we are bound to the usage of a singular English term in our analy-
sis of it. As I observed at the outset of this discussion, there is confusion in much
of the English literature on Kokugaku, where nativism is used either as a catego-
rization for it or as its translation. It is time to embrace the notion that Kokugaku
was many things; it more easily conforms to other analytical categories, notably
Conclusion 65
(ethnic) nationalism. Nationalism, of course, is perhaps already a crowded field

in Japanese history, and restoring Kokugaku to it potentially would yield little
analytical benefit. Singling out Kokugaku for inclusion in the category of Japa
nese nativism conjures up a kind of infamy that it likely does not deserve.
The image that many scholars have regarding Kokugaku, such as Motoori
Norinaga at his desk looking at a cherry tree sapling, or lively discussions of
classical literature held at private gatherings, does not resonate with what we know
about nativism in American history or in anthropology. Unlike American nativ-
ists in the nineteenth century who criticized and attacked immigrants as foreign
contaminants in a pure, American society, the followers of Kokugaku criticized
their fellow countrymen for falling under the sway of foreign teachings. Immi-
grants in America, especially the Catholic Irish, were identified as irredeemably
foreign by some nativists. Before the Civil War, some of the native-born expressed
doubt that immigrants could ever become Americans, which is why the ideologi-
cal foundation of the Know-Nothings was the twenty-one-year residency require-
ment for naturalization. In the case of eighteenth-century Kokugaku, one could
argue that what drew the ire of Mabuchi, Norinaga, and others in their attacks
on Chinese culture was that its supporters were not foreign; the Confucians,
Buddhists, and followers of Rangaku were all Japanese, just like the scholars of
Kokugaku were. The Know-Nothings of the nineteenth century and the Ku Klux
Klan of the twentieth were anti-immigrant and thereby antiforeign; the followers
of Kokugaku during its intellectual height in the eighteenth century were anti-
Sinocentric and, to some degree, anti-Buddhistic, such that they were antiforeign
as well, in a manner of speaking. Antiforeignism, therefore, is something that
one could argue that eighteenth-century Kokugaku had in common with
American nativism, but using this commonality to then categorically identify
Kokugaku with nativism presents problems.
Just as American nativism has changed over time, according to Higham, so
too has Kokugaku. While Kokugaku was never monolithic as an intellectual
category, it was not monolithic in scope either. As I have argued before, followers
of Kokugaku shifted their intellectual focus during the early decades of the nine-
teenth century from the literary studies of the previous century to religious con-
cerns centering on Shinto. Antiforeignism, however, remained on the minds of
Kokugaku scholars even as they broadened their research interests. For Higham,
antiforeignism links nineteenth-century nativism to its twentieth-century coun-
terpart, as well as to the jingoism of the late nineteenth century. For Kaufmann,
antiforeignism is not the salient theme of American intellectual history; Anglo-
Saxonism is the important connection between discourses of American identity
before and after the Revolutionary War. When examining Kokugaku in the
context of Tokugawa nativism, it is crucial to acknowledge the impact of Western
arrivals in Japan, particularly Commodore Perry’s landing in 1853. It is possible

that Higham and Kaufmann, while seemingly at odds over the larger historical
context for American nativism, are actually arguing the same point in different
ways. In any case, both antiforeignism and the assertion of ethnic identity endured
the intellectual transition within Kokugaku from the eighteenth to the nineteenth
centuries, and they remained relevant even after Perry.
Perry’s arrival signified the beginning of a new relationship between Japan
and the world, especially the West (Europe and the United States). As we have
seen, the arrival of foreigners is a fundamental condition by which nativism can
develop. While it is difficult to make such an argument during the eighteenth
century in Japan, after Perry’s landing and especially after 1856 when Western
merchants, diplomats, and their families began to establish residences in Japan,
a clear out-g roup emerged to confront a clear in-g roup. Thus, to the extent that
followers of Kokugaku reacted to the presence of Westerners in Japan, Kokugaku
became a form of nativism. A simple reaction from Kokugaku scholars is likely
sufficient to qualify as nativism for anthropology; defensive reactions of hatred
and fear likely meet the threshold for the classification of nativism according to
American history. The extent to which historians know whether and how followers
of Kokugaku responded to the foreign presence in Japan will determine if at least
some of the Kokugaku scholars had become nativists or not, and by extension, if
Kokugaku had become nativism or not.
As long as scholars continue to use nativism as a classification or translation
for Kokugaku, it is important that they use the term properly; at the same time,
they should also be aware of the consequences if they fail to do so. Billington was
perhaps unaware of the implications of his work for the study of other cultures; by
confining nativism to anti-Catholicism, much of the rest of the world is irrelevant
to the study of nativism. Higham, on the other hand, was aware of such implica-
tions; although he offers insights into nativism as a historical category throughout
his monograph, when taken together, we have a lucid and coherent framework
with which we can approach other cultures. Higham’s work represents the eticiza-
tion of nativism from the context of American history. The anthropologists whose
work we have examined in this chapter all assume that nativism is an analytical
category that is used to examine disparate cultures and settings. Not surprisingly,
the anthropologists conceived of etic nativism before the Americanists did. Ap-
plying nativism to Japan, even to Edo Japan, would not be surprising to scholars
of nativism, who would expect that the Japanese conform, or have conformed, to
the models that anthropologists and Americanists have already established. It is
important to note, however, that these etic concepts of nativism not only diverge
from one another, they also contradict each other. Since it is unclear which ver-
Conclusion 67
sion prevails in Japanese studies, it is necessary to refer to both, and, as a first

step, focus on conceptual commonalities between the two. Scholars who have
published on nativism all agree that it is a condition which exists when members
of different cultures come into contact with one another. By applying nativism to
the scholars and followers of Kokugaku in the years before Perry, especially those
canonical scholars who were active in the mid-to late eighteenth century, the case
of Edo Japan seems to have nullified this axiom. Kaufmann’s observation about
how Americanists look to exceptional explanations for American nativism ap-
plies in this situation to Western scholars of Japan: Eighteenth-century Kokugaku,
as nativism, makes Japan unique by comparison with the rest of the world. While
the rest of the world is moved to hostility when confronted with foreigners in their
midst, the Japanese are similarly aroused even in the total absence of a foreign
“menace,” according to the logic of Kokugaku as nativism. The Japanese people,
therefore, are and were an exceptional people, but in a decidedly negative way. Of
course, it is possible to take the Kokugaku example and offer it to anthropolo-
gists and Americanists as the Japanese contribution to the ongoing eticization of
nativism. This is likely not a worthwhile endeavor for two reasons. First, it forces
scholars who do not study Japan to add a Japanese corollary to etic nativism that
essentially undermines its fundamental meaning; nativism is antipeople, and
not especially opposed to the idea or image of other peoples. Second, adding a
corollary, as would be the case with Kokugaku, also diverts attention away from
those historical moments in Japan that actually do conform more neatly to our
expectations of etic nativism. If Kokugaku was Edo Japan’s version of nativism,
then Japan becomes the exceptional case in the global study of nativism. Con-
versely, if Kokugaku was something e lse entirely, then other instances that re-
semble the ways in which nativism is understood outside of Japanese studies can
be studied alongside those of other cultures in more meaningful ways.
The foundational studies of nativism in American history and in anthropol-
ogy that we have examined in this chapter were published at least three decades
ago; Higham’s monograph is more than fifty years old and Billington’s is more
than seventy years old. It is possible that the significance of nativism as a cate-
gory of analysis has waned with the passage of time, succumbing to the efficacy
of newer scholarly paradigms. As the recent work of Kaufmann shows, however,
nativism is still relevant to our understanding of American history. Nativism has
been the notorious counterpart to the image of the welcoming embrace of im
migrants symbolized in the United States by the Statue of Liberty. The study of
American nativism challenges the myth of American tolerance, especially its ide-
ological role in the explanation of American superiority (exceptionalism). Amer-
icans are, after all, just like everyone else in the world. Immigration is an issue
that continues to occupy the time of politicians and policy makers even today; it
overshadows, in unfortunate ways, its historical antecedents in the minds of most
Americans. Movements such as Eng lish monolingualism in the United States
resonate with nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism in the context of continuing
immigration, especially from Spanish-speaking countries. Political figures today
have openly admitted to supporting nativism, a term some even embrace willingly.
Worldwide, migration flows are still a significant aspect of foreign relations and
even globalization. Encounters between in-groups and out-groups are ongoing and
will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The analysis of nativism is argu-
ably important not only to Americans but also to peoples all over the world. As
we acknowledge its intellectual utility and apply it to Japanese history, it is vital
that we do so in a way that is as faithful as possible to those studies already under
taken in other cultural contexts. Categories such as nativism demand a compara-
tive analysis that might finally be worthwhile to undertake.
Since Japanese studies encompasses a wide range of disciplines, including
anthropology, and has few direct intellectual connections with American history,
the fact that there are two divergent forms of nativism may present itself as an
obligatory choice for Japanologists seeking to use it in their own work. Any at-
tempt to adhere strictly to either concept of nativism signifies a methodological
and theoretical allegiance that functions to undermine the viability of the other.
Since there are areas of conceptual overlap, however, it is possible to navigate an
analytical course between the two, and such a course would represent a refusal to
commit wholly to one or the other. In some ways, the conceptual confusion that
prevails in Japanese studies regarding the usage of nativism means that the pro
cess of developing such a hybrid concept of nativism has already begun. It is time
to develop more fully this synthesis with overt and self-conscious references to
theorists such as Billington, Linton, Higham, and others.
C HA P T E R T WO
Sonnō-jō’i
Nativism and Bakumatsu Japan
I have argued that the social interactions between the members of two different
societies are common to the conceptions of nativism prevalent in the fields of
American history and anthropology, mostly typified in the work of John Higham
and Ralph Linton, respectively. With the arrival of the Americans in 1853,1 fol-
lowed shortly thereafter by the end of the Bakufu’s isolation policy, the slogan
jō’i became prominent, functioning as a justification for resistance to Western
demands, and eventually for armed opposition to their presence in Japan. The
encounters between the Japanese and Westerners during the final decades of the
Tokugawa period certainly constituted the kind of social interactions envisioned
by both Higham and Linton, thereby qualifying them as contexts ripe for the
emergence of nativism. There are, however, important caveats to consider before
proceeding to analyze the history of this period as nativism. First, the discourse of
jō’i is not a perfect match with nativism, since it had both ancient origins and
usages unrelated to nativism.2 Consequently, we can say that as a theory jō’i was
not nativism per se, but as a practice undertaken by the men of high purpose dur-
ing the final years of the Edo period, the Bakumatsu shishi, against Westerners, it
was, so long as it meant armed opposition to their presence in Japan. Not all Ba-
kumatsu intellectuals, even those who were part of the sonnō-jō’i movement, w ere
actual nativists, since either they themselves or the ideas they espoused predated
Perry’s arrival in Japan, or because they did not advocate the expulsion of foreign-
ers from Japan. Even in the face of Western contact, these Japanese intellectuals
reacted in ways that defy categorization as nativism, even according to the con-
cepts formulated by either Higham or Linton. While we can find within the his-
tory of sonnō-jō’i critical aspects of nativism common to both theorists, it would
be a mistake to think that it and nativism are perfectly synonymous.3
According to John Breen, the field of Japanese studies should follow more
closely the anthropological conception of nativism offered by Linton and others.4
He argues that the analysis of Kokugaku as nativism, offered most prominently
by Harry Harootunian, has, at best, only a passing resemblance to the ways in
which nativism is understood in other fields. By more rigidly adhering to Linton,
69
70 Sonnō-j ō’i
the possibility of “a more complex history of nativism in Japan, one that ranges
beyond the confines of Kokugaku” begins to emerge.5 Other than Breen’s belief
that nativism has more to do with the assertion of the “native” than it does with
the rejection of the “foreign,” his call for Japanologists to adhere more carefully to
Linton’s conceptualization of nativism is problematic because it ignores both
Linton’s own application of nativism to Japanese history and his emphasis on
cultural adaptation as the chief nativistic response of societies in positions similar
to that of Japan in the sixteenth century with respect to the Europea ns. For
Linton, the paradigmatic example of Japanese nativism was the adoption of
European technology (likely firearms) during that era. Breen’s observation about
the perception among Japanologists that “nativism equals Kokugaku” as wrong-
headed is wholly legitimate and insightful, but his prescription for Japanologists
presents obvious problems, as does his insistence that there is still some signifi-
cant overlap between nativism and Kokugaku, even in the absence of an exclusive
identification of one with the other.
In addition to decoupling Kokugaku from nativism, for which Breen’s article
represents a significant step in the right direction,6 the adoption of emics and
etics among Japanologists is needed in order to develop more richly and fully the
application of nativism to Japanese history. While it is important to come to grips
with the usages of nativism “in disciplines like sociology and social and intel
lectual history” among those “working outside Japan,” one must also keep in mind
that categories like nativism emerged from contexts other than the Japanese one,
namely, as emics, but their universal usages, as etics, demand that all potentially
relevant data be examined.7 In other words, etic categories can and should change
as more data become available to scholars. Although it is not clear to what extent
Breen was aware of nativism’s connections with American history (its emic ori-
gins), the work of Linton and others on the applications of nativism outside of
American history is clearly etic, so that any kind of faithful replication of or ad-
herence to any of its theorists, Linton or otherwise, is unnecessary and runs coun-
ter to the conceptual basis of etics. Consequently, Japanologists should embrace
the idea of actively contributing to the ongoing conceptual development of nativ-
ism using Japanese case studies. While Linton’s work is certainly critical to this
effort, they should feel neither constrained by its canonical status nor daunted by
its significant divergences from the work of Americanists like Higham. As an etic
category, nativism’s conceptual boundaries are not forever determined by the work
of any individual scholar, no matter how influential they are.
In looking at the history of sonnō-jō’i as the repository of nativistic moments,
it is clear that the conceptual works of both Linton and Higham are, by themselves,
inadequate for the task. While one could assert the existence of instances of
Sonnō-j ō’i 71
Table 2. Sonnō-jō’i as Nativism

Assertion
Face- of a
Anti- to-Face Native Negative Hostility/
Catholicism Colonialism Immigration Contact Identity Connotation Nostalgia Violence
Billington Y* N N N Y Y N Y
Linton Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y/N
Higham Y N Y Y Y Y N Y
Sonnō-jō’i N/A Y Y Y Y N/A N Y
(hybrid)
cultural adaptation on the part of the Japanese during the relevant decades of
sonnō-jō’i, following Linton’s conceptualization of nativism, these were, at best,
only minor examples, such that the central narrative character of sonnō-jō’i would
remain unchanged. At the same time, Higham’s emphasis on large-scale immigra-
tion would likely preclude any efforts to apply his concept of nativism to Tokugawa
Japan, among those Japanologists seeking to adhere faithfully to it. What the field
of Japanese studies needs, then, is a more self-consciously etic concept of nativ-
ism that uses relevant Japanese data to formulate a hybrid concept of nativism that
uses elements from both Linton and Higham, as the chief theorists of nativism
during the twentieth century (see table 2). In this way, the conceptual common-
ality shared between Linton and Higham, namely, the encounter between the
members of two different societies, would become the starting point in the devel-
opment of such a hybrid concept of nativism.
While the analysis of sonnō-jō’i using the concepts of nativism associated with
Linton and Higham, in order to refine nativism as an etic category, is the goal of
this chapter, it is important to distinguish within the history of sonnō-jō’i between
those who formulated ideas that stimulated others to action and those figures who
were actually active participants in Japanese politics. We see nativism at work in
both groups, but it is more consistently prominent in the latter group, rather than
in the former. Intellectuals had a range of ideological options at their disposal that
they could use in making their case against the Western presence in Japan, and
expulsion was one of them. For political actors, like the shishi, but also for leader-
ship figures like Tokugawa Nariaki (1800–1860) and even Emperor Kōmei (1831–
1867) himself, simplicity was a necessary ingredient in effective motivation, and,
for this reason, expulsion fit their agendas quite nicely. In either case, we see how
the political movement of sonnō-jō’i does not constitute a coherent nativistic
movement analogous to the Know-Nothings of antebellum America; sonnō-jō’i
72 Sonnō-j ō’i
was more politically fractured and ideologically diverse than their anti-Catholic,
anti-immigration American contemporaries w ere. For this reason, we should
not be surprised that those figures associated with sonnō-jō’i did not always ad-
vocate the actual expulsion of Westerners from Japan, as one might expect after
reading about Higham’s concept of nativism; in fact, after 1864, sonnō-jō’i signi-
fied anti-Bakufu agitation more than it did opposition to the Western presence
in Japan.8
Bakumatsu Political History: A Narrative of Nativism

Perhaps the most obvious way in which sonnō-jō’i conforms to nativism, espe-
cially of the American variety as analyzed by Higham, were the attacks on
Westerners by the shishi. The emergence of the shishi, especially after Townsend
Harris (1804–1878) took up residence in Japan in 1856, was not a knee-jerk reac-
tion that occurred overnight.9 It was actually the culmination of events that
began at least as far back as the early 1800s, and perhaps even earlier than that. It is,
therefore, helpful to review these events with an eye toward the analytical con-
cepts of nativism prevalent in the fields of anthropology and American history.
During the early decades of the nineteenth century, British and American ves-
sels plied the north Pacific in search of whales, seeking their coveted blubber. On
occasion, these Western ships encountered Japanese fishing boats, some of which
issued out of the Mito domain. Japanese fishermen returned to port with tales of
these Westerners, not all of which w ere negative; more often than not, their stories
of encounters with the Westerners were actually quite positive. Some fishermen
voiced confusion over the seclusionist attitudes of the Bakufu; the Westerners,
they said, were not so bad after all.10 Contact with Westerners, however, was
forbidden, and about 300 fishermen were punished for their interactions with
them. Partly inspired by these encounters, Aizawa Seishisai penned his Shinron
in 1825, which eventually served as an advisory document for the Bakufu. The
result was the Munen Uchiharai No Rei or Muninen Uchiharai Rei (order to strike
without thinking, otherwise known as the Expulsion Edict) of 1825, which
required that coastal batteries fire on any ships that approached the Japanese
coastline, no matter what the reason. In 1837, the American-chartered ship, the
Morrison, attempted to repatriate shipwrecked Japanese sailors, but was turned
away, in compliance with the Expulsion Edict. In response to criticisms of its pol-
icies, the Bakufu relaxed the Expulsion Edict in 1842, so that ships in distress
could seek aid at Japanese ports.
A mere eleven years later, the Expulsion Edict, as well as the Bakufu’s isola-
tionist policies, w
ere put to the test once again with the arrival of Commodore
Bakumatsu Pol itic al History 73
Matthew Perry at Uraga. Knowing of the failures of previous Western attempts

to open Japan, including American attempts, Perry commanded an impressive
fleet of ships in 1853, including four state-of-the-art warships, as a demonstration
to the Japanese that the Americans had every intention of succeeding where
earlier expeditions had failed. Perry handed over a letter to Bakufu officials from
President Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) requesting that ports be made available
to American ships and to render assistance to American sailors in distress. Perry
departed Japan in order to give the Bakufu time to consider the American
“offer,” and a vigorous debate ensued in Edo. The display of American military
power, and the prospect of war with the Americans, were enough to persuade
influential members of the Bakufu, such as Abe Masahiro (1819–1857) and Hotta
Masayoshi (1810–1864), the former’s appointee to the rōjū (senior councillors) in
1855, to acquiesce to Perry’s demands, and their views eventually prevailed. There
were, of course, key figures who opposed the Americans, including Tokugawa
Nariaki and Emperor Kōmei. With the appointment of Masayoshi, a strong sup-
porter of kaikoku,11 Nariaki’s desire for expulsion “had become untenable. . . .
[His] position no longer received sympathetic or even full hearing at Edo.”12
Perry returned the following year, concluding the Convention of Kanagawa
in July 1854. One of the provisions of the Convention of Kanagawa (Nichibei
Washin Jōyaku) was that the Bakufu had to allow an American consul to take
up residence in Japan, and as per the treaty, Townsend Harris arrived in 1856.
Shortly after the arrival of Harris and his entourage, Mito samurai began
plotting his assassination.13 As the former lord of Mito, Tokugawa Nariaki was
charged with Japan’s maritime defense after Perry’s arrival in 1853,14 and it was
widely known among officials in Mito that Emperor Kōmei was opposed to the
Convention of Kanagawa.15 The plotters, of course, failed in their attempt on
Harris’ life, and he was able to establish the American presence in Japan and to
press his demands for a new treaty of amity and commerce on the Edo Bakufu.16
In addition to his demand for the opening of Hyōgo to American ships and the
setting of import duties at 20 percent, Harris also wanted the Bakufu to recog-
nize the rights of Americans to lease and to purchase property, and the right of
Americans to establish permanent residency in Japan.17 Members of the impe-
rial court and certain Bakufu officials, such as Nariaki, were vigorously opposed
to any new treaty with the Americans, and Emperor Kōmei himself was espe-
cially anxious and enraged after the Bakufu acquiesced to the American de-
mands.18 The concessions yielded by the Japanese resulted in the Harris Treaty
(Nichibei Shūkō Tsūshō Jōyaku) of 1858, promising not only increased Amer
ican arrivals in Japan, but also the prospect of immigration to Japan, even if on
a very limited scale.
74 Sonnō-j ō’i
By the time of the Harris Treaty, members of the Bakufu gradually became
accustomed to the idea of relations with the West, a trend that culminated in the
Bakufu’s first mission to the West in 1860, and the United States was the destina-
tion for the first such delegation.19 By that time, the prospect of hosting Western-
ers in Japan, a process that the arrival of Townsend Harris in 1856 had seemingly
begun, confronted not just political elites but also ordinary Japanese people. As
Robin Cohen tells us, foreigners who take up residence abroad for economic op-
portunity represent a kind of immigrant; thus, one can conceive of Western mer-
chants who came to Japan during this time as the Tokugawa analogue to German
and especially Irish immigration of roughly the same era in the United States,
namely, the decades before the American Civil War.20 Of course, the scale of this
immigration into Japan was much smaller than it was in the American case, but
the size and scope of arrivals was not an issue for Linton, even though one could
argue that it was at least implicit for Higham’s concept of nativism. The Know-
Nothings feared that the immigrants would achieve citizenship and thereby in-
fluence local and national elections by voting mostly for candidates associated with
the Democratic Party, so that the scale of immigration was more prominent in
the minds of American nativists than merely its symbolic significance, as was the
case with the opponents of Westerners in Japan. Just as immigrants to the United
States had to endure a hostile and at times violent reception among the native-
born population, the same was true of Westerners arriving in Japan during the
Bakumatsu era. In this critical way, Western arrivals during the Bakumatsu era
paralleled the arrival of European immigrants to the United States. As Western
merchants and their families were concentrated in Yokohama after its opening to
foreign merchants in 1858,21 they “furnished an inviting target for young swords-
men anxious to try their blades on the hated foreigner.”22
Members of the court and the Bakufu who had opposed ending Japan’s self-
imposed isolation in favor of diplomatic and trade relations with the United States
feared that they might have to yield to similar demands made by other Western
nations. The Russians had been trying for more than half a century before the ar-
rival of Perry to open relations with the Japanese; it is only natural, perhaps, that
they used the occasion of the Convention of Kanagawa to finally persuade the
Bakufu to open Japan to them as well.23 Like the Americans, the Russians came to
terms with the Bakufu on a treaty of amity and commerce. As was the case with the
Harris Treaty, the Russians were allowed to establish a presence in Japan, but
there was some confusion as to where that presence within Japan was to be. On
the third day of the second month of the first year of Bunkyū (1861), the Russian
navy arrived at Tsushima, informing the islanders of their rights to build a base
there as per the terms of their treaty of amity and commerce with the Bakufu.
The Russians immediately began building barracks for their sailors and dig-
ging wells for fresh water.24 There were some clashes between the Russians and
the locals that ended badly for the latter, and domainal officials sent word to Edo
pleading for help and asking for instructions on how to deal with these foreign
invaders, even as they attempted to deal with the Russians themselves. The
Bakufu dispatched its gaikoku bugyō (commissioner for foreign lands), Oguri
Tadamasa (1839–1867), and one of its metsuke (inspectors), to negotiate with the
Russian commander for a withdrawal of his sailors from the island. The Russian
naval commander refused to recognize the authority of these Bakufu officials,
arguing that the Russian presence on Tsushima was a local matter, and he vowed
to deal only with its officials, despite the fact that the Russians had arrived in
Tsushima by invoking their rights as outlined in its treaty with the Bakufu. Dis-
couraged by Russian obstinance, Tadamasa returned to Edo, as Tsushima’s lord,
Sō Yoshinori (1818–1890), began talks with the Russians.
Like the Russians and the Americans, the British negotiated a treaty of their
own with the Bakufu, which enabled them to dispatch Rutherford Alcock (1809–
1897) to Japan as Great Britain’s first consul. The British had been monitoring the
developing situation between the Bakufu and the Russians with great interest. Al-
cock was in Hong Kong at the time of the Russian incursion into Tsushima, and
he was summoned back to Japan to assist the Bakufu in its attempt to negotiate a
Russian withdrawal. Britain’s diplomatic assistance to the Bakufu, which even-
tually did result in a Russian withdrawal, was not universally appreciated among
those opposed to any Western presence in Japan. The Bakufu, of course, allowed
Alcock and his party to return to Japan via ship to Nagasaki and from there over-
land to Edo. Alcock, for his part, requested permission to journey from Nagasaki
to Edo with a stop in Kyoto, but the request was denied. The Bakufu was sensitive
to the views of conservative elements within the imperial court who considered
Kyoto to be a sacred space by virtue of the emperor’s presence there.25 Although
Alcock and his companions bypassed Kyoto on their journey to Edo, they w ere
ambushed nonetheless by fourteen shishi. The shishi had intended to kill every-
one in the delegation, but they ultimately failed; however, Alcock’s secretary and
the British representative in Nagasaki were wounded. While the Bakufu refused
Alcock’s request to visit Kyoto on the basis of its special sacred status, the shishi
who participated in the attack on the British believed that Japan in general, not
just Kyoto, was sacred, and so they and their like-minded supporters would not
allow the presence of any Westerner to defile Japanese soil.26
Shortly after the approval of Harris’ demands during the seventh month of
the fifth year of Ansei (Ansei 5 or 1858), the imperial court gave an expulsion
order directly to the Mito domain on the eighth day of the eighth month, calling
76 Sonnō-j ō’i
for the removal of all Westerners attempting to take up residence in Japan.27 Such
an order was unprecedented, as it represented a direct imperial order to a domain,
and thus bypassed the Bakufu altogether. What may have seemed like a political
oddity was, in fact, not the case, since the Mito domain had traditionally main-
tained a special relationship with the imperial court.28 The court, however, drew
up a similar directive to the Bakufu that arrived just three days after the original
orders reached Mito, ordering the Bakufu to inform the other domains. Tokugawa
Nariaki quickly composed a reply to the court, pledging to carry out the emper-
or’s wishes. Emperor Kōmei and his advisers had long harbored suspicions
regarding the motives of the Americans and Westerners in general, and they did
not approve of the Harris Treaty. Ii Naosuke (1815–1860), who had become tairō
(great elder) about four months earlier, signed the treaty on behalf of Japan any-
way. To make matters worse, Ii Naosuke was one of the key figures in securing
Tokugawa Iemochi (1846–1866) as the shogunal successor to Iesada (1824–1858),
the month before signing the Harris Treaty with the Americans; Iemochi became
shogun upon Iesada’s death on the fourteenth day of the eighth month of Ansei
5, which was just one week after the court’s expulsion order had arrived in Mito.
Aware that elements in both the imperial court and the Bakufu w ere opposed to
the Harris Treaty, and to contact with Westerners in general, Naosuke embarked
on a series of political purges in late 1858 and early 1859, which netted key figures
in the sonnō-jō’i movement, including Yoshida Shōin (1830–1859), who was exe-
cuted, and Nariaki, who was placed under house arrest and died of chest pains
while so confined in 1860.29 Believing that Ii Naosuke was acting against the
wishes of the imperial court, warriors from Mito, with assistance from Satsuma
warriors, ambushed and killed him outside of the Sakurada Gate to the shogun’s
palace on the third day of the third month of Ansei 7 (1860).
With Ii Naosuke dead, many of those who had been victimized in the Ansei
Jigoku (Ansei Purge) w ere able to reemerge and become active in national poli-
tics again, including Hitotsubashi Keiki (1837–1913) and Matsudaira Shungaku
(1828–1890). As domestic political alignments took shape in the months and years
following Naosuke’s assassination, the shishi continued their attacks on Western-
ers and also on their Japanese supporters. In 1862, the former lord of Tosa,
Yamauchi Yōdō (1827–1872), thwarted a Chōshū plot to kill Westerners in Yoko-
hama by dispatching a force of Tosa warriors to intercept them.30 Yōdō had man-
aged to convince the Bakufu to accept the idea of jō’i without committing to a
specific date, thinking that such an agreement would undermine the extremist
position represented by those who sought immediate expulsion of Westerners from
Japan. In the fall of that year, the British merchant Charles Richardson (1834–1862)
was attacked in the village of Namamugi in Sagami by Satsuma samurai under the
command of Shimazu Hisamitsu (1817–1887), complicating the efforts of moder-

ates like Yōdō. Eventually, the British government dispatched the Royal Navy on
a punitive military expedition that resulted in the nearly total destruction of
Kagoshima. As the British prepared their military expedition to Satsuma, Hitot-
subashi Keiki, Yamauchi Yōdō, Matsudaira Katamori (1836–1893), and Matsud-
aira Shungaku formed a political alliance, pledging to curb any pro-Western
policies of the Bakufu and to carry out the imperial court’s order to expel West-
erners from Japan, which was to commence during the fourth month of Man’en
3 (1863).31 Yōdō was one of the key figures who helped broker the agreement
between the imperial court and the shogun over the issue of expulsion, and a
meeting was arranged in January 1863 for the shogunal successor, Tokugawa
Iemochi, to meet with Kōmei to discuss the expulsion of Westerners. The meet-
ing took place in the third month of Bunkyū 3; a few days later, Kōmei visited the
Kamo Shrines in Kyoto to pray for expulsion.32
Katsu Kaishū was in Kyoto during Iemochi’s sojourn. He later described be-
ing attacked in the street by men who were either shishi or at least acted like them,
in a graphic account of the sheer violence of a shishi encounter that illustrates how
precarious a place Kyoto had become by the final years of the Edo Bakufu.33 It is
important to remember that while shishi attacks on Westerners have been invoked
as proof of Japanese antiforeignism during this period, attacks on those who w ere
viewed as pro-Western were perhaps no less common or brutal, as the example of
Ii Naosuke shows us. The attack on Charles Richardson and his party in 1862,
known as the Namamugi Incident, is also used by historians as evidence of Japa
nese extremism during this period, alongside the attacks by the shishi. In some
ways, viewing the Namamugi Incident in the same context as the activities of the
shishi is misleading, since it was an attack ordered by Shimazu Hisamitsu, one of
the leading critics of the shishi, and carried out by Satsuma regulars, not by shi-
shi. However, many of the Satsuma warriors who participated in the attack were
xenophobes under the influence of Mitogaku.34 Many of them “were inclined to
attack foreigners whenever the opportunity arose,” and “the Tōkaidō near Yoko-
hama” presented them with just such an opportunity.35 In the attack described
by Katsu Kaishū, it was none other than a shishi, Okada Izō (1832–1865), who ac-
tually saved Kaishū’s life. It was not long after saving the life of the founder of the
Bakufu navy that Okada Izō was arrested by Kyoto authorities and handed over
to Tosa officials, who subsequently executed him.36
The emperor’s wish to expel Westerners from Japan, and the court’s orders to
carry out these wishes that it issued to the Mito domain and to the Bakufu, w ere
known among other domains as well, including the powerful tozama domain
of Chōshū. Annoyed and concerned with the activities of Satsuma, the lord of
78 Sonnō-j ō’i
Chōshū, Mōri Takachika (1836–1871), viewed Satsuma’s political and military

entanglements with the British in the wake of the Namamugi Incident as a chance
to demonstrate his loyalty to Kōmei and the willingness of those in his domain
to execute Kōmei’s commands. Since the rather sizable domain of Chōshū, com-
posed as it was of two provinces, was bounded by the Sea of Japan on one side
and the Inland Sea on another, its geographic position brought it into close con-
tact with Western ships that either entered or exited the Inland Sea via the Straits
of Shimonoseki. Officials in Chōshū, including Takachika, had crafted a plan
in 1863 to fire on foreign ships from the domain’s coastal batteries, which would
effectively close the straits to all foreign shipping. As Thomas Huber observes,
starting a war with the Western powers did not mean that Takachika and his
advisers thought that victory was possible—quite the opposite, in fact: “If an early
military clash exposed the inadequacies of current defense arrangements, and
jolted the realm into a sense of crisis, so much the better.”37
As Chōshū’s contribution to the jō’i effort, Takachika ordered the attack on
Western ships to commence on the tenth day of the fifth month, and the first ship
to wander into the crosshairs of the domain’s cannons was the American mer-
chant vessel Pembroke.38 Although there w ere Japanese people aboard the Amer-
ican ship at the time of the attack, Takachika proudly reported the attack to the
court nine days later; on the first day of the sixth month, the court sent its praises
to Takachika, commending him for obeying the emperor’s commands and sum-
moning him to Kyoto for a meeting.39 The imperial court understood the consid-
erable peril to which Takachika had just exposed Chōshū, so on the sixth day of
the sixth month it ordered neighboring domains to stand with Chōshū and attack
foreign ships. The leadership of these neighboring domains, however, chose to
ignore the imperial order, since they viewed the Bakufu as the only legal entity
that could issue orders for war; without such mobilization orders from Edo, those
domains that adjoined Chōshū chose to do nothing.40 Undaunted, the imperial
court dispatched officials to Chōshū on the fourteenth day of the same month with
additional praise for the domain’s efforts to carry out the court’s jō’i orders and
with new orders for the neighboring domains to participate. Interestingly, ques-
tions were raised as to whether Dutch ships should be spared from these attacks,
as the Dutch were the only Westerners who had had legal trading rights with Japan
since the seventeenth century; the reply from the imperial court was that Dutch
ships w ere not to be spared, but that Chinese ships were, since the Dutch im-
posed on the Bakufu their own unequal treaty in 1858.41 The court’s efforts to
cajole reluctant domains to join the fray, as well as the Bakufu’s efforts to con-
vince Chōshū’s leadership to issue orders to its coastal batteries to stand down,
continued for several weeks during the summer of 1863. In the meantime, the
attacks on Western shipping continued, and the Straits of Shimonoseki remained

closed for the rest of 1863 and much of 1864. During the summer of 1864, a West-
ern expedition composed of British, American, French, and Dutch naval vessels
attacked Chōshū’s coastal artillery installations, followed thereafter by their cap-
ture and destruction. It was in this way that Chōshū’s jō’i activities came to an
end. Thereafter, in the words of Marius Jansen, “anti-foreignism, however fervently
held by individuals, would function chiefly as an issue with which to reproach
the Bakufu.”42
Hitotsubashi Keiki, another political figure victimized by Ii Naosuke’s Ansei
Purge, had quietly risen within the ranks of the Edo Bakufu during the 1850s and
early 1860s. During the spring of 1863, Shogun Iemochi was summoned to Kyoto
by Kōmei with plans to discuss the domestic political situation as well as Japan’s
foreign affairs. It was during this time that Kōmei visited the Iwashimizu Hachi-
man Shrine to pray for jō’i as a prelude to ordering Iemochi to carry out expul-
sion. The ceremony, however, in which Iemochi was to receive the imperial order
to wage war was canceled, as Iemochi was reported to have taken ill. Shortly after
this episode, Hitotsubashi Keiki was appointed by the imperial court to the office
of imperial protector (kinri goshu eisōtoku). With such a close connection to the
imperial court, esteem for Keiki grew among its courtiers, especially with Kōmei
himself, and Keiki was one of the leading figures who convinced the emperor to
approve the unequal treaties, including the Harris Treaty, in 1865.43 Keiki’s abil-
ity to persuade Kōmei to assume a more moderate political stance with regard to
the Western presence in Japan was an indication of the emperor’s growing confi-
dence in him.44 The imperial court, in fact, heartily endorsed Keiki as shogunal
successor to the childless Iemochi.
The retroactive approval of the unequal treaties significantly undermined the
very raison d’être of the shishi, many of whom unsuccessfully attempted to top-
ple the domain government in Mito the previous year, 1864. Whereas 1864 marked
the end of Chōshū’s bombardment of Western ships, 1865 was another important
year in the brief history of jō’i, because of Kōmei’s approval of the unequal
treaties in that year.45 Emperor Kōmei, the symbolic and moral leader of the jō’i
movement, died in 1867. It is believed that Kōmei succumbed to an illness, likely
smallpox, but speculation lingers to this day that he was assassinated by poison-
ing, perhaps by Iwakura Tomomi (1825–1883).46 Keiki, the one who had persuaded
Kōmei to give in to Western demands regarding the unequal treaties, had al-
ready become shogun following the death of Iemochi in the fall of 1866, a time
that Jansen asserts represented a watershed for expulsion. “Anti-foreignism,” he
observes, “in the simple form [supported by radicals] . . . was a dead issue for
almost everyone of any intelligence.”47 Kōmei’s esteem for Keiki, now Shogun
80 Sonnō-j ō’i
Yoshinobu, was perhaps a prospect that antiforeign elements, and supporters of

jō’i, did not want to see develop into a reinvigorated Bakufu, which would also
likely place Japan in an increasingly subservient relationship with the Western
powers. The motivation for assassination, therefore, was not insignificant. In any
case, jō’i, as the physical expulsion of Westerners from Japan, was no longer a
viable option for the Japanese after 1867, if not earlier.
Bakumatsu Intellectual History: Nativism

and the Discourse of Sonnō-jō’i
The political narrative of the Bakumatsu era describes rather obvious examples
of nativism, according to the conceptualizations offered by both Higham and Lin-
ton. The efforts to bring about jō’i, symbolized by the terrorism of the shishi and
the shelling of Western ships by Chōshū, are reminiscent of the Know-Nothings,
at least in the case of the former, while the semicolonial nature of the encounter
resonates with Linton. Unlike the abstract concept of jō’i that the Japanese in-
herited from China, the actions that w ere taken during the Bakumatsu era were
specific responses to the presence of Westerners in Japan. The example that is
well-k nown among American Japanologists is the arrival of Townsend Harris
in Japan, whose presence led to at least one unsuccessful attempt on his life, but
whose secretary and interpreter fell victim to just such an attack at the hands of the
shishi. The fear and hatred that motivated the shishi and their political supporters
in Mito and Kyoto are perhaps better understood in the context of Russia’s seizure
and short-lived occupation of Tsushima in 1861. Anxiety surrounding a potential
Russian invasion had plagued at least some Bakufu officials since the end of the
eighteenth century; their military incursion into Tsushima, therefore, certainly
confirmed that such anxieties were not unfounded.48
Japanese intellectuals were forced to come to grips with the ending of Japan’s
isolation and the arrival of Americans and other Westerners. To say the least, the
intellectual response to the important events of the Bakumatsu era was not the
same as it was for the political actors embroiled in jō’i. It is, however, commonly
held among historians that the ideas articulated by the intellectuals of the time
helped to sharpen the ideological focus for political action and to motivate those
who had yet to commit themselves to it. This was perhaps especially true of
the scholars of Mitogaku, which served as the ideological arm of the jō’i move-
ment and the chief source of inspiration for the shishi.49 The scholars of Kokugaku,
an intellectual cousin of Mitogaku, were also engaged in explaining the Western
presence in Japan and its religious ramifications for the Japanese people.50 The
intellectual response to Westerners in Japan was not as clear as it was in the arena
Bakumatsu Intellectual History 81
of political action. While some called for jō’i, others called for a return to tradi-
tional institutions, and still others argued that opening to the West was actually
beneficial for the Japanese. The complexity of the intellectual response fore
shadowed a similar development among political actors in the years immediately
preceding the Meiji Restoration, who argued that jō’i was no longer a viable option
even for the most ardent supporter of antiforeignism in Japan, and that relations
with the West were inevitable.
Shortly after Commodore Matthew Perry’s arrival in 1853, one of the leading
intellectuals of Mitogaku, Toyoda Tenkō (1805–1864), wrote the Bōkai shinsaku
(Maritime defense, a new policy). By the 1850s, the Mito domain had already
earned a reputation for its vocal support of the idea of jō’i. With the arrival of the
Americans, the dreaded eventuality feared by Mito intellectuals and others, Tenkō
decided that the time was at hand to translate the jō’i idea into actual practice.
He concluded that armed expulsion was the only correct course of action, and this
call to arms influenced many samurai to become shishi and carry out attacks on
Westerners residing in Japan. It is for this reason that Mito was also associated
with the shishi, not just jō’i, during the final decade or so of the Edo era.51
As Bob Wakabayashi has pointed out, the idea of jō’i is quite old, even by the
time of the Edo period, and has its origins in Chinese history.52 Specifically, the
idea of “expelling the barbarian” had nothing to do with armed confrontations,
but with purging peripheral peoples of their non-Chinese ways, preparing them
for the adoption of Chinese civilization. During the Edo period, this original
meaning of jō’i changed to signify armed expulsion. Tenkō argues that the policies
of the first three Tokugawa shoguns regarding the Europea ns and Chrisitianity
were linked to the jō’i ideal. The Japanese had to return to these wise practices
if they were to once again survive their latest encounter with Westerners.53 Tenkō
observes how the Tokugawa shoguns developed their wise policies of armed ex-
pulsion by looking to ancient Japanese history.54 If the examples from Japan’s
own history were not enough to convince people that armed expulsion was the
only option for the Japanese, Tenkō cites recent events in China as well, in what
is likely a reference to the Opium Wars.55 For Tenkō, jō’i meant both individual
struggles, in hand-to-hand combat, and a collective struggle.56 The shishi, of
course, endeavored to fulfill the former through attacks on Western residents and
their Japanese supporters, while the Bakufu and the domains were responsible for
the latter. There is no question that attacks on Westerners in the Bakumatsu era,
inspired by the interpretation of jō’i by Tenkō and others, constitute Tokugawa
nativism, whether one follows the conceptualizations of Linton or Higham. This
nativist response, however, did not always entail the murder of Westerners, as the
example of Yoshida Shōin demonstrates.
82 Sonnō-j ō’i
Yoshida Shōin was the leading figure of the jō’i movement of late Tokugawa
Japan.57 Under the tutelage of Sakuma Shōzan,58 beginning in 1851, Shōin stud-
ied Western learning, and was both impressed by and fearful of Westerners and
their military technology.59 With the arrival of Commodore Perry, Shōin and
Shōzan decided that the time had come to see the West first hand, and the two
put into motion a plan to board a Western ship and return with it to its home port
in the West.60 Having missed his opportunity to depart with the Americans in
1853, Shōin made his way to Nagasaki in hopes of boarding a Russian naval ves-
sel under the command of Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin (1803–1883), but was late
again.61 Knowing that Perry and the Americans would return in early 1854, he
returned to Edo for a second attempt at Uraga with a Chōshū ashigaru (foot sol-
dier) named Kaneko Shigenosuke (1831–1855).62 Unlike Tenkō, who advocated
more of a “shoot first, talk later” approach to the appearance of the Americans,
Shōin claimed that he wanted to study the Americans and their ways more closely
and carefully.63 Shōin, in his Kaikoroku (Record of my recollections), says nothing
about killing foreigners on sight, and we can detect within it no special fascina-
tion, positive or negative, with Westerners. Based on this source alone, it is a
stretch to classify Shōin as a nativist, even if he did support the idea of jō’i. His
phrase from the Kaikoroku, “could be of use to the realm” (kokuyō ni kyōsubeshi),
is very interesting, and is perhaps consistent with feelings of patriotism rather
than nativism.64
Shōin, of course, was arrested and imprisoned for his attempted boarding of
an American ship. He was subjected to interrogations by Bakufu officials to un-
cover his motivations and the scope of his plan, and to root out any others with
whom he had conspired, other than Kaneko Shigenosuke. Shōin claimed that it
was his curiosity about Westerners and, above all, his concern for Japan, that drove
him to see the Black Ships of the Americans himself, anchored off Kanagawa in
1854. When he told his interrogators that he thought his “transgression would be
forgiven” (sono tsumi wo yurushi), Shōin likened his planned sojourn abroad to
the castaway Nakahama Manjirō’s ten-year stint in the United States. Since Manjirō
was eventually forgiven for violating the Bakufu’s prohibitions against travel
abroad, the Bakufu should have had no issue with Shōin’s plan. Shōin knew that,
if caught, he would be guilty of committing a crime against the Bakufu, the certain
sentence for which was death.65
In writing his memoirs the year after his failed plot, Shōin hoped to turn his
failure into martyrdom for Japan, not just his home domain of Chōshū.66 Shōin,
however, was not executed for the Perry plot, and neither was Sakuma Shōzan, but
the two w ere sentenced to a period of confinement followed by house arrest. It was
during their five-month stint in prison, in adjoining cells, that Shōin and Shōzan
Bakumatsu Intellectual History 83
shared their ideas about current affairs, finding common ground on many is-
sues.67 Shōin was eventually sent back to Chōshū, but it was not long before he
was arrested for plotting to assassinate a Bakufu official in Kyoto, for which he
was executed in 1859. Shōin’s pre-1853 fascination with Westerners was only dis-
tantly nativistic, according to Linton’s broad and inclusive concept of nativism,
if it was at all, and was a common attitude among followers of Rangaku as well.
His willingness to die for Japan was certainly not what we would normally call
nativism either: “I was certainly going to die for the realm; this was clearly my
intention.”68 To the extent that Shōin’s ideas inspired advocates of jō’i to commit
acts of terror and murder against Westerners, nativism is clearly an appropriate
categorization for them. Whether these ideas made Shōin himself a nativist is a
matter of debate. Thomas Huber argues that Shōin was an advocate of kaikoku,
just not the Bakufu’s version of it. As was the case with Katsu Kaishū, Shōin may
have started his scholarly career as an advocate of jō’i, but he ended it as an advo-
cate of kaikoku.69
Takeo Masatane (1833–1874) was a member of the Hirata School of Kokugaku
and a student of Ōkuni Takamasa (1792–1871).70 In 1861, he incorporated knowl-
edge of international conditions into an essay on Japan’s position in the world,
the Daiteikokuron (Discourse on the great empires). It is important to note that
Westerners had been living in Japan since Townsend Harris’ arrival in 1856, a
situation that both Tenkō and Shōin had feared when they penned their observa-
tions several years earlier. With Westerners actually living among the Japanese,
one should not be surprised that feelings of nativism, according to the concepts
of either Linton or Higham, developed in Japan, and the activities of the shishi
confirm this. One might also expect similar sentiments from a scholar with firm
connections to Kokugaku, but this is not the case. Instead, we see assertions of
Japanese superiority over the nemeses of Kokugaku, both of the eighteenth cen-
tury (China and India) and of the nineteenth (chiefly the United States and the
major European states). Thus, at least some Kokugaku scholars, when confronted
with a situation ripe for nativism, fell back on what is more commonly referred to
as exceptionalism instead.
Masatane acknowledges that the world is dominated by a handful of great em-
pires, an illustrious group within which he includes Japan.71 Masatane’s obser
vations are interesting for a number of reasons. First, he omits both Great Britain
and the United States from his list of great empires (even if only what he calls
“fake” ones). The former, of course, was a global imperial power by the middle
of the nineteenth century, while the latter forcibly ended the Bakufu’s isolation
policies. He discounts Britain by observing that it is a “republic” (kyōwa seiji),
and not an empire, while he only acknowledges America’s size, which he says is
84 Sonnō-j ō’i
comparable to that of Russia.72 Second, he notes that the ruler over the empire of
Japan is its emperor (sumeraki no mikoto) and not the shogun. This is consistent
with statements made by Motoori Norinaga in the eighteenth century, as well as
with the views of the supporters of sonnō, a slogan that was closely related to (if
not essentially synonymous with) jō’i. Finally, Masatane specifically mentions the
presence of Western residents in Japan, but he does not call for their expulsion or
murder. Instead, it was the duty of Japanese scholars, such as himself, to assume
the responsibility of “informing” them (shirashimu, literally “make them know”)
of the inferior statuses of their home countries.
Of more importance to Masatane than a (friendly?) chat with Westerners was
the duty of loyal scholars to persuade the adherents of foreign forms of knowl-
edge that their ways were in extreme error: “The imperial realm is, in fact, the lord
of all realms on the earth, but the scholars of Chinese and Dutch Learning know
nothing of the sublime classics of the Divine Age.”73 What is implicit in Masa-
tane’s statement is that foreign knowledge, without a foundation in Japanese learn-
ing (Kokugaku) is tantamount to disloyalty to Japan.74 Masatane’s solution to
this dilemma is a bit different from Norinaga’s, since it was made after the settle-
ment of Westerners in Japan.75 He does not say that the Westerners themselves had
to be expelled, or even that their forms of knowledge had to be eliminated. Masa-
tane calls for the “dismissal” (shirizoke) of Western knowledge and the “inquiry”
(tadashi) into the heterodoxy of Chinese and Indian forms of knowledge, refer-
ences to Confucianism and Buddhism, respectively. The softer rhetoric of jō’i
that we see in Masatane is perhaps surprising for one of its advocates and is even
distinct by comparison with the position of kaikoku.
Nativism from the Bottom to the Top: Sakamoto

Ryōma, Tokugawa Nariaki, and Emperor Kōmei
While Tokugawa intellectuals were divided over resistance to or acceptance of the
presence of Westerners in Japan, their counterparts in the political arena were sim-
ilarly conflicted. Those who supported intercourse with the West were identified
with the political position known as kaikoku, while their opponents, who called
for the immediate expulsion of Westerners, w ere labeled as followers of sonnō, jō’i,
or both. By the final years of the Edo Bakufu, even the strongest supporters of
sonnō-jō’i realized that armed expulsion of Westerners in Japan was unrealistic,
and their political position became increasingly indistinguishable from that of
their colleagues who were identified with kaikoku. To the extent that the follow-
ers of either side supported the expulsion of Westerners, even if not immediately,
they were all nativists.76
Sakamoto Ryōma 85
Sakamoto Ryōma: The Early Years

While the exploits of specific shishi who were active during the 1850s and 1860s
are well known to historians today, perhaps the most celebrated member of this
group is Sakamoto Ryōma, a samurai from the Tosa domain in Shikoku. As a
shishi, Ryōma articulated the basic ideas that motivated men like himself to take
decisive action against Westerners in Japan. When one reads Ryōma’s thoughts
in the months and years following the arrival of Commodore Perry and his men,
they are remarkable for their clarity and simplicity; he was not interested in for-
mulating anything approaching a nuanced position. As his colleague and fellow
shishi, Hirai Shūjirō (1833–1863), observed in a letter to his sister dated the twenty-
fifth day of the third month (3/25)77 of Bunkyū 2 (1862), “Ryōma has always been a
formidable person [jinbutsu]; however, he is not well-read, and so makes mistakes
from time to time, so keep this in mind.”78 Like most shishi, the “early” Ryōma
was more interested in deciding matters with his sword than he was with his wits.
As a teenager who was already recognized as talented with a blade, Ryōma was
sent to Edo for more advanced study of kenjutsu (fencing).79 It was while residing
in Edo that Ryōma learned of Commodore Perry and the arrival of the Ameri-
cans in the summer of 1853. In a letter to his father dated 9/23 of that year, he
articulates his own feelings of excitement and anxiety over Perry’s arrival, feel-
ings that others likely shared:
Concerning my brother’s rumor about America [having arrived in Japan],

you can tell for yourself. First of all, regarding the urgent matter [before
us], [though] you may have a hard time with [my] hasty and messy writ-
ing, how can we avoid having to deal with foreign ships? I know that, by
next spring, the numbers [of foreigners] will have grown. . . . I am certain
that foreign ships will keep coming [to Japan], [which means] that [for-
eign] armies will soon follow. At that time, I will take [some] foreign heads
and return home with them. My regards.80
It is clear that the root of Ryōma’s anxiety over the arrival of the Americans was
the prospect of subsequent arrivals, not only of more Americans, but also of peo-
ple from foreign lands (ikoku) in general. Ryōma likely felt more than a little fear
at the thought of facing off against hordes of well-armed foreigners, and so the
classification of his reaction as nativistic is warranted. We have to keep in mind
that hatred is a characteristic emotion of nativists, according to Higham; to say
that he hated Westerners so much that he wanted to kill all of those setting foot
in Japan, even though he had not yet seen a Westerner personally, is perhaps not
86 Sonnō-j ō’i
a stretch. Ryōma’s fear and hatred, in other words, resonate with the feelings ex-
pressed by his American nativist counterparts, the Know-Nothings, who were
similarly troubled by the arrival of Catholic immigrants in the United States.
It was not long after Perry concluded the Convention of Kanagawa that
Townsend Harris and his delegation arrived at Shimoda to establish the first
consular post for the United States in Japan. Ryōma’s certainty that the Perry
expedition was only the vanguard of a future wave of foreign arrivals in Japan
was prophetic, as similar treaties were concluded with the British, the French, the
Russians, and others, and they also prepared to establish consular presences in
Japan. Ultimately, it became known that the Bakufu had concluded these treaties
without the approval of the imperial court; as the leading figure in the Bakufu’s
capitulation to Western demands, Ii Naosuke was assassinated by shishi from
Mito, as noted above. The Ishin Tosa kinnō-shi (A history of Tosa loyalism during
the Meiji Restoration) describes Ryōma’s elation upon hearing the news of Nao-
suke’s death: “[The news] later reached Sakamoto Ryōma. He met someone from
Mito and asked him for all the details. [In this way], he found out almost every-
thing. All of a sudden, he shouted, “My lords, why do you uselessly grieve? They
[the assassins] merely did their duty as [loyal, imperial] subjects. I pledge to do
the same thing someday.” Ike [Kurata (1841–1866)], Kōno [Masuya (1844–1895)],
and others, saw, for the first time, Ryōma’s embrace of this higher calling.”81
It is at this point, historians believe, that Ryōma became a shishi. He dedicated
himself to the cause of the shishi not because of the presence of Westerners in
Japan, or because of his desire to kill them, which he had expressed to his father
some six years earlier. His vow to “do the same thing someday” was the result of
hearing of the valiant deed committed by other shishi to end the tyrannical poli-
cies of the traitor Ii Naosuke. Thus, while the shishi certainly targeted Westerners
for assassination, those Bakufu officials who facilitated Western efforts in Japan
were also fair game for the shishi. Both the immigrant threat from abroad and the
domestic political threat from within were significant in the history of American
nativism, as well. The Democratic Party was largely viewed among Americans
before the Civil War as the chief political supporter of unrestricted immigration.
While assassination was perhaps less common among Americans during the
1840s and 1850s than it was for their Japanese counterparts at nearly the same
time, the parallel is nonetheless still there. The nativists viewed the Democrats as
traitors to the United States in much the same way that sonnō-jō’i advocates
viewed Bakufu officials as traitors to Japan.
In another interesting similarity between the history of American nativism
and that of the shishi, both the Americans and their Japanese counterparts
invoked the metaphor of purity in articulating the urgency of their respective
Sakamoto Ryōma 87
anti-immigrant causes. Americans, who had proclaimed their moral authority

on the basis of having been born in the United States, believed that America was
a haven of genuine Protestantism, unsullied by the sectarian squabbles of the
Europeans. The presence, therefore, of Catholic immigrants in America was more
acute than it was in other societies with mixed populations of Protestants and
Catholics, since American Protestantism was inherently more pure than it was
in other places in the world. Although some Protestant leaders believed that it
was, at least in theory, possible for Catholic immigrants to convert to Protes-
tantism, thereby defusing this threat to American Protestantism, this view
was not universally shared among Americans, many of whom saw Catholic im-
migrants, especially the Irish, as somehow subhuman. As Marius Jansen observes
about the shishi, the issue of purity was on their minds as well, “Thus the ‘purpose’
for which the shishi strove came to have overtones of preservation of the ‘sacred
land’ from the impurity of foreign occupation and of reverence for the Kyoto court
wherein lay the essence of ‘national purity.’ ”82 While American nativists rallied
around Protestantism, the shishi and others rallied around the emperor and the
imperial court as Japan’s wellspring of spiritual purity. Just as American extrem-
ists believed that Catholic immigrants were an irredeemable threat to American
purity, so too did the shishi share such a view of Westerners who had arrived
in Japan.
The year after declaring himself sympathetic to the goals of the shishi, Ryōma
became one of the founding members of the Tosa Loyalist Party (Tosa Kinnō-tō).
In the oath that each founding member swore, we see a more detailed articulation
of the shishi political position.83 As was the case with Ryōma’s vow of the previous
year, this oath refers, although obliquely, to the assassination of Ii Naosuke, the of-
ficial who caused the emperor’s humiliation. The motivation for becoming a shishi,
for Ryōma personally, as well as the other members of the Tosa Loyalist Party (and
likely shishi throughout Japan), was actually not the presence of Westerners in Ja-
pan; it was, rather, the complicity of Bakufu officials who had allowed it to happen.
The oath’s implication, of course, is that the only legitimate response of the Bakufu
was jō’i or armed resistance to the approach of foreign ships as outlined in the Ex-
pulsion Edict of 1825. As that option was no longer viable as of 1861, Ryōma and
the other shishi decided that jō’i had to assume two different forms, namely the
murder of Japanese “traitors,” like Naosuke, and the murder of individual Western-
ers residing in Japan, and these new forms of expulsion were much more personal in
practice than the targeting of ships from shore.84 The oath, however, is also impor-
tant in the context of nativism since it calls for a revival of Japan’s martial spirit as
the antidote to its moral degeneration. In this way, jō’i resembles nativism in the
way described by Linton.
88 Sonnō-j ō’i
By 1862, Ryōma had earned a national reputation for himself in domestic

politics, a fact that was confirmed by Matsudaira Shungaku in a letter dated the
eighth month of Bunkyū 2 (1862): “Sakamoto Ryōma is a retainer from Tosa
domain (han) who runs around day and night [tending to] matters [of the realm]
and whose tremendous exertions are known to all.”85 At nearly the same moment
that Shungaku brushed these words, Charles Richardson and his party were at-
tacked by Satsuma warriors under the command of Shimazu Hisamitsu. The Royal
Navy eventually attacked Satsuma the following year in retaliation, adding to the
national anxieties over Western domination; the arrival of Commodore Perry and
the American Navy represented a clear military threat in 1853, but an outright
confrontation with Perry and the American Navy never materialized. With the
British attack on Satsuma, such a confrontation did occur, and the consequences
were devastating for the town of Kagoshima. Ironically, Satsuma’s British entan-
glements allowed its rival, Chōshū, to assert its preeminence in domestic political
affairs by attempting to carry out Emperor Kōmei’s expulsion order. The general
chaos and mayhem that plagued the Japanese during these tumultuous times
convinced Ryōma that he was not fated to survive unscathed. In fact, in a letter
to his sister (dated 6/29 of Bunkyū 3 [1863]), he expressed his certainty that he
was not going to die an ordinary death.86
By attacking Western shipping going through the Straits of Shimonoseki, Mōri
Takachika effectively started a war with the West, actions that made Chōshū a
Western military target in much the same way as Satsuma had been only months
earlier. The confrontations with the Russians in 1861 and the British in 1863 did
not go well for the Japanese; when the Westerners sent a combined fleet of Brit-
ish, French, Dutch, and American ships to attack Chōshū, the sense of national
emergency must have seemed even more urgent for individuals like Ryōma. His
prediction as a teenager in 1854 seemed to come true, but the situation for the
Japanese was perhaps even worse than he thought it would be. Western military
might was both impossible to deny and very nearly impossible to resist. By early
1863, Ryōma had become an assistant to Katsu Kaishū, who had been tasked with
developing a Bakufu navy.87 Although Ryōma had joined Katsu Kaishū,88 a sup-
porter of kaikoku, which had the effect of moderating Ryōma’s views of jō’i,89 he
remained an adamant supporter of the imperial court. Since the court sought the
expulsion of Westerners from Japan, expulsion became his own personal goal. As
a sign that his interpretation of jō’i had, indeed, softened, it is important to note
that he does not mention the Americans in his list of foreign invaders in Japan.
His initial reaction to the arrival of Perry and the Americans was to kill as many
as he could; ten years later, his attitude seems to have changed. It is possible that
he had accepted the American presence, and, in theory, the general presence of
Sakamoto Ryōma 89
Westerners in Japan, since the Americans, in his mind, were no longer Japan’s chief
adversaries. In the context of the attacks on Chōshū in 1863, the British, the French,
and the Dutch were the most active military participants; although the Ameri-
cans contributed one ship for the expedition, its role was perhaps the most mini-
mal of the four contributing nations. The Russians, however, were not part of the
Western expedition, and did not participate in the Shimonoseki war. It is curi-
ous, therefore, that Ryōma would include the Russians for expulsion, even though
they did not attack Chōshū, and leave the Americans out, even though they did.
It is possible that he had the Russian invasion of Tsushima in mind, even though
the British forced them to leave Tsushima just the year before the Western expe-
dition to Chōshū. At the same time, it is possible that Ryōma had simply made a
mistake, and that he may have intended to include the Americans and wound up
confusing them with the Russians, or he had received false information that the
Russians had attacked. In any case, the option of driving out the Westerners en-
dured in the minds of shishi like Ryōma, an understandable response to what was
rapidly becoming a situation of colonial domination, the critical context within
which nativism develops, according to Linton.
Ryōma penned a famous letter about one month after meeting with the
Fukui official Murata Ujihisa (1821–1899), a retainer of Matsudaira Shungaku.
In Nakane Yukie’s (1807–1877) history of Fukui during the Bakumatsu era, Zoku
saimu kiji (A record of revisiting the dream, continued, ca. 1869), we see a more
fully articulated statement of Ryōma’s views. It is in this source that we see a view
of jō’i informed by concerns of an impending Western colonization of Japan.90 It
is in this conversation, attributed to Murata Ujihisa and Ryōma, that we see the
latter’s more moderate political stance as a shishi. We see that he clearly expresses
his admiration for the bold action taken by Chōshū; the idea that its leaders chose
death for their domain (province) must have resonated, in Ryōma’s mind, with
the idea, expressed in such celebrated texts as Hagakure (Hidden by leaves), that
the individual samurai must be ready to die at any time, a conviction especially
dear to the hearts of all committed shishi.91 He also vows to “deal with” (shochi)
corrupt Bakufu officials, a view that is consistent with his reasons for becoming a
shishi in the first place, namely, the assassination of Ii Naosuke. As a final vestige
of political radicalism, Ryōma favors all-out war with the Westerners participat-
ing in the punitive expedition as a final option. The desire to go out in a blaze of
glory, like this, only confirms Ryōma’s earlier views and those of the shishi in gen-
eral.92 However, all-out war is only an option in the event that negotiation failed
to secure a Western withdrawal. Negotiation, therefore, was to be the first, and
presumably best, option for the Japanese. Although the oath of the Tosa Loyalist
Party does not specifically preclude negotiation, the tone of the document is such
90 Sonnō-j ō’i
that options of that sort w ere likely unthinkable to its authors, one of whom was
Ryōma. Although he does not necessarily classify Chōshū’s actions as illegal,
he concedes the point when Ujihisa makes this assertion. As the letter to his sis-
ter dated on 7/25 of Bunkyū 3 demonstrates, Ryōma was aware of the expulsion
orders handed down by the imperial court, and that these orders represented the
wishes of Emperor Kōmei himself. If this is the case, then the attacks on Western
ships, although consistent with the wishes of the emperor, contravened legal stan-
dards; in this context, the illegality to which Ujihisa refers in this document is
the fact that attacks on Western ships were never ordered by the Bakufu, the only
legal body that had the authority to issue such an order. Although Ryōma viewed
the Bakufu as infested with corruption, he still supported the idea that the insti-
tution itself was legitimate.
Ryōma’s chief concern in his exchange with Murata Ujihisa, and one that
conforms with the letter to his sister that he penned at nearly the same historical
moment, is that the Westerners are preparing to occupy Japanese soil by their pres-
ence in Chōshū. He was aware at the time that, unless the Japanese secured the
immediate withdrawal of Western forces in Chōshū, these forces could have re-
mained in Japan indefinitely. The obvious danger in this scenario was the outbreak
of a wider war on Japanese soil followed thereafter by the future colonization of
Japan. This is the reason why he asserted that all-out war was the only option left
to the Japanese if negotiations with the Westerners failed. Clearly, this position
would not have been controversial among other shishi in Japan at that time.
Ryōma’s advocacy for jō’i in this instance was qualitatively different from the
motivations for earlier shishi attacks on Westerners, and, indeed, the reasons that
motivated the leadership of Chōshū to attack Western shipping. He did not argue
against the presence of Westerners in Japan, just the presence of their military
forces. By arguing for a negotiated withdrawal, Ryōma had essentially agreed to
the necessity of a Western presence in Japan, as his intention was to negotiate with
their civilian consular officials and not their military commanders. Although he
was still a shishi in 1863, Ryōma’s more moderate political stance compared with
other shishi at the time, and compared with those of just a few years earlier, also
signified a weakening of his commitment to the kind of nativism described by
Higham, namely, driving immigrants out.93
Tokugawa Nariaki
The lord of Mito, Tokugawa Nariaki, was another ideological inspiration for the
shishi, as well as one of the leading antiforeign figures within the Edo Bakufu. Un-
like Ryōma, who softened his political stance regarding the presence of Western-
ers in Japan, Nariaki remained steadfastly opposed to the Western presence until
Tokugawa Nariaki 91
his death, or, at least, one could argue that he did not live long enough to change
his mind. We should also remember that the shishi assassins of Ii Naosuke were
moved to action by Nariaki’s victimization during the Ansei Purge and his sub-
sequent death while still under h ouse arrest.
The clearest statement of Nariaki’s nativist views is a document he composed
shortly after the arrival of Perry and the Americans in 1853. The text is called Jūjō
goji kengisho (A proposal of ten conditions and five circumstances), and it became
one of the main ideological statements of the Bakumatsu sonnō-jō’i movement. It
is also important as a statement of Tokugawa nativism.94 At the outset of this text,
Nariaki states unambiguously that peace was not an option for the Bakufu, leav-
ing war as the only viable course of action.95 He has three basic reasons for this
assertion. First, war was certain to result in the removal of Westerners from Ja-
pan; the route of peaceful negotiation would, he believes, virtually guarantee that
they would remain in Japan. It was axiomatic to Nariaki that Japan’s leadership,
namely, the Bakufu and the imperial court, did not want to see Westerners on
Japanese soil, whether they favored war or peace. The only successful outcome,
however, could be achieved by a military confrontation alone. Second, the Bakufu
was a military government charged with the protection of not only Japan but also
the imperial court. Japan, of course, was a country governed by the warrior class;
war was an obvious and important aspect of the warrior identity. To choose peace
over war was a betrayal of that identity, as it would dilute the “resolve” of the Japa
nese. As was the case with Sakamoto Ryōma and his fascination with death,
the notion that “thinking too much” about the urgent situation brought on by
the arrival of the Americans is also reminiscent of Hagakure. It must have disap-
pointed Nariaki that Bakufu leaders chose to interact with the Americans rather
than striking out against them immediately. He warns against the erosion of the
samurai spirit, but the very reason for composing his text was a testament that
such an erosion was already taking place. Third, allowing the Americans to land
in Japan was a violation of Japan’s “prohibitions,” that is to say, sakoku.96 This line
of reasoning is interesting, since it is fundamentally different than the other two
justifications for war in this section labeled “the first reason.” Put simply, allow-
ing the Americans to land on Japanese soil was illegal, according to Nariaki, and
the Bakufu had to uphold the law (its own, no less). While the appeal to immedi-
ate expulsion is clearly nativistic, and akin to the views of the antebellum Know-
Nothings, the assertion of the samurai identity represents an appeal to Japanese
culture, while the observation regarding the transgression of sakoku is an appeal
to the law.
As if Nariaki’s appeal was not already effective both emotionally and ratio-
nally at this point in the text, he was just getting started. He continues by, once
92 Sonnō-j ō’i
again, using various types of argumentation, rather than relying exclusively

on one particular line of reasoning.97 The Bakufu should refuse to deal with the
Westerners, since they are naturally evil, he asserts. As a sign of their wicked-
ness, they will bring their religion with them, as they did at the beginning of the
Edo period. Naturally, he reasons, the Bakufu would not find Christianity any
more palatable than they did more than two centuries earlier. It is hard to argue
that these observations are anything other than nativistic;98 however, Nariaki
was savvy enough to understand that condemnations of foreigners were likely to
be insufficient to sway the Bakufu against giving in to the American demands.
By citing the example of the recently concluded First Opium War in China, Nariaki
resorts to geopolitics as well. The Chinese found themselves on the short end of
this conflict with the British, but Nariaki chooses not to emphasize the negative
outcome for the Chinese. Since the Chinese did resist the British, a course that
Nariaki hoped to persuade the Bakufu to embrace, drawing any attention to the
Chinese defeat could have undermined his rhetorical efforts. Resistance, in other
words, would have seemed useless to the Japanese, who may have reasoned that it
was best to capitulate in order to avoid the destruction of their coastal areas.
Rather, Nariaki’s invocation of the Opium War works best as recent historical evi-
dence of Western treachery and greed. The Japanese, in other words, should not
trust the Westerners as the Chinese had done. Finally, Nariaki again uses a legal
argument against the American demands; allowing the Americans to enter Japan
for the purpose of trade is a violation of the Bakufu’s regulations regarding
sekisho (barrier stations), he argues. Unlike his earlier legal argument regarding
potential violations of sakoku, namely laws concerning foreign relations, abroga-
tions of regulations regarding barrier stations would be violations of laws govern-
ing internal matters.
Nariaki concludes his plea by returning to cultural justifications for resistance,
only this time he combines it with a practical military strategy.99 He especially
focuses on the issue of technology in this section of his proposal, arguing that
the followers of Rangaku have emphasized the superiority of Western technol-
ogy to the point of intimidating the Bakufu and undermining its leadership’s
self-confidence. While Nariaki concedes that the Westerners have a clear naval
advantage over the Japanese, at some point, he reasons, they will have to land on
Japanese soil. Since combat on land is something the Japanese did well, he argues
that they would eventually gain the upper hand under such favorable circum-
stances. Traditional weaponry, such as the samurai sword, and the lifetime of
training in which Japanese warriors engaged, along with superior numbers (one
imagines), would eventually result in ultimate victory for the Japanese. Nariaki
cautions the Bakufu against becoming overawed by Western military technology.
Emperor Kōmei 93
While Nariaki asserts that ultimate victory over the Westerners was certainly
not unimaginable, he also describes a solution to the more immediate problem
facing the Bakufu, namely, Perry’s return. Through trickery and deception, he
advises the Bakufu to order its men to board the American ships and engage in
close-quarters combat with the American sailors, after the assassination of their
“captain.”100 By fighting in this way, the Japanese would succeed in effectively nul-
lifying the technological advantage of the Americans. Once the Americans had
tasted cold Japanese steel, they would lose their stomach for the fight, he reasons,
so that the use by the Japanese of such deceptive tactics would dissuade Western-
ers from any future incursions into Japan.
Nariaki does not deny that Western weapons w ere impressive, and that it
would be to the advantage of the Japanese to adopt their use. Rather than engage
in any peaceful exchange with the Westerners for this purpose, as was advocated
by many intellectuals in Edo, Nariaki believes that the Japanese could simply study
Western weapons and then duplicate them in Japan. Most likely, Nariaki had the
adoption of the arquebus during the sixteenth century in mind when he made this
observation. The training and ferocity of the samurai, therefore, would carry the
day against the Westerners in the beginning; eventually, the Japanese ability to
study and emulate Western technology would forever keep the Westerners at bay.
Emperor Kōmei
Nariaki’s arguments in the Jūjō goji kengisho exhibit the hallmarks of nativism
quite well, whether one focuses on his reaction to the potential colonial domina-
tion of Japan (Linton) or on his ideas of forcible expulsion (Higham), and he was
recognized during the Bakumatsu period as one of the leading figures of the sonnō-
jō’i movement. There are, however, elements in his text that are not congruent
with either form of nativism; thus, while Nariaki’s ideas deserve the label of
nativist, they tell only part of the story. Perhaps the most inspirational leader of
sonnō-jō’i was none other than Emperor Kōmei himself, the “ jō’i emperor.”101
As was the case with Sakamoto Ryōma, Kōmei had little esteem for Western-
ers even before their arrival, although it is not likely that he offered to slay any
Westerners personally. These sentiments, however, do not qualify as nativistic,
since there were no Westerners residing in Japan with whom the Japanese could
interact.102 On the one hand, a large part of Kōmei’s contempt for Westerners was
due to the influence of Mito scholars, one of whom, Aizawa Seishisai, inspired the
Bakufu’s Expulsion Edict of 1825.103 Consequently, Kōmei’s anti-Western attitude
was perhaps nativistic to the extent that it was connected to the Expulsion Edict.
On the other hand, Western sailors rarely actually landed in Japan before 1853,
and even those that landed did not remain in Japan for very long and certainly
94 Sonnō-j ō’i
not in any great numbers. One could also argue that the edict of 1825 and Mi-
togaku in general, as well as its influence on Kōmei, were actually not nativistic,
since whalers did not represent an impending colonial threat, and the scale of
interaction was neither very large nor temporally sustained. It is, however, safe to
categorize Kōmei’s attitude as antiforeign; after the arrival of the Americans, and
especially after the conclusion of the unequal treaties, Kōmei’s feelings became
decidedly nativistic in ways similar to those of Ryōma and Nariaki.
Before the arrival of Perry, Kōmei was taught that Westerners had designs on
Japan. They sought not only to subdue and conquer Japan but to exhaust its re-
sources and leave it impoverished.104 It is not surprising that the emperor reacted
unfavorably to American overtures to trade, believing that trade was a Trojan
horse and the first step toward annexation (heidon).105 The Bakufu concluded the
Convention of Kanagawa without court approval; as specified in the treaty, the
Americans were allowed to establish a consular presence in Japan, and Townsend
Harris arrived in order to assume this new diplomatic posting. Harris’ main goal
was to negotiate a new treaty that was both broader in scope and more favorable
to American interests than the previous one. Kōmei vigorously opposed any new
treaty, arguing that it would result in eternal humiliation for Japan, cause the kami
undue anxiety, and be generally unfilial toward the imperial ancestors.106 Kōmei
expressed his displeasure to his advisers: “However, foreign ships will continue
to come h ere; to make matters worse, ships with representatives of foreign gov-
ernments will appear, seeking contact [with us] and begging for amity and trade
with Japan. On the surface, they will talk about feelings of friendship; in reality,
their intentions to annex [Japan] will emerge later on.”107
Kōmei’s anger with the Bakufu for agreeing, yet again, to American demands
turned to threats of abdication if his views w ere not respected. Upon being
allowed to issue expulsion orders to Mito and the Bakufu in 1858, Kōmei with-
drew his threat.108 He ordered that expulsion was to commence during the fourth
month of Bunkyū 3 (1863), following the return of the shogun to Edo after a pro
cession to Kyoto.109 During his stay in Kyoto, Shogun Iemochi pledged to carry
out expulsion, vowing to achieve absolute victory.110 The date to begin expulsion,
which was initially set for the twentieth day of the fourth month, was pushed back
to the tenth day of the fifth month. With no other delays in sight, Mōri Takachika
initiated the emperor’s expulsion effort by firing on the Pembroke. Naturally,
Kōmei lavished praise on Takachika for his decisive actions, but he also expressed
disappointment that neighboring domains had done nothing to help.111 Concerned
with Chōshū’s rising prominence at the imperial court, leaders from Satsuma
and Aizu attacked Chōshū’s forces around the imperial palace and drove them
out of Kyoto on the eighteenth day of the eighth month of Bunkyū 3. “Freed”
Emperor Kōmei 95
from Chōshū’s dominance, Kōmei claimed that he was now able to express his
“true” feelings.
In a letter to the leader of Satsuma, Shimazu Hisamitsu, Kōmei backed away
from his earlier hard-line position regarding Westerners in Japan. During the
summer of 1863, radical elements within the imperial court drafted an imperial
edict “authorizing a campaign against the barbarians led by the Emperor.”112 While
opposed to the Western presence in Japan, Kōmei also opposed an all-out war
against the West. Although he continued to favor expulsion, he distanced him-
self from the more radical ideas espoused by the shishi and their courtier sup-
porters.113 This letter refers to the emperor’s threat to abdicate, which he admits
doing on more than one occasion. It is clear that Kōmei made such threats out of
frustration that his opinions w ere not being seriously considered by the Bakufu,
let alone acknowledged as the commands of Japan’s sovereign. Perhaps the
most significant examples of the Bakufu’s dismissal of the emperor’s views
were the treaties that w ere concluded with the Western powers, notably those
with the Americans, the Convention of Kanagawa and the Harris Treaty. Kōmei,
however, claims in this letter that those threats w ere not serious, and that no one
had known about them anyway. While appearing to tone down his own pol iti
cal position regarding the whole issue of Westerners and their activities in Japan,
he also confesses his desire to be a good ruler. Such a desire explains the frustra-
tion he felt when his views did not translate into Bakufu policy.
Kōmei expresses his admiration for the shishi, whom he believes were moti-
vated out of loyalty to him. He apologizes for the shishi by observing how they
had been misled by “advocates of violence” (bōron no tomogara). It is not clear what
individual or groups the emperor had in mind, since either or both the Mito
scholars, such as Aizawa Seishisai, Fujita Yūkoku (1773–1826), and others, or the
Kyoto nobles, such as the four who were forced to become Buddhist monks, seem
to fit the description of “advocates of violence.” In any case, Kōmei seems to ab-
solve the shishi of responsibility for their deeds, even though the consequences
for Japan as a whole were unfortunate. In fact, Kōmei’s position on the use of vio-
lence by the shishi is ambiguous in this letter. His words might be construed as a
condemnation of violence in general, which seems to resonate with the fact that
the emperor was a civilian authority in a system that delegated matters related to
defense and warfare to the Bakufu and to the warrior class in general. This inter-
pretation seems unlikely, since it was clear that the emperor understood that jō’i
was going to require forceful means to achieve, and he praised Mōri Takachika
just months earlier for his attacks on Western ships. Consequently, a slightly more
narrow interpretation, namely, that his condemnation of violence was a reference
to violence against Westerners, is also precluded by Kōmei’s praise for Chōshū’s
96 Sonnō-j ō’i
expulsion activities. For these reasons, the emperor’s (mild) condemnation of the
violence committed by the shishi was likely relevant only to attacks on the Bakufu.
Thus, the assassination of Ii Naosuke, a great elder, though inspired by the em-
peror’s desire for expulsion, was in fact illegal and not what Kōmei had in mind,
as he seems to say in this letter. The message to Shimazu Hisamitsu, then, is that
Kōmei’s idea of jō’i is literal, that is to say, the expulsion of foreigners (Western-
ers) from Japan, and not the more general expulsion (killing) of officials viewed
as facilitating the Western presence in Japan.
Kōmei continues his letter by discussing the effect of the Western presence in
Japan and his decision to order expulsion.114 His sympathies with Chōshū’s efforts
are clear in this part of the letter, and he links its attacks on Western shipping to
his desire for expulsion. Shimazu Hisamitsu surely knew about the emperor’s ear-
lier expulsion order issued initially to Mito, then to the Bakufu and to the rest of
the domains, so that the emperor’s desire to expel Westerners from Japan should
not have been a surprise to him. Instead, Kōmei informs Hisamitsu that Mōri
Takachika had simply acted on this imperial order, despite the long odds for his
domain’s success. What is most significant about this section of the letter is Kōmei’s
rationale for issuing the expulsion order, namely, to protect Japan. His obligation
as emperor, he says, is to maintain Japan’s purity by preventing its pollution, as
such a task can only be accomplished by preventing foreign incursions into Japan
and by driving out unwanted foreigners who had successfully landed in Japan.
Consequently, Kōmei suggests that his only recourse as emperor was to order
expulsion. This explanation is interesting for two reasons. First, it places respon-
sibility for national defense with the imperial court and not the Bakufu, since the
Bakufu’s role is to await imperial instructions. Second, equating the presence of
Westerners in Japan with the pollution of the realm made Kōmei’s position in-
tractable. Thus, the presence of any Westerner in Japan for whatever reason was
tantamount to the defilement of the realm and a betrayal of the kami.
Although Kōmei admitted his desire to be a good sovereign earlier in the
letter, he later clarifies this position to include governing with the Bakufu.115 Here
again, Kōmei distances himself from the shishi to Shimazu Hisamatsu, who him-
self was very critical of the destabilizing activities of the shishi. He argues against
direct rule in favor of the power sharing arrangement or “coa lition” symbolized
by the “union of court and Bakufu” (kōbu-gattai).116 Thus, Kōmei now clarifies his
earlier statement that he had wanted to be an effective sovereign, since he envi-
sions himself as governing alongside, rather than instead of, the Bakufu. By ally-
ing himself with the Bakufu in this way, Kōmei secured their support of his own
goal of jō’i; at the same time, he alienated those among his supporters who
wanted to see the Edo Bakufu overthrown or replaced. The mysterious circum-
Conclusion 97
stances surrounding his death might be evidence that this cooperation with the
Bakufu reached a point where even the assassination of the emperor became a
viable option to some. Kōmei’s vision of kōbu-gattai emerges in this part of the
letter, namely, obeying both his orders and those of the Bakufu. Since the Bakufu
also serves the imperial court, following its orders is, at the same time, following his
orders.117 By implication, following the emperor’s wishes should not conflict with
the Bakufu, as long as its leadership understands their role in serving the emperor.
The chief difference, therefore, between direct, imperial rule and kōbu-gattai is
that the latter preserves the existence of the Bakufu. Even within the framework of
kōbu-gattai, Kōmei implies that his rule is still direct, which reinforces the sub-
servient position of the Bakufu.
Kōmei ends his letter to Hisamitsu assuring him of his confidence in the
Bakufu and apologizes for making false statements or, at least, allowing others to
do this for him.118 The emperor makes three important statements in the final
pages of his letter. First, he wants Shimazu Hisamitsu to know that previous state-
ments that w ere made in his name were false, and those who were responsible for
these statements, namely, a group of seven court nobles, fled Kyoto after the in-
tervention by forces from Satsuma and Aizu had pushed out the warriors from
Chōshū. It is not clear whether Kōmei means every statement emanating in his
name from the imperial court before 8/18 of Bunkyū 3 (1863), or just some of them,
such as the expulsion order after the conclusion of the Harris Treaty; even in this
letter to Hisamitsu, the emperor admits that jō’i was something he wanted to see
occur. Second, he reiterates that the Bakufu has been responsive to him, even
though this was not the case years earlier when the unequal treaties w ere approved
without his consent. Finally, the emperor tells Hisamitsu that those Kyoto nobles
who were responsible for these lies should be punished, and that the problem with
the shishi should be handled. There was perhaps no better way for the emperor to
distance himself once and for all from his zealous supporters of the previous de
cade than by calling on samurai leaders like Shimazu Hisamitsu to deal with them.
Now that Kōmei had approved the unequal treaties and secured the cooperation
of the Bakufu, he decided that he no longer needed the help of those “advocates
of violence” acting on his behalf.
Conclusion
Supporters of jō’i spanned nearly all layers of Tokugawa society and lived through-
out the diverse regions of Japan. From Sakamoto Ryōma, a low-ranking samurai
from Tosa, to the lord of Mito, Tokugawa Nariaki, to the emperor himself, the
expulsion of Westerners from Japan served as a powerful ideology capable of
98 Sonnō-j ō’i
mobilizing those concerned with Japan’s political present, as well as its future.
The arrival of foreigners from abroad during the Bakumatsu era created the con-
ditions for the development of nativism in Japan. The model for the emergence
of nativism provided by Ralph Linton and others assumes a colonial interaction
between the arriving Westerners and their indigenous counterparts, and such was
certainly the case with Japan during the 1850s and 1860s. The Japanese saw how
the Western powers had dealt with China in earlier decades and they feared,
rightfully so, that Westerners had similar plans for Japan. At the same time, as
Robin Cohen tells us, people who leave one country for another with hopes of
economic gain are a kind of immigrant and constitute a kind of diaspora. The
response to immigration is the hallmark of American nativism; thus, even the
Japanese case conforms to American nativism in this way, as well. As Higham
tells us, nativism is characterized by strong emotional responses, chiefly fear and
hatred, so that feelings of annoyance or acceptance indicate that nativism has not
actually emerged. To say that fear and hatred were part of the emotional spectrum
of the Tokugawa Japanese would be, to say the least, an understatement. American
nativism, particularly in the form of the Know-Nothings of the antebellum era,
represented a true movement, especially if one invokes the relatively high polling
numbers for the Know-Nothings during the presidential election of 1856. The prev-
alence of jō’i and sonnō-jō’i throughout Japanese society closely resembles the popu-
larity of the Know-Nothings, who were almost exactly contemporaneous with
their Japanese counterparts. If, from the American example, we speak of nativism
as a movement, it would not be a mistake to characterize sonnō-jō’i as a movement
as well.
The unity that terms like “movement” imply should not blind us to the intel-
lectual and ideological diversity that likely exists at the same time, and this is the
case with sonnō-jō’i. There were extremists who advocated the restoration of im-
perial rule and the overthrow of the Bakufu; there were those who wanted to pre-
serve the Bakufu, including Kōmei himself, while still asserting the need to expel
the Westerners from Japan at some future point; and there were still others who
insisted that expulsion had to occur immediately. Although the shishi were cer-
tainly an important element of the movement for expulsion, some, such as Shimazu
Hisamitsu, supported the imperial court but were opposed to the social and po
litical chaos caused by their activities. Another source of diversity for the sonnō-
jō’i movement was the cleavage between political actors, like the shishi, and the
authors who inspired them into taking decisive action, such as Yoshida Shōin
and the scholars of Mitogaku. When one examines their ideas, some emerged in
response to the “threat” of a future Western incursion into Japan, as was the case
with Aizawa Seishisai’s Shinron. At the same time, intellectuals, such as Takeo
Conclusion 99
Masatane, writing several years after Perry’s arrival and the treaties with the
Americans, asserted the necessity to inform the Westerners of Japan’s pristine
purity. In neither case can we classify such ideas as nativistic, since social inter-
action is absent, even though their foundational status within the discourse of
sonnō-jō’i is indisputable. Even Yoshida Shōin, one of the main inspirations
for the shishi, formulated ideas in response to the arrival of the Americans that
appear more patriotic than nativistic. Just as the alleged one-to-one correspon-
dence between Kokugaku and nativism is highly problematic, the same is true
for a similar identification of sonnō-jō’i with nativism. It is better to think of
sonnō-jō’i as exhibiting a range of ideas, and that nativism is an important part
of this intellectual range.
The notion that sonnō-jō’i, while constituting a seemingly coherent political
movement of Bakumatsu Japan, was only nativistic some of the time indicates an
important divergence between the American case and the Japanese one. Ameri-
can historians, with the notable exception of Billington (1938), have chiefly iden-
tified discreet political groups as the anchors of American nativism, whether the
Know-Nothings in the era before the Civil War or the Ku Klux Klan around the
time of World War I. The members of each group w ere, in theory, always nativ-
ists, since their negative reaction toward immigrants and their descendants never
wavered. Even in Billington’s work, the majority of Americans opposed Catho-
lic immigration into the colonies, and this ardent hatred only continued after
independence. In the Japanese case, opposition to the presence of Westerners in
Japan, of course, included immediate expulsion, but it also included the future ex-
pulsion of Westerners after the Japanese had built up their military and reformed
their political institutions, that is to say, kaikoku; opposition to Westerners even
turned, in some cases, to the acceptance of their presence in Japan. Thus, it is per-
haps less useful to imagine sonnō-jō’i as assuming the contours of groups like the
Know-Nothings in the United States, and more useful to think of figures asso-
ciated with sonnō-jō’i as exhibiting the characteristics of nativism at specific
historical moments. Bakumatsu nativism, therefore, was a series of nativistic
episodes articulated by historical actors at certain times, and these episodes
constituted the era’s nativism as a movement, rather than the ideas and activities
of organized social institutions or political groups.
The concept of antiforeignism has, in some ways, complicated our understand-
ing of nativism in the Japanese context. Sakamoto Ryōma, upon hearing that the
Americans had arrived at Uraga, vowed to his father that he would kill them on
sight, betraying antiforeign feelings that he shared with others at that time; his
hatred of foreigners, in other words, did not make him distinctive during the
Bakumatsu era—it was not, to say the least, particu lar to him. Similarly, Kōmei
100 Sonnō-j ō’i
expressed extreme contempt for the Western “barbarians”; Nabeya Hiroshi, in

fact, counts no fewer than seven different pejoratives used by the emperor to
signify Westerners in Kōmei’s writings.119 Nabeya credits the scholars of Mi-
togaku for Kōmei’s antiforeignism prior to Perry, although the ideas of Mitogaku
certainly exerted no small influence on Tokugawa Nariaki as well.120 Aside from
those ideas that directly influenced the emperor, Nabeya argues that the funda-
mental tenets of sonnō thought in general were derived from both Mitogaku and
Kokugaku.121 The role of Kokugaku in arousing such sentiments is confirmed in
Jansen’s work on Sakamoto Ryōma. Specifically, the Tosa Loyalist Party, of which
Ryōma was a founding member, had a number of members who had been stu-
dents of a Tosa adherent of Motoori Norinaga’s teachings.122 Norinaga’s anti
foreign rhetoric, therefore, had at least a small role in the formation of this orga
nization that was dedicated to jō’i.123 While the antiforeignism of Kokugaku
and Mitogaku were connected, perhaps even in profound ways, to the activities
of sonnō-jō’i followers, that does not mean that we can classify these intellectual
inspirations as nativism, even if they influenced people to take nativistic actions.
As nativism is the response to the arrival of foreign groups, ideas that predate
such contact cannot and should not qualify as nativism. The main ideas of both
Kokugaku and Mitogaku, germinated as they were in a context before the arrival
of Perry’s expedition in 1853, cannot accurately be called nativism before 1853.
Nativism is, perhaps above all else, a practice; it is antiforeignism in action.
The American case presents an important analogue to this axiom. As Billing-
ton argues in his monograph on nativism, American anti-Catholicism predates
independence, with origins going back to the Protestant Reformation in England.
Despite the fact that only a very small number of colonists were Catholic, the
Protestant majority harbored strong anti-Catholic feelings. However, once large-
scale immigration began in the nineteenth century, these feelings reemerged after
a period of dormancy during the War of Independence, as the majority of these
immigrants w ere either Catholic Germans or Catholic Irish. Billington, for this
reason, asserts that nativism and anti-C atholicism are synonymous, and that
nativism predates immigration. The same kind of rationale is in operation in
the Tokugawa case with regard to antiforeignism, namely, that since the Japanese
were clearly antiforeign before Westerners began to take up residence in Japan,
these feelings naturally continued even after they had established themselves in
Japan. There was no significant difference in these feelings of antiforeignism
before or after Westerners were actually present in Japan.
Responding to Billington, Higham asserts that there is a difference between
anti-Catholic feelings among Americans before and after the arrival of Catholic
immigrants. While he does not deny that there were Americans who held strongly
Conclusion 101
anti-Catholic views before independence, these feelings were significantly en-

hanced once Catholic immigrants began arriving several decades later. Although
the Catholic religion of these immigrants was an obvious sign of their foreign-
ness in the eyes of the “native born,” it was not the only one, as the case of German
immigrants, most of whom were also Catholic, attests. Higham argues that anti-
Catholicism is not the same thing as nativism; while the former can arise even
without the presence of Catholics, the latter cannot arise without immigrants.
Contempt, latent or otherwise, can only become hatred when there is an object
upon which to affix that feeling.
In the Tokugawa case, we should follow Higham’s logic with regard to anti-
foreignism, the Japanese analogue to Billington’s anti-Catholicism. Once the
Westerners began arriving in Japan following the Perry expedition of 1853, the
antiforeignism that had developed previously, perhaps centuries earlier, began to
change, and I argue that it developed into nativism. Of course, there are impor-
tant differences between the arrival of Westerners in Japan during the 1850s
and 1860s and the arrival of Irish and German immigrants before the American
Civil War. The American situation was not colonial in nature, while the Japanese
situation did approach colonialism. While Higham’s conceptualization of nativ-
ism in American history is useful, we must also look to the work of anthropolo-
gists for their views of nativism. Since Linton originally conceived of nativism as
arising in colonial encounters between Western nations and indigenous peoples,
anthropological conceptualizations of nativism are also useful in the analysis of
the Tokugawa context.
Looking to the Bakumatsu era for the emergence (or even reemergence) of
nativism, it is tempting to focus on sonnō-jō’i as embodying nativism; sonnō-jō’i
is the Japanese analogue to American nativism. It is a mistake to equate nativism
with sonnō-jō’i, as the latter encompasses points of view at odds with nativism.
For example, the attempts by the shishi to assassinate supporters of the foreigners
or Bakufu leaders, although inspired by the presence of Westerners in Japan, did
not focus on Westerners per se. The same is true of those who agitated for an
overthrow of the Bakufu. Both of these efforts, while falling squarely and securely
within the sonnō-jō’i movement, do not necessarily resonate with nativism as we
understand it from the American historical context. The Know-Nothings, while
certainly opposed to the Democrats as political enemies, did not denounce them
in the same way as they did the immigrants themselves, who w ere culturally and
ethnically their mortal enemies. While one could perhaps make a more compel-
ling case for these activities as examples of the kind of nativism described by the
anthropologists, such a line of argumentation actually exposes a significant weak-
ness in anthropological nativism. If every action that was inspired by the presence
102 Sonnō-j ō’i
of foreigners falls under the category of nativism, as Linton argues, then the
challenge becomes one of finding those instances that fall outside of it. In other
words, everything, and therefore nothing, would qualify as nativism within
the discipline of anthropology, if one were to rely exclusively on Linton’s concept
of nativism.124
If the task is to determine what within the sonnō-jō’i movement qualifies as
nativism, then we should begin by focusing on those moments in which the ac-
tual expulsion of Westerners was a goal. The activities of the shishi, especially dur-
ing the era from 1858 to 1866, that focused on the killing of Westerners residing
in Japan, qualify as nativism and approach the efforts of the “native Americans”
to expel immigrants from the United States. Similarly, the attacks on Western
shipping in 1863 and 1864 carried out by Chōshū also embody, in a fundamental
way, the salient features of nativism as described by Higham. The bombardment
of Western ships also resonates with the shishi attacks, as the latter w ere more
personal, face-to-face versions of the former. The attacks on Westerners by shishi
parallel the violence of American natives perpetuated against Catholic immigrants
before the Civil War in ways that the attacks on Western shipping do not. In the
historical narratives focused on American nativism, there is no close analogue to
the attacks carried out by the Chōshū domain. To the extent that Chōshū’s clos-
est political analogue in the United States is one of the states, there was no effort
by any state that was more virulent in its anti-immigrant activities than that of
other states, and certainly nothing that came close to large-scale, organized at-
tacks on immigrants, as was the case with Chōshū. Even in the case of the shishi
attacks, there are important departures from the American example of nativism.
First, the shishi were not simply using violence to intimidate Westerners; they tried
to kill Westerners or, if unsuccessful, severely injure or maim them. There were
certainly brawls in the American case, as described in the book Gangs of New York,
and people certainly did suffer violent deaths as a result, but the targeting of
innocents for murder by highly trained and skilled warriors was not an aspect of
nativism in the American case. Second, the shishi were perhaps as pleased to kill,
if not more so, the Japanese supporters of the Westerners, including members of
the Bakufu, as the case of Ii Naosuke demonstrates. Violence against supporters
of immigration in the United States, although this likely occurred, generally
does not fill the pages of historical descriptions of nativistic violence during the
nineteenth century.
Higham advises historians interested in determining the existence of nativism
to look for a situation of immigration in which the natives react negatively, first
in a defensive posture, which then evolves into hatred. Viewed in this way, Baku-
matsu Japan is an era that historians can argue exhibits nativism in very clear
Conclusion 103
ways. Although one could view the arrival of Westerners in Japan during this pe-
riod as a kind of immigration, this categorization draws our attention away from
the fact that Westerners dealt with the Bakufu from a position of military strength
and political and economic power. One could not say the same for the arrival of
Irish and German immigrants in the United States during the antebellum period.
As useful as Higham’s conceptualization of nativism is, its applicability is limited
in this way. For this reason, the conceptualizations of the anthropologists, like
Ralph Linton, are important, as they imagined the encounter within which nativ-
ism arises to be colonial in nature. The Japanese case conforms to this notion of
nativism quite well. While it is perhaps tempting to disregard the anthropological
view in favor of Higham’s, Japanologists are served well by retaining both in the
analysis of Bakumatsu Japan.
The emic conceptualization of nativism cannot apply to Tokugawa Japan, nor
was it meant to have applications beyond the American nineteenth century, es-
pecially its first half. Both Linton and Higham revised the concept of nativism to
have analytical uses beyond labeling American attitudes toward Catholicism; they
began the process of turning emic nativism into etic nativism. As etic concepts,
the revised versions of nativism formulated by Linton and Higham are subject to
ongoing revision as different case studies and sets of data are applied to them, even
if neither scholar imagined or envisioned their work evolving in this way. Japa-
nologists need not feel hesitant to apply the analytical concept of nativism, or any
similar concept for that matter, in ways that push its boundaries in new direc-
tions, and scholars using nativism in contexts other than Japan should view these
Japanese applications as an integral part of this eticization. The case of Bakumatsu
Japan clearly shows the need to create a blended concept of nativism using the
work of Linton and Higham, which should become an important contribution
from Tokugawa Japan to global studies of nativism.
C HA P T E R T H R E E
Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority

The History of Exceptionalism
While the notion of cultural rejection was certainly one of the distinguishing,
and perhaps infamous, aspects of Kokugaku ideology,1 the assertion of Japan’s
superiority over foreign cultures was yet another. However, the same cannot be
said of nativism in the way it is commonly understood, and so the association
of Kokugaku with nativism, while generally inaccurate, also does not capture
these crucial characteristics in any meaningful way. Among scholars working on
fields outside of Japanese studies, the concept of exceptionalism is commonly
used to signify assertions of cultural superiority, and this is especially true of
Americanists; in fact, it is from American history that the term emerged, as was
the case with nativism.2 A key difference between the ways in which the terms
“nativism” and “exceptionalism” are used is that while the former is not widely
understood among nonacademics in the United States, the latter has actually en-
tered the popular lexicon, and usage among nonacademics, especially politicians
and their mass-media observers, is not uncommon. The term “exceptionalism”
will likely signify the assertion of either material or cultural uniqueness, but
both of these meanings ultimately lead to ideas of incommensurability upon
which assertions of superiority are intellectually founded. Despite such popular
usages, exceptionalism is still a potentially useful analytical category for Japa
nese history and Japanese studies more broadly.
My discussion of nativism revealed that it assumes two major forms, what I
call American or historical nativism and anthropological nativism. Similarly, there
are two major ways in which the concept of exceptionalism is understood today.
The first of these is embedded within a genealogy of studies of American society
descended from Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805–1859) influential and famous work,
Democracy in America. Not only do the European Tocqueville’s observations pro-
vide historians with a glimpse into nearly every imaginable aspect of American
life in the 1830s, but his numerous assertions of fundamental differences between
the United States and Europe also serve as the ideological foundation for Ameri-
can exceptionalism today. Other European travelers published similar kinds of
accounts during the nineteenth century, but Tocqueville’s work stands alone in
104
Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority 105
the minds of Americanists for its impact on American thinking. By the end of
the nineteenth century, Americans, influenced to a large extent by Tocqueville,
began to pen their own reflections on the ways in which America, the Americans,
and their history diverged from European models. The most famous of these
scholars was Frederick Jackson Turner, who wrote essays over the course of his
career that describe the role of the American frontier in the shaping of a distinc-
tively American cultural character. Since the United States began as a nation cling-
ing to the extreme eastern edge of the North American continent, its history is
fundamentally about the march westward, a process in which the western border
was constantly in flux, as intrepid pioneers and the like were drawn to the west
by the lure of both unfettered freedom and free land. The values that developed
in this dynamic crucible had a lasting influence on the basic values of all Ameri-
cans, an influence that did not end once the rest of the continent had been set-
tled. In addition to the role of the frontier in the configuring of American values,
its existence made the United States the first “new nation” in the world, as such
frontiers had long since disappeared in Europe.3
The evaluation of the United States as the world’s first new nation was an
important theme in the work of the twentieth century’s best known scholar of
American exceptionalism, Seymour Martin Lipset (1922–2006). In fact, his work
has been the most influential on the ways in which American exceptionalism is
understood outside of American history, exerting a profound impact on the dis-
ciplines of political science and sociology. While Lipset himself credits Tocqueville
as the first intellectual to articulate the foundational ideas of American exception-
alism, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Lipset himself was the founder
of American exceptionalism as an academic field. Taking his cue from Tocqueville,
Lipset asserts that the history of the United States was unique by comparison with
other countries, including but not limited to those of Europe. Such a qualitative
judgment is not subjective for him, however, since it is based on considerable em-
pirical data, as was the case with Tocqueville’s monumental work. Lipset’s works
not only diverge from Tocqueville’s in terms of their time frame, they also derive
much of their persuasive force by virtue of their comparative scope. While Lipset
gives Tocqueville credit even for this comparative impulse, it is clear that com-
parison was not Tocqueville’s primary concern, although it does manifest itself
from time to time in his observations. With Lipset’s work, comparison is definitely
foregrounded, as he believed that any conclusions potentially reached about Amer-
ica could only make sense by reference to external models.4
It is not just Lipset who bases his conclusions on evidence, as both Tocqueville
and Turner did much the same thing, even if their evidence was fundamentally
different. For this reason, I have termed the form of American exceptionalism
106 Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority
embodied in the works of Tocqueville, Turner, Lipset, and others as objective-

evidential exceptionalism. The emphasis within objective-evidential exception-
alism is on the various and sundry elements that distinguish America and
Americans from the rest of the world; its proponents set out to prove, therefore,
how America is the “outlier,” to borrow Lipset’s words.5 The other major form of
exceptionalism is what I call subjective-evidential exceptionalism (see table 3).6
This form of exceptionalism is subjective by virtue of the diminished role of both
comparison and evidence in the assertions of its proponents. However, the most
noticeable aspect of subjective-evidential exceptionalism is that its ideological con-
tributors advocate either uniqueness or superiority, or both, and its supporters
in the United States today share the strong belief that theirs is a nation superior
to all others in the world for all time. While some of the minds associated with
subjective-evidential exceptionalism were more focused on statements of Ameri-
can uniqueness rather than superiority, others, especially those living in more re-
cent times, make direct references to American superiority,7 and still others, like
Turner, essentially make it impossible to separate the two. As one would expect,
there is a profoundly religious component to such assertions, such that the search
for evidence, as is the rule among objective-evidential exceptionalists, is rendered
largely superfluous, as the United States enjoys divine favor, while other nations
do not.8 While the intellectual pedigree for objective-evidential exceptionalism
is rather old, stemming from the 1830s, the ideas of subjective-evidential excep-
tionalism go back much further in history. Some historians date assertions
of American superiority to before Tocqueville (who, in fact, makes note of such
claims in his book), either earlier in the nineteenth century or even during the
late eighteenth century.9 Others look even to the seventeenth century, well before
the founding of the American republic, for evidence that early colonists saw them-
selves as morally superior to their European contemporaries.10 Still others trace
the development of (subjective-evidential) exceptionalism to as early as the six-
teenth century, when Europeans, none of whom had actually set foot in the Amer-
icas, believed that the colonies represented a better future for all humankind.11
The application of emics and etics to the analysis of American exceptional-
ism is especially critical to appreciating the ideological cleavage between these two
forms. Like nativism, exceptionalism has both emic and etic forms, that is to say,
analytical applications that are exclusive to the American context and those that
are not. Both objective-evidential and subjective-evidential exceptionalism are
etics that emerged from an earlier emic form. Of the two, only the latter form truly
functions as an etic, while the former only maintains the appearance of such. As
the founder of the academic study of American exceptionalism, Lipset pushed the
concept out of its emic confines and into the light of comparative analysis, but its
Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority 107
Table 3. The Two Forms of Exceptionalism
Spiritual/
Material Cultural
Form Uniqueness Uniqueness Incommensurability Superiority
Objective- Y Y Y N
Evidential
Subjective- Y Y Y Y
Evidential
sunbath in the rays of the etic w ere short-lived, because Lipset found no other
societies that w ere worthy of the designation as exceptional. Consequently, etic
exceptionalism collapsed back into the emic, but this new emic was qualitatively
different from, and ideologically opposed to, the original Marxian incarnation.
While Japan and its history are the focus of the present study, the Japanese case
actually played a prominent role in this story of American exceptionalism. Just
as the Japanese of the Edo period had to contend with, and account for, China in
their efforts to proclaim Japan’s world supremacy, Lipset and his supporters had
to contend with and account for Japan during the 1980s and 1990s in making their
claims of American exceptionalism.12
The focus of the present chapter is on objective-evidential exceptionalism,
whose contributors are exceptionalists themselves, as opposed to those who study
subjective-evidential exceptionalism, whose political allegiances generally con-
flict with those of the exceptionalists. Other than this undeniable ideological
divergence between the two forms, they also differ in their methodological ap-
proaches. Lipset and his supporters seek to prove American uniqueness in the
present using the analytical tools of the social sciences, while their scholarly col-
leagues writing on subjective-evidential exceptionalism analyze the historical
assertions of American superiority. Understanding both forms is critical to the
field of Japanese studies, since Americanists have already labeled Nihonjinron as
either the Japanese analogue of American exceptionalism or as Japanese excep-
tionalism itself. Conspicuously missing from these appraisals by Americanists is
an emphasis on historical development, a consciousness for which their counter-
parts in Nihonjinron are fully aware, chiefly in the form of Kokugaku.13 While
our discussion of nativism may have begun with Kokugaku, our attention even-
tually moved further afield from it; with exceptionalism, the discussion may lead
us back to Kokugaku,14 but it is important that we not end our analysis there, as
the history of Japanese exceptionalism is yet richer and more complex than an
exclusive focus on Kokugaku would allow us to see.
Objective-Evidential Exceptionalism
Before embarking on a discussion of the main features of etic objective-evidential
exceptionalism, a brief overview of emic exceptionalism is in order. The term
“exceptionalism” was first used during the 1920s by Marxist scholars as a way of
analyzing historical development in the United States.15 This discussion was in-
stigated by the publication of a famous sociological work, Why Is There No So-
cialism in the United States? (1906), by German sociologist Werner Sombart (1863–
1941).16 Thus, the first stage in the development of emic exceptionalism was
initiated by a German scholar more than a half-century after the debut of the term
“nativism,” while the founding figure claimed by adherents of etic objective-
evidential exceptionalism was a French scholar whose work had appeared
roughly eighty years earlier.17 The thorny issue with which these Marxists had to
grapple was not whether the Americans had nurtured a vigorous socialist move-
ment,18 but whether it should have, given the historical position of the United States
within orthodox Marxist theories of historical development. If American society
was still in the early years of its bourgeois phase, then there was still hope that
the Americans would continue along the path of Marxist development, resulting
in a legitimate and viable socialist movement; maybe they just needed more time,
Marxists reasoned.19 It was, however, impossible to deny that, far from being a na-
scent bourgeois society, the United States, by the 1920s, was perhaps the world’s
most advanced such society, and arguably its most powerful, showing no signs
of weakening and only a very few instances of class conflict.20 Marxists the world
over, especially those within the United States, had to decide what to make of
American historical development and what its impact on Marxist theories would
be. Rather than abandon, or fundamentally revise, Marxist theory, the radical Left
in the United States decided that the weakness of socialist institutions and the near
absence of class conflict among Americans were aberrations in what was other-
wise a still sound set of theoretical assumptions; that the United States diverged
from the proper path of historical development was, therefore, the exception to
the rules of Marxism.21 Consequently, “exceptionalism” was a convenient term to
signify the American case, while still preserving the intellectual viability of Marx-
ism itself.22 It should be clear, however, that while the Marxists needed the con-
cept of exceptionalism as a way to maintain their intellectual legitimacy in the
face of American power and success, the later supporters of exceptionalism, who
were decidedly anti-Marxist, needed Marxism as a foil against which they could
struggle in order to maintain their own viability. The concept of exceptionalism
relies on epistemological rules and their exceptions; without rules, exceptional-
ism loses its conceptual potency.23
Alexis de Tocqueville 109
“Exceptionalism” remained a specialized term during these interwar years,

and Marxists had plenty of material to analyze with the overthrow of the czar in
Russia and the rise of socialism and communism in both China and Japan. The
Allied victory that ended World War II made matters, in some ways, worse for
the Marxists, as the United States only grew stronger over the course of the war,
even as the rest of the world had to endure unimaginable death and destruction.24
In the years following the end of the war, exceptionalism ceased being one, among
many, highly specialized terms developed by the Marxists and became a subject
of discussion within the wider academic community in the United States.25 Even-
tually, nonacademics joined the discussion during the 1950s, as exceptionalism
seemed to hold the promise of becoming an anti-Marxist ideology, and it entered
the mainstream consciousness by the end of the 1960s.26 Today, the term is rather
ubiquitous in the United States, both within the academy and among the public
at large.27 Whether one sees exceptionalism as signifying material or cultural
uniqueness, one concept that is common to both subjective-e vidential and
objective-evidential forms is that exceptionalism indicates incommensurability.28
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

While the terminological origin of “exceptionalism” is undeniably twentieth cen-
tury, scholars of objective-evidential exceptionalism point to an even earlier con-
ceptual origin, specifically in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (2 vols., 1835
and 1840).29 It is not clear if the Marxist scholars of the 1920s who actually used
the term “exceptionalism” w ere aware of Tocqueville’s description of the United
States as exceptional, but what is clear is that Tocqueville had something altogether
different in mind when he made his observations of American life in the 1830s.
For Tocqueville, it was not the absence of a viable socialist movement, or even the
lack of class conflict, that made the United States exceptional; it was the various
ways in which it diverged from European states, especially its monarchical ones.
Tocqueville was a French aristocrat and scholar who had devoted considerable
energy to understanding the French Revolution, specifically the rise and fall of
democracy in France. He looked to the emergence of the American republic as a
potential comparative case, since the perception in Europe by the early decades
of the nineteenth century was that the bold experiment in democracy that the United
States represented had largely succeeded.30 Thus, it is perhaps worth pointing out
that, for those who claim Tocqueville as the intellectual founder of exceptional-
ism, Tocqueville was not an American, and his primary scholarly interest was to
understand what had happened in France. In fact, Tocqueville was one of many
European travelers to the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, others of whom also contributed to the literary canon of American

exceptionalism, such as John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813), Toc-
queville’s predecessor.
Tocqueville was struck by the fact that the Americans had managed to base
their democracy on an idea of equality unknown among Europeans.31 He char-
acterized the establishment and perpetuation of equality in the United States
as “a great democratic revolution” that was “taking place in our midst.”32 Perhaps
the most exciting aspect of American equality was the absence of an aristocracy,
so that the Americans had no feudal legacy barring them from seeing one another
as equals.33 As an aristocrat himself, Tocqueville noted how the absence of an aris-
tocratic class had a “downside” as well, such as the lack of progress in the United
States in the arts and (theoretical) sciences (Democracy, 460). There was simply
no one among the Americans who had the leisure and inclination toward the quiet
“meditation” (like himself ) needed to make substantive advancements in these
areas, which is why Tocqueville saw no true intellectual class among the Ameri-
cans (Democracy, 56). Since everyone in America, as far as Tocqueville could de-
termine, had to rely on their own efforts to survive, and even flourish in many
cases, the result was a society in which there was an “equality in wealth,” and the
lack of ideal conditions for intellectual pursuits resulted in a similar equality in
“mental endowments” (Democracy, 56).
As a scholar in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, Tocqueville believed in a
notion of progress guided by the hand of God, and the success of the United States
was proof of such progress, so that any attempt to reverse the American achievement
of democracy was tantamount to “a fight against God himself ” (Democracy, 12).34
Thus, he (perhaps grudgingly) admits that “sooner or later we, like the Americans,
will attain almost complete equality of conditions” (Democracy, 18). Tocqueville
saw the world’s future in the success of the United States, and the decline of the
lifestyle and privileges that he enjoyed and of which he himself was a product. As
a somewhat religious man and a Catholic, Tocqueville was able to console himself
with the fact that larger providential forces were at work and that the perpetuation
of enlightened (as opposed to Enlightenment) values would continue. Perhaps be-
cause America was not the birthplace of the Enlightenment or the source of its
canonical philosophical figures, it achieved a status in Tocqueville’s mind as “more
enlightened than other nations” (Democracy, 225). In a similar way, the Americans,
without studying Cartesian rationalism, seemed to understand and embody it
quite well, “So, of all countries in the world, America is the one in which the
precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed” (Democracy, 429).
It is interesting that two of Tocqueville’s observations of America resonate
with what we know about Tokugawa Japan, namely, the lack of political unity and
geographic isolation. Had he known that these factors w ere in place with Japan,
or emphasized them in his study of America, he likely would not have heaped
any praise on the Japanese, as they did not develop democratic institutions based
on social equality. What is especially intriguing about these observations is that
the ideas of geography and geographic isolation w ere important to the Japanese
and informed their own exceptionalism, while the opposite was true for the ab-
sence of political unity in Japan, replaced as it was by discourses of cultural unity
(like Kokugaku).35 In the case of American history, American ideas of exception-
alism drew heavily on the idea of geographic isolation as well, but the lack of
political unity is also never mentioned; objective-evidential exceptionalists be-
lieve that an American national identity formed either shortly before or shortly
after the War of Independence.
Tocqueville was aware that the United States occupied but a part of the North
American continent, but its geographic isolation was so felicitous that it was as
if the United States w ere an island nation: “Placed in the middle of a huge con-
tinent with limitless room for the expansion of human endeavor, the u nion is
almost as isolated from the world as if it were surrounded on all sides by the
ocean” (Democracy, 169). For Tocqueville, isolation meant that the Americans were
largely free from anxieties of foreign invasion, which was not the case with Euro
pean nations. Of course, unlike the British, who actually did occupy an island, the
Americans did share borders with European colonies to the north, the south, and
the west, but these settlements were politically and militarily weak and posed no
serious threats to American security. In the case of Britain, this fact did not insu-
late the British people from foreign invasion. Thus, what is implicit in Tocqueville’s
observation about America’s metaphorical insularity is that it is actually better
than was the case with nations characterized by actual insularity. Japan’s situa-
tion is more similar to that of Britain than to that of the United States, since Ja-
pan was subject to foreign migrations even in its prehistory, and was even invaded
by the Mongols twice in the thirteenth century. Rather than characterizing
Japan’s geographic situation as one of isolation, it is perhaps better to see it as
separated from the outside world; with the advent of the Tokugawa period, of
course, the Bakufu chose to restrict its interactions with the outside world, so
that separateness became self-imposed isolation, which itself came to an end at
the hands of the Americans in 1853.
Tocqueville’s admiration of America’s isolation was not limited to its freedom
from invasion by a European nation, since it also betrayed his rather low opinion
of the indigenous peoples already living in America when the first colonists ar-
rived. Although he was likely aware of the conflicts between the colonists and
indigenous peoples that had plagued the American continent previously, such as
the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and the enduring presence of indigenous
peoples both within and beyond the borders of the United States, he was not wor-
ried about the survival of American democracy. For all of Tocqueville’s insight-
ful and even prophetic analyses of America, he did not foresee that conflicts with
indigenous peoples would continue for much of the nineteenth century, yet he still
insists, “The American Union has no enemies to fight. It is as solitary amid the
wilderness as an island in the ocean” (Democracy, 306). The fact that Tocqueville
was not impressed enough with the ongoing conflicts between the Americans and
indigenous peoples to cause him any anxiety for the future of American democ-
racy is related to the confessed racial hierarchy that undoubtedly informed his
analysis: “Among these widely different people, the first that attracts attention and
the first in enlightenment, power, and happiness, is the white man, the European,
man par excellence; below him came the Negro and the Indian” (Democracy, 317).
The benefits that the Americans derived from their geographic isolation was
true of European colonial settlements elsewhere in North America, and also those
in South America, according to Tocqueville. These South American colonies, set-
tled mostly by the Spanish, proved that geography by itself did not lead to equal-
ity and democracy (Democracy, 306). Rather than overemphasizing the role of
geography in the shaping of American democracy, Tocqueville’s intention was ac-
tually to downplay its significance, so as to turn his analysis to “laws and mores,”
which he saw as the source of “their greatness” (Democracy, 307).
While the theme of geography is important in only a couple of places in
Tocqueville’s otherwise substantial work, the theme of national unity is much
more prominent. He was struck by how disunited the various states of the American
union were, referring to them as “twenty-four little sovereign nations” and “an
assemblage of confederated states” (Democracy, 61, 117). Within this curious ar-
rangement, Tocqueville discovered what he thought was the true “strength” of the
American system, namely, its weak federal government: “In America real power
resided in the provincial governments rather than in the federal government” (De-
mocracy, 143). The Americans had created a system, he believed, in which power
was decentralized in spite of a “high degree of governmental centralization”:
“national power is more concentrated there than it ever was in any of the ancient
monarchies” (Democracy, 89). Despite the pol itic al successes that such a novel
system conferred on the Americans, Tocqueville recognized a somewhat tense
relationship between the states and the federal government: “Each state is not only
at large but is its perpetual adversary, since whatever authority the Union loses
turns to the advantage of the states” (Democracy, 140). While Tocqueville attrib-
uted the brilliance of American democracy to the English legacy of “laws and
mores,” it was not a perfect system, and he saw within it the ongoing potential for
conflict between the states and the federal government. Of course, within thirty
years of the publication of Democracy in America, a war between states that sup-
ported the federal government and those that did not, the Civil War, began, but
Tocqueville did not live long enough to see his prophetic words realized during
what was the most traumatic era in American history.
It is perhaps not surprising that the sometimes adversarial relationship
between the federal government and the states also had a profound connection
to the feelings of nationalism that Americans felt for the United States, and
Tocqueville recognized this aspect of the American system as well. The need to
develop feelings of loyalty to the state may have seemed important to Tocqueville,
as it was an issue of ongoing importance in his own France, and so he was keenly
interested to see how such an issue revealed itself during his sojourn in the United
States. Since many of the states that comprised the American union in Tocqueville’s
time predated the founding of the American republic, he noticed how Ameri-
cans exhibited strong loyalties to their native states. Fortunately for the Americans,
their attachments to their home states did not necessarily inhibit the development
of feelings for the nation as a whole: “Public spirit in the Union is, in a sense, only
a summing up of provincial patriotism. Every citizen of the United States may be
said to transfer the concern inspired in him by his little republic into his love of
the common motherland” (Democracy, 162). Tocqueville seemingly neutralizes
any sense that the antagonism between the states and the federal government ac-
tually translated into divided loyalties among the Americans. However, toward
the end of volume 1, Tocqueville seems to have reversed himself (Democracy, 367).
One way to interpret Tocqueville’s apparently contradictory statement regarding
the extent of American nationalism, what he calls “patriotism,” is to conclude that
he saw examples of both state-centered and nation-centered patriotism during his
travels, so that it is impossible to categorize American nationalism as entirely one
and not the other during the 1830s.
As is characteristic of the literature of American exceptionalism today,
Tocqueville makes a number of statements that apply exclusively to America and
the Americans, forming the basis for the claims among objective-evidential ex-
ceptionalists today of America’s material uniqueness. These “only in America” (my
words) statements are found throughout his work and cover a comprehensive
range of phenomena. As previously discussed, the Americans succeeded in cre-
ating the world’s first society founded on actual social equality, according to
Tocqueville. This equality was present at the founding of the first colonies, grow-
ing stronger until it inspired the Americans to declare their independence
from the British. Independence was followed by the creation of a “new phe-
nomenon” in America that the world had never seen before, namely, a “great
democratic republic” (Democracy, 222). While there had been other republics in
world history, even those with pretensions to greatness, such as the first French
republic, only the United States had actually earned such a classification in his
estimation. Independence and republican government eventually led to another
unique attribute of the Americans: they were the only society in the world that
understood the meaning of popular sovereignty. As Tocqueville observes, “If there
is one country in the world where one can hope to appreciate the true value of the
dogma of sovereignty of the people . . . and judge its dangers and its advantages,
that country is America” (Democracy, 58).
America and its inhabitants were not different only in these significant ways,
stemming as they did from the American value of equality, but also in seemingly
less significant ways. He notes how the absence of a true aristocracy in American
society resulted in the absence of an intellectual class as well. In this respect, the
Americans were unique: “I think there is no other country in the world where . . .
there are so few ignorant and so few learned individuals as in America” (Democ-
racy, 55). Without social and intellectual inequality, the Americans enjoyed
socializing and were fond of forming political associations: “Of all countries on
earth, it is in America that one finds both the most associations and the most
newspapers” (Democracy, 518). We commonly associate such gatherings with the
public sphere,36 and the French had developed quite an active one during the eigh
teenth century. Tocqueville’s observation about Americans may stem from the
way that the French had handled social differences in their public sphere, specifi-
cally, by suspending outwards signs of social class and opening participation to
people of different social backgrounds (at least in theory).37 Although he makes
no direct statement on the subject, it is possible that he viewed the American es-
teem for political association as uniquely successful, since the Americans had no
need to suspend such social differences. The lack of a social hierarchy among the
Americans did nothing to undermine their determination to succeed in life. In
fact, comprehensive social equality stimulated the American drive to succeed:
“Without doubt there is no other country on earth where people make such great
efforts to achieve social prosperity” (Democracy, 92). Although Tocqueville never
describes the Americans as either a giddy or a dour people, the fact that they had
to be self-reliant in order to survive cultivated a certain determination within
them: “I used to think that the English were the most serious-minded people on
earth, but having seen the Americans, I have changed my mind” (Democracy, 609).
For Tocqueville, the Americans were different from the rest of the world’s
peoples not only in these significant ways but in more pedestrian ways as well. For
example, he comments on the fact that American Catholics had succeeded in
building a successful Catholic Church, which was “making the most progress” in
the United States (Democracy, 450). While Tocqueville discusses the issue of reli-
gion in Democracy in America, noting how American success was built at least in
part on Christian values and the general religiosity of the Americans, he acknowl-
edges that Protestantism was more prominent in the United States than Catholi-
cism. Rather than seeing any antagonism between the followers of the two, as was
likely the case, he includes Catholicism in the religious narrative of American life,
admitting that he had to resort to “reliable reports” rather than personal observa-
tion (Democracy, 450). On an unrelated issue, the Americans created an especially
wise system of crime and punishment: “There is no country in which criminal
justice is administered with more kindness than in the United States. . . . North
America is, I think, the only country on earth which has not taken the life of a
single citizen for political offenses during the last fifty years” (Democracy, 564).
Americans treated their criminals humanely, which Tocqueville viewed as per-
haps odd but also laudable, which is the same for his observation of American
views of marriage: “Certainly of all countries in the world America is the one in
which the marriage tie is most respected and where the highest and truest con-
ception of conjugal happiness has been conceived” (Democracy, 291). The list of
even these innocuous “only in America” traits is somewhat long and wide-ranging
in Tocqueville’s analysis. Both the significant and less-t han-significant ways in
which America was unique by comparison with the rest of the world are crucial
to Tocqueville’s point, namely, that America is different in a handful of funda-
mental ways, which then begat a host of other differences.
What were obvious differences to Tocqueville were likely apparent to the
Americans whom he encountered as well. The excessive pride and self-praise are
characteristics that are associated with exceptionalism today, so it is interesting
to see Tocqueville acknowledge them during the 1830s with at least some exas-
peration (Democracy, 374). He admits that the United States certainly had the
potential to become “one of the greatest nations in the world,” implying that he
did not think it was such a nation just yet (Democracy, 383). This potential great-
ness, he predicts, would be based on certain “natural advantages” conferred on
the nation by its geographic location, leading him to the following conclusion:
“[I] cannot help believing that one day they will become the leading naval power
on the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the
world” (Democracy, 407). So, while Tocqueville’s objective assessment was that
the Americans had created a nation that was both exceptional and even great
in some areas, it was not a superior nation by comparison with others in the
world, notwithstanding Americans boasts to the contrary: “An American is
constantly talking about the wonderful equality prevailing in the United
States” (Democracy, 570).
We should end our discussion of Tocqueville by mentioning a seeming para-

dox in his observations of America. He makes, as we have seen, superlative state-
ments about the Americans and their nation, but he cautions the reader against
concluding that his intention is simply to praise (Democracy, 18–19). Despite his
disclaimer, there is a tension in Democracy in America between an objective case
for material uniqueness and a subjective claim of greatness (or superiority), and
this tension has confused Tocqueville’s readers since the publication of his vol-
umes in the United States. Some have used Tocqueville’s analysis as proof of their
own claims of American superiority, while others have tried to adhere to Toc-
queville’s admonitions not to do that. For this reason, Tocqueville’s observations
appear in the works of both subjective-evidential and objective-evidential excep-
tionalism, but his position within the latter’s pantheon of intellectual greats is
especially central, I would argue.
Frederick Jackson Turner

Tocqueville’s work proved to be highly influential in the United States, inspiring
American scholars to reflect on their own history and culture. During the latter
half of the nineteenth century, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner authored a
number of essays on the theme of America’s cultural character and its historical
origins. Thirteen of these essays were collected and published as The Frontier in
American History in 1920, and this volume has since become another monumen-
tal work in the canon of American exceptionalism. While Turner echoes many
of the same sentiments as Tocqueville, Turner’s concern with the origins of the
American character, rather than a description of it, sets his work apart from
Democracy in America, and it stands alone as an important articulation of
American exceptionalism.
Not surprisingly, Turner emphasizes American democracy as “fundamental
in traditional thought.”38 While Tocqueville stresses the role of English “laws and
mores” as critical in the establishment of American democracy, Turner seeks to
avoid giving too much credit to any European origins for American democracy.
He agrees that the first colonists, having been born in Europe, created a society
that was understandably European in character. In other words, the first Amer
ican colonies, established as they were along the Atlantic coast, created the first
frontier in American history (FAH, 9). However, as these early colonists confronted
the “simplicity of primitive conditions” presented by their new surroundings, the
process of becoming Americans had begun (FAH, 9). “Our early history,” he ob-
serves, “is the study of European germs developing in an American environ-
ment” (FAH, 3). Thus, Turner sees the transformation of European settlers into
Frederick Jackson Turner 117
Americans as a process that took place over the course of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and was made possible by the natural environment. Con-
sequently, Americans were not simply transplanted Europeans, as their transfor-
mation into Americans would not have been possible without America’s uniquely
unsettled and undeveloped natural environment. The generations that followed
the first European colonists continuously encountered the harshness of this nat-
ural environment as they established new settlements throughout the colonies.
Tocqueville was fascinated by the absence of an aristocracy in American society,
and he asserts that any understanding of democratic institutions in America must
take this into account. Turner agrees with this observation but adds to it the de-
velopment of certain traits needed to survive under the difficult conditions of the
American environment, such as courage and perseverance. Without the environ-
ment, American democracy cannot be properly understood or appreciated:
“American democracy came from the forest, and its destiny drove it to material
conquests” (FAH, 153–154).39 At the same time, Americans had little need for the
considerations of social hierarchy, and were in no mood to see one develop: “[The
pioneer] had a passionate hatred for aristocracy, monopoly and special privilege; he
believed in simplicity, economy and in the rule of the people” (FAH, 273). Funda-
mentally, Turner agrees with Tocqueville that American democracy was unique by
comparison with anything yet seen in Europe. As a scholar of what we would call
sociology today, Tocqueville was more concerned with American society as it was
during his sojourn, rather than conducting a historical analysis, as was the case
with Turner. For the latter, the result was more of a concern with the origins of
American democracy, which w ere deeply connected to the natural environment:
“The forest clearings have been the seed plots of American character. . . . This forest
philosophy is the philosophy of American democracy” (FAH, 206–207).
The wilderness with its forests not only amplified a hostility toward aristoc-
racy and an esteem for democracy among early Americans, it also forced them to
embrace self-reliance and individualism: “Complex society is precipitated by the
wilderness into a kind of primitive organization based on the family. The tendency
is anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly, to any direct
control. . . . The frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted de-
mocracy” (FAH, 30). While Tocqueville had also recognized the robustness of
such individualism among Americans, it was not a concept to which he made any
specific references, and therefore is not prominent in Democracy in America.
While Tocqueville only obliquely acknowledges the role of the individual in the
establishment of American democracy, Turner sees individualism as its sine qua
non: “We cannot lay too much stress upon this point, for it was at the very heart
of the whole American movement. The world was to be made a better world by
the examples of a democracy in which there was freedom of the individual, in

which there was the vitality and mobility productive of originality and variety”
(FAH, 306–307).
While Tocqueville does not emphasize the idea of individualism in Democ-
racy in America, and Turner does in The Frontier in American History, the issue
of religion is more prominent in the former than in the latter. The issue of reli-
gion differs in the two works of American exceptionalism not only in its degree
of emphasis, but also in its conception of Christianity. Tocqueville was struck by
the religiosity of Americans, asserting that they w ere more devout than their
European counterparts.40 Religion, he argues, exerts a “peculiar power” in America
(Democracy, 432). As we saw above, Tocqueville makes the curious assertion that
the Catholic Church thrived in the United States. This observation dovetails with
his assertion that any discussion of Christianity in America had to include Ca-
tholicism: “Although there are many sects among the Anglo-Americans, they all
look at religion from the same point of view” (Democracy, 373). What is implicit
in Tocqueville’s views of American religiosity is that there must be a connection
between American institutions, especially American democracy, and Christian-
ity, but he is unclear on the nature and origin of that connection. Turner’s analysis
fills this lacuna, but in a way that radically diverges from Tocqueville. American
individualism, he argues, bears the exclusive stamp of Protestantism,41 specifi-
cally, “the Calvinistic conception of the individual” (FAH, 302). While it would
be an exaggeration to characterize Turner’s observation as a point of emphasis,
it nonetheless undermines Tocqueville’s contention that Catholicism was part
of the story of American democracy. In what was likely a reference to the notion
of predestination, Turner’s comment excludes rather than includes American
Catholics; girded by the idea that the outward evidence of one’s predestined sal-
vation was solely within one’s individual control, American Protestants were
especially inspired to work hard and to succeed.
Tocqueville had no doubts that the Americans were fundamentally different
from the Europeans, and even from the Canadians, a conclusion he reached after
a brief visit there in 1831.42 As the United States expanded and grew in size, Amer-
ican merchants w ere eager to facilitate trade between the various regions of the
nation. The links that w ere forged during these early decades of the nineteenth
century, precisely the era of Tocqueville’s travels within the United States, fostered
feelings of national sentiment among Americans: “Nothing works for nationalism
like intercourse within the nation. Mobility of population is death to localism,
and the western frontier worked irresistibly in unsettling population” (FAH, 30).
As economic opportunities fueled the development of what Turner calls “nation-
alism,” it also distracted attention away from Europe by necessity: “The Old West
[namely, parts of New Eng land, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia] began
the movement of internal trade which developed home markets and diminished
that colonial dependence on Europe in industrial matters shown by the maritime
and staple-raising sections” (FAH, 108). While Tocqueville devotes little space
to the ways in which European colonists and their descendants became Amer-
icans, Turner argues that such a transformation occurred gradually; it was not
simply a matter of birthplace, but the movement of Americans westward and
their interactions with the frontier. For Tocqueville, the key to unlocking the
mystery of American democracy was equality; for Turner, the key to unlocking
the mystery of the American character was the frontier.
For Turner, the role of the forest or wilderness in general was especially cru-
cial as it existed on the frontier, rather than in or near areas already settled. The
frontier was where intrepid Americans encountered a harsh and unforgiving nat-
ural environment; Turner’s analysis, then, focuses on the skills these Americans
needed to survive on the frontier, skills that formed the basis of the American
character. Since the eastern coast of North America was originally settled, the
frontier was always located to the west of settled areas; in fact, the frontier and
the “West” are essentially interchangeable in Turner’s essays. Just as the notions
of forest and frontier were profoundly important in the forging of the American
character, the West was no less important: “This, at least, is clear: American de-
mocracy is fundamentally the outcome of the experiences of the American peo-
ple in dealing with the West. . . . The problem of the United States is not to create
democracy, but to conserve democratic institutions and ideals” (FAH, 266). At the
hands of American pioneers, the American forests necessarily had to disappear,
giving way to new forests and new pioneers as settlement expanded. So long
as the American woodlands seemed never to end, the frontier and the West also
endured from one generation to the next. Neither the frontier nor the West w ere
static areas of the United States; they were concepts that represented stages in the
conquest of the North American continent: “The West, at bottom, is a form of
society, rather than an area. . . . Decade after decade, West after West, this rebirth
of American society has gone on, has left its traces behind it, and has reacted on
the East” (FAH, 205). Thus, nearly every region of the United States had been a
kind of “West” at some point in American history, including settlements on the
east coast: “The oldest West was the Atlantic coast” (FAH, 67).
Turner’s concept of the American frontier was not only the crucial mechanism
that generated cultural differences, it was also fundamentally different from the
frontiers found in Europe, which were merely “fortified boundary line[s]”; the
frontier was unique to the United States (FAH, 3). Although Tocqueville predicts
that the Americans were fated to subdue the rest of the continent, he generally
views the United States of the 1830s as a rather stable, yet inexorably growing,
entity (Democracy, 378). This is somewhat different from the more dynamic image
of America that Turner presents. Similarly, the image of the Constitution that one
sees in the works of the two scholars is also different; whereas Tocqueville praises
the Constitution as a concrete symbol of American political wisdom and even
genius, Turner is much less effusive. “This Constitution,” Tocqueville writes,
“which at first sight one is tempted to confuse with previous federal constitutions,
in fact rests on an entirely new theory, a theory that should be hailed as one of the
great discoveries of political science in our age” (Democracy, 156). While Turner
does not deny the importance of the Constitution in American history, he down-
plays its role in the formation of the American character; for Turner, the Consti-
tution is a product of the frontier at work: “Not the Constitution, but free land
and an abundance of natural resources open to a fit people, made the democratic
type of society in America for three centuries while it occupied its empire” (FAH,
293). This statement reveals another important feature of the frontier; namely,
it held the prospect of “free land” for those pioneers who had the wherewithal
to claim it.43 For Turner, “free land” promotes democracy “under the belief that
all men going into vacant lands have the right to shape their own political insti-
tutions” (FAH, 169). Just as the frontier and the West had done for the American
character, so too was “free land” another of these “transforming influences” (FAH,
205). Ultimately, it was “free lands [that] promoted individualism, economic equal-
ity, freedom to rise, [and] democracy” (FAH, 259). In other words, all of the
major qualities that Tocqueville had seen as unique to the United States, Turner
attributes to “an abundance of free lands” (FAH, 320).
Turner emphasizes the role of these concepts (free land, the West, the fron-
tier, and the forest or wilderness) in the formation of the American identity as
embodied by unnamed settlers and “pioneers.” America’s great political leaders,
as Americans themselves, drew on the same experiences as ordinary Americans,
and so Turner credits their collective achievements to these concepts as well.
He characterizes Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) as a president who “embodied” the
“Western forces of aggressive nationalism and democracy” (FAH, 216), and “the
very personification” of “frontier democracy,” for better or for worse (FAH, 252).
It is interesting to note that Tocqueville provides us with a different evaluation of
very much the same qualities that Turner lauds in Jackson’s persona, as products
of the American frontier (Democracy, 278). Thus, in vilifying Andrew Jackson,
Tocqueville still managed to find yet further proof of America’s uniqueness.
Tocqueville, of course, did not live long enough to witness the political career
of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), another prominent figure in Turner’s work
who bore the mark of the frontier: “What had been typical of the democracy of
the Revolutionary frontier and of the frontier of Andrew Jackson was now to be
seen in the States between the Ohio and the Mississippi. As Andrew Jackson is the
typical democrat of the former region, so Abraham Lincoln is the very embodi-
ment of the pioneer period of the Old Northwest” (FAH, 255). Lincoln’s humble
origins were crucial, rather than quaint, in Turner’s eyes: “Lincoln . . . [was] born
in Kentucky in 1809, while the state was still under frontier conditions, migrated
in 1816 to Indiana, and in 1830 to Illinois. The pioneer influences of his commu-
nity did much to shape his life, and the development of the raw frontiersman into
the statesman was not unlike the development of his own State” (FAH, 241). In a
reiteration of his assertion concerning the importance of “free land” in coming
to grips with the influence of the frontier on the American character, Turner ex-
plains how frontier conditions were conducive to the nurturing of leaders like Lin-
coln (FAH, 213). Of course, Turner’s canonization of Lincoln was likely not contro-
versial among American historians by the turn of the twentieth century. Turner,
however, was not merely content with further solidifying Lincoln’s preeminent
position in American history; he sought, instead, to make a case for Lincoln as
more than just a good president: “It was not without significance that Abraham
Lincoln became the very type of American pioneer democracy, the first ade-
quate and elemental demonstration to the world that that democracy could pro-
duce a man who belonged to the ages” (FAH, 304–305). Thus, Turner concludes
that the frontier not only configured a unique American character but that it also
gave to the world one of its most important leaders.
Tocqueville had similar praise for Thomas Jefferson, whom he observes was a
man of “great talents” and “the most powerful apostle of democracy there has ever
been” (Democracy, 176, 261). Jefferson is another figure, like Jackson and Lincoln,
whom Turner argues manifested the influence of the frontier, and he uses language
strikingly similar to Tocqueville in his assessment of Jefferson: “Jefferson was the
first prophet of American democracy, and when we analyse the essential features
of his gospel, it is clear that the Western influence was the dominant element”
(FAH, 250). In addition to Jefferson’s celebrated achievements as a politician and
intellectual, he was also an “independent yeoman” who hailed from “a democratic
frontier people,” and he managed to eschew “the aristocratic tendencies of slave-
holding planters” in favor of “the democratic ideals of pioneers” (FAH, 93–94).
The brand of democracy that historians credit to Jefferson, which Turner observes
is associated with the “separation of church and state, its wish to popu larize
education and its dislike for special privilege” was “deeply affected” by “Western
society” (FAH, 114).
The foundational status of Turner’s work for exceptionalism should be clear
by now. He discusses many of the same issues as Tocqueville, such as equality,
democracy, and individualism, but adds to them a historical dimension that un-
covers a range of different issues, such as the wilderness or forest, free land, the
West, and, of course, the frontier. Before concluding the present analysis of Turner,
it is worth noting that he also makes a number of observations of the United States
that we can categorize as “only in America” statements, as was much the case with
Tocqueville. A brief discussion of these observations is warranted, as they have
made an enduring impact on contemporary American exceptionalism.
Ironically, the concept of the frontier, important enough as it was to earn a
place in the title of his 1920 book, is not an exclusively American one. Turner ad-
mits that other countries have or had their own frontiers, including the nations
of Europe from which he sought to distinguish America. The American frontier
for Turner was distinct by virtue of its proximity to the American wilderness
and the fact that it lay “at the hither edge of free land” (FAH, 3). Just as the West and
the frontier are virtually interchangeable in Turner’s works, so too are his con-
cepts of wilderness and free land; since the wilderness was, by virtue of its
“absence” of people (forgetting, of course, the indigenous peoples who may have
already been there), open to settlement by essentially any American who wanted
it and who was willing to do whatever it took to survive there. Even if one were to
argue that such a frontier, even with free land, had existed in European history,
Turner insists that the size of the American phenomenon was still unique by
comparison: “The United States is unique in the extent to which the individual
has been given an open field” (FAH, 212–213, emphasis added). It seems that when
Turner uses “extent” in discussing the uniqueness of America’s free lands, he
means both the number of instances whereby people moved westward for settle-
ment on such lands, and the geographic scale of the United States wherein it oc-
curred. Since Turner’s concept of free land is so crucial to his argument regarding
the formation of a unique American character, which itself was the largest fac-
tor in the development of the United States, the United States was the only nation
where the phenomenon of free land existed for Turner. Other nations may have
had frontiers and free land, but no other society succeeded in producing a nation
like the United States.
For Turner, the size of the United States was an important factor in other ways
that helped him make a case for the uniqueness of America. “Other nations,” he
argues, “have been rich and prosperous and powerful, art-loving and empire-
building. No other nation on a vast scale has been controlled by a self-conscious,
self-restrained democracy in the interests of progress and freedom” (FAH, 203).
Keenly aware that democracy was not an American invention, Turner believes that
no other democracy in human history had ever succeeded like the United States
(FAH, 260). His esteem for the unique size of the United States creeps metaphor
ically even into comments about its place in world history: “The United States
lies like a huge page in the history of society” (FAH, 11). In a discussion about the
significance of the “Middle West,” he notes how the harmonious intermingling
of its various ethnicities (“national cross-fertilization”) should serve as an ex-
ample to the world, holding within it nothing less than “the promise of world
brotherhood” (FAH, 351). He uses similar grandiosities when discussing the unique-
ness of the American West (FAH, 268).
As Tocqueville describes in Democracy in America, American democracy was
unique by comparison with other democracies, since he believed that American
democracy was founded by the world’s only society that was characterized by true
social equality. Turner also believes in the uniqueness of American democracy
but for different reasons. Speaking again of the “Middle West,” Turner argues that
American democracy will always diverge from democracies in Europe (FAH,
281–282). On a conspicuously elevated rhetorical level, Turner does not merely
invoke the uniqueness of American democracy in the context of “the history of
society,” but instead writes of “the history of the human race,” which will contain
among its “wonderful chapters” one in which “Western democracy” is glorified
as America’s contribution to “the nations of the earth” (FAH, 267). As was the
case with Tocqueville, democracy in the United States is not just democracy for
Turner; it is unique because it is American democracy, born in the wildernesses
of the American West.
Not surprisingly, Turner argues forcefully that American democracy is a
singular event in world history (FAH, 335). Turner’s esteem for American democ-
racy seems to preclude the indigenous development of American-style democracy
anywhere else in the world, as frontiers adjoining free lands, if they existed at all,
were rapidly disappearing. Tocqueville himself understood the danger of portray-
ing American democracy in such exclusive terms, since he sought to apply its
wisdom to other nations and societies, in other words, for “the profit of mankind”
(Democracy, 19). Tocqueville overcame this potential quandary by concluding, in
a way that anticipates Karl Marx (1818–1883), that the rest of the world was going
to develop along American lines anyway: “It seems to me beyond doubt that sooner
or later we [i.e., non-Americans], like the Americans, will attain almost complete
equality of conditions” (Democracy, 18). As an American, Turner was perhaps un-
concerned with the ways in which the genius of American democracy could be
applied outside of the United States; for Tocqueville, a Frenchman, the issue of
application was understandably foremost in his mind. Instead, Turner was more
interested in the ways in which the lessons of the frontier could fade even within
the United States, once the frontiers themselves had disappeared entirely. He
admonishes Americans to adhere to the ideals of the Western frontier: “It is to
the realm of the spirit, to the domain of ideals and legislation, that we must look
for Western influence upon democracy in our own days” (FAH, 261). Whether
societies in the rest of the world could follow these ideals in their own lands was
an open question for Turner.
Tocqueville’s denial that his work was meant simply as praise for the United
States, and his annoyance with the claims of Americans whom he encountered
that the United States was a morally and culturally superior nation, are not du-
plicated in Turner’s work, even though Turner never mentions any historical
claims of superiority. While Turner never proclaims America’s superiority, he
issues no disclaimers about his praise for American values and institutions. For
these reasons, a certain ambiguity with regard to the issue of a subjective-evidential
claim of superiority exists in Turner’s work, as it does in Tocqueville’s. In the ab-
sence of a disclaimer, however, it is likely even less ambiguous. The implications
of Turner’s observation about the impact of the disappearance of the frontier
on the perpetuation of American democracy provide us with even more clarity on
the issue. There is no question that Turner viewed democracy as the best form
of government ever conceived, and that American democracy was its most felici-
tous incarnation. Without any hope for the successful emulation of American
democracy, hope which we do see in Tocqueville’s work, a notion of superiority
becomes implicit in The Frontier in American History, and it, like Democracy in
America, continues to exert a powerful influence on American exceptionalism
today.
Seymour Martin Lipset

Although not a central concern of Turner, he makes an interesting statement about
socialism and the American character, observing that American pioneers “had
no sympathy with a radical reconstruction of society by the revolution of social-
ism; even his alliances with the movement of organized labor, which paralleled
that of organized capital in the East, were only half-hearted” (FAH, 277). Unknown
to Turner, this statement anticipated the next major development in American
exceptionalism, and whose most insightful and articulate spokesperson was
Seymour Martin Lipset.
Despite the influence of both The Frontier in American History and Democ-
racy in America, Lipset argues that the analysis of American exceptionalism be-
gan with the issue of “the absence of a significant socialist movement in the United
States.” 44 Although Marxist scholars w ere the first to attempt to grapple with this
issue following World War I, Lipset observes how both Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895) were aware of this issue, but were unable to offer up any co-
Seymour Martin Lipset 125
herent explanation other than that the United States was simply an exception to
the forces of historical change that affected every other society.45 Their Marxist
heirs and others, beginning in 1929, began with the proposition that the United
States was an exceptional society and endeavored to articulate the reasons for this,
concluding that “the ideological content of Americanism is highly similar to so-
cialism and hence Americans believe they have most of what it promises.”46 This
also functioned as an explanation for “trade union exceptionalism,” that is to say,
the fact that the United States had “the weakest union movement in the demo
cratic developed world in terms of density.”47 Marxists, it seems, had concluded
that their revolutionary efforts in the United States were likely to be more diffi-
cult than they otherwise should have been, but that was far from being a con-
cern of Lipset. In fact, as an anti-Marxist scholar, he was dissatisfied with the
seeming monopoly on the analysis of American exceptionalism enjoyed by
the Marxists, and so he advocated an even earlier intellectual champion in the
figure of Tocqueville.
Lipset denies that the Marxist debates of the 1920s were the intellectual arena
within which the concept of American exceptionalism was born, citing Democ-
racy in America as the locus classicus for “exceptionalism”: “In his great book,
Tocqueville is the first to refer to the United States as exceptional—that is, qualita-
tively different from all other countries. He is, therefore, the initiator of the writings
on American exceptionalism.”48 If he were to make the association of American
exceptionalism and Tocqueville an enduring one, he would have to redefine the
concept of exceptionalism, which he does with his notion of the “outlier”: “This
book [American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword] attempts to explain con-
temporary America . . . by reference to its organizing principles and founding
political institutions. These are, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1830s, ex-
ceptional, qualitatively different from those of other Western nations. Hence the
United States has developed as an outlier.”49 By focusing on this concept of out-
lier, Lipset not only redefines American exceptionalism, he also broadens it, such
that it holds within it the potential to become an etic analytical category unto
itself. Other nations and societies, in other words, might also qualify as outliers,
and exceptionalism could be used to analyze them as well. In fact, Lipset did find
another outlier in Japan, but he ultimately chose not to extend the category of ex-
ceptionalism to include Japan, an issue to which I return later in this chapter. For
now, we should note how Lipset sought to marginalize Marxism in the discus-
sion of American exceptionalism by emphasizing Tocqueville’s insights in Democ-
racy in America; in the process, however, he (perhaps unintentionally) broadened
the definition of exceptionalism, such that it threatened to become applicable to
other nations, thereby undermining the status of the United States as the world’s
Table 4. Objective-Evidential Exceptionalism
Spiritual/
Material Cultural
Theorist/Theory Uniqueness Uniqueness Incommensurability Superiority
Sombart Y N N N
Tocqueville Y N N N
Turner Y Y Y Y
Lipset Y Y Y N
Nihonjinron Y Y Y Y
only exceptional nation. Both Lipset and his Marxian foes assumed that aspects
of the United States were exceptional, but they differed over the nature of this ex-
ceptionality. For the Marxists, like Sombart, it was material; for Lipset, it was
cultural and even spiritual. Material exceptionality gave Marxists a basis on which
to deny any link between spiritual uniqueness and superiority, but that was not
true of cultural exceptionality, a concept that leads to incommensurability and
also superiority (see table 4). In the absence of other societies that were also cul-
turally exceptional, the emic was still poised on the threshold of becoming an etic,
yet the latter was incongruent with incommensurability. Consequently, Lipset’s
quandary was how to preserve incommensurability, yet do so without forsaking
the intellectual security of, and scientific air inherent within, etic concepts.
Lipset’s valorization of Tocqueville, and his recognition of Tocqueville’s ca-
nonical status in the literature on American exceptionalism, is clear. His view
of Turner’s work, however, is unclear, and even nonexistent in his two influential
treatises on American exceptionalism, The First New Nation: The United States in
Historical and Comparative Perspective (1963), and American Exceptionalism: A
Double-Edged Sword (1996). At first glance, this omission is baffling, especially to
scholars working outside of American history. Lipset’s omission is interesting for
two reasons. In the first place, Turner himself recognized the nearly complete
absence of a viable socialist movement in the United States, which I mentioned
earlier. Since this issue was not foremost in Turner’s mind, Lipset might have
thought of his own work as an extension of Turner’s, yet Lipset does not acknowl-
edge the overlap. Second, Turner’s notion of the frontier (and its related concepts)
in no way undermines the outlier status of the United States. Rather than an over-
lap, this issue represents a divergence that reinforces rather than undermines the
arguments of each scholar. As we saw, Turner was adamant that the American
frontier was absolutely unique, as was its effects on the American character. A
potential solution to the conundrum of Lipset’s seeming disregard for Turner’s
ideas comes from the pen of a contemporary scholar of American exceptionalism,

Charles Lockhart. Although he does acknowledge the importance of Turner’s
contributions (and Lipset’s, for that matter) to our understanding of American
exceptionalism, he takes issue with Turner’s prioritization of the frontier over all
the other distinctive characteristics of American society that are so highly valued
by the exceptionalists, such as individualism. Instead of arguing that individual-
ism was a direct result of the American encounter with the frontier, he argues, we
should see the frontier as an outcome of American individualism.50 Lockhart’s
views, while at odds with those of Turner, do conform more neatly to Lipset’s
views, namely, that American values are unique and the ultimate source of Amer-
ica’s outlier status. Lipset believes that these unique American values developed
within the context of American religiosity.
Tocqueville observed how strong the religious sentiment was among the
Americans that he encountered during the 1830s: “It was religion that gave birth
to the English colonies in America. . . . In the United States religion is mingled
with all the national customs and all those feelings which the word fatherland
evokes. For this reason it has peculiar power” (Democracy, 432). For Lipset, the
depth and prevalence of Christian beliefs were distinctive features of American
society from the very beginning, not just in Tocqueville’s time, that continue to
mark the United States as distinct to this day.51 Although the Americans had clung
to their religious beliefs over such a long period of time, they still managed to build
a society that was not only the world’s largest democracy, but also its largest cap-
italist economy. According to orthodox Marxism, societies shed their religious be-
liefs over time as they modernize and rationalize their economies.52 Clearly, the
American example for Lipset contradicted Marxism, adding another layer to its
exceptionality, in addition to the absence of a legitimate socialist movement within
the United States.
Although Lipset, like Tocqueville more than a century earlier, believes that
the unique history of the United States cannot be understood without an analysis
of the religious beliefs of its people, he parts ways with Tocqueville over the char-
acter of American Christianity. For Lipset, discussions of American Christianity
in the context of American exceptionalism should focus on a specific form of
Protestantism, namely, Calvinism, as opposed to Protestantism more broadly
conceived, or even all of Christendom, as was the case with Tocqueville. Tocqueville
noted how the success of American democracy was in no way derailed by the pres-
ence of Catholics in the United States, whom he praised for being “the most obe-
dient of the faithful and the most independent citizens” (Democracy, 450, 289).
Thus, Tocqueville even suggested that American Catholics actually contributed
to American democracy, a far cry from the accusations of nativists that appeared
at virtually the same time as the publication of Democracy in America. Lipset,

however, ignores the history of American Catholicism, as well as the other forms
of what he refers to as “hierarchical” Protestantism.53 For Lipset, Calvinism, in
the form of Puritanism, the faith of the very first English colonists, was the key to
American success.54
Although religious issues were less important to Turner than they were for
Lipset, the former was also convinced of a link between American individualism
and Calvinism (FAH, 302). Lipset, although he does not acknowledge Turner’s
work, agrees with him that Calvinism as Puritanism instilled within early Amer-
icans the values of “individualism and personal rights.” 55 Despite the fact that the
concept of predestination, which is so central to Calvinism, facilitated the culti-
vation of individualism among early Americans, Lipset observes how it was grad-
ually supplanted by a modified version supplied by a rival movement known as
Arminianism. Arminianism served as an even stronger boost for individualism,
since it made predestination, and therefore salvation, more a matter of free will
than was the case with Calvinism.56 This theological shift was the result of a con-
vergence of secular “Enlightenment ideals” with Calvinism, which led to the “rapid
decline” of the latter.57
Arminian teachings exerted influence on both the “Calvinist denominations”
in America and even the “non-Calvinist ones,” serving as the basis for the emer-
gence of a pan-Christian movement.58 While Arminian teachings were widely
accepted among American Protestants, sectarianism was still prevalent, and con-
tinues to be a defining feature of American Christianity to this day: “The United
States . . . is the only country where most churchgoers adhere to sects, mainly the
Methodists and Baptists, but also hundreds of others.” 59 The most relevant fea-
ture of these sects, for Lipset, is the fact that they eschew any ecclesiastical struc-
ture in favor of leadership by their own members: “Since most of the Protestant
sects are congregational, not hierarchical, they have fostered egalitarian, indi-
vidualistic, and populist values which are anti-elitist. Hence, the political ethos
and the religious ethos have reinforced each other.”60 While Tocqueville reserved
a special place for the Catholic Church in the narrative of American democracy,
Lipset specifically leaves it out, along with other “hierarchical” churches, such
as the Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.61
Lipset cites as further evidence of the centrality of Puritanism and Calvinism
to the story of American exceptionalism the success of Jews in the United States.
The affinity between Puritanism/Calvinism and Judaism was something, he ob-
serves, that Max Weber (1864–1920) had also recognized.62 He cautions the reader,
however, against concluding that Weber’s assertion of affinity applied to Judaism
in general; for Lipset, it really applies only to “Jews in American society,” who are
“exceptional among the world’s Jewries,” and so “differs qualitatively from those
of their co-religionists in other countries.”63 For Lipset, the success of Jews in
America is proof that the values of American Jews are aligned with American
values, which in turn are derived from Puritanism/Calvinism: “Clearly the story
of American and Jewish exceptionalism, closely intertwined as they are, is not
over. . . . Unlike the saga of black Americans, which . . . is still one marked more
by racism than universalism, and by continued hardship, that of the Jews shows
the United States at its best.”64 Lipset argues that African Americans have been
left out of American exceptionalism; they are literally the exception to the rule of
exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, he admits, has functioned as a kind
of racial ideology for white Americans, so one might assume that the Jews have
no “position” within American exceptionalism. This, he says emphatically, is not
the case.65 “Evangelical Protestantism,” he writes, “had long formed the base of
opposition to Catholic immigration, while ignoring or even accepting the Jews
for the most part.”66 The shift in American Protestantism from Calvinism to
Arminianism had excluded American Catholics, such that “Protestant Sectar-
ians viewed Roman Catholics . . . negatively.”67 Jews, of course, were also not part
of the Protestant embrace of Arminianism, but they already seemed to embody
its core values more fully than other Christians, especially Catholics.
We have discussed the ways in which exceptionalism can mean, for many
people, the assertion of national superiority, what I call subjective-evidential
exceptionalism. When one reads the canonical works of American exceptionalism,
it is easy to see why people would draw such a conclusion. With Tocqueville,
although he never declared that the United States was superior, his otherwise
superlative statements about American uniqueness create a certain ambiguous
tension in Democracy in America that allows subjective-evidential exceptional-
ists to claim it as authoritative proof of American superiority. This tension is less
ambiguous in Turner’s writings, even though one is hard pressed to find an overt
assertion of American superiority in them either. Lipset is seemingly the clearest
of the three, since he rejects the idea that exceptionalism has anything to do with
assertions of superiority: “[American exceptionalism never] meant, as some crit-
ics of the concept assume, that America is better than other countries or has a
superior culture. Rather, they have simply been suggesting that it is qualitatively
different, that it is an outlier.”68
Tocqueville had also observed the American proclivity toward self-praise, but
it had no connection to his assessment of American uniqueness, and the same is
true for Lipset, for whom American assertions of superiority have no bearing on
the more important discussion of American exceptionalism. Americans, Lipset
admits, are a very patriotic people who tend to believe that their society is the best
in the world.69 Specifically, in the American social system, free and equal indi-
viduals who apply themselves and work hard can succeed economically; no other
society in the world, the belief is, has a social system like the American one.
Societies, as the Marxists argue, can and do change over time, but Americans are
unconcerned with the notion that American society is going to change; Ameri-
can society is timeless. Ultimately, many Americans believe that the United States
has earned divine favor, which protects Americans from the vicissitudes of history:
“Americans are utopian moralists who press hard to institutionalize virtue, to de-
stroy evil people, and eliminate wicked institutions and practices. A majority even
tell pollsters that God is the moral guiding force of American democracy.”70
Such a belief is an indispensable aspect of American religiosity; in other words,
patriotism and religious belief are intertwined.71 One would think that a scholar
analyzing American exceptionalism with the disclaimer of any intention to laud
the United States as superior would choose not to voice any support for the
notion of its divine favor, but that is not the case with Lipset:
There can be little question that the hand of providence has been on a na-
tion which finds a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt when it needs
him. When I write the above sentence, I believe that I draw scholarly con-
clusions, although I confess that I write also as a proud American. But, I
should hasten to add, not as one who thinks his country is better than
other democratic societies, but as one who believes that greatness of free
polities lies in their institutionalization of conflict, of the continued strug-
gles for freer and more humanely decent societies.72
In the above passage, Lipset asks that the reader accept the idea that a belief in
the divine favor of the United States is not tantamount to a belief in its moral or
cultural superiority. Such a candid admission of bias undermines the viability of
objective-evidential exceptionalism, since a belief in divine favor is inherently
subjective and begins to blur the distinction between the “exempt” and the “ex-
emplary,”73 to use Jack Greene’s words, or objective-evidential and subjective-
evidential exceptionalisms.
As we saw in our discussions of Tocqueville and Turner, Lipset also makes
a number of observations that we can classify as “only in America.” As should be
clear by now, such statements are typical and even essential to writings on Amer-
ican exceptionalism. Since the early Americans established a society without
an aristocracy, it was the world’s first such society, as it was “much less bound to
the customs and values of the past.”74 These “values of the past,” of course, w ere
European, and many of these were products of a long feudal age.75 Americans
ere, therefore, willing to embrace a more radical idea of equality. Once war
w
with Britain ended in 1783,76 this unique society developed into the world’s first
“new nation,” as well as “the first colony, other than Iceland, to become indepen
dent.”77 The new American nation continued to develop its “distinctive value sys-
tem” after political independence, resulting in characteristics that Americans still
exhibit to this day. For example, Americans then and now have been strongly “an-
tistatist” in political orientation, that is, fundamentally suspicious of the central
government, which echoes Tocqueville’s observations of the relatively weak senti-
ment Americans felt for the union as a whole, as opposed to the strong loyalties
they felt for their individual states. Along with a latent hostility toward the federal
government, Americans were also and are still the “most . . . legalistic” people in
the world.78 That is to say, Americans look to the law for the protection of their
rights, an attitude that strengthens their individualism, the depth of which is
another distinctive feature of Americans. American attitudes toward the law
reveal the ways in which Americans approach conflict in general. They are apt to
view conflicts in which they are engaged in moral terms, rather than as a con-
frontation between rival interests, yet another distinctly American value.79 The
intense fascination with morality felt by Americans is related to their general reli-
giosity, which Tocqueville observed was unique by comparison with Europeans,
and which Lipset observes as setting Americans apart from the rest of the world’s
other democracies.80 As primarily Protestant, the depth of American religiosity is
related to the various Protestant sects and the numbers of their adherents. There are,
of course, Protestants in other countries, but they belong to forms of Protestantism
that are “hierarchical” and center around a church structure, as opposed to the
congregational form prevalent among Americans. The congregational nature
of American Protestantism, along with “the withdrawal of government support
from religion,” as is usually the case with “hierarchical” forms of Christianity,
makes “American Protestantism unique in the Christian world.”81 Polls, Lipset
argues, “indicate Americans are the most churchgoing in Protestantism and the
most fundamentalist in Christendom.”82
By describing Americans and their society in such superlative terms, Lipset’s
writings, as well as those of Tocqueville and Turner, lure readers into drawing
conclusions of superiority. Lipset is aware of this possibility and he deals with it
in two ways. First, he uses quantitative data to make his case for uniqueness, which
are drawn primarily from surveys. Statistical anomalies, therefore, not subjective
opinion, form the basis of his assertions for America’s outlier status. Ironically,
Lipset ends up agreeing with his Marxist rivals like Sombart that America’s outlier
status is essentially a kind of material uniqueness. The assiduous use of data, in
fact, separates Lipset’s writings from those of both Turner and Tocqueville, and
for this reason I have labeled American exceptionalism, as articulated by Lipset

and others, as objective-evidential exceptionalism. This does not mean, however,
that the assertions of uniqueness made by Tocqueville and Turner were entirely
subjective in nature, as the latter used abundant examples from American his-
tory in making his case, while the former claimed a certain level of disinterested
distance from the object of his study. We must remember that Tocqueville, un-
like Turner, drew on a reservoir of comparative examples in his work, in addition
to the fact that he was not an American, both of which are critical factors in
understanding the material dimension of his idea of American exceptionality
and also the material and cultural dimensions of Turner’s. Tocqueville and
Turner, therefore, also relied on data in their scholarly work, even if their data
were not generated via surveys. Second, Lipset deals with the specter of subjec-
tive claims of American superiority by claiming that American exceptionalism
was a “double-edged sword.” While superlatives abound when describing Ameri-
can society, it is a mistake, Lipset warns, for people to assume that all of these
superlative descriptions are, in every case, positive, or reflect well on the United
States and its people.83 A British observer and later scholar of American politics,
Godfrey Hodgson, took note of the same phenomenon more than a decade after
Lipset.84 In discussing the “dark side” of American society, Hodgson sought to
undermine the notion that the United States was a superior nation,85 which Lip-
set ostensibly wanted as well. However, Lipset was a strong advocate of American
exceptionalism, since exceptionalism was connected to ideas of both material and
cultural uniqueness and not to claims of superiority, while Hodgson believes that
exceptionalism primarily signified national superiority; consequently, he is an
outspoken critic of American exceptionalism. Despite Lipset’s rhetorical efforts,
the specter of exceptionalism as national superiority haunts his work much as it
appears in Turner’s writings, since the distinction between cultural uniqueness
and both incommensurability and superiority can be difficult to ascertain.
The Etic Becomes the Emic: Japan

as America’s Doppelgänger
Japanologists, especially those who have either never heard of exceptionalism or
know very little about it, will likely be surprised to learn that Japan occupies an
important position within writings on American exceptionalism, in particular its
objective-evidential form as represented by Lipset’s work. Lipset admired De-
mocracy in America, and he praised Tocqueville for his efforts at comparing the
United States to other contemporary societies. Tocqueville, of course, used Euro
pean nations as comparative examples, notably France and Britain. Comparisons
The Etic Becomes the Emic 133
of this kind were perhaps still valid in the decade following the end of World War
II, when Lipset began his academic career, but as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s
and then the 1980s, Japan’s economic success proved that its example was impos-
sible to ignore. The Japanese case of the last two decades of the twentieth century
had the potential to undo American exceptionalism in profound ways, as it was a
non-Western nation that had developed the world’s second largest economy us-
ing values and institutions divergent from, if not at odds with, those of the United
States. As America’s chief economic rival and former enemy, Japan needed a care-
ful examination and analysis, since nothing less than America’s exceptionality
was at stake.
Comparative study is the standard methodology of objective-evidential ex
ceptionalism today, and one of the legacies of Democracy in America. Lipset cites
survey data primarily from other Western democracies, including Britain, France,
and Germany. He also views Australia and especially Canada as nations with
histories similar to the United States. For Lipset, the survey data usually confirm
that the Europeans continue to exhibit similarities among themselves and differ-
ences with Americans, while Australians and Canadians are to varying degrees,
depending on the issue, more akin to Europea ns than to Americans. Charles
Lockhart has written a book that looks at “the roots of American exceptionalism,”
by examining the comparative examples of France, Sweden, and Canada. Like Lip-
set, he also analyzed the Japanese case, concluding that it, along with the three
other countries of his study, w ere similar to one another and fundamentally
different from the United States.86 Lockhart’s cursory dismissal of any substan-
tive commonalities between Japan and the United States was made possible, in
large part, by Lipset’s sustained examination of the Japanese case in American
Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. It is clear that not only was the Japanese
case foremost in Lipset’s mind, forming a critical if not the crucial section of his
book, but also that Japan’s formidable economic success posed a conceptual
threat to American exceptionalism that needed to be neutralized.
As we saw earlier in this chapter, Lipset denies that exceptionalism carries
the connotation of superiority, arguing that the word “outlier” is a more accurate
way of conceptualizing America’s exceptionality. The notion of an outlier was an
effective way for Lipset to remove American exceptionalism from its exclusive
analysis by Marxist scholars, who were obsessed with the lack of a legitimate so-
cialist movement in the United States. In other words, the United States was ex-
ceptional not simply because of the absence of socialism, but because of its gen-
eral lack of conformity to models that w ere otherwise applicable to the rest of the
world. For Lipset, “outlier” seemed to capture this meaning well.87 With that term,
Lipset was able to wrest American exceptionalism away from the exclusive
clutches of Marxism, but only at the expense of broadening its meaning; indeed,
the prospect that American exceptionalism had become simply “exceptionalism,”
namely, an etic analytical category with applications outside of American history,
was at hand. The door was open for a notion of exceptionalism with universal
applicability, and Japan was the first and heretofore only test of this potential
categorical expansion. Japan, Lipset admits, is also an outlier nation, like the
United States.88 Since, he had earlier identified “outlier” as synonymous with the
exceptional nation, the Japanese case should also qualify for inclusion within ex-
ceptionalism, one would think. Ultimately, Lipset concludes that Japan does not
qualify as exceptional, such that exceptionalism does not apply in the Japanese
case; Lipset’s analysis, therefore, effectively closes the door, thereby preserving the
exclusive association of the United States with exceptionalism. For Lipset, Japan
was proof that the etic category of exceptionalism would continue to apply only to
the United States.
Japan’s economic success prompted Lipset to classify it as an outlier, which
he had associated with the concept of exceptionalism decades earlier; since Lip-
set concludes that Japan is not exceptional, he had to expand the meaning of
outlier, in order to accommodate the Japanese case. To do this, he resorts to the
phenomenon of Japanese appraisals of their own distinctive culture,89 namely,
Nihonjinron, which he associates with the articulation of Japanese “uniqueness”:
“The two outliers, the two developed nations which are most different from each
other . . . t he Japanese themselves are fascinated with discussions of Japanese
uniqueness, Nihonron [sic], their counterpart to American exceptionalism.”90 Ni-
honjinron signifies the indigenous articulation of Japanese uniqueness,91 while
the same is true in the American case, namely, that American exceptionalism
signifies the indigenous articulation of America’s exceptionalism (see table 4).
Uniqueness is associated with a signified to Nihonjinron’s signifier, while American
exceptionalism is self-referential, functioning as both signifier and signified.
Japanese uniqueness, the assertions of Nihonjinron advocates notwithstanding,
was material and not cultural for Lipset, while American uniqueness was both.92
The Japanese case, therefore, forces Lipset to describe the United States in
i ncommensurable and even ineffable terms.
The comparative analysis of American and Japanese societies yields, under-
standably, mostly differences between the two, but Lipset admits that two highly
successful societies should have at least some, even if only a few, commonalities,
and he finds this in the form of an esteem for tradition. Americans are, by
comparison with “most West European and Australasian cultures,” more fond
of retaining their traditions, which one would not expect of a society that was
“developed technologically.”93 Undoubtedly, the depth of American religiosity, es-
The Etic Becomes the Emic 135
pecially by comparison with the Europeans, is also an important aspect of Ameri-

can traditionalism. At the same time, Lipset observes how, on international sur-
veys, the Japanese also register as a society with comparatively more adherence
to traditional values and customs than the rest of the world.94 Since Americans
tend to identify tradition, in particular traditional values, with “conservatism,”
then both the United States and Japan are “conservative cultures.”95 Even on this
seemingly common national trait, the strength of the commonality is ultimately
weak, since the Japanese have had politically relevant socialist parties in the post-
war period: “Japan has a relatively strong Socialist Party, a much weaker, more
moderate (social democratic) Democratic Socialist Party, and a fairly radical
small Communist Party. Their combined vote has ranged up and down between
36 percent in 1958 and 32 percent in 1990, while such tendencies have almost no
electoral support in the United States.”96 Thus, Japan’s economic success earned
for it Lipset’s classification as an outlier nation, joining the United States, the
only other outlier, but the existence of a legitimate socialist movement in Japa
nese politics not only separates it from the United States, it also disqualifies it as
exceptional, in its Marxist (emic) sense of the word.
As nations that are the “most different from each other,” the United States and
Japan, even as the only outlier nations in the developed world, are polar oppo-
sites of one another, in Lipset’s eyes. While Americans are the most individualis-
tic in the world, the Japanese are perhaps its most “group-oriented.”97 While
Americans have generally turned away from definitions of Americanness based
on ascription, the Japanese are “much more particularistic and race-conscious.”98
Since economic success was the primary factor in Japan’s status as an outlier,
Lipset goes back to economics to argue that, while hugely successful, the Japanese
still resemble the Europeans more than they do the Americans: “Clearly, nations
which have reached the same high point of technological development and eco-
nomic success can still be very different culturally and can continue to be anom-
alies, outliers, among the developed countries, exceptional or unique compared
to most others. But while American economic patterns have been exceptional,
Japanese patterns resemble those in Europe, particularly Northern Europe.”99 In
other words, when speaking of “family resemblances,” the Japanese are funda-
mentally more similar to the Europeans than they are to the Americans. In a sense,
the resemblance of the two nations is like that of mirror images, with Japan acting
as a reflection of the American original. Since the cultural road to success for
each was so completely different, their status as unique societies was mutually
threatening for Lipset. For this reason, we can also think of Japan in Lipset’s
analysis as a kind of doppelgänger to the United States: it is almost an exact
duplicate whose existence will ultimately spell the undoing of the original. In
Lipset’s analysis, the position of Japan vis-à-v is the United States is special by
comparison with all of the other democracies in the world, such that Japan has
been indispensable to the development of American exceptionalism during the
last few decades. In order to preemptively eliminate the Japanese doppelgänger,
Lipset excludes it from inclusion as exceptionalism, so as to preserve its sanctity
as exclusively American, as well as America’s very exceptionality. Lipset, there-
fore, collapses the etic expansion of exceptionalism back into an emic, not its
original Marxian emic, but a new anti-Marxian one.100
Conclusion
Although Tocqueville saw great potential in the United States, he never wavered
in his belief that, as decrepit as the states of western Europe had become by the
early decades of the nineteenth century, European civilization was still superior
to the rest of the world, the United States included. His canonical status within
American exceptionalism, therefore, is twofold. On the one hand, he contributed
to it a comparative methodology and a methodological rigor that contemporary
scholars of (and believers in) American exceptionalism, like Lipset, use to this
day. On the other hand, his overt denials of American superiority give the same
group of scholars a kind of ideological “plausible deniability” that allows them to
argue against any associations between American exceptionalism and superiority.
These scholars and researchers seek, instead, to prove how America is singularly
unique, not superior, and for this reason I have called their field objective-evidential
exceptionalism. This American uniqueness, however, could not be merely material
in the eyes of exceptionalist writers like Lipset, as that would push their interpreta-
tion uncomfortably close to that of the Marxists. American uniqueness had to rest
on a foundation that had both material and cultural dimensions. In fact, excep-
tionalist writers had no interest in acknowledging that such a bifurcated concept
of uniqueness even existed. Consequently, they w ere able to preserve the illusion,
borrowed from Marxism, that proving uniqueness can be an objective under-
taking, while proving cultural superiority cannot.
At the same time, scholars of objective-evidential exceptionalism seek to make
a conceptual distinction between difference and singular uniqueness without
falling into the trap of asserting cultural superiority. In fact, the intellectual legiti-
macy of objective-evidential exceptionalism entirely emanates from the intellec-
tual viability of this distinction. I believe that proving there is a difference between
mere difference and singularly unique difference is doomed ultimately to fail,
because cultural uniqueness always elicits a value judgment, whereas material
uniqueness, as we saw with Tocqueville and Sombart, may not. Difference by
Conclusion 137
itself does not invite such value judgments, as the concept of relational meaning
in structural linguistics demonstrates. This is not true for assertions of cultural
uniqueness, since they belie motivations to then illustrate the ways in which phe-
nomena are clearly inferior by comparison, usually in some concrete, specific way,
or superior. However, these assertions of uniqueness, even if they emerge from a
material context, suggest superiority in decidedly nonmaterial ways, which is why
Werner Sombart had to deny that the exceptional state of America during the early
years of the twentieth century was material and not spiritual. Ironically, in two of
the founding works of American (qua objective-evidential) exceptionalism (Som-
bart and Tocqueville), we see denials of American cultural exceptionality, a no-
tion that has since become orthodox among its supporters today. The very birth of
objective-evidential exceptionalism was dependent on the conceptual elusiveness
of uniqueness, as opposed to simple difference. Not even Sombart could stop the
rhetorical strategy of arguing for material uniqueness from becoming an argu-
ment in favor of spiritual and cultural uniqueness, and the conceptual gap be-
tween the latter and superiority is barely perceptible, if it even exists at all.101
This tension is something that we can perceive even more clearly in the work
of Frederick Jackson Turner. Like Tocqueville, he also avoided making overt dec-
larations of American superiority over the rest of the world, at least in his canoni-
cal work, The Frontier in American History. For this reason, Turner’s ideas continue
to be foundational for objective-evidential exceptionalism. Curiously, Lipset
was less enthusiastic about Turner’s work than others laboring on the subject of
American exceptionalism, preferring the work of Tocqueville, despite the fact that
Democracy in America emerged almost a century before The Frontier in American
History, and Lipset’s opposition to Marxism precluded any intellectual reliance on
Sombart. I would argue that Lipset’s intellectual discomfort with Turner stems
from the fact that Turner’s conceptualizations of American history not only made a
case for America’s singular uniqueness, but they also reached the point of becom-
ing effusively laudatory and thereby were tantamount to assertions of America’s
superiority without actually having to say so directly. Add to this the fact that
the Frenchman, Tocqueville, actually stated how he opposed characterizations of
America and the Americans as superior (even though the Americans, he said, be-
lieved that about themselves), while Turner never made such a disclaimer, and we
are left with a theorist in Turner whose ideas threaten the validity of American
exceptionalism as a field of social scientific research.
In tracing the development of the concept of exceptionalism, there is one crit-
ical difference between it and nativism. With the latter, we have both a word and
a concept, along with a clear sense of their original usage, in other words, the
intellectual ingredients necessary for the identification of an emic. In the case of
exceptionalism, we have the later identification of a concept in the absence of a

precise term. Both Tocqueville in the 1830s and unidentified Marxist researchers
around World War I used “exceptional” to describe the United States, but neither
used the word “exceptionalism” as such, making the identification of the emic
more complicated. However, in both cases, the exclusive object of analysis was the
United States, so that the focus was sufficiently narrow in scope for us to rule
out any etic conceptualizations with either of them. Consequently, we have
two candidates for emic exceptionalism, only one of which (Tocqueville) is
actually claimed by scholars and researchers working in the field of American
exceptionalism.
In Japanese studies, understanding the concepts of emics and etics is critical
to any attempt to apply the latter to the study of Japan. Seeking to apply Ameri-
can emics to the study of Japan will likely end before it starts, or leave one having
to invent etic usages that may already exist. The difference between the observa-
tions of Tocqueville, Sombart, and Turner, on the one hand, and Lipset, on the
other, is that Lipset operated with both a word and concept, instead of nascent
concepts with no terminology in the cases of the other three. Not surprisingly, it
is Lipset who deserves the credit for inventing the etic concept of exceptionalism.
Following the lead of Tocqueville (and even Sombart), Lipset availed himself of
numerous studies that compared the United States to the rest of the world, which
gave him the confidence to declare that the United States was singularly unique
because the rest of the (relevant) world was different in more or less the same
way. The evaluation of “exceptional,” for Lipset, was not merely a qualitative one; it
was a qualitative assessment based on quantitative research. It is to Lipset, there-
fore, that Japanologists should look for potential etic applications of exceptional-
ism to Japan.
Japanologists, however, are confronted with the fact that Lipset employed com-
parative study only as a way of keeping all other candidates for inclusion within
exceptionalism out, including Japan. In fact, Japan occupied a special conceptual
position within Lipset’s work, since it signified the only real threat to American
exceptionalism. Since Lipset and his fellow scholars of objective-evidential excep-
tionalism operate under the assumption that singularly unique difference is in-
tellectually legitimate, a situation in which more than one society is granted the
status of “exceptional” is untenable.102 Denying such a status for Japan, therefore,
was a foregone and eminently predictable conclusion with Lipset. For Japanolo-
gists, and all others external to the field of American exceptionalism, Lipset’s etic
looks much like an emic, and the fact that its curious status as an etic-as-emic is
dependent on a refutation of Japan likely makes it even more interesting to Japa-
Conclusion 139
nologists especially. American etic concepts that function as emic ones are of
little use to those working in fields unrelated to the United States, and this is the
case with Lipset’s concept of exceptionalism. Fortunately, Lipset’s work is not the
last word on etic exceptionalism, and it is to the more etically useful ideas of schol-
ars working in what I call subjective-evidential exceptionalism that Japanolo-
gists should look, while keeping the intellectual distinction between the two forms
of exceptionalism in mind.
Subjective-evidential exceptionalism is the historical analysis of ideas of the
exempt and the exemplary, so it is inclusive of objective-evidential exceptional-
ism, because it is conceptually broader. Scholars of subjective-evidential excep-
tionalism have a different take on comparison than their colleagues working
within objective-evidential exceptionalism, since they assume that exceptional-
ism exists or has existed in other cultures and in other times. So, for American-
ists studying subjective-evidential exceptionalism, Nihonjinron is a form of
Japanese exceptionalism and not simply its analogue. However, unlike their col-
leagues working in objective-evidential exceptionalism, Americanists who study
subjective-evidential exceptionalism undertake very little comparative analysis,
and neither group has attempted any sustained historical comparison with the
United States. Historical analysis, of course, is methodologically critical to the
work of Americanists in the field of subjective-evidential exceptionalism, but they
do not extend it to the study of any other culture. By studying the United States
in isolation, they actually, and ironically, reinforce the exceptionalist image of the
United States, even as they actively seek to undermine it.
Americanists on both sides of the ideological fence of exceptionalism
understand the stakes involved in turning the emic into the etic. As Yoshio Sug-
imoto, a scholar of Nihonjinron, observes, “a repertoire of Japanese emic ideas
that Nihonjinron has generated can be used as etic categories for cross-national and
cross-cultural studies,” an outcome that was certainly anathematic, ideologically
speaking, to the adherents of Nihonjinron.103 Etics, by their very comparative
nature, erode the edifice of all exceptionalisms, American, Japanese, or otherwise,
since “the exceptionalist nation grounds its very understanding of itself in its
incommensurability with others.”104 Even the exceptionalist forebears of Nihon-
jinron, the scholars of Kokugaku, understood how “foreign” concepts could not
be applied to Japanese phenomena, since foreign concepts as etics would displace
indigenous, or emic, concepts that they felt more accurately apprehended native
phenomena.105 While comparison is critical to establishing etics, which then
serve to undermine exceptionalism, Lipset and his supporters have actually used
it as a way of fostering an image of intellectual legitimacy for exceptionalism,
and the unwillingness or inability of Americanists to undertake historical com-

parison in their own work within subjective-evidential exceptionalism poses
no serious threat to the use of comparison by contributors to objective-evidential
exceptionalism.106 Thus, it is to scholars other than Americanists that we must
turn for comparative historical analyses of exceptionalism, and Japanologists
find themselves in a strong position to take up this intellectual challenge and
epistemological imperative.
C HA P T E R F OU R
Seventeenth-Century Tokugawa
Exceptionalism
The discussion of Tokugawa exceptionalism should not end with the analysis
of Kokugaku.1 As has been the case with Tokugawa “nativism,” some might be
tempted to look no further than the writings of scholars associated with Kokugaku
when discussing Tokugawa exceptionalism. As Mabuchi, Norinaga, Atsutane, and
their students and followers understood very well, Confucianism was a cultural
institution whose provenance was profoundly Chinese; in seeking to delimit the
contours of what was authentically Japanese, Kokugaku scholars identified the
influences of both Confucianism and Buddhism as the foreign enemies of their
intellectual crusade. Japan was not just different, they argued, it was superior to
China. Before the spread of Rangaku by the end of the eighteenth century, it was
not necessary to make a case for China’s superiority to the rest of the world, so
that claiming Japan was superior to China implied that the rest of the world, in-
ferior as it was to China, was also inferior to Japan. In the eyes of Kokugaku schol-
ars, one had to reject Confucianism as a foreign set of teachings in order to prove
one’s loyalty to Japan. Otherwise, one’s cultural allegiances were always hopelessly
divided and ultimately untrustworthy.
Indeed, this line of thinking was something that Confucian scholars them-
selves shared for the most part. Confucianism was a Chinese institution, they
reasoned, such that embracing its teachings required at least a tacit admission
that China was culturally superior to Japan. The potential for such an admission
to become an intellectual conundrum, however, did not discourage them, as it
need not develop into an insurmountable obstacle; Confucianism, in other
words, was not necessarily an impediment to exceptionalist claims by the Japa
nese as it might otherwise have appeared. By focusing on the universal applica-
bility of Confucianism, the proof of which was signified by its adoption outside
of China, they were able to argue that Confucianism was itself a universal teach-
ing, transcending both time and space. Confucianism, therefore, was not a Chi-
nese institution, they believed, but the Chinese articulation of a much broader
truth that predated humanity itself. Such a line of thinking among Japanese Con-
fucians developed before Kokugaku; in fact, such ideas collectively were both its
141
142 Seventeenth-C entury Tokugawa Exceptionalism
intellectual forerunner and the windmill against which the early Kokugaku
thinkers tilted as they formulated their distinctive ideology.
The intellectual rule (or orthodoxy) for Tokugawa scholars was the idea that
China’s civilization was much older than Japan’s and that its cultural institutions
were models that the Japanese should use to gauge their own development. Put
simply, China’s civilization was superior to Japan’s. Whether they liked it or not,
Tokugawa intellectuals were required to recognize China’s superiority, and to the
extent that there was an exceptionalist rule during Tokugawa Japan, it was the
support of China’s exceptionalism, not Japan’s. This was the context within which
the major Confucian thinkers of Tokugawa exceptionalism developed their ideas.
Although some of the ideas that they espoused had been around since medieval
times, if not earlier, scholars have viewed such exceptionalist assertions as distinc-
tive for that era. Distinctive or not, such assertions of Japan’s superiority, especially
with respect to China’s, were actually not the rule among Edo intellectuals, so
that Tokugawa exceptionalism was, itself, the exception.
While Nihonjinron has been the point of departure for the discussion of
Japanese exceptionalism, turning its connections with Kokugaku into a potential
starting point for Tokugawa exceptionalism, Japanologists need to look both for-
ward and backward in time from Kokugaku’s eighteenth-century inception in
order to understand more fully the role of Confucianism in the development of
Tokugawa exceptionalism. Three of the most important advocates of Tokugawa
exceptionalism from within Confucianism during the seventeenth century w ere
Yamazaki Ansai, Yamaga Sokō, and Kumazawa Banzan. While they w ere all in
agreement that Japan was superior, and while they all had established more than
a little renown for themselves as Confucian scholars in their day, their arguments
were all intellectually distinct, proving that there was diversity even among those
Confucians who were advocates of Japanese exceptionalism.
Confucianism and Chinese Exceptionalism

Before analyzing the foundational ideas of Tokugawa exceptionalism in the writ-
ings of early Tokugawa Confucians, we should first discuss the critical contextual
aspects of that era in East Asian history. In so doing, we can begin to come to
grips with understanding how Confucianism was so foundational for the emer-
gence of exceptionalism in Japan, and why this emergence occurred in the sev-
enteenth century.
In a fundamental way, it should come as no surprise that the roots of Tokugawa
exceptionalism w ere firmly embedded within the writings of Confucian intellec-
Confucianism and Chinese Exceptionalism 143
tuals, rather than the ideas of figures associated with the more “protonationalis-
tic” movement of Kokugaku.2 Although we might focus on what constitutes the
exception when speaking of exceptionalism in the abstract (as etics), namely, that
something is set apart from everything else, a qualitative evaluation of that status
as superior is, at the very least, implied. Qualitative evaluations of this kind are,
therefore, inherently hierarchical; otherwise, the exceptional is simply reduced
to the status of being different. When Marxist scholars first began using the word
“exception” to refer to the seeming resistance within American society to social
revolution, they did not anticipate that their bourgeois political opponents, under
the strong sway of Judeo-Christian values, would seize on their assessment
of American society and use it against them. America’s social “failure” in the eyes
of the Marxists became, instead, proof not only of its brilliant “success” but also its
“chosenness” and from within America’s exceptionality emerged its superiority.
Despite the fact that a moral hierarchy is implicit within a conception of
exceptionality premised on ideas of divine election, the hierarchy itself is not
fetishized the way it is in Confucianism, premised as it is on “classics [that] posit
social order based on the innately unequal situation of all human beings.”3 For
the Confucians of premodern East Asia, cosmic harmony was the result of the
preservation and protection of hierarchies, emanating from and sanctioned by
Heaven, via the performance of ritual. The basic structure of relationships, whether
social, political, or economic, was not, generally speaking, between equal parties;
one side of the relationship was superior, such that the other side was always
relegated to the status of an inferior. Harmony was the result of maintaining this
unequal relationship, and the failure to do so could incur a chaos of potentially
cosmic dimensions. For Confucians, hierarchical relationships existed among in-
dividuals and groups, obviously, but they existed among societies as well. Natu-
rally, Confucianism elevated China to the status of the world’s one truly superior
society, a conception of world order that was at odds with its contemporary West-
ern counterpart. Societies around the world could not possibly all be equal to one
another; one society had to stand apart from all the others, since Heaven itself
had decreed it. As was true of all hierarchical relationships, there were obligations
that the inferior owed to the superior, but this was a reciprocal obligation at the
same time. As the world’s superior society, the Chinese saw themselves as sad-
dled with the responsibility of maintaining cosmic order, while all other societies
in the world fulfilled their cosmic duties simply through the ritualized recogni-
tion of China’s special status, as we will see below.4 Thus, it is not an exaggeration
to say that exceptionalist thinking and Confucianism go together in ways for
which there is no analogue in the West.
Sinocentrism as Exceptionalism
The hierarchy at the core of Confucian thinking manifested itself in the global
arena using the vocabulary of center and periphery, with China, naturally, the sole
occupant of the former.5 Perhaps the most common expression of this hierarchy
is the dichotomy of hua (J. ka), “efflorescence,” and yi (J. i), “barbarian.” Aside
from its more mundane floral connotations, the word hua also signified the qual-
ities of blooming and flourishing, which lent to it, in nonbotanical contexts, a
broader meaning of civilization itself. Civilization was something that the Chi-
nese had long associated exclusively with their own society, a feeling that dates as
early as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE).6 Rather than using the circular logic
of superiority famously articulated by Norinaga in the eighteenth century, namely,
Japan is superior because it is Japan,7 the association of hua exclusively with China
made it superior because China was conceived of as the sole receptacle of human
civilization in the world.8 All other societies w ere both literally and metaphor
ically on China’s periphery, complementing China’s superiority with their own
cultural and moral inferiority. Since the peripheral status of barbarian societies
was not only metaphorical but geographic as well, the hua/yi dichotomy contained
an implicit concept of centrality, such that one of the names for China was Cen-
tral Efflorescence (Zhonghua, J. Chūka). And, of course, the metaphor of cen-
trality could stand on its own even without any direct reference to hua/yi, as
in the other very common name for China, the Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo,
J. Chūgoku). It is perhaps fitting that one need look no further for evidence of the
foundational role of exceptionalist thinking in Chinese history than these names
for China itself.9
While Confucianism conceived of China as the center of the world, it was also
the linchpin between Heaven and earth, a status that not only enhanced its global
centrality but also focused the world’s attention on China’s temporal and spiri-
tual leader, the emperor. These dual leadership roles for the Chinese emperor were
symbolized by the titles of tianzi (J. tenshi), or Son of Heaven, for the latter, and
huangdi (J. kōtei), or “imperial sovereign,” for the former. While both of these
titles were also associated with Japanese emperors, taking a place alongside the
title more commonly used today, tennō, the two had very different connotations
in the Chinese case, as Mark Mancall tells us.10 As huangdi, the emperor of China
ruled as the recipient of the Mandate of Heaven, from which his political legiti-
macy emanated. The progenitor of an imperial dynasty in China obtained the
Mandate of Heaven and transmitted it to the subsequent rulers in their dynastic
line; however, such dynastic founders earned this mantle only by successfully nav-
igating the chaos that represented the downfall of the previous dynasty. In other
The Tributary System 145
words, while one could earn the Mandate of Heaven in China, one could also lose
it. A huangdi who had either obtained the Mandate of Heaven or maintained it
from the previous generation was also a tianzi, not in the literal sense of being
descended from Heaven, as the Japanese believed was true of their emperors, but
in the sense that the emperor of China was charged by Heaven with certain ritual
duties and responsibilities on behalf of all of humanity.11 The Chinese emperor, a
figure “at the apex of the Chinese world,”12 performed rituals that ensured the
smooth perpetuation of the cosmos, which included the maintenance of the proper
hierarchies, especially the one that placed China at the center of the world. By con-
trast, Japanese emperors were the direct descendants of the kami, who resided in
Heaven (Takamagahara), so that there was no heavenly mandate to lose, since
Japanese emperors were divine. They were not the metaphorical sons of Heaven;
they were, in a real sense, Heaven’s sons. Since China’s emperors were firmly em-
bedded within the Confucian tradition’s universalistic scope, it is not surprising
that the Chinese believed in the truly cosmic significance of their emperors. The
Japanese, on the other hand, enveloped their imperial institution within the folds
of Shinto, whose scope was generally limited to Japan, even if its implications were
more global or cosmic than that.
The Tributary System

Sinocentrism was not only the ideological lens through which the Chinese viewed
the outside world,13 since it also informed the various ways in which they dealt
with it, and this influence manifested itself spectacularly in imperial China’s
foreign relations. Since antiquity, the Chinese had treated the societies on their
periphery as barbarians who were compelled by Heaven to submit and to show
allegiance to the emperor of China. According to Confucianism, the relationship
between China and these barbarian states was that of a ruler and subject; as such,
it was the first of the Five Relationships identified by the early Confucians, the
proper ritual observance of which they thought was fundamental to social and
even cosmic harmony. Specifically, barbarian states pledged their loyalty to the
emperor and recognized him as their lord, who then conferred upon them vassal
status: “Presentation of tribute to the emperor was the ritual appropriate to ac-
knowledging the world order.”14 During the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), Chi-
nese emperors felt justified in forcing peripheral societies into this relationship of
geopolitical vassalage, but within a few centuries following the decline of the Han,
this view gave way to the acceptance of tribute instead.15 The Chinese realized
that the effort and expense involved in militarily forcing peripheral states into
submissive relationships with China were too great, and they came to relish the
idea that the barbarians realized China’s cultural and moral superiority on their
own without any Chinese coercion.16 This idea that what made China morally
right was more important in its foreign relations than its military might domi-
nated the rest of imperial Chinese history, the echoes of which resonated even
into the twentieth century.17
During the Tang (618–907 CE), Song (960–1279), and Yuan (1271–1368)
eras, the Chinese accepted tribute missions from peripheral states, as well as al-
lowing trade to take place between private Chinese merchants and their foreign
counterparts, both within China and also abroad. However, both the tributary sys-
tem and foreign trade changed fundamentally with the decline of the Yuan and the
rise of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–1398), as the Ming
dynasty’s founder and the Hongwu Emperor, decided to link China’s foreign trade
with the tributary system, such that countries on China’s periphery could engage
in trade only so long as they also participated in the tributary system.18 This meant
that the rulers of foreign states, wishing to engage in what had always been a highly
lucrative trade with the Chinese, had to respond to the Hongwu Emperor’s strong
requests for the recognition of his imperial legitimacy by sending tribute. Gener-
ally speaking, those rulers of maritime states who acquiesced to these requests
sent envoys to China aboard ships laden with local products and commodities as
gifts to the Ming emperor; once these gifts were presented at Nanjing, the Chi-
nese bestowed on these foreign envoys gifts from the emperor to their rulers back
home, especially items associated with the investiture of their rulers as “kings”
(wang), namely, vassals of the Chinese emperor. Officials who accompanied these
tribute missions and stayed behind at their designated ports while envoys made
the trip to the capital w ere allowed to engage in their own trade with specially
licensed Chinese merchants. Under the isolation policy of “prohibited seas” (hai-
jin), Ming emperors prohibited their subjects from leaving China to engage in
trade, and foreigners seeking to trade with the Chinese had to abide by the provi-
sions of the tributary system. An unintended consequence of this policy was a dra-
matic increase in the demand for Chinese goods abroad, a demand that fueled
smuggling activities in the region, especially by the Wakō, pirates whom the Ming
isolation policy was intended to suppress.
The Hongwu Emperor sent envoys to Japan in 1369, offering the Japanese an
opportunity to trade with his newly established Ming dynasty in the hope that
he could secure a commitment from the Japanese to suppress the Wakō.19 Like the
other missions sent by the Hongwu Emperor in the late 1360s and early 1370s,
the envoys sent to Japan carried with them an offer of investiture, as the “king of
Japan,” to whoever saw fit to comply with the Ming request for tribute. While the
Japanese had sent imperial delegations to China as early as the seventh century, a
Japan and the Tributary System 147
practice that came to an end in 869 CE, no political figure had ever undergone
formal Chinese investiture as the king of Japan, so that whoever decided to re-
spond to the Hongwu Emperor’s request would have set a precedent of truly his-
toric proportions.20 There were two earlier incidents in which the Chinese wrote
letters addressed to the king of Japan. The first occurred in the twelfth century,
when Taira no Kiyomori (1118–1181) received a letter from a Chinese merchant
requesting permission to trade with the Japanese. Kiyomori responded to the
letter and allowed the Chinese to trade directly with the Taira near his retire-
ment residence at Fukuhara, as well as dispatching ships to China, and by doing
so, fulfilled the obligations associated with the king of Japan without any actual
investiture.21 The second instance took place about a century later, when the
Mongols were preparing to invade Japan as they swept away the last remnants of
the Song dynasty. The Mongols gave the Japanese a chance to surrender and to
send them tribute in a letter addressed to the Japanese emperor as the “king of
Japan.”22 Officials of the Kamakura Bakufu intercepted the letter before it made
its way to Kyoto, and they ordered the execution of the Mongol envoys. As was
the case with the twelfth-century example of Kiyomori, there was no formal in-
vestiture associated with the Mongol “offer,” and the Japanese response was obvi-
ously negative anyway.
Japan and the Tributary System

The circumstances of the Hongwu Emperor’s request were significantly different
from those of these two earlier episodes, neither of which resulted in the investi-
ture of a king of Japan. Of all the delegations sent by the Ming requesting tribute
after the founding of the dynasty, the Japanese were the only ones who spurned
them.23 The first group of countries to receive tribute requests in 1369, other than
Japan, were Annam, Champa, Java, and Goryeo Korea.24 Undaunted, the Hongwu
Emperor dispatched another mission to Dazaifu in 1370, and they were received
by the Bakufu’s military commander, Prince Kaneyoshi (?–1383). Prince Kaney-
oshi had brutally dealt with the earlier Chinese mission of 1369,25 which is why
the Chinese never received a reply to their request, but he had changed his mind
about the Ming offer in the intervening years, and decided to take it upon him-
self to send tribute to the Ming and to accept its offer of investiture as Japan’s
first king. In his reply to the Ming, he referred to himself as “King of Japan,
Yoshikane,” signaling to the Chinese that he had formally accepted the title.26
Within a few years, however, Prince Kaneyoshi, a supporter of the Southern
Court, found himself at odds with a supporter of the Northern Court, Imagawa
Ryōshun (1326–c. 1414), during the fourteenth-century civil unrest associated
with the Nanbokuchō (Southern and Northern courts) period, and he was de-
feated, and the era of Japan’s first king came to an abrupt end. As far as the Chi-
nese were concerned, Japan’s king was no more, and its trade relationship within
the tributary system was defunct.
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408) became the third of the Muromachi
shoguns in 1368, at essentially the same historical moment as Zhu Yuanzhang’s
accession as the first Ming emperor. As shogun, he had no direct control over
foreign relations, since it was difficult enough to maintain order within Japan
during Nanbokuchō. However, he retired from the office of shogun in 1394,
which finally freed him to devote his attention to foreign matters, specifically,
the revival of the lucrative China trade. With the “demise” of King Yoshikane, the
Ming emperor, Yongle (1360–1424), sent envoys once again to Japan in 1401, and
the confluence of Yoshimitsu’s retirement with the relative peace following the end
of Nanbokuchō meant that the conditions were set for Japan’s more meaningful
participation in the tributary system. Yoshimitsu decided to accept the title of
“king of Japan,” in exchange for his pledge to suppress piracy, and he dispatched a
tributary ship, what would later be referred to in Japan as kenminsen (Ming trib-
ute ships), to China in 1402.27 He later received an investiture document from the
Ming, as well as robes and a seal with “king” inscribed on it. Thus, Yoshimitsu
became the first Japanese ruler to receive Chinese investiture, and the Ming en-
tered Japan into its official roll of more than sixty vassal states.28
As far as the Chinese were concerned, Yoshimitsu was to pass his title on
to the subsequent generations of his house, and so there would be no need to for-
mally invest his successors.29 Because of Yoshimitsu’s acceptance of Ming inves-
titure, Japan remained a tributary state of the Ming until about 1550,30 with only
a brief period of controversy during the reign of Yoshimitsu’s son, Yoshimochi
(1386–1428), who rejected the title of “king” as humiliating and demeaning for
Japan, and suspended Japan’s participation in the tributary system from 1408 to
1434, when it was resumed by Yoshinori (1394–1441).31 The circumstances sur-
rounding the ending of Japan’s participation in the tributary system, concerned
as they w ere with rivalries among competing samurai families and their ethnic-
Chinese representatives, severely damaged Japan’s already tarnished reputation
in the eyes of the Chinese, and the Portuguese were eager to fill the commercial
void it created.32 As strained as relations were between China and Japan as of 1550,
matters grew even worse following Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s (1536–1598) invasion
of Korea in 1592. The Joseon king, Seonjo (1552–1608), fled before the advancing
Japanese forces, sending word to the Ming emperor, Wanli (1563–1620), that his
kingdom was under attack and in dire need of assistance. The initial Ming expe-
dition to Korea was outnumbered and consequently overwhelmed by the Japanese,
Japan and the Decline of the Ming 149
and the Wanli Emperor responded to their defeat by sending a much larger force,
ultimately fighting the Japanese to a stalemate. The Ming had no desire to engage
in a protracted and costly conflict with the Japanese, and the Japanese harbored
similar doubts about a prolonged conflict with the Chinese. The two sides negoti-
ated a cessation of hostilities, and the Chinese raised the subject of investiture
for Hideyoshi, who seemed amenable to the idea, so the Chinese sent a mission
to Japan in 1596 for the purpose of investing Hideyoshi as king.33 When the de-
cisive moment during the investiture ceremony came, and the Ming officials pro-
claimed that Hideyoshi was the king of Japan, Hideyoshi balked, claiming that
he was told he was to be made “king of the Ming.” He angrily ended the ceremony,
vowing revenge against the Ming Chinese for their refusal to recognize his vic-
tory in Korea,34 as well as the Japanese negotiators who had misled him.35
In the Ming investiture document, a reference was made to Yoshimitsu’s in-
vestiture as the first king of Japan, with the obvious implication that Hideyoshi
was to become the second ruler to accept Ming investiture.36 By calling off the
investiture ceremony and renewing the Japanese military campaign in Korea,
Hideyoshi seemed to have ended any hope of restoring Japan’s tributary status
and, by extension, its direct trade with China. Once the tumult of Hideyoshi’s
succession had subsided, and Tokugawa Ieyasu emerged as the shogun of a new
Bakufu based in Edo, the subject of renewing trade relations with China sur-
faced once again. Both Ieyasu and his son, the second Tokugawa shogun, Hi-
detada, sought to restore Japan’s position as a Ming tributary state so as to restart
trade between the two countries. Feeling that enough time had passed since Japa
nese aggression in Korea, the Ming Chinese sent Hidetada a letter in 1621 inviting
him to present tribute, thereby bringing the Japanese to the brink of renewing a
relationship that had been moribund for more than fifty years. The Japanese de-
bated how to respond to this letter, and in 1624, the decision was made not to ac-
cept the offer.37 As Ron Toby argues, the leadership of the Edo Bakufu believed
that accepting the status of a vassal state of the Ming reduced their political stat-
ure within Japan; the tributary system, in other words, undermined the legiti-
macy of what was still a relatively new Bakufu, as Ieyasu had only accepted the
title of shogun roughly twenty years earlier.38
Japan and the Decline of the Ming:

From Parity to Superiority
In theory, Japanese participation in the Chinese tributary system signified their
acceptance of Chinese centrality and superiority, in other words, China’s excep-
tionalism. However, there is evidence that Japanese attitudes were informed more
by economic expediency than anything else, and that views of cultural and moral
parity were more prevalent than not among Japanese elites in the pre-Tokugawa
era. Historians like to invoke the famous example of Emperor (or Empress) Sui-
ko’s (554–628 CE) letter of 607, drafted by her regent and nephew, Prince Shōtoku
(572–622), to the Sui emperor Yang (569–618), which implies that the sovereigns
of the two countries w ere peers.39 This feeling of parity was not isolated to the early
seventh century, however; we see it expressed in later eras as well.40 Even after Yoshi
mitsu formally enrolled Japan as a Ming tributary state by referring to himself as
the “king of Japan,” the Muromachi Bakufu abandoned the requisite protocols
recognizing Ming superiority in its diplomatic correspondence with the Koreans
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.41 Yoshimitsu’s son, Yoshimochi,
was so disturbed by what his father had done that he suspended Japan’s partici-
pation in the tributary system, and it is clear that he was not the only one who
expressed opposition to recognizing Ming supremacy at the time.42 Japanese op-
ponents to the tributary system argued that no Japanese emperor, as the tradi-
tional sovereign of Japan, had ever accepted Chinese investiture as a king, unlike
other peripheral states in the region, chiefly Korea.43
The refusal to recognize Chinese exceptionalism, however, did not necessar-
ily mean that Japanese elites were prepared to substitute Japanese exceptionalism
in its place. Before Yoshimitsu, they could feign ignorance of the Chinese world
order, as Japan had no formal tributary status and no Japanese ruler had accepted
Chinese investiture. It would have been folly, however, to claim superiority over
China, as that would have meant embracing, even if momentarily, the Sinocentric
world in order ultimately to reject it. Successfully resisting the Mongols in the
thirteenth century provided the Japanese with a more rational basis upon which
to claim exceptionality, since they could claim to have defeated the same people
who had subdued the Song Chinese. Indeed, the Mongols couched their offer to
spare the Japanese the destruction of their society by issuing them a demand for
tribute; in this way, nonparticipation in the Chinese world order had evolved into
active resistance against it. Still, no claims of Japan’s superiority over China is-
sued from the brushes of Japanese elites, as geopolitical parity with their much
larger and traditionally more powerful neighbor to the west was perhaps ideo-
logically satisfying enough, and claims of superiority w ere as yet unthinkable. The
Mongol invasions significantly weakened politic al support for the Kamakura
Bakufu, which was subsequently overthrown about two generations later. Despite
the fact that Ashikaga Takauji (1305–1358) was able to establish the Muromachi
Bakufu in Kyoto in 1338, the turmoil associated with the Nanbokuchō effectively
suppressed the development of the cultural self-confidence necessary to make any
claims of superiority or exceptionality.
Japan and the Decline of the Ming 151
With the controversy of the two imperial courts still unresolved, Chinese
rebels overthrew the Mongols and their Yuan dynasty in 1368, the same year that
Yoshimitsu became shogun. Yoshimitsu served as shogun until 1394, two years
after the two imperial courts w ere reunited, and more than a generation follow-
ing the establishment of the Ming dynasty. By accepting Ming investiture some
eight years into his retirement, Yoshimitsu made the task of imagining Japan’s
parity with China very difficult, if not impossible. This explains why his own son,
as well as other observers at the time, was so outraged by Yoshimitsu’s accep
tance of Ming investiture. They were troubled not by the undermining of any
superiority claims by the Ashikaga as much as they were that notions of political
parity were no longer tenable within the context of the tributary system. For this
reason, the Bakufu’s relations with Joseon Korea became even more critical,
since it provided the Japanese with a diplomatic context within which they could
ignore the tributary system, and the same is true of the Muromachi Bakufu’s re-
lationship with Ryūkyū.44
With the decline of Japan’s vassal status around 1550, the result of the she-
nanigans of the Hosokawa and the Ōuchi, reviving the image of Japan’s parity with
China became possible once again, especially after the relative peace and stability
that developed following Ieyasu’s founding of the Edo Bakufu.45 Hayashi Razan
(1583–1657) handled the Bakufu’s foreign relations during the early decades of
the seventeenth century. As Ron Toby has observed, Razan sought Ming investi-
ture for Ieyasu, since he saw it as an opportunity to enhance Ieyasu’s political le-
gitimacy.46 While it was possible to project an image of parity with China before
Yoshimitsu’s time, it was still possible to do so even within the tributary system,
and this was likely on Razan’s mind. Razan, in other words, sought legitimacy
for Ieyasu while operating under the assumptions of parity in effect during the
Muromachi era. While the Bakufu ultimately spurned Chinese overtures for
tribute so as not to paint a portrait of the shogun as submissive and weak, the
crafting of an image of parity with China was still possible by default, a position
expressed by Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619) and one with which Razan concurred.47
By assisting the Bakufu in closing the door on renewing Japan’s tributary rela-
tionship with China, Razan and other Confucians w ere likely emboldened by this
diplomatic move, and thereafter the writings of Tokugawa Confucians exhibited
“genuine feelings of confidence,” as Kate Nakai observes.48
While all of this was going on in Japan, the once-mighty Ming dynasty was
rapidly weakening, and it eventually succumbed to the armies of the Manchus in
1644. The trauma of the Ming collapse quickly reached Japan’s shores, as did the
thousands of Ming loyalists who fled China. While intellectuals like Razan were
well aware of the political events unfolding in China, nonelites were as well, chiefly
via Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s (1653–1725) play centering on the celebrated fig-

ure Koxinga (1624–1662).49 The prevailing view of China that soon developed in
Japan was that China itself, not just the Ming dynasty, was in a state of decline,
and nothing symbolized this better than the fact that another barbarian people
had succeeded in conquering it.50 Rather than seeing the world as having dual
centers, China and Japan, as Seika and Razan had believed,51 the perception “that
now Japan was the true ‘center’ ” began to develop.52 Toby argues that “conceits of
Japanese centrality” (what I call Japanese exceptionalism) informed and were
informed by the Bakufu’s conduct of foreign relations during the first half of the
seventeenth century.53 This was certainly the case; however, we should not under-
estimate the role of hierarchy within Confucianism, especially as it manifested
itself in Neo-Confucian metaphysics.54 The notion of parity conflicted with the
Confucian view of cosmic order; hierarchy for the Confucians did not allow for
relationships of equality.55 It should come as no surprise that notions of parity with
China prevailed among Japanese elites in the era before the existence of a Neo-
Confucian orthodoxy (imagined or not) in Japan, and even prior to the advent of
Neo-Confucianism itself. One of the distinguishing features of early Tokugawa
Japan was the Bakufu’s recognition of Neo-Confucianism as its “official” learn-
ing, a development with which Hayashi Razan was closely affiliated. By equating
the collapse of the Ming with China’s overall moral decline, Japanese Neo-
Confucians created the necessary conditions for abandoning assertions of parity
with China in favor of claims of superiority over it.56
Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan

It might be tempting to conceptualize the virulently protonationalistic assertions,
namely exceptionalism, of Tokugawa intellectuals as ideologically dominant, while
relegating the more moderate and less overtly assertive views of others to the
status of an aberration.57 Such a historiographical temptation is understandable,
when one considers Japan’s trajectory in the modern era. The orthodox assump-
tion about the connection between the ideology of the Pacific War and the Edo
period claims that Japanese “ultranationalism” sprang from the aggressive phil-
osophical rantings of Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan, as well as the writings of Kokugaku
scholars.58 While the ideological connection between ultranationalism and
the modern Japanese state was undoubtedly strong, the same cannot be said for
the connection between Tokugawa exceptionalism and the Edo Bakufu. Whereas
one could argue for the existence of a connection between exceptionalism and the
overthrow of the Tokugawa government, to argue that exceptionalism also served
the ideological needs of the Tokugawa seems counterintuitive, even though the
Yamazaki Ansai 153
former’s emphasis on the imperial court represented a radical departure from the
latter’s emphasis on the Bakufu. To further complicate matters, Ansai, Sokō, and
Banzan were all Confucian scholars, and the Bakufu actively supported Confu-
cian learning with the establishment of Hayashi Razan’s academy, the Shōheizaka,
in 1630, an institution that was known as the Shōheizaka Gakumonjo (Bakufu
College) after 1790. Unless one were to assert that Tokugawa Confucianism was
fundamentally exceptionalist in orientation, it is impossible to argue that the
Bakufu’s support for Confucianism was tantamount to an endorsement of Japa
nese exceptionalism. In fact, the recognition of Confucianism as an imported
Chinese institution, which was prevalent among Tokugawa intellectuals, made it
a difficult basis upon which to establish Japanese exceptionalism. Far from being
the rule among Tokugawa Confucians, Japanese exceptionalism was more likely
the exception to the rule of a belief in Chinese exceptionalism.
By viewing the intellectual context of the Tokugawa period, or at least the first
half of it, in this way, one only highlights more profoundly the exceptionalist ideas
of Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan. These were intellectuals whose ideas went against the
grain; rather than making contributions to a larger exceptionalist trend, the ideas
of these three intellectuals were perhaps the most influential in the nascent for-
mulation of Tokugawa exceptionalism. Herman Ooms has identified Ansai, Sokō,
and Banzan (along with Hayashi Razan)59 as scholars who “expressed the view
that primitive Shinto before the arrival of Buddhism in Japan was the same as
Confucianism.”60 While the idea that archaic Shinto and Confucianism were es-
sentially the same is a critical first step in the development of a Confucian-based
form of exceptionalism, it by itself is not exceptionalist. If anything, it merely
places ancient Japan on par with China. Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan claimed that
Japan was superior to China by viewing Confucianism as the Chinese articula-
tion of universal ideas associated with the Way, so that Shinto was the ancient
Japanese articulation of the same. In other words, the ancient Japanese appre-
hended these truths independently of the Chinese; once they combined this view
with the divine myths of archaic Shinto,61 they were on much firmer ideological
grounds to then begin the task of building a form of Japanese exceptionalism with-
out actually abandoning Confucianism.
Yamazaki Ansai: Metaphysics and Exegesis

Yamazaki Ansai is one of the most fascinating, and perhaps notorious, intellec-
tuals of the Edo period. His intellectual life began as a Zen monk, in a school of
Buddhism that had served as the intellectual haven for Song Confucianism since
the Kamakura period. In China, the institutional histories of Zen and Song Con-
fucianism were intertwined, and the adherents of the former embraced what they
believed were the profound intellectual similarities between the two, a feeling that
the followers of the latter did not share with their Buddhist colleagues. While Chan
(Zen) monks in China explored these resonances between the two traditions, the
scholar officials who identified with Song Confucianism harshly denounced Chan
(and Buddhism in general) as overly obsessed with the hereafter, as opposed to
the here and now, and they generally refused to acknowledge any significant af-
finity between the two. During the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, Zen
began to take root in Japan, aided by close cultural interactions with China, and
this was the beginning of the process by which Neo-Confucianism developed in
Japan. It was as a Zen monk that Ansai was exposed to Neo-Confucianism for
the first time, and he took to it enthusiastically, especially the writings of Zhu Xi
(1130–1200), the most influential of the Neo-Confucians. Ansai was so obsessed
with Zhu Xi that he intensely focused on Zhu Xi’s concept of the daotong (J. dōtō),
or “orthodox lineage of the Way,” which Zhu Xi believed had been lost after Men-
cius, only to be “rediscovered” more than one thousand years later by the brothers
Cheng Hao (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi (1033–1107).62 By tracing his own intellec-
tual lineage to the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi believed that he had entered into
this orthodox lineage. Believing himself to be a kind of spiritual heir to Zhu Xi,
Ansai similarly inserted his name into his own dōtō, in what was essentially a pro
cess of self-canonization. After many years of study, Ansai left Zen Buddhism to
dedicate his life to Neo-Confucianism, becoming part of a larger trend during
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that included other luminaries
such as Hayashi Razan and Fujiwara Seika. Ansai eventually garnered employment
for himself as a Confucian tutor, not an easy task for self-styled Confucians in
early Tokugawa Japan, lacking as it did a path to government service via a civil ser
vice examination system. His employer was the Bakufu official Hoshina Masayuki
(1611–1682), for whom Ansai worked for seven years, from 1665 to 1672.
While attempting to write a history of Japan using Neo-Confucian ideas,
Ansai closely read and analyzed the scriptural texts of Shinto, especially the cre-
ation stories of the Nihongi set during kamiyo. He was enthralled by these stories,
believing that a close exegetical analysis of them would yield the universal truths
of Neo-Confucianism.63 In the words of Herman Ooms, Ansai “articulated an
anagogical interpretation whereby these teachings were rewritten in terms of
the destiny of Japan, a country superior to all others.”64 While his turn toward
Shinto was not quite as radical as his earlier embrace of Neo-Confucianism and
subsequent rejection of Buddhism (in other words, he did not abandon Neo-
Confucianism even as his study of Shinto deepened), his impact on the latter was
significant nonetheless. His effort to synthesize the two traditions also yielded
important ideas that contributed to Tokugawa exceptionalism.
Yamazaki Ansai 155
While Ansai emphasized those truths that only a close reading of Shinto texts
revealed, he also believed that a summary and superficial reading was possible,
since it yielded facts about the events of remote antiquity. The descent of emperors
from Amaterasu, and the divine status that they derived from it, was an idea with
roots going back more than one thousand years to the sixth century. While the
kami were the creators of the banbutsu (myriad things), including the realms and
peoples that composed the rest of the world, only Japan’s emperors had such a
divine pedigree. This idea, a foundational one for Japanese exceptionalism in
the premodern period and one to which all Tokugawa exceptionalists paid
homage to one degree or another, was important to Ansai, who asserted that the
divine regalia w ere physical proof of the exceptionality of Japan’s emperors. The
regalia, composed of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi (sword), the Yasakani no Magatama
(jewel), and the Yata no Kagami (mirror), were “without compare among foreign
realms” (ikoku nimo tameshi naki onkoto nari), and their possession by reigning
emperors made the imperial court (and, by extension, Japan) the exception to the
rest of the world.65 The regalia were wrought in Takamagahara, and then brought
to Japan by the grandson of Amaterasu, Ninigi-no-mikoto, and it was their trans-
mission from one emperor to the next, generation after generation, that served as
the irrefutable proof of imperial legitimacy within Japan. Ansai’s invocation of the
regalia as the foundation of Japan’s exceptionality also functioned as a claim for
its superiority with an eye toward realms outside Japan. As the only rulers in the
world in possession of the regalia, Japanese emperors had an exclusive claim to a
divine sanction for their rule; all other rulers were merely illegitimate pretenders,
while the world’s one, true ruler was Japan’s emperor. Japan, as the home of the
world’s only authentic and divinely sanctioned ruler, was naturally superior to all
other societies and cultures in the world, in Ansai’s mind.
Ansai’s analysis of the imperial regalia was actually not a distinctive feature
of his scholarship. Scholars both before and after Ansai’s time made similar ob-
servations, such that the imperial regalia in Japan were analogous to American
beliefs in Manifest Destiny; they w ere ideas at the very core of Tokugawa and
American exceptionalism, respectively. What made Ansai’s synthesis of Shinto
and Confucianism unique was his insistence that Neo-Confucianism was the Chi-
nese articulation of universal truths that predated human civilization. After his
close analysis of the creation stories of kamiyo, he became convinced that the
Japanese of remote antiquity had understood these truths on their own, indepen
dently of their mainland counterparts, the Koreans and the Chinese. The prevail-
ing view of Ansai’s time was that the ancient Japanese had no knowledge of the
Way prior to the importation of Confucianism from China (via Korea), so whatever
wisdom was contained in the myths and legends of kamiyo were either completely
unrelated to the Way or w ere only connected by chance or coincidence. Ansai,

of course, felt differently, using the Chinese metaphysical category of the Five
Phases (wuxing; J. gogyō) and applying it to kamiyo: “Our realm is superior (shū)
because of its preponderance (sei) of earth (tsuchi) and metal (kane). Since the
beginning of time (kaibyaku irai), the divine emperors (jinnō) have long perpet-
uated the correct lineage.”66 The truth of kamiyo was demonstrated by ancient
Japan’s exhibition of the Five Phases, providing yet even more proof of Japan’s in-
herent superiority.
Like the Five Phases, Ansai also found significant examples of yin and yang
in the kamiyo stories.67 Ansai attempted to grapple with the seemingly random
and nonsensical kamiyo narrative regarding the origins of the various kami of the
Shinto pantheon. While the untrained eye saw only chaos, Ansai perceived cos-
mic order, which he insisted could only be understood with reference to Chinese
metaphysical categories, in this case, wuxing and yin/yang. These categories, while
fundamental to Chinese metaphysics, w ere not exclusively associated with
Neo-Confucianism, much less the writings of Zhu Xi. While it was true that
the Neo-Confucians had more than a passing interest in metaphysics, the same
was true of their counterparts in classical Confucianism as well, even if not to
the same extent. The metaphysical vocabulary that separated one form of Con-
fucianism from the other, and which quintessentially distinguished Neo-
Confucianism, were li and qi. Although these were terms whose usage dated to
Chinese antiquity, most likely among the Daoists, they came to be closely as-
sociated with the moral philosophy of Zhu Xi, such that their appearance in
Ansai’s analysis of kamiyo should come as no surprise.68
Ansai’s application of the categories of li and qi to the interpretation of ka-
miyo alone is not sufficient for his inclusion within the Neo-Confucian tradition.
Rather, it was the moral lens through which he viewed them that betrayed his
intellectual allegiance to Zhu Xi. The Neo-Confucians adopted the Mencian idea
of original goodness, namely, the idea that all humans are born into a state of
moral purity, as their philosophical foundation. Moral goodness, they believed,
was a combination of both li and qi, where the former was equated with cosmic
goodness and the latter with the origin of evil. To say that all qi was corrupt and
evil, however, was something that the Neo-C onfucians did not believe; while
li was always morally pure, qi could be either good or bad, and was most often a
combination of both within human beings. Even the Chinese Sages of antiquity,
revered as divine or nearly so by Confucians regardless of their ideological back-
ground, were morally composed of both li and qi, but their qi was purer than that
of normal people; only Heaven, it could be said, was pure li. In the Suika-ō shin-
setsu (New explanations of the venerable Suika), Ansai describes the kami in these
Yamaga Sokō 157
terms as well, as having both li and qi. The big difference between Ansai’s inter-
pretation of the kami and the Neo-Confucian view of the Sages is that Ansai rel-
egated the mischievous, if not malicious, kami to spiritual beings with corrupted
qi, for which there was no analogue among the Chinese Sages.
While the Sages and the kami occupied analogous positions within Confu-
cianism and Shinto, respectively, the former were not linked to evil in any way,
while such a link clearly existed in the latter case, as related in the stories of
kamiyo. Ansai did not seek to bait his readers into thinking that the kami were
inferior to the Sages, however. Instead, he admonished his followers to worship
the kami, thereby placing the onus of dealing with the corrupt qi of the kami on
the Japanese people themselves. Such an emphasis on the veneration of the kami
became the basis for Suika Shinto, one of the two lasting contributions of Ansai’s
thought to Tokugawa intellectual history, along with his Kimon School of Neo-
Confucianism, but it was also relevant to Ansai’s implicit comparison between
the kami and the Sages. The Sages, even as extraordinary beings, were nonethe-
less human, a fact that rendered their active worship superfluous, especially for
the Japanese people. On the other hand, the kami w ere thought to be immortal
spiritual beings whose actions could affect the fortunes and collective welfare of
the people, so that placating them through Shinto rituals and practices was essen-
tial in Ansai’s mind. To put it another way, the Sages were people while the kami
were divine, even if the kami were associated with evil in the world while the
Sages were not. By emphasizing the connection between the kami and evil, An-
sai gave purpose to Shinto and, by doing so, raised its religious profile and deep-
ened its relevance to the daily lives of the Japanese people. In a sense, the evil
inhering in the kami created the necessary conditions for a true form of Shinto
to emerge, a development that an observance of the Chinese Sages alone could
never produce. In this way, the kami were theologically superior to the Sages.
Yamaga Sokō: History, Geography,

and Tokugawa Exceptionalism
Yamaga Sokō studied Neo-Confucianism as a student of Hayashi Razan in Edo,
taking up an official post after the completion of his studies. Like Ansai, Sokō’s
mind began to change as his career unfolded, a change that prompted Ansai to
embrace Shinto without abandoning Neo-Confucianism; in Sokō’s case, he be-
came increasingly skeptical of his Neo-Confucian training at the Shōheizaka
academy. Unable to resist the urge to express his criticisms of Neo-Confucianism,
he composed his Seikyō yōroku (An essential record of the sagely teachings) in
1666, which drew the stern attention of the Edo Bakufu. Led by Hoshina Masa-
yuki, officials within the Bakufu ordered that Sokō was to be banished from Edo,
and he was sent to the Asano of the Akō domain, later to be made famous for its
Genroku Akō Jiken popularized by the play Chūshingura (Storehouse of loyalty).69
Maruyama Masao points out that the banishment was not entirely motivated by
Sokō’s criticisms of Neo-Confucianism, as Bakufu officials were also concerned
with the legions of rōnin roaming the streets of Edo. At the same time, Masayuki’s
involvement in Sokō’s punishment should not come as a surprise, since he was a
dedicated Neo-Confucian himself and the patron of Yamazaki Ansai.70 Sokō’s sen-
tence demonstrated that the Bakufu’s view of exceptionalist assertions of Japan’s
superiority could be characterized as indifferent during the seventeenth century,
so long as its ongoing effort to establish a Neo-Confucian orthodoxy was upheld.
During the years of his banishment from Edo, Sokō composed his most
famous treatise in which he outlined the fundamentals of his exceptionalist ideas,
the Chūchō jijitsu (The facts of the central imperial court), completing it in 1669.
Although his predicament at the time owed more than a little to the influence of
Yamazaki Ansai, Sokō concurred with him that Japan was superior to China.71
In this text, Sokō cites the Manchu conquest of China, which was largely com-
pleted by 1644, roughly a generation before Sokō’s observations. Put simply, while
Sokō admits that China and Japan both enjoyed the blessings of Heaven, Japan
was ultimately spared China’s fate, which he saw as proof of Japan’s special and
divine dispensation. Thus, while Ansai looked more deeply into Neo-Confucian
metaphysics to make his case for Japanese exceptionalism, Sokō looked to Chi-
na’s recent past as irrefutable evidence that its decline signified that Japan was,
and had always been, superior. In some ways, Sokō implies that the decline of the
Ming was inevitable, since the Chinese lacked the world’s only true imperial line;
that is to say, he does not end his exceptionalist claims for Japan with the advent
of the Qing.72 Whereas Sokō invokes recent history in his discussion of the rise of
the Qing dynasty, in a later passage he cites remote antiquity in an attempt to ac-
count for a critical gap in the ancient sources. In other words, there was a time
when the truth of the special relationship between ruling emperors and the kami
was as yet unknown to the ancient Japanese people. After an unspecified period
of ignorance, the truth revealed itself to the ancient Japanese, but Sokō’s point is
that such a later revelation did not invalidate the truth of this relationship. The
Japanese of remote antiquity were an exceptional and superior people, even if such
a fact never occurred to them, he argues.
Continuing with his use of history in making a case for Japan’s superiority
over China, Sokō mentions the Chinese ideal of ruling via the combination of wen
(J. bun) and wu (J. bu): “The world is big with many foreign realms, but none are
like the Central Realm [Japan]. The civilizing power of the imperial traditions
along with the achievements of wen and wu have attained the highest virtue. How
Yamaga Sokō 159
could these not [make Japan] great?”73 Since antiquity, the Japanese had hailed
the virtues of this ideal with its locus classicus in the Shiji (Records of the grand
historian [Sima Qian, 145 or 135–86 BCE]), which was composed during the Han
dynasty. Although the pursuit of wen/wu was something that the Japanese asso-
ciated with Chinese culture, it was not nearly as revered in China as it was in Ja-
pan, with the dominance of a civil bureaucracy in the former and a warrior elite
in the latter.74 Sokō’s observation regarding the development of wen/wu in the his-
tory of Japan functions in an exceptionalist way both by extolling the Japanese
people and also by denigrating the Chinese people. By not living up to their own
political standard, the Chinese, in Sokō’s historical analysis, left themselves vul-
nerable to conquest from abroad, an unfortunate consequence that was visited
upon the Chinese people more than once during their history. On the other hand,
the Japanese far exceeded their mainland counterparts by emphasizing warrior
culture to the point where warriors assumed political control of the country, be-
ginning in 1192, a situation that endured even in Sokō’s time. With two rulers,
emperor and shogun, and two governments, a civilian one in Kyoto and a military
one based in Edo (in Sokō’s day), the political situation in Japan was itself the
embodiment of wen and wu.
While history provided Sokō with useful evidence of Japan’s superiority over
China, geographic factors w ere perhaps of equal importance to his exceptionalist
arguments.75 Japan’s geographic position on the earth, he argues, was uniquely
felicitous: “Only our realm [is distinguished by its unique] position in the expanse
of the oceans and enjoys the sublime offerings of Heaven and earth.”76 China, by
virtue of its position to the west of Japan, was inferior; even China’s size was a li-
ability in Sokō’s mind, as it stretched further north and south than Japan, thereby
exceeding the limits of the zone of geographic perfection that was Japan.77 He be-
lieved that the ancient Japanese were aware of their environmental and geographic
blessings, and that they filled the stories of kamiyo with references to the “center”
(chū or naka) of things, a good example of which was the name of the creator
deity, AmenomiNAKAnushi-no-mikoto (the lord at the august center of Heaven).
For Sokō, the center was synonymous with perfection, which explains why it was
so critical to the worldviews of the peoples of both ancient China and Japan. How-
ever, he took exception to the sobriquet Zhongguo for China, a precedent that the
Mito scholars of the nineteenth century followed (chapter 5). In the aftermath of
the Manchu conquest, it no longer made any sense to Sokō that the Japanese peo-
ple should continue to refer to China as the Central Realm or Middle Kingdom, a
mantle that had instead passed to Japan.78
In the Chūchō jijitsu, Sokō, perhaps confusingly for his contemporaries,
refers to Japan as the Central Realm,79 citing its geographic position in particular,
which he argues yielded its superior climate and environment. Such a geographic
position, of course, put Japan squarely at the center of Heaven and earth, by which
he meant “the cosmos,” so that the title of Central Realm was naturally appropri-
ate. He admits, however, that China was also a realm at the center of Heaven and
earth, an admission that likely explained the history of referring to China as the
Central Realm. Thus, at the very heart of the cosmos, there w ere two realms, China
and Japan, but Sokō reserves the title of Central Realm only for Japan. His justi-
fication for doing so was twofold. First, the Japanese enjoyed a better climate and
environment for agriculture, especially the cultivation of rice. Japan, he asserts, has
no extremes of hot or cold, an observation that implies that China does. Second,
his argument for calling Japan the Central Realm follows his litany of China’s
shortcomings by comparison with Japan, the most important of which was its
conquest at the hands of foreign barbarians. While Sokō could not banish China
from its position at the cosmic center, he nudges it to the side just enough to place
Japan there as well, citing the downfall of the Ming in order to proclaim that the
world had a new Central Realm.
Kumazawa Banzan and the Revival of Shinto

The third and final of the major figures of seventeenth-century exceptionalism is
Kumazawa Banzan. Like Ansai and Sokō, Banzan was also a scholar of Confu-
cianism, a field to which the majority of his intellectual writings w ere directed;
and, like his colleagues, he also garnered for himself a national reputation among
intellectuals and political figures alike.80 While Ansai enjoyed the patronage of
Hoshina Masayuki, Banzan was similarly employed by the daimyo of Okayama
in Bizen province, Ikeda Mitsumasa (1609–1682). Banzan served as a teacher in
the domain’s school from 1645 until 1657, when he fell into disfavor with Mitsu-
masa and subsequently relocated to Kyoto.81 Mitsumasa, like Hoshina Masayuki,
had more than just a passing interest in Confucianism, and he sought to put its
ideas into actual political practice, as was supposed to be the case with the scholar-
officials of China. He was drawn to Banzan’s thorough knowledge of Wang
Yangming’s philosophy, an influential thinker of the deposed Ming dynasty in
China; Banzan was a student of another renowned scholar of Wang Yangming’s
teachings, Nakae Tōju (1608–1648). Wang Yangming’s desire to transmute abstract
Confucian teachings into political action, what he referred to as “the u nion of
knowledge and action” (zhixing geyi; J. chigyō gōichi) and “attaining felicitous
knowledge” (zhiliangzhi; J. chiryōchi), the latter a phrase attributed to Mencius,
resonated with Mitsumasa’s own politic al outlook.82 Banzan taught his stu-
dents that this u nion was not as difficult to understand as they might think:
“Master Wang [Yangming] said that knowledge is the beginning of action. Action
Kumazawa Banzan and the Revival of Shinto 161
is the realization (naru nari) of knowledge. This explanation is easy to grasp.”83

Banzan’s role in Okayama, then, was as the intermediary between Wang Yang-
ming and Ikeda Mitsumasa.
Wang Yangming’s status within Neo-Confucianism fluctuated during the last
century of the Ming dynasty, a trend that continued into the Qing. Although
he subscribed to Zhu Xi’s theory of li and qi, he believed that the search for li in
the Confucian classics was a futile exercise, and he based his philosophy on the
apprehension of li within one’s own individual consciousness. The resulting
intuitionism, a philosophical position that was very close to Emerson’s,84 that
Wang Yangming advocated, had both supporters and detractors among the more
orthodox followers of Zhu Xi’s Daoxue Confucianism, an ideological develop-
ment that unfolded in seventeenth-century Japan as well. Hayashi Razan, as the
recipient of Bakufu support for his Neo-Confucian academy, was a vocal critic of
Wang Yangming’s philosophy, condemning it as secretly connected to Christian-
ity.85 It was under these circumstances that Mitsumasa shifted his intellectual
allegiance away from Wang Yangming’s philosophy to the more orthodox version
of Neo-Confucianism led by Razan, a move that exposed Banzan to criticism and
which cast a veil of political suspicion over him. Banzan, having established him-
self as an influential scholar in Kyoto following his teaching stint in Okayama,
was placed under house arrest in 1667, “and for much of his remaining life he lived
in one form or another of detention.”86 Razan was determined to suppress Wang
Yangming Confucianism and neutralize it, so that it would never pose a serious
threat to the position of Daoxue in Japan, or to that of his academy.87
Perhaps bitter at the loss of his teaching post in 1657, Banzan did not mince
words regarding how he felt about his fellow Confucians in Japan.88 He lamented
that his Confucian colleagues had lost sight of the larger picture, namely, that Con-
fucianism enjoyed a measure of relevance via its traditional association with the
Kingly Way that other forms of learning did not have. By squabbling among them-
selves, he believed that Confucianists had degenerated into ideological factions,
with the followers of each one operating under the vain belief that their faction
was orthodox while all others were heterodox, a likely jab at Hayashi Razan.
Banzan’s harsh assessment of Confucian learning in his day was indicative of his
controversial take on Confucianism in general. Like Ansai, Banzan viewed Con-
fucianism as the Chinese attempt to understand the Way. All true Confucians ap-
prehended this truth, properly revering the latter over the former. While Banzan
was a Confucian, his esteem for Wang Yangming’s intuitionism not only gave him
the courage to believe such an idea, but it actually compelled him to declare it
openly. As long as the Japanese people were attuned to the truth of the cosmos,
whether one referred to this truth as the Way or not, their observance of Confucian
teachings was irrelevant. In other words, so long as the Japanese followed cosmic
truth, revealed only within themselves, they had no need for either Buddhism
or Confucianism.89
One of Banzan’s most important teachings that helps us to understand his
seemingly bizarre view of Confucianism was the distinction that he made
between the Way and the Law (Hō, also “means” or “methods”).90 For Banzan,
Confucianism did not have a monopoly on apprehending the Way; it was one set
of teachings (or Law) toward that end and nothing else. Loyalty to a particu lar
intellectual position within Confucianism should never trump one’s loyalty to
the Way, he argued. His dismissal of textual study as focused on the Law rather
than on the Way is consistent with his support for Wang Yangming’s philosophy,
since the most effective means of gaining insight into the Way did not emerge from
the external study of canonical or scriptural texts but from internal reflection
and meditation. It was an oblique swipe not only at Neo-Confucianism or even
at the newer textualist schools of Confucianism led by Itō Jinsai (1627–1705)
(and later Ogyū Sorai), but also an indictment of all forms of Confucianism. In
this way, Banzan anticipated the emergence of the defining ideologies of both
Kokugaku in the eighteenth century and Mitogaku in the nineteenth.
By severing the taken-for-granted connection between the Way and Chinese
culture and history, Banzan laid the intellectual foundation for his exceptionalist
ideas. It mattered little to Banzan that Confucianism was an institution with
Chinese origins, and so he felt no need to search Japanese antiquity for proof that
their ancient ancestors had articulated its central ideas independently of the
Chinese, as his colleague Yamazaki Ansai sought to do. The Way existed outside
of human civilization, no matter how ancient its origins; it was even older than
the cosmos itself. The only advantage that Confucianism had for intellectuals
such as Banzan was that it represented a systematic approach to understanding
the Way, what he called a Law. The only viable alternative to Confucianism for
Banzan was Buddhism, as another example of a Law, but he preferred Confucian-
ism over Buddhism, since he viewed Buddhism in much the same way as he did
Christianity.91 However, any Law like Confucianism or Buddhism was always in-
herently flawed, as these were human institutions that were subject to human
error. The greatest flaw of all, for Banzan, was the human proclivity toward hubris,
which led people to elevate the Law to the status of the Way; instead of getting
closer to the Way, their devotion to the Law led them further astray, a spiritual
degeneration of which they w ere unaware. Such a revelation came to Banzan
within the context of Confucianism, but its logical conclusion was leading him
outside of the tradition. Like Ansai, Banzan’s attention was increasingly drawn
toward Shinto following his ouster from Okayama.
Ansai’s devotion to, and perhaps obsession with, Zhu Xi prompted him to view
archaic Shinto as essentially the same as Neo-Confucianism, with a part icu lar
emphasis on the latter. Such a formulation was similar to the Buddhist teaching
of honji suijaku with regard to Shinto, in which the kami were manifestations
(suijaku) of Buddhist deities (honji). At a fundamental level, Shinto and Bud-
dhism were the same, such that the worship of Japanese kami could theoreti-
cally continue within the context of Buddhism. Ansai’s analysis of kamiyo was
a similar theological move, with the exception that he replaced Buddhism with
Neo-Confucianism. In either case, foreign teachings took precedence over Shinto,
even within Ansai’s analysis. By appealing to Neo-C onfucianism, Ansai had
inadvertently undermined his exceptionalist efforts, and so he had to emphasize
the imperial regalia as proof of Japan’s superiority against the more obvious
superiority of China. By contrast, Banzan offered a more novel resolution to the
conundrum of analyzing Shinto alongside Confucianism. Banzan replaced Con-
fucianism, as the only legitimate goal for intellectual endeavors, with the Way,
thereby reducing the importance of Confucianism. At the same time, he raised
the significance of Shinto by arguing that it was also an attempt to apprehend the
Way, but one whose unarticulated teachings did not rise to the level of a Law.
Thus, Banzan did not assert that Shinto was the same as Confucianism, as Ansai
had done; rather, he asserted that Confucianism was similar to authentic Shinto
in that both were attempts to understand the Way, with the exception that the
former was a Law and the latter was not. “The Way is the Shinto of Heaven and
earth,” he writes in 1657. “The Way of the Sages of China, and the Way of [Japan’s]
divinities, are both the Shinto of Heaven and earth.”92 Authentic Shinto, in other
words, was not the equivalent of the Way, as Ansai argued; the Way was the
equivalent of authentic Shinto.
In what would become a common theme among scholars of both Kokugaku
and Mitogaku, Banzan harbored little respect for the institutional Shinto of his
day.93 Although he seemed to imply that the authentic Shinto of antiquity did not
constitute a Law unto itself, this made it distinct by comparison with contempo-
rary Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism; Shinto, he believed, did eventually
develop in that direction under the influence of Confucianism and Buddhism,
both of which were Laws themselves, but it neither needed to be revived nor was
it worthy of perpetuation. In the Daigaku wakumon (Inquiries into the Greater
Learning), he reiterates his skepticism with regard to scriptural exegesis, a favor-
ite Confucian pastime, by arguing that authentic Shinto had no such scriptures,
at least in any conventional sense. Like Ansai, Banzan stressed the importance of
the imperial regalia, but he did so with a different emphasis, namely, they signified
the proof of the existence of authentic Shinto in antiquity, rather than the proof
of Japan’s superiority. As an advocate of action over inertia, it is not surprising

that Banzan was only willing to view the regalia as scriptural and textual, thereby
inspiring one to action, rather than books, which merely inspired one into a state
of quiescence. Just as the only genuine form of Shinto was one without articu-
lated teachings for Banzan, the only legitimate scriptural text was one that was
not textual at all.
Banzan viewed the Sages of China and the kami not just as cultural analogues
of one another, but as beings with a special relationship to the Way. He collec-
tively refers to the kami as “divine people” (shinjin), a term that signified an in-
termediary category between ordinary humans and the kami.94 The Chinese Sages
were divinely inspired people, just like those figures of remote Japanese antiquity
who were commonly referred to as kami, such as Amaterasu. In fact, Banzan
subscribed to a controversial seventeenth-century Confucian view that Amater-
asu was none other than the Chinese figure Wu Taibo (eleventh c. BCE), the eldest
son of the first king of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE).95 It was a mistake,
Banzan believed, to think that the Sages and the kami w ere representative of
divergent Ways, one for China and the other for Japan, an issue that the
Kokugaku scholars heatedly debated much later, during the early nineteenth
century.96 Occupying the same position within archaic Shinto as the Sages did
within Confucianism, the kami guided the kami masters, or ancient emperors,
in accordance with the one, true Way. Once the Laws of Confucianism and Bud-
dhism started to distort authentic Shinto, this connection between the emperors
and the Way was disrupted, and authentic Shinto was lost. Banzan, therefore,
called for a revival of this authentic Shinto as the restoration of the ancient con-
nection to the Way. In theory, the Chinese themselves could restore their own
special connection to the Way by reviving the original teachings of the Sages, but
Banzan’s tone implied that this would never happen, and even if it were to occur,
he was nonetheless unconcerned with China. The fact that the Japanese were in a
position to recover the Way via authentic Shinto was foremost in his mind, and
his exceptionalist ideas flowed from it.
Banzan’s belief in Japan’s superiority is evident from his observations in the
Miwa monogatari (The tale of Miwa).97 Banzan’s exceptionalism is revealed when
he cites the fact that Japan was the only realm with an unbroken line of legiti-
mate emperors, something that Sokō cited as well. Like Sokō, citing the unbro-
ken imperial line during the latter half of the seventeenth century was a reference
to the political upheavals in China’s history, especially its then-recent conquest
by the Manchus. Aside from the imperial line, Banzan argued that the Japanese
were the most distinguished of the barbarian peoples for their connection to the
Way. It is important to note that his observations regarding Japan and the other
“barbarians” within the Chinese world order potentially undermined his excep-
tionalism, since China would always stand above Japan; using the barbarian ar-
gument, then, Japan would always be, at best, second to China, if not for archaic
Shinto and the imperial lineage.98 For Banzan, Shinto was the key to Japan’s su-
periority: “In the interval between Heaven and earth, outside of China, there is
no realm like Japan [Nihon ni narabu beki kuni wa nashi]. Even if the Chinese
Sages were to have crossed over, Japan naturally had a Law of its own, so that we
must follow Shinto.”99 In this quote, he claims for Japan the spot behind China in
the world order, yet insisting that Shinto was a more appropriate means to
understanding the Way than Confucianism. Shinto, then, was superior to Con-
fucianism for Banzan. At the same time, his categorization of Shinto as a Law,
and one that the Japanese were obligated to follow, undermines his criticisms of
Buddhism and Confucianism as other forms of Law. For Banzan, what made
authentic Shinto superior to contemporary Shinto, as well as superior to Bud-
dhism and Confucianism, was the fact that it was not simply a Law like all of the
other teachings. In this passage, Shinto makes Japan superior to China, not because
it was not a Law, but because it was a superior Law to Confucianism. Therefore,
the ancient Japanese were closer to the Way than the Chinese w ere. If one were
to attempt to reconcile one statement that implies that Shinto was not a Way with
another statement that it was, one could argue that Banzan believed that any at-
tempt to come to grips with the Way in any systematic manner, via teachings,
automatically became a Law. The distinction, then, between authentic Shinto as a
Law and contemporary Shinto as a Law is that the latter developed in the shadow
of Buddhism and Confucianism.
While acknowledging China’s status as the world’s “teacher realm” (shikoku),
Banzan did not want his readers to lose sight of Japan’s inherent superiority.100
Japan, he wrote, “is a realm of benevolence [jinkoku] and long life [kotobuki
nagashi].”101 At the same time, it was a “martial realm” (bukoku), a fact that did not
contradict its status as a realm of benevolence; in fact, Banzan argues that the two
complemented each other in the Japanese case.102 The imperative to be a realm of
martial valor was necessitated by Japan’s abundant natural wealth, especially gold
and silver.103 As a samurai himself, Banzan was particularly proud of Japan’s
warrior spirit, a superior aspect of its culture that protected Japan’s wealth and
kept foreigners at bay. Aside from these objective facts about Japan’s excep-
tionality, Banzan also cited the fact that China had recognized Japan’s special
status in antiquity: “Japan has received praise as a realm of lords even from
China (Morokoshi). Thus, outside of China, there is no realm to its east, west,
south, or north that is as elegant or correctly [practices] the Way of rites and
music like Japan.”104
Banzan’s reliance on Shinto as the foundation of his exceptionalism resonated

with the thought of both Ansai and Sokō. For Banzan, his assertions of Japan’s
superiority of China, while obliquely dependent on the context of the Manchu con-
quest, w ere more an emanation of his observations of archaic Shinto than of the
unbroken line of Japanese emperors. This was the reverse of Sokō, who was ready
to crown Japan the next Central Realm once the Manchu conquest was complete.
Ansai’s reliance on archaic Shinto was more similar to Banzan’s than Sokō’s, but
his identification with Zhu Xi implied that Confucianism took precedence over
Shinto, a formulation that Banzan inverted. While all three of these intellectuals
were strongly exceptionalist in their views, one could argue that Banzan’s ex
ceptionalism was more potent and therefore more influential than the views of
the other two. Although Ansai believed in the universality of Confucianism, a
view held by all Tokugawa Confucians, he was ultimately unable to escape the
fact of its Chinese origins. The status of Confucianism as a Chinese institution
loomed over the assertions of Shinto’s superiority made by Ansai and Sokō, no
matter how vociferously they advocated for it. Banzan’s insistence on the Way,
rather than on Confucianism, indicates that he was aware of this problem. For
Banzan, Confucianism was not and should not be universal; only the Way ap-
plied to all places and for all time. Such universalist thinking was fundamental
to the development of exceptionalism in the American context as well, as Ameri-
cans never denounced Christianity as a foreign creed in favor of a more authenti-
cally American one. Instead, Americans believed that the world’s only true Chris-
tianity was rooted in the American soil, and therefore was inextricably linked to
the American identity. Such a view is similar to Banzan’s interpretation of the
Way, the apprehension of which qualified Christianity as yet another kind of Law
in Banzan’s thought, ironically enough. The best means of understanding the Way
was Shinto, he believed, but there were other inferior attempts to do the same. Just
as American superiority could be firmly connected to Christianity, the Japanese
identity, for Banzan, was connected to the Way via Shinto.
Banzan’s novel attempt at reinterpreting the Way was influential on develop-
ments in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Kokugaku scholars were
also aware of the threat posed to Japan by foreign teachings like Buddhism and
Confucianism. Rather than viewing the Way as universal, they chose to develop
their ideology in the opposite direction, by advancing a particularistic conception
of Shinto against similarly particularistic notions of Buddhism and Confucian-
ism. In their view, each set of teachings was linked to a different kind of Way, with
the Japanese Way assuming a superior position with respect to the others. Such
a line of thinking was exactly what Banzan argued against when he said that the
Conclusion 167
Chinese Sages and the kami were linked to one true Way and not to two separate
Ways. Expressing skepticism toward the views of their Kokugaku colleagues,
nineteenth-century scholars of Mitogaku held views of the Way that were similar
to Banzan’s. They were less condemnatory of Confucianism than was Banzan,
viewing it as universally valid like Ansai. However, they agreed with Banzan that
the various Confucian schools of Tokugawa Japan were all wrong when it came to
understanding the Way. The scholars of Mitogaku believed that they had uncovered
authentic Shinto in their own work on Japanese antiquity, and so they earnestly at-
tempted to effect a Shinto revival in the manner of Banzan’s scholarship. The result
was the emergence of a new Confucianism-inspired form of Japanese exceptional-
ism, one that had connections to the earlier forms of the seventeenth and eigh
teenth centuries, but which had important distinguishing features of its own.
Conclusion
The seventeenth century was a critical period in the development of Confucian
exceptionalism, narrowly speaking, and of Tokugawa exceptionalism more
broadly. The decline of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the Qing during the
middle of the seventeenth century spurred Japanese Confucians into formulating
justifications for a form of learning that had seemingly lost its intellectual cachet
and even relevance to Tokugawa Japan. Though disturbed by events in China, and
supportive of Ming loyalists seeking help and refuge in Japan, Japanese Confu-
cians were undaunted by the Manchu conquest, a thought process that required a
separation within their own minds between China and Confucianism. While
orthodox Neo-Confucians contented themselves with such justifications for con-
tinued support of Confucianism in Japan, Yamaga Sokō extended this line of
thinking even further by asserting that Japan had effectively replaced China as
the world’s preeminent realm. For this reason, he encouraged his fellow Confu-
cians to cease using “Central Realm” to refer to China and to use it, instead, as a
name for Japan. Even though the decline of the Ming was the more immediate
impetus behind Sokō’s assertions, he argued that Japan’s superiority was far older
and deeper than recent political upheaval in China might have indicated. Japan’s
people, its crops, climate, and geographic location were all in place from the very
beginning, even if no one had ever viewed them collectively as evidence of Japan’s
superiority. While Sokō was not prepared to abandon Confucianism, he also did
not rely on it as the primary basis for proving Japan’s superiority over China, a
task he may have felt was impossible. In other words, Japan’s superiority over
China, for Sokō, was for reasons other than its adoption of Confucianism.
Sokō and his Confucian colleagues during the seventeenth century confronted
the tension between Japanese exceptionalism and Confucianism. Orthodox
Neo-Confucians chose to adhere to Confucianism even at the expense of excep-
tionalism, since the latter represented a threat to their identification with the
former. Sokō did not let Confucianism impede his exceptionalist beliefs, and we
can view his break with Neo-Confucianism as at least tangentially related to his
exceptionalist leanings. Yamazaki Ansai was also confronted with the issue of
reconciling Confucianism with exceptionalism, but his solution to the conun-
drum was very different from Sokō’s.105 Rather than seek evidence outside of the
Confucian tradition, Ansai stayed within it, finding metaphysics especially use-
ful for his exceptionalist ideas. However, his reliance on Confucian metaphysics,
along with his own personal identification with Zhu Xi and the daotong, overly
privileged the centrality of Confucianism, so that it overshadowed Shinto rather
than highlighting it. Ansai compensated for this by arguing that Shinto was the
same as Confucianism, but the split among his disciples into factions supporting
either Kimon Confucianism or Suika Shinto indicated that his conceptualization
of equivalence was difficult to maintain in practice.
A contemporary of both Sokō and Ansai, Kumazawa Banzan formulated a
version of Confucian exceptionalism that succeeded in ways that the views of his
colleagues did not. The ancient Japanese people apprehended the Way, which was
identical to the Way of the Sages, he argued. Like Ansai, Banzan believed that the
ancient Japanese people had practices, customs, and institutions that were con-
gruent with the Way, even though they were unaware of this fact and even with-
out the introduction of any teachings from the outside. Where Banzan diverged
from Ansai was in his stance on the Confucian tradition itself. Identification
with the Confucian tradition via the daotong was critical to Ansai; for Banzan,
however, Confucianism was merely one legitimate approach to apprehending
the Way among potentially many others, including Shinto. He also asserted that
Shinto and the Way were the same; in addition, Confucianism and Shinto were
equivalent in the sense that both w ere attempts to possess the Way, and the
same was true of Buddhism and even of Christianity. The Way existed “above”
Confucianism, for Banzan, so that the latter’s status was that of a Law; Shinto,
however, was different. In the case of Shinto, it was both the Way and, at the
same time, a Law. Shinto was superior to Confucianism, so that Japan was supe-
rior to China, according to Banzan. For this reason, Banzan was willing to dis-
pense with Confucianism altogether for the Japanese, assuming such a thing
was even possible; the Japanese did not need Confucianism, since Shinto by it-
self was sufficient.
Conclusion 169
Two events were critical to the development of Tokugawa exceptionalism dur-

ing the seventeenth century. The first was the Bakufu’s refusal to renew Japan’s
tributary status with the Ming dynasty in 1624. For centuries, societies on China’s
periphery had sent envoys to China as a show of cultural if not political sub-
mission to it. As the wellspring, and also guardian, of human civilization itself,
China occupied a superior position by comparison with all other societies in the
world, such that tribute missions to it signified the ritual recognition of this sta-
tus. The tributary system represented Sinocentrism in practice. Naturally, send-
ing tributary missions to China was the ideological rule of East Asia (and even
beyond), but China itself did not send tribute missions anywhere; China was the
exception to this rule. At the same time, China was supposed to be the only
society that received such tribute missions; it was yet again an exception, since
the rule was that no culture was to receive tribute missions except China.
China was exceptional in the senses of being both exempt and exemplary, the
dual meanings at the intellectual core of exceptionalism. As is clear, China’s
status as the world’s exempt and exemplary culture was firmly intertwined
with Sinocentrism; it was perhaps hopelessly futile to try and decouple the two,
as some Americanists have tried to do in the case of the United States. Excep-
tionalism, therefore, applies to China in ways that make more sense than in
other cases, perhaps even the American one, and Confucianism, as the chief
articulation of Chinese exceptionalism, similarly has no equivalent among West-
ern societies. Thus, by closing the door on the tributary system, the Bakufu opened
the door to Japanese exceptionalism.
The other critical event of the seventeenth century was the collapse of the Ming
dynasty in 1644. This political development gave Japanese elites the confidence
to assert that Japan was superior to China, in what were likely the first such state-
ments in Japanese history. As Ron Toby has argued, such assertions w ere ideo-
logically useful for the fledgling Edo Bakufu, concerned as its officials were with
creating an image of politic al legitimacy. Ideologically, things changed quite
dramatically during the reigns of the first three Tokugawa shoguns. Operating
under the foreign relations paradigm of the Muromachi Bakufu, Ieyasu sought
to renew Japan’s tributary relationship with China. With his death in 1616, his
son, Hidetada, had the chance to do just that, but he changed his mind. The even
more ancient ideal of parity with China came to the fore among Bakufu officials
and their Confucian advisors, and Razan began the task of portraying Japan as
China’s peer and equal. With Iemitsu, parity gave way to the notion that Japan
was superior to China. In the eyes of Tokugawa Confucians like Ansai, Sokō, and
Banzan, the Tokugawa shoguns ruled over a country that had displaced China as
the world’s Central Realm or Middle Kingdom. While the legitimating impera-
tive by Iemitsu’s time was not quite as strong as it had been for his father and
grandfather, grandiose claims such as these w ere still ideologically useful, even if
they were no longer politically critical, but the intellectual foundation had been
laid in the seventeenth century that held up the later exceptionalist developments
of Kokugaku in the eighteenth century and of Mitogaku in the nineteenth.
C HA P T E R F I V E
From Exceptionalism to Nativism

Mitogaku and Nineteenth-Century Japan
While the exceptionalist ideas of Kokugaku owed much to the writings of the
seventeenth-century intellectuals profiled in chapter 4, they were not successful
in severing the link between Confucianism and Japanese exceptionalism, as the
work of their nineteenth-century exceptionalist compatriots in Mitogaku amply
demonstrated. While Mito scholars w ere hard at work on various projects, notably
the Dai Nihonshi (The history of great Japan), the great academic undertaking
started by Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1701),1 their most virulently exceptionalist
ideas were products of a much later era, chiefly the first half of the nineteenth
century. The leading figures of nineteenth-century Mitogaku, such as Fujita
Yūkoku, his son Tōko (1806–1855), and Aizawa Seishisai, articulated exception-
alist ideas that were similar to those of their seventeenth-century forebears, and
the same was true of their leader, Tokugawa Nariaki. Since the Mitogaku schol-
ars had a common institutional identity and shared the same ideological views,
their ideas did not exhibit the same diverse range as the scholars of the seventeenth
century, who, other than identifying with Confucianism, did not have a common
institutional affiliation. Their cohesion as a group, however, sharpened Mitogaku’s
exceptionalism in ways not seen in the seventeenth century, combining the
Confucian exceptionalism of the early Edo period with the chauvinism of
eighteenth-century Kokugaku.
The ideological prominence of Mitogaku during the nineteenth century is fur-
ther proof of the centrality of Confucianism in the story of Tokugawa exception-
alism. To put it another way, Confucianism was to Tokugawa exceptionalism as
Kokugaku was to what Japanologists have mistakenly believed to be Tokugawa
nativism. Of course, Mitogaku did not supplant Kokugaku, since the two existed
alongside one another during the final decades of the Edo period, but their tra-
jectories diverged significantly after the Meiji Restoration.2 Associated as it was
with the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, Mitogaku was connected with the
ancien régime in ways that Kokugaku was not, despite the fact that neither seemed
especially relevant to the forces of Westernization that were brought to bear on the
171
172 From Exceptionalism to Nativism
Table 5. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (Tokugawa Japan)
Spiritual/
Material Cultural Superiority
Institution/Theorist Uniqueness Uniqueness Incommensurability (Japan)
Kokugaku N Y Y Y
17th-Century Y Y Y Y
Confucian Shinto
Mitogaku N Y Y Y
Orthodox Neo- N N N N
Confucianism
Ogyū Sorai N Y N N
Meiji state. The scholars of Kokugaku imagined a state governed by the imperial
court, as they believed was the case in Japanese antiquity, although it was unclear
whether or not this imagined state required a Bakufu. In the case of Mitogaku,
however, its scholars also advocated for a state governed by the imperial court,
but their vision clearly included the Tokugawa Bakufu, albeit a greatly reformed
one. For this reason, Mitogaku did not survive the Tokugawa-Meiji transition
intact, even though some of its critical ideas, such as “the oneness of rites and
politics” (saisei itchi) and “national polity” (kokutai), did. The elites of Meiji
Japan found exceptionalism to be politically useful, as had the Tokugawa before
them, but the Kokugaku version was more congruent with their nation-state
building efforts than the version offered by Mitogaku was.
Mitogaku’s rise and fall during the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth
centuries occurred at a critical juncture in Japanese history, when external
pressures became great enough to affect internal matters. Like their Kokugaku
colleagues, the scholars of Mitogaku looked to the exceptionalism of seventeenth-
century Confucians for solutions to the crises of their day,3 but they blended them
with calls for sonnō and jō’i,4 ideas whose provenance was Confucian, and there-
fore beyond the ideological pale for the adherents of Kokugaku (see table 5). In
this way, the scholars of Mitogaku conjured up nativism using conceptual ingre-
dients taken from exceptionalism, but they brewed their concoction within the
cauldron of Confucianism.5 The fact that Tokugawa exceptionalism lent itself
so easily to the development of nativism suggests that some sort of axiomatic
connection may exist between the two. If such a connection exists, it is likely
not one that emanates from exceptionalism toward nativism; that is to say, for
every instance of exceptionalism, there is a subsequent emergence of nativism.
Exceptionalism can exist even without nativism. However, as the ideology be-
Mitogaku 173
hind the practice of nativism, for every instance of nativism, one might expect
to find exceptionalist ideas at work, so long as the nativism in question has
reached the level of an organized social movement.
Mitogaku: Exceptionalism and Late Tokugawa Japan

Despite the emergence of Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan during the seventeenth cen-
tury, and the renown and influence attached to each of them, they w ere unable to
sway their fellow Confucians away from the belief in China’s exceptionality and
superiority;6 as some scholars put it during the Tokugawa period, Japanese Con-
fucians viewed China as “the realm of the world for which there is no other”
(yo no naka ni futatsu naki), a sentiment that their Chinese counterparts certainly
shared.7 Such an assumption regarding China’s superiority was an integral part
of the intellectual context within which Mitogaku developed in the seventeenth
century. The term “Mitogaku” signifies two different meanings simultaneously,
namely, the scholarship that was sponsored by the Mito domain and centered pri-
marily on the composition of the Dai Nihonshi, and an exceptionalist ideology
that blended Confucianism with Shinto.8 As a form of scholarship focused on a
specific historical project, Mitogaku’s origins are thoroughly seventeenth century,
when Mitsukuni, a grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu, established the Mito histo-
riographical bureau in Edo at Komagome in 1657. It was subsequently moved to
Koishikawa in 1672, when it assumed the name of Shōkōkan (Institute for Pon-
dering the Past).9 As an exceptionalist ideology, its origins are much less clear,
beginning in the late eighteenth century and maturing during the early decades
of the nineteenth. In a manner similar to the earlier incarnation of Mitogaku, the
exceptionalist version of it was also connected with the construction of an insti-
tute, the Kōdōkan (Institute for Propagating the Way); it was built in Mito by
order of Tokugawa Nariaki, opening its doors to the domain’s scholars in 1841.10
While both the earlier and later versions were connected to each other in terms
of a shared intellectual lineage, Mitogaku today is usually associated with the later
version because of its exceptionalist ideology, which wielded considerable politi
cal influence during the nineteenth century outside of Mito; this influence waned
after 1850 and declined even more sharply after 1864.11 In ideological terms, the
views of Mitogaku scholars w ere, according to Kajiyama Takao, midway between
orthodox Confucianism, which supported everything Chinese, including its
exceptionalism, and Kokugaku, which denounced everything Chinese.12 This
ideological position, however, was one that Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan had helped
develop in the seventeenth century, and just as they were convinced of Japan’s
superiority, so too were the scholars of Mitogaku.
Like the followers of Kokugaku, who celebrated the scholarly careers of a

select group of intellectuals, among them Kamo no Mabuchi, Motoori Nori-
naga, and Hirata Atsutane, the supporters of Mitogaku had their own group of
intellectual luminaries. Occupying core positions within this group w ere Fujita
Yūkoku, his son Tōko, and Yūkoku’s student, Aizawa Seishisai. In addition to the
contributions of these Tokugawa intellectuals, the ideas of Mitogaku’s inspira-
tional leader during the first half of the nineteenth century, Tokugawa Nariaki,
were no less critical to its scholarly identity. Nariaki’s role in the development of
Mitogaku was not only critical ideologically, but it also set Mitogaku apart from
their exceptionalist colleagues or rivals in Kokugaku, who had no equivalent
figure in possession of Nariaki’s political clout or personal charisma.
Yūkoku, Tōkō, and Nariaki

Fujita Yūkoku was the son of a Mito chōnin (townsman), who distinguished him-
self at a young age for his scholarly brilliance. After studying under the tutelage
of Tachihara Suiken (1744–1823), Yūkoku joined the staff of the Mito branch of
the Shōkōkan (popularly referred to as the Suikan) in 1789 on the strength of Sui-
ken’s recommendation; he worked at the Suikan until 1806, when he joined the
Edo Shōkōkan (popularly referred to as the Kōkan), just days before the birth of
his son, Tōko.13 By joining the Shōkōkan, Yūkoku became a scholar of Wagaku,
like all of the scholars at the institute, as Tokugawa Mitsukuni himself had envi-
sioned during the seventeenth century.14 The connection between the work of
the Mito scholars and Wagaku was a natural one, since the primary mission of the
Shōkōkan was the compilation of the Dai Nihonshi, a project that required the
collection and analysis of Japanese documents, rather than the Chinese sources
that were the main focus of Confucian scholars during the Edo period. Edo
intellectuals began to substitute the term “Kokugaku” for “Wagaku” in order to
draw attention to the latter term’s implied hierarchy of China over Japan, a hier-
archy that the former term seemed to invert.15 By adhering to the term “Wagaku,”
the Mito scholars were simply operating under the same assumptions as their
seventeenth-century forebears;16 the use of Wagaku, with its implied relationship
between China and Japan, was both traditional and orthodox. Yūkoku was a piv-
otal figure in the transition between this accepted view of Japan’s relationship with
China and one that asserted Japan’s superiority; Yūkoku, in other words, helped
push the Shōkōkan in a decidedly exceptionalist direction without forsaking
Confucianism, and the result was, in a profound way, the birth of Mitogaku itself.17
In response to a growing anxiety over Russian encroachment in Ezo
(Hokkaidō), Yūkoku composed his most influential work, the Seimeiron (a dis-
cussion of the rectification of names), in 1791, at the remarkable age of seventeen.18
Yūkoku, Tōkō, and Nariaki 175
Shortly after its composition, Yūkoku’s text drew the attention of Matsudaira
Sadanobu, the head of the rōjū and shogunal regent to Tokugawa Ienari (1773–
1841), to whom Yūkoku submitted a copy of his work. Yūkoku’s prescription for
the ills (or perceived ills) of Japanese society was highly conservative, namely, the
maintenance of a strict observance of social relationships, a theme that inspired
Yūkoku to use it as the title Seimeiron. The importance of Seimeiron was not its
conservatism, something that made it rather ordinary and unremarkable, but its
exceptionalist tone.19 Yūkoku invoked the idea of the rectification of names in
Japanese antiquity to explain its long history of peace and prosperity, a situation
that he believed had been ongoing for centuries. In the Seimeiron, the rectifica-
tion of names functions as more than a recommendation for reform; it is also an
explanation for Japan’s superiority over China. It was an observation with major
intellectual implications for Japan’s past, present, and future. The Japanese peo-
ple must not relent in their rectification efforts, he seemed to warn, lest they fall
into upheaval and decline, as the Chinese had. Instead of resorting to new meth-
ods for dealing with the growing Russian threat, Yūkoku advised the Japanese to
rely on the one that had served them well for centuries. The proof of the wisdom
of staying the course was revealed in an examination of Japan’s glorious history,
an area in which the Mito scholars had a unique expertise. The ability of their an-
cestors to maintain peace and stability in Japan was a testament, he argued, to
their singular achievement in the rectification of names. The rectification of names
was, for Yūkoku, the key to Japan’s survival and a source of its superiority.
Yūkoku’s assertion that Japan presided over the world was not based on his
knowledge of eighteenth-century geopolitics. To put it another way, Yūkoku under
stood well that the Japanese did not actually rule the world; Japan, while not the
world’s political leader, was its moral leader instead. Such a belief was another
exceptionalist assertion of Japanese superiority, but its source was not the rectifi-
cation of names, since Japan’s moral superiority was an extension of its imperial
court’s exceptionality. For Yūkoku, the imperial court was exceptional in two
related ways: first, Japan’s emperors were the only rulers in the world who were of
heavenly descent; and second, Japan’s imperial lineage was the world’s only un-
broken line of descent. The concept of the unbroken line was critical to Ansai,
Sokō, and Banzan in the seventeenth century, and so it is not surprising to see it
featured so prominently in Yūkoku’s work as well. The discussion of the numer-
ous instances of change in the Mandate of Heaven in Chinese history, marking
the end of one imperial dynasty and the beginning of a new one, was also impor-
tant to these seventeenth-century Confucians; an emphasis on changes in the
Mandate or kakumei represented another intellectual angle on the same issue,
namely, the fact of Japan’s unbroken imperial line. Yūkoku used Japanese history
to assert the distinctiveness of Japan’s unbroken imperial line, and he used

mythology under the guise of history to explain how this imperial lineage man-
aged to remain intact over the centuries. Both of these ideas justified his assertion
that Japan was a singularly unique, and therefore exceptional, realm in the world,
with the strong implication of its superiority over China.
Tokugawa Nariaki was named the lord of Mito in 1829, the year of Yūkoku’s
death. He spent the first three years of his tenure as the lord of Mito in Edo, be-
fore returning to Mito where he resumed his post in 1833. It was known among
the scholars of the Shōkōkan and the officials in the domainal bureaucracy that
Nariaki intended to reform the Mito government. He outlined his political goals
in a document titled Kokushihen (A report of my intentions), in which one can
readily discern the connection between the practice of Nariaki’s politics and
the theory of his exceptionalism.20 Nariaki emphasized the significance of the
imperial lineage, citing its cosmic origins, the investigation of which was more
than just interesting intellectually, but was also obligatory morally. In other
words, Nariaki found within exceptionalism a useful ideological pretext for his
reform efforts in Mito. Yūkoku’s influence was also noticeable on this issue, as
Nariaki cited the existence of the key relationships of lord-subject and father-son
in remote antiquity, in other words, the Way. His exceptionalist leanings were
even more evident later in the text when he offered his critical assessment of
orthodox Confucianism.21
Nariaki’s critical remarks were primarily aimed at orthodox Confucianism
and its assumption of Chinese superiority. At the same time, Nariaki seemed aware
of Kokugaku critiques of Confucianism as a Chinese institution, with the impli-
cation that it was unfit for propagation in Japan. He characterized these views as
extreme, and asserted that the ideological position of Mito existed somewhere
between them. Although Confucianism was imported into Japan in antiquity, he
argued, it should not be condemned simply because of its foreign origins. He could
not support the Confucian reverence for the Sages at the expense of the kami and
the imperial line. Neither orthodox Confucian scholars nor their Kokugaku ri-
vals seemed to grasp the idea that Confucianism and Shinto were not antagonis-
tic toward each other, but were actually complementary, and that this ideological
harmony was understood and put into practice by the emperors of antiquity.
Underpinning this line of argumentation, and what is nearly buried amid
Nariaki’s comments regarding Confucianism, is his matter-of-fact observation
that Japan’s customs were superior to those of other foreign lands. In this way,
Nariaki sided with Fujita Yūkoku in support of Japanese exceptionalism.
Along with the general outline of Nariaki’s political goals as the new leader
of Mito, he also declared his intention to establish a school in Mito with a cur-
Yūkoku, Tōkō, and Nariaki 177
riculum that would “unite Shinto with Confucianism and combine wen with wu”
(shinju itchi, bunbu gappei).22 Nariaki enlisted the help of the scholars and offi-
cials in the Mito faction who supported him in this endeavor, and he asked
Yūkoku’s son, Tōko, to assist him in the composition of the stone inscription for
the school’s dedication. Tōko complied, calling the inscription the Kōdōkanki (The
record of the Kōdōkan).23 Nariaki completed the inscription in 1838, about three
years before the school opened its doors to students. The exceptionalist tone of
the inscription is readily apparent and unmistakeable, even in its opening lines.24
As Nariaki made very clear in this inscription, the Way existed in Japan in re-
mote antiquity; the Way was not introduced with the importation of Confucian-
ism. This idea alone placed Japan, at the very least, on the same cultural and moral
level as China. Nariaki implied, as his earlier Kokushihen made clear, that the prac-
tice of the Way by the ancient Japanese emperors was no accident of history; it
was part of the divine plan of the kami. If anything, the existence of the Way in
ancient China, for Nariaki, was serendipitous, but not so with Japan.
Fujita Tōko, another towering figure in Mitogaku, was active during Naria-
ki’s time as the lord of Mito. Tōko was born as Yūkoku’s second son; his elder
brother, however, died in infancy, and so Tōko’s birth came as a relief to Yūkoku,
as it made the adoption of an heir unnecessary.25 Yūkoku’s position as head of the
Shōkōkan required him to be away from his family for periods of time while Tōko
was young, but Yūkoku saw to it that his son received a good education back in
Mito. Tōko left Mito for Edo in the spring of 1826, living in Edo for barely eight
months, before Yūkoku passed away at the end of that year. Tōko, along with two
of his father’s favorite students, Aizawa Seishisai and Toyoda Tenkō, arranged
for Yūkoku’s funerary rites in Edo.26 Although he never became the head of the
Shōkōkan, he did fill in for a time as the head of the Suikan in 1829.27 He was also
a leading figure in the political faction that supported Nariaki’s succession as the
lord of Mito that same year.
In 1847, Tōko finished the final draft of a work in which he elaborated on the
deeper meanings of Nariaki’s inscription, which he called the Kōdōkanki jutsugi
(The Kōdōkanki explained). Tōko built on his father’s ideological foundation by
arguing that Japan had a Way that was distinctive, even by comparison with the
Way of the Sages. By doing so, he continued to advance the exceptionalist rheto-
ric of Mitogaku, ideologically moving it in the direction of Kokugaku.28
Tōko makes two important observations in this work that bore the distinc-
tive ideological markings of Mitogaku. First, he reiterated Nariaki’s position on
the status of China and Chinese culture.29 This defense of Japan’s cultural bor-
rowing from China in antiquity was congruent with Nariaki’s goal of using Con-
fucianism in order to deepen the Japanese appreciation and understanding of
Shinto. Tōko’s explanation, of course, was broader in scope than a focus on Con-
fucianism, and he made the argument that Chinese culture in general was the
supplement that the Japanese culture of antiquity required in order to push it from
mere superiority to perfection. Tōko’s second observation is one that people com-
monly associate with Mitogaku, namely, the link between Mitogaku and sonnō-
jō’i.30 Engaging in such endeavors for Tōko was not only morally justifiable, it was
also obligatory, as a way of showing one’s gratitude to the kami. However, jō’i had
a very different meaning in 1847 than it would assume a mere six years later.
Before the arrival of the Perry expedition, Tōko and his Mitogaku colleagues, like
Aizawa Seishisai, could not imagine going to war against the Westerners; rather,
their calls for sonnō-jō’i signified a desire for more robust efforts to repel incursions
by Western sailors into Japan and its coastal waters. After Perry’s arrival, shishi
like Sakamoto Ryōma, who revered the scholarship of Mitogaku scholars like
Tōko, did not allow this critical contextual issue to impede their efforts to expel
Westerners with violent, armed force.
Tōko’s stated esteem for Chinese cultural institutions, as an essential ingre-
dient in Japan’s perfection in ancient times, was targeted, at least in part, at the
supporters of Kokugaku, who, following the example of Kamo no Mabuchi,
Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane, held diametrically opposed views. Tōko,
despite agreeing with the scholars of Kokugaku over the issue of the Way
in Japanese antiquity, dismissed them for their misguided condemnation of
Confucianism.31
Despite Tōko’s critical assessment of Kokugaku, he agreed with its followers
that the ancient Japanese practiced the Way even before the introduction of Con-
fucianism and Buddhism: “After [the creation of] Heaven and earth, there was
no Way other than this Way. [Japan was] replete (kiki kōkō) [with the relation-
ships of] lord/subject and higher/lower, [so that the ancient Japanese] followed and
practiced [the Way], and corrupt theories were never blended with [it].”32 Whereas
Kokugaku scholars like Norinaga and Atsutane insisted that the Way of Japa
nese antiquity was not the same as the Way of the Sages, Tōko believed that
it was. The ancient Japanese, in other words, grasped the Way independently
of the Chinese Sages. On this issue, Tōko, while diverging from his Kokugaku col-
leagues, came close to the position articulated by Kumazawa Banzan more than
a century earlier. Like Banzan, Tōko expressed grave doubts about Buddhism,
but he viewed the history of Buddhism in Japan as useful in the quest of Mitogaku
scholars to demonstrate the existence of the Way in Japanese antiquity.33 For
Tōko, the importation and adoption of Confucianism unfolded rather smoothly
in antiquity because Confucian teachings were in no sense antagonistic toward
the values and practices of the ancient Japanese people. Amazingly, Confucian
Aizawa Seishisai 179
teachings articulated and gave expression to phenomena that were already in ex-
istence in ancient Japan. Buddhism provided Tōko with a critical counterexam-
ple that proved the merits of his observation, since its teachings were so alien to
the daily lives of the ancient Japanese. Rather than viewing the conspicuous ab-
sence of a specific term in remote antiquity for the Way as evidence that there
was no Way in ancient Japan, Tōko used this fact as crucial proof that there was.
By rhetorically turning the tables on his counterparts in orthodox Confucian-
ism, he deflected their criticisms of ancient Shinto and simultaneously directed
his own criticisms at them. Confucian denigrations of Shinto stemmed from a
belief in China’s superiority over Japan; in other words, orthodox Confucians were
supporters of Chinese exceptionalism. By claiming that the ancient Japanese had
the Way even if they never coined a word for it, Tōko makes it clear that Japan
was superior to China, since the Chinese had a word for the Way, yet their history
amply demonstrated that their knowledge of it could not prevent China’s conquest
by barbarians. Having a word for the Way, then, was proof of its absence, while
the absence of a word for the Way was an indication of its presence.
Motoori Norinaga had made a strikingly similar argument regarding the Way
more than fifty years earlier, so that Tōko found himself on similar ideological
ground as the supporters of Kokugaku. He made it clear, however, that Confu-
cianism was nonetheless critical to Shinto.34 Tōko, a supporter of Shinto, had no
sympathy for scholars who were reverent of Shinto without Confucianism, like
the followers of Kokugaku. He was similarly critical of Confucian scholars, like
Ogyū Sorai and Dazai Shundai, who were contemptuous of Shinto. Tōko realized
that Japanese exceptionalism needed Shinto, since the Japanese could not estab-
lish their own exceptionalism purely on a Confucian basis, the very same basis
upon which Chinese exceptionalism was founded. He was unwilling to break
completely from Confucianism, since Shinto fundamentally lacked universality;
for Tōko, what made Shinto the basis for Japanese superiority was its affinity with
Confucianism, so that denying the validity of Confucianism in no way enhanced
Shinto’s validity.
Aizawa Seishisai
Perhaps the most famous of the Mitogaku scholars was Tōko’s colleague and
fellow student of Fujita Yūkoku, Aizawa Seishisai, a figure whose stature within
Mitogaku was analogous to that of Motoori Norinaga within Kokugaku. Like
Yūkoku, Seishisai headed the Shōkōkan beginning in 1831, before becoming the
first director of the Kōdōkan in 1841.35 Seishisai, like Kumazawa Banzan, believed
that the Way was universal, a view that made it possible to apprehend the Way
even in the absence of formal teachings.36 While believing in Japan’s inherent

.
superiority over China, as evidenced by his using the name Central Realm
(Chūgoku) for Japan, he was somewhat more reticent in his criticisms of China
than other scholars in Mitogaku w ere.37 Praise of Japan, for Seishisai, should not
come at the expense of China, since the standard of greatness of the former was
derived from the Confucianism of the latter. He did not disagree with the notion
that Japan’s unbroken imperial lineage was evidence of its superiority over China
with its long history of dynastic changes, but he believed that those scholars who
invoked such comparisons did not give the Chinese enough credit for their long
periods of stability.38 In this way, Seishisai was more ideologically inclined toward
orthodox Confucianism than his Mitogaku contemporaries were, like Fujita
Tōko.39 Seishisai, while a supporter of Japanese exceptionalism, was not satisfied
with assertions of superiority, like exceptionalists from earlier generations; in-
stead, he honed exceptionalist thinking into a more concrete conceptualization
of the Japanese nation, especially after 1825.40 With Seishisai’s ideas, Japanese ex-
ceptionalism began to anticipate the civic nationalism of Meiji Japan.
Seishisai’s Exceptionalism
Seishisai believed that the ancient Japanese lived in harmony with the Way, even
before the importation of Confucianism. Once the ancient Japanese people be-
gan to learn about Confucianism, they realized that the Way was neither a diffi-
cult concept to grasp nor was it alien to their own daily experience. For Seishisai,
the easy understanding of the Way, and easy adoption of Confucian teachings
about it, were proof that the Way of Japanese antiquity was the one, true Way of
the cosmos.41 Seishisai brushed these remarks in 1847, as his own commentary
on Nariaki’s Kōdōkanki, so it is understandable that Seishisai reiterated the
idea that Chinese culture functioned as a supplement to Japan’s, thereby chal-
lenging the orthodox Confucian stance on Chinese exceptionalism. He makes it
clear that the Way existed in Japanese antiquity and that the Chinese never had
any exclusive claim on the Way, even if they did refer to it as the Way of the Sages.
Later in this same document, the Taishoku kanwa (A discussion in retirement),
Seishisai clarified how the ancient Japanese came into possession of the Way.42 In
this passage, Seishisai located the origin of the Way with the progenitor of the
imperial line, who then bestowed it upon the ancient Japanese people. Although
this observation explained how the presence of the Way in ancient Japan came to
be, it left open the question of how the ancient Chinese Sages acquired the Way, a
question that was ultimately irrelevant because of Amaterasu’s role. The imperial
regalia, for Seishisai, were not merely the relics of political legitimacy for Japa
nese emperors, they were also collective proof of the existence of the Way in
Seishisai’s Exceptionalism 181
antiquity. Naturally, Seishisai saw no contradiction between Shinto and the

Way in ancient Japan.43 While the Way existed above and outside of both China
and Japan, its connection with Japan was fundamental because of Amaterasu,
according to Seishisai. Since Amaterasu was associated with Shinto, the con-
nection between the Way and Japan was none other than Shinto itself. Shinto
was the Way. Seishisai’s conceptualization of the Way as independent of any
particu lar human civilization, yet coterminous with Shinto, was strikingly sim-
ilar to Kumazawa Banzan’s view of Shinto. Banzan’s identification of the Way
with Shinto prompted him to conclude that the Japanese ultimately had no need
for any foreign doctrines, even Confucianism. Seishisai, on the other hand, ar-
gued that knowledge of Confucianism was even more vital to the Japanese peo-
ple, once they understood that Shinto was the Way. Seishisai’s patron, Tokugawa
Nariaki, made it clear in the Kōdōkanki that his goal for the new school was
to unite Shinto with Confucianism, not to dispense with the latter in favor of
the former.
While the above evidence of Japan’s superiority over China was certainly
sufficient to convince his students and followers of the intellectual merits of
Mitogaku, Seishisai himself invoked metaphysical evidence as well in support
of his claims. Japanese superiority, in other words, could be proven even with
Chinese evidence.44 His invocation of yin and yang, which Seishisai made in 1847,
was consistent with a similar metaphysical observation that he made in his most
famous work, Shinron, in 1825.45 With the example of yin and yang, Seishisai
situated Japan on the same level as China, as two realms with auspicious (and
exceptional) geographic locations. Since he had already argued for Japan’s supe-
riority over China, as was the case with other Mitogaku scholars, his observation
regarding yin and yang served to account for China’s cosmic significance, which
helped to explain the existence of the ancient Sages and their apprehension of
the Way in the absence of any special connection to Amaterasu. Seishisai’s earlier
metaphysical analysis in Shinron made no mention of China at all. Japan’s meta-
physical exceptionality, for Seishisai, was linked to the centrality of rice. Rather
than making such a statement regarding Japan’s agricultural exceptionality with
geographic and climatic evidence, as Yamaga Sokō did in the seventeenth century,
Seishisai privileged the use of metaphysics. Although there was no direct reference
to China in this part of Shinron, his comment on the lack of any meat-eating tra-
ditions in Japan was an oblique reference to the barbarity of Westerners, but one
that could also have applied to the Chinese. Seishisai used these metaphysical
arguments to demonstrate how Japan’s Heaven-endowed superiority extended to
essentially all aspects of Japanese life, a “trickle-down effect” that literally reached
into the very soil of Japan.
Seishisai’s use of metaphysics was similar in effect, though not necessarily in

scale, to Yamazaki Ansai’s scholarship on the creation stories of kamiyo. Ansai
was also one of the first Confucians to use the term Central Realm (Chūgoku) to
refer to Japan rather than China, along with Ansai’s contemporary Yamaga Sokō.46
This was another intellectual legacy of seventeenth-century exceptionalism from
which Seishisai borrowed. Finally, Seishisai’s conception of the Way as something
that was beyond Chinese civilization, and the first existence of which was not in
China, contradicted the views of both orthodox Confucians and even the fol
lowers of Ogyū Sorai, who believed that the Way was an artificial construct of
the Chinese Sages. Fundamentally, Seishisai agreed with Kumazawa Banzan’s
view of the Way, despite the fact that his prescription for reapprehending the Way
was radically different from Banzan’s. The exceptionalism of seventeenth-century
Confucians like Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan opposed the support for Chinese
superiority that was common among orthodox Confucians, and the same was
true of the exceptionalism of the Mitogaku scholars of the nineteenth century.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the Mitogaku scholars found at least
some affinity between their ideas and those of their seventeenth-century excep-
tionalist counterparts.
Just as the Way was crucial to seventeenth-century exceptionalism, discussions
of the imperial lineage were also essential, and the Mitogaku scholars focused on
this issue as well, including Seishisai.47 Seishisai’s invocation of the two main
ethical relationships (out of the five) was a reference to the existence of the Way
in Japanese antiquity before the importation of Confucianism, which, when
combined with the unbroken imperial lineage, made Japan an exceptional realm
by comparison with the rest of the world. For Seishisai, the existence of the Way
in antiquity and the unbroken imperial lineage were aspects of Japan’s “national
polity”; although all realms have their own kokutai, Japan’s was both unique and
superior by virtue of these two aspects. Seishisai observed in 1847 that “the
Heavenly Court [Japan] is the [essence] of [the relationship of] lord/subject; along
with Heaven and earth, it will [never] change. Those who overthrow [their rul-
ers] can never say [such a thing about their own realm].”48 The exceptional nature
of the imperial lineage, for Seishisai, was not only its long history of institutional
integrity but also the guarantee that this integrity would endure for all time.
The imperial regalia, linked as they were to the political and spiritual legiti-
macy of the imperial court, was an issue that Seishisai touted as proof of Japan’s
exceptionality.49 For Seishisai, Japan was the exception to China’s rule of dynastic
change,50 and this exceptionality, born of Japan’s divine dispensation, was symbol-
ized by the imperial regalia. While Seishisai was keenly aware of China’s history
of dynastic change, as all intellectuals of the Edo period were, such an aware-
“Forsake This, Follow That” 183
ness was ultimately not an impediment to the extension of his discussion to

include the world (shikai, “the four seas”) and not just China.51 As was the case
with seventeenth-century exceptionalism, the demonstration of Japan’s superior-
ity hinged on a comparison with China, with the assumption that China was the
only other legitimate candidate in the world for the designation of “superior.”
Of course, Seishisai likely had more knowledge of the world outside of East Asia
than the exceptionalists of the seventeenth century, but the rhetorical strategy re-
mained largely unchanged. Heaven had decreed that the world should have only
one ruling realm, he and the Mitogaku scholars reasoned; if that realm was not
China, then it must be Japan.
While China was no threat to Japan’s position of moral dominance in the
world, the Westerners represented just such a threat. Writing in 1825, Seishisai ex-
pressed his extreme skepticism regarding the motives of the Westerners.52 In dis-
cussing Westerners, he did not invent the metaphor of the world as a body; scholars
of previous eras made similar comments about Japan’s place in the world. This
metaphor of the body constrained his thinking by forcing him to think in terms of
one paramount and supreme realm in the world. As a student of Fujita Yūkoku,
Seishisai was well acquainted with the arguments for Japanese superiority over
China; as of 1825, he was confronted with the task of having to account for West-
erners attempting to land on Japanese shores, and the body metaphor was useful in
this regard. Japan, he admitted, was not the largest or the most powerful realm on
the earth, but it was still the world’s only exceptional one. More than twenty years
after the excitement that prompted Seishisai to write Shinron, Seishisai revisited
the issue of China’s geopolitical position in terms of the body metaphor.53 Seishisai
reiterated that there can only be one head of the world’s body: “The Land of the
Han is a realm of propriety (reigi), yet it has not escaped change [in the Mandate of
Heaven]. Regarding the head of the myriad realms [of the world], there cannot be
two, and the momentum of Heaven and earth has always been [like this], from the
beginning [of time].” 54 Despite Seishisai’s concerns during the 1820s over develop-
ments among the Westerner “barbarians,” including the Americans, he did not
view the Westerners as potentially dethroning Japan from its exceptional status in
the world, which was why he clarified China’s status during the 1840s. He made it
clear that China, its cultural achievements notwithstanding, followed after Japan
in the world order; since there could only be one exceptional realm in the world,
that realm had to be Japan, he argued.
“Forsake This, Follow That”

Like Matsumiya Kanzan, Aizawa Seishisai lamented the fact that Japanese Con-
fucians seemed to admire China more than they did Japan.55 Having been born
in Japan, Confucian scholars needed to show more deference and respect to the
land of their ancestors, he believed, and that included a reevaluation of their rather
low assessment of Shinto. For Kanzan, the main issue was loyalty, or the lack
thereof, that Confucians exhibited toward all Japanese matters, including, but
not limited to, Shinto. For this reason, he called on scholars who studied and
researched Japanese matters, namely, Wagaku, to eschew that term in favor of
Kokugaku, as the latter signified their allegiance to Japan.56 Kanzan’s choice
of Kokugaku over Wagaku was gradually adopted by scholars during the latter
half of the eighteenth century, becoming commonplace by the nineteenth, and
it was the preferred term for those scholars whose writings w ere exceptionalist
in orientation. Despite this important development in the history of Toku
gawa exceptionalism, Kanzan himself was not necessarily a supporter of Tokugawa
exceptionalism. His calls for changing the name Wagaku to Kokugaku were
neither assertions of Japan’s exceptionality in the world nor of its superiority over
China. Kanzan’s argument was that Japanese scholars should not use a term that
signified Japan’s subservient position with respect to China, a connotation of the
term Kokugaku that later scholars ideologically modified to denote exceptionalist
sympathies. Seishisai, who also preferred the term Kokugaku over Wagaku,57 ad-
vanced a position that was similar to Kanzan’s but which was decidedly more
exceptionalist in tone. He used the phrase “forsake this [in order to] follow that”
(kore wo sute kare ni shitagau) to signify the predominant attitudes of Confucian
scholars toward Japan, namely, that they privileged China over Japan. For Seishi-
sai, the imperative to honor Japan was not connected to the fact that it was the
home of a scholar’s ancestors; it was connected to the fact that Japan was superior
to China and, by extension, the rest of the world. In this regard, Mitogaku was
superior to all other forms of learning in Japan, since it was the exception to the
rule whereby one had to acknowledge China’s preeminence, an exceptionality that
Seishisai extended, perhaps grudgingly, to Kokugaku as well.
Writing in 1842, Seishisai believed that the denigration of Japan began in
antiquity with the adoption of Buddhism.58 He condemned Buddhism in two ways.
First, he argued that the Buddhists introduced the idea of “forsake this in order to
follow that.” Specifically, it was the worship of Buddhist deities that superseded
respect for the kami, especially the emperor as a living kami.59 Second, he insisted
that this attitude was projected onto Confucianism by the Zen monks of the Go-
zan temples of medieval Japan, and it was perpetuated by influential Confucian
scholars during the Tokugawa period. Among the pantheon of illustrious intel-
lects of eighteenth-century Japan, he focused his remarks on Ogyū Sorai and
Arai Hakuseki. Hakuseki was an orthodox Neo-Confucian scholar and formal
adviser to two shoguns, Tokugawa Ienobu (1662–1712) and Tokugawa Ietsugu
(1709–1716). Sorai, however, is best known as a scholar who was highly critical of
Neo-Confucianism, believing that its teachings had seriously distorted those of
classical Confucianism. Like Hakuseki, he was also an advisor to a shogun,
Tokugawa Yoshimune, but his status was more informal, even though his influ-
ence over Yoshimune was undeniable. In other words, Seishisai pointed to the
academic careers of two scholars who represented divergent strands of the Confu-
cian tradition in Japan, insisting that both of them were supporters of “forsake
this in order to follow that.”
Although Seishisai’s conception of the Way as universal owed much to
Kumazawa Banzan’s views of the Way and Shinto, Seishisai was not tolerant of
Wang Yangming’s philosophy.60 Like the orthodox Neo-Confucians, Seishisai was
highly dubious about the internal search for li without the guidance of the Five
Classics, as Wang Yangming and his followers, like Kumazawa Banzan, believed.
In this manner, Seishisai sided with the orthodox Neo-Confucians, a group for
which he had serious doubts because of their denigration of Japan. However, he
again diverged from the Neo-Confucians over the use of the commentaries on
the classics, calling for scholars to read the classics themselves rather than rely-
ing on these biased commentaries. In this manner, Seishisai’s views w ere in agree-
ment with those of Yamaga Sokō and also of Ogyū Sorai. As the leader and the
most influential of the Mitogaku scholars, Seishisai charted an eclectic ideologi-
cal course for Mitogaku that transcended the standard oppositions within Con-
fucianism, namely, Song Learning versus Ming Learning (Wang Yangming) and
Neo-Confucianism versus Classical Confucianism (Itō Jinsai, Yamaga Sokō, and
Ogyū Sorai). This represented an important difference between the exceptional-
ism of the seventeenth c entury, dominated as it was by Neo-Confucianism, and
that of the nineteenth century, as embodied by Mitogaku.
While Seishisai’s condemnation of Confucianism was somewhat ecumenical
in its scope, his disdain for other forms of learning, especially Kokugaku and
Rangaku, was tempered by a fascination with and even tolerance for these
scholarly rivals of Confucianism.61 While neither Kokugaku nor Rangaku truly
challenged the authenticity, legitimacy, and ideological correctness of Mitogaku,
Seishisai could not bring himself to lump them together with the rest of the
Confucian tradition.62 Having composed two formal refutations of Kokugaku,
Seishisai was not known in his day as one of its supporters.63 His praise of
Kokugaku was less than effusive, and he quickly followed it with critical observa-
tions.64 His theme of “forsake this [in order] to follow that,” he admitted, did not
apply to Kokugaku; it was the only example of scholarship other than Mitogaku
that did not succumb to it. Despite its otherwise praiseworthy ideological ori-
entation, Kokugaku, for Seishisai, had four distinct weaknesses as a form of
scholarship. First, it resembled too closely Daoism and even Mohism, schools of
philosophy that had long since been dismissed by the Confucians. The similarity
with Daoism was an issue that Motoori Norinaga also acknowledged, before re-
futing such a criticism as a misunderstanding of his ideas. In fact, Seishisai’s in-
vocation of Daoism in this context was likely aimed at Norinaga’s scholarship.
Kamo no Mabuchi, Norinaga’s predecessor, embraced the idea of a resemblance
between archaic Shinto and Daoism, and Norinaga’s refutation of Daoism was
prompted by Mabuchi’s stated esteem for it.65 Second, Seishisai claimed that
Kokugaku scholarship was too subjective in its methodology, meaning that its
teachings were only loosely based on scriptural authority, if at all. Seishisai’s
claim on this issue is interesting, since it was also something that Norinaga spe-
cifically denied. Norinaga admonished his students to adhere scrupulously to the
words of the ancient and classical texts of Japanese literature in their scholarly
work. Seishisai, of course, was aware of this rigorous attitude toward scholarship,
but it was all for naught, since the Confucian canon superseded ancient Japanese
texts in both age and wisdom. For Seishisai, objective scholarship, even of Japa
nese antiquity, was only possible with the Confucian canon as its foundation;
everything else, no matter how self-consciously rigorous, was fundamentally
subjective and nonacademic.
Seishisai’s last two criticisms of Kokugaku w ere related to his attitude toward
the Confucian canon. The authority of the canon was derived from its authorship,
namely, the Sages of Chinese antiquity, Confucius, and Mencius. For this reason,
Seishisai condemned the Kokugaku scholars for turning their backs both on the
Way of the Sages and, by extension, authentic Shinto. Believing themselves to be
loyal to Japan above all, the followers of Kokugaku were actually quite disloyal,
according to Seishisai. His final criticism of Kokugaku was the effort of its
adherents to be purely academic and apolitical. Seishisai and the other scholars
of Mitogaku, as well as Tokugawa Nariaki, believed in the union of politics and
ethics, what was later called “the oneness of rites and politics,” which became the
basis for State Shinto during the Meiji period.66 The primary purpose of ethical
teachings was its political application, while politics in the absence of ethical teach-
ings was unimaginable for Seishisai. By rejecting Confucian ethical teachings,
the followers of Kokugaku stripped away this critical aspect of good government,
such that no domain could officially adopt Kokugaku as its orthodoxy. The Mito
domain, as the number three house of the Tokugawa family, could never embrace
the political vision articulated in Kokugaku. For Seishisai, Kokugaku was politi
cally both unrealistic and naive.
As was the case with Kokugaku, Seishisai reserved a special place in his writings
for Rangaku and Western learning. Unlike the scholars of Kokugaku, Rangaku’s
followers were guilty of exhibiting the attitude of “forsake this [in order] to
follow that,” but it was not China that they privileged over Japan, which made
it completely different by comparison with orthodox Confucianism for Seishisai.67
He admitted that at least some of the knowledge gained via Rangaku was actu-
ally useful for the Japanese people, and so he was not prepared to issue a com-
plete condemnation of it: “The strict prohibition of Western teachings [in Japan
should] only [apply] especially to those [that are of] no profit to the realm; [those
with] practical [applications] (jitsu) are good teachings [for Japan].”68 Seishisai
understood the potential utility of Western technology even before Perry’s arrival
only six years after he wrote these remarks. However, he cautioned his readers
against placing too much faith in Rangaku; as a field of study, it had a profound
weakness, especially in matters related to spirituality. He proposed to deal with
Rangaku in much the same manner as he viewed Confucianism, since they were
both supplements to what was truly important for him, namely, Shinto. Seishi-
sai’s attitude toward Rangaku was very similar to Sakuma Shōzan’s, and they
espoused their views at virtually the same historical moment.69 We should keep
in mind that Seishisai’s sonnō-jō’i developed into kaikoku by the end of his life.
Here we see that his embrace of Rangaku, even if it was only a partial one, was the
initial step in his eventual support for kaikoku after Perry’s arrival. As Seishi-
sai’s discussion of Rangaku shows, his exceptionalist attitude did not culminate
in the practice of nativism. This might come as a surprise when one considers
his views as expressed in Shinron, in which he called for the forcible expulsion
of Westerners attempting to land on Japanese soil. Such an attitude, which
stemmed from his exceptionalism, actually did approach nativism without ulti-
mately reaching it. Thus, Seishisai’s Shinron represents a gray area between ex-
ceptionalism and nativism.
Seishisai conducted interviews with shipwrecked Western sailors in 1824, us-
ing the knowledge gleaned from these exchanges as the basis for his anti-Western
stance in Shinron.70 He submitted his essay to the lord of Mito, Tokugawa
Narinobu (1797–1829), since his domain’s Pacific coastline was where the West-
erners had come ashore, but the Bakufu was no less concerned with these land-
ings than their Mito counterparts were. The culmination of this concern came
in 1825 when the Bakufu issued its Expulsion Edict, in which all coastal domains
were instructed to fire on Western ships approaching Japanese waters. The popu-
larity of Seishisai’s Shinron was at least partially responsible for putting pressure
on the Bakufu to issue such an order. Seishisai was convinced that no good would
come out of further such interactions with the Westerners.71 As a scholar of Japa
nese history, which was fundamental to the identity of the Mitogaku scholars,
Seishisai was aware of the exchanges between the Chinese court and the Japanese
court in remote antiquity, using these as evidence that the ancient Chinese ac-
knowledged the exceptionality of the Japanese. By associating Japan with the
“territory of the sun,” the Chinese recognized that Japan was unique among the
realms of the world, he reasoned. While Seishisai’s citation of this fact was likely
not an ideological fabrication, his interpretation of it most certainly was. In other
words, the Chinese spoke of Japan as a realm to their east, beyond which, as far as
they knew, there w ere no other lands. Japan, therefore, was less a realm of the sun
to the Chinese than it was a realm in the east. Seishisai combined what he as-
serted was the Chinese recognition of Japanese exceptionality with what he had
heard about the Western belief that Asia was constituted by “realms of the
morning.” By citing the associations of the morning with yang and correctness,
he argued that Westerners had unwittingly provided the Japanese with an inde
pendent and unbiased confirmation of their exceptionality, even though the
Westerners had made this observation of Asia as a w hole and not just Japan in
particu lar. The failure of the Westerners to see the ways in which Japan stood out
from the rest of Asia was likely not surprising to Seishisai’s readers, since their
realms occupied inferior positions within the metaphorical body of the world.
Westerners w ere clearly inferior to the Japanese, according to Seishisai.
While Seishisai saw the Westerners as a threat to the Japanese, their threat
was cultural, not military. As of 1825, he could not imagine that incursions into
Japanese waters, by whalers seeking supplies and assistance, represented Japan’s
imminent invasion by Western forces.72 By asserting that the Westerners were
inferior to the Japanese, he undermined any potential image of them as a serious
threat to the security of Mito or of Japan. Instead, they posed a threat to Japan
via their interactions with ordinary Japanese people, as actually occurred in the
case of the whalers who had come into contact with Mito fishermen in 1824.
Seishisai feared that the Westerners had beguiled the Japanese fishermen into
feeling sympathy for them, rather than the fear and hatred that he expected them
to feel as loyal subjects of the emperor. In other words, he was disappointed that
the encounters between the fishermen and the Western sailors had not elicited
any nativist response among the Japanese, in the sense of nativism described by
Higham. He believed that ordinary Japanese people could not be trusted to
resist these Western incursions; rather than risk Japan’s security, Seishisai as-
serted that the only legitimate response to the Westerners was an armed one.
In this way, his argument came close to crossing over from exceptionalism
into nativism.
Unlike the anti-Chinese ramblings of either Kamo no Mabuchi or Motoori
Norinaga, Seishisai’s anti-Western diatribe in Shinron was a response to actual
interactions with Westerners, including Seishisai’s own conversations with cap-
Conclusion 189
tured whalers. As was the case with the armed efforts to expel Westerners from
Japan during the 1850s and 1860s, Seishisai’s recommendation in 1825 was to
respond to Western incursions with force. In fact, historians generally do not
object to the assertion of a continuity between Shinron and the terror tactics
employed by the shishi after the Convention of Kanagawa, especially following
the arrival of Townsend Harris in 1856, as both fall under the historical rubric
of sonnō-jō’i. Seishisai’s call to fire on Western ships clearly constituted a rejec-
tion of foreign arrivals, as one might expect to occur in any encounter that elicits
nativism, especially as it is understood in American history. Consequently, it
would be logical to view both examples of sonnō-jō’i as instances of nativism as
well; however, pulling the category of nativism back in time from the era of 1856–
1866 to 1825, in order to accommodate Shinron, is overly ambitious. Not only did
Seishisai not expect these encounters with Western sailors to assume the dimen-
sions of a significant military threat, he also did not expect that Western diplo-
mats, merchants, and their families would actually take up residence in Japan,
which occurred roughly one generation after the appearance of Shinron. The key
conceptual component of American nativism was the settlement in the United
States of immigrants, while it was colonial settlement in the case of anthropo-
logical nativism. In other words, the encounter between members of two societ-
ies itself does not constitute nativism; rather, it was the prospect of ongoing in-
teractions between these societies that spawned nativist reactions. For this reason,
the classification of Shinron as nativism is, I believe, somewhat of an overreach.
Seishisai’s influential work, while not a work of Japanese nativism, certainly
inspired those who w ere later engaged in nativist activities; thus, Shinron was
more closely connected to nativism than was the case with the writings of the
canonical figures of Kokugaku. This affinity between Shinron and nativism could
also be said, of course, of Seishisai himself and of the other Mitogaku scholars.
Mitogaku, as an ideology and as a form of learning that was preeminent during
the first half of the nineteenth century, literally straddled the line between excep-
tionalism and nativism.
Conclusion
By embracing kaikoku instead of literal jō’i, Seishisai ultimately turned away from
nativism as a viable option for the Japanese, once the Western presence in Japan
had become a reality. Like Sakuma Shōzan, Seishisai’s commitment to Japan
remained unchanged, and he never abandoned the exceptionalist rhetoric of his
Mitogaku colleagues. His teacher, Fujita Yūkoku, asserted the significance of the
Way in Japanese antiquity, specifically that there was evidence that the ancient
Japanese practiced the rectification of names, which itself was evidence that they
had apprehended the Way; Yūkoku also hailed the unbroken imperial lineage
as proof that Japan was literally the sole exception to China’s rule of dynastic
change. Both of these ideas became foundational to the ideology of Mitogaku,73
whose scholars exhibited more institutional and ideological discipline than
their Kokugaku counterparts. By equating archaic Shinto with the Way, an idea
that was further developed by Tōko and Seishisai, Yūkoku laid the foundation
for Mitogaku’s intellectual identity.
Tokugawa Nariaki, the lord of Mito and the guiding force behind the estab-
lishment of the Kōdōkan, the Mitogaku academy, provides us with an interesting
counterexample to Aizawa Seishisai. Nariaki was no less an exceptionalist than
Seishisai, yet he called for armed expulsion once Perry and the Americans arrived
in 1853, in a clear turn toward nativism and a divergence from the chosen kai-
koku path of Seishisai. In Nariaki’s case, there was a connection between excep-
tionalism and nativism, and this pattern was a characteristic of the Know-Nothings
as well from American history. This pattern of ideology and practice was not true
of Seishisai, who maintained his exceptionalism throughout his career. If the idea
of exceptionalism as the ideological motivation for nativism is the rule,74 then
Seishisai’s example potentially represents the exception. However, as the case of
Transcendentalism shows us, exceptionalism did not automatically culminate in
nativist practices. Generally speaking, the Transcendentalists were opposed to the
Know-Nothings and to nativism in general, even though some of their most rep-
resentative figures were also exceptionalists. At the same time, it is important to
note that the Transcendentalists were not antinativist because of their exception-
alism.75 Although Seishisai’s exceptionalist assumptions did not lead to nativism,
his calls for kaikoku were more directly linked to his exceptionalism than was the
case with the Transcendentalists. In any event, these examples from both Amer-
ican and Japanese history illustrate that while the practice of nativism can be
linked to exceptionalist ideas, the latter do not necessarily culminate in the de-
velopment of the former.
The importance of Confucianism in the development of Tokugawa exception-
alism was critical in a way that no legitimate discussion of the subject can ignore.
Although Confucianism, linked as it was in the minds of Tokugawa intellectuals
to Chinese exceptionalism, posed a fundamental problem for Tokugawa excep-
tionalism, it was one that they eventually overcame (see table 6). These Confu-
cians were no less exceptionalist in their views than the followers of Kokugaku. It
would be a mistake, therefore, to confine any discussion of Tokugawa exception-
alism to the scholars of Kokugaku, as was the case with Western historiography
regarding Kokugaku and nativism. We should also point out that while Kokugaku
Conclusion 191
Table 6. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (China and Japan)
Spiritual/
Material Cultural
Institution Uniqueness Uniqueness Incommensurability Superiority
Chinese N Y N Y
Confucianism
Hua/yi N Y N Y
Tribute System N Y N Y
Kokugaku N Y Y Y
Confucian Shinto N Y Y Y
Mitogaku N Y Y Y
Table 7. Nativistic Exceptionalism
Face-to-Face Hostility/
Institution Uniqueness Superiority Contact Violence
Kokugaku Y Y N N
Confucian Shinto Y Y N N
Sonnō-jō’i* N N Y Y
Mitogaku† Y Y Y Y
Know-Nothingism N N Y Y
Transcendentalism Y Y N N
* Sonnō-jō’i here refers to the practices associated with forcible expulsion and anti-Bakufu political
activities.
† Mitogaku here refers to figures associated with the academic institution established in Mito who
espoused ideas associated with both exceptionalism and nativism, such as Tokugawa Nariaki.
developed after the seventeenth century, Mitogaku’s formation followed Kokugaku’s,

and the two scholarly traditions coexisted during the final decades of the Tokugawa
period. As deeply enmeshed within Confucianism as Mitogaku was, it still
deserves a prominent place in the history of Tokugawa exceptionalism alongside
its seventeenth-century Confucian forebears and Kokugaku colleagues.
The fact that exceptionalist ideas could be so readily mobilized in the cause of
nativism indicates the ways in which Mitogaku can become the paradigmatic
example to which researchers in other contexts can look for analytical guidance
(see table 7). When practices reach the level of social movements, as happened
with sonnō-jō’i during the Edo period, ideological constructs serve to motivate
their participants by elevating their activities above those of the ordinary and
the mundane. Indeed, social movements can take shape only under some type
of ideological influence. Both Linton and Higham were in agreement on the practi-
cal dimensions of nativism; for both scholars, nativism is less a motivation to act
than it is the act itself. Within Japanese studies, nativism (Kokugaku) assumes a
prominent position among a pantheon of ideological choices during the Edo period,
some of which inspired political figures, like the shishi, into action. For Japanolo-
gists, therefore, nativism was an ideology and not a practice, a view clearly at odds
with the ways nativism is understood outside of Japanese studies. By following Lin-
ton and Higham more closely, and blending the analytical strengths of their views
together, we can pull certain activities associated with sonnō-jō’i into the practical
foreground of nativism and push critical ideas associated with it, chiefly Mi-
togaku, into the ideological background of exceptionalism.
Aizawa Seishisai viewed Motoori Norinaga as the main intellectual inspira-
tion for what he called Kōkokugaku during the middle of the nineteenth century,
and his grudging admission of its merits indicates that he saw it as an intellectual
competitor to Mitogaku. Historians have credited both Kokugaku and Mitogaku
with supplying the ideological tools needed to overthrow the Bakufu and restore
the imperial institution to power. In the Western (mostly American) attempt to
tell the story of the Meiji Restoration, Kokugaku was assigned the role of nativ-
ism, since restoring the emperor to actual political power seemed to signify a re-
turn to a political arrangement from a more native era, namely, a time before Bud-
dhism and Confucianism, but no such role was given to Mitogaku. Among scholars
in contemporary Japan, of course, Mitogaku continues to reside, historiographi-
cally speaking, alongside Kokugaku, but they have no use for nativism except in
contexts related to American history. By assigning Kokugaku to nativism, Western
Japanologists have effectively reduced the historical significance of Mitogaku,
thereby overly enhancing the former at the expense of the latter. By focusing on
the link between exceptionalism and nativism in Mitogaku,76 we can begin to
reverse this historiographical injustice by highlighting its ideological importance
to late Tokugawa Japan, even if that comes at the expense of Kokugaku.
Conclusion
Transcending Confucian Hierarchy with a Logocentric Binary
The centrality of Confucianism in the intellectual history of Tokugawa Japan is

undeniable, so the fact that it occupies a similar position within the history of
Tokugawa exceptionalism should come as no surprise to Japanologists.1 The ca-
nonical figures of Kokugaku and their legion of followers in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries denounced Confucianism and Buddhism as pernicious
sources of foreign influences that contributed to the obfuscation of Japan’s authen-
tic culture, the recovery of which was their ultimate goal. In such an antiforeign
context, Confucianism assumed the role of cultural villain against which the
Japanese had to struggle in order to bring about the reemergence of a Japanese
cultural identity that Kokugaku followers believed had been suppressed and even
forgotten for centuries. As the examples of Confucian Shinto from the seven-
teenth century and Mitogaku from the nineteenth demonstrate, Confucianism
played more than just a supportive role in the history of Tokugawa exceptional-
ism; Confucianism was no less at the forefront of exceptionalism than Kokugaku.
Analyzing Tokugawa exceptionalism is unthinkable without Confucianism.2
Aizawa Seishisai and Tokugawa Nariaki were the two leading figures of
Mitogaku during the Bakumatsu era; the former was its intellectual voice and the
latter its political one. Even before the arrival of Commodore Perry and the Amer-
ican navy, Seishisai called for the forcible expulsion of Westerners who attempted
to land on Japanese soil, convinced as he was of a nefarious Western plot to sub-
jugate Japan. His ideas inspired the shishi to undertake drastic and violent action
against the Westerners and their Japanese supporters, once the unequal treaties
were concluded and Westerners began to take up residence in Japan. The terror
tactics of the shishi were an attempt to effect the forcible expulsion, or jō’i, of West-
erners from Japan for which the scholars of Mitogaku like Seishisai had advocated
for decades. Although Seishisai himself, as well as the other scholars affiliated
with Mitogaku, were not personally connected to these attacks, they were as-
sociated with the sonnō-jō’i movement of late Tokugawa Japan anyway. Similarly,
Tokugawa Nariaki’s support for Seishisai and for Mitogaku implicated him as
a leading advocate of sonnō-jō’i as well. Nariaki’s support for sonnō-jō’i was so
193
194 Conclusion
widely known throughout Japan, including among a faction of anti-Western court-

iers at the imperial court in Kyoto, that several shishi w
ere inspired to avenge his
untimely death while under house arrest by attacking Ii Naosuke outside of the
Sakurada Gate of the shogun’s palace in 1860. Seishisai and Nariaki believed that
expulsion was the only legitimate response to Western encroachment upon Japan,
since it had a sacredness about it that no other country in the world had; Japan
was the sacred exception to the rule of the world’s profaneness. Consequently, one
can argue not only that Mitogaku contributed to the ideological foundation of
sonnō-jō’i, but also that this foundation was firmly anchored in exceptionalism.
The Mitogaku scholars were confronted with the imperative of overcoming
the Chinese origins of Confucianism in making their case for Japanese exception-
alism, and the implicit support for Chinese exceptionalism that was prevalent
among Confucians in their day. Put simply, if one w ere to assert an exceptional-
ist argument regarding Japan using Confucianism, one would have essentially
undermined one’s own argument before it was ever made. The Confucian excep-
tionalists of Tokugawa Japan had to conceptualize Confucianism in a way that
de-emphasized its Chineseness and enhanced its Japaneseness at the same time.
The Mitogaku scholars insisted that China was a society in decline, one whose
history was replete with the kind of dynastic change that the Japanese, they ar-
gued, had been able to resist. Changes to the Mandate of Heaven, in other words,
governed the histories of all of the world’s societies, except Japan.
Yamaga Sokō advanced a similar argument during the seventeenth century;
wielding the themes of decline and dynastic change, Sokō famously built his ex-
ceptionalist arguments for Japan’s superiority over China. The problem with Sokō’s
exceptionalism, and with the dynastic change argument in general, is that it left
the issue of Confucianism’s Chinese origins unresolved. Yamazaki Ansai ad-
dressed this issue by conceptualizing Confucianism more broadly than was con-
ventional at the time, in an attempt to prove that the Japanese of remote antiquity
had apprehended Confucianism’s universal truths independently of the Chinese
and, more importantly, before the Sages and early kings of Chinese antiquity. In
Ansai’s estimation, the Japanese were superior to the Chinese by virtue of this fact,
so that Confucianism was no longer an impediment to exceptionalist claims from
within Confucianism itself. While Sokō and Ansai w ere important seventeenth-
century influences for the scholars of Mitogaku, it was Kumazawa Banzan’s inter-
pretation that gave their message the ideological sophistication that was lacking
in the writings of Sokō and Ansai.
Like Ansai, Banzan thought about Confucianism in rather broad terms as well.
In fact, he thought about it so broadly that his conceptualizations exceeded the
boundaries of Confucianism altogether. For Banzan, the scholar’s goal was not a
Conclusion 195
deeper understanding or appreciation of Confucianism, or even Sagehood itself,

as the Song Confucians believed. Scholars, and ordinary people in general, should
seek after the cosmic truth of the universe, which he referred to as the Way. Con-
fucianism was for Banzan one means to achieving this goal, but it was not the only
one; Buddhism and even Christianity were similar to Confucianism in the sense
that they were all doctrinal attempts to grasp the Way. Of these three sets of teach-
ings, Confucianism was clearly the best for Banzan, but the one that was above
all others in the world was Shinto. Like Ansai, Banzan believed that the Japanese
people of remote antiquity had apprehended the Way independently of China
and independently of Confucianism; however, the Way for him existed outside of
Confucianism, whereas Ansai did not conceive of the Way separately from the
Confucian context. Banzan’s faith in Shinto was such that he believed that its
Tokugawa revival would be sufficient finally to wean the Japanese people off their
intellectual reliance on Confucianism. Shinto was the superior means to the ap-
prehension of the Way, and its Japanese provenance bestowed upon Japan its su-
periority over the rest of the world. What ultimately sounds like a repudiation of
Confucianism, however, was not actually the case with Banzan. Banzan main-
tained his Confucian identity, and his support for the views of Wang Yangming.
While archaic Shinto was superior to Confucianism, as the Chinese attempt to
grasp the Way, Banzan still relied on Confucianism for its conceptual language.
While he interpreted the lack of such a conceptual language in Japanese antiq-
uity as further proof that the ancient Japanese had, in fact, grasped the Way, such
a terminological lack posed its own set of problems for Banzan, not the least of
which was the metalanguage he needed to make his arguments. For this reason,
Banzan never abandoned Confucianism, despite his reverence for Shinto, and the
Mitogaku scholars followed suit. As Nariaki instructed the Mito scholars, Shinto
could have no existence without Confucianism; proper instruction required
knowledge of both. While the adoption of Confucianism was not the source of
Japan’s superiority, its conceptual language was ideal for explaining Japan’s
superiority. For Banzan and the Mitogaku scholars, the Japanese people needed
Confucianism, since it provided the only legitimate standard by which to assess
Japan’s superiority.
The Mitogaku scholars acknowledged the intellectual affinities between their
school of thought and that of their counterparts in Kokugaku. Exceptionalism
provides us with the tools to begin conceptualizing these affinities without resort-
ing to terms like proto-nationalism, nationalism, or even to narratives that priv-
ilege the development of the nation-state. The present discussion of Tokugawa
exceptionalism began with Kokugaku in the context of nativism, but one of its
important themes has been the avoidance of an exclusive identification of
196 Conclusion
Western intellectual concepts with Tokugawa ones. The Confucian Shinto schol-
ars of the seventeenth century, and their intellectual descendants in nineteenth-
century Mito, articulated exceptionalist ideas in their writings and so contrib-
uted to Tokugawa exceptionalism, and the same is true of the Kokugaku scholars
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Another way of conceptualizing ex-
ceptionalism as an overarching intellectual category is to look at the example of
American history, from which the concept of exceptionalism originated.
While Japanologists have classified Kokugaku as nativism for more than a gen-
eration, the implicit comparison that such a classification evokes has never been
explored. While a general suspicion among Japanologists regarding comparative
studies at least partially explains the reasons for this historiographical absence,
another explanation is related to the ways in which nativism is discussed out-
side of the context of Japanese studies. If one follows the concept of nativism
found in Ralph Linton’s work, and in the subsequent work of his followers, it is
difficult to find any institution analogous to Kokugaku; in fact, Linton looks
less at institutions than at the behaviors that ensue as the result of intercultural
encounters. On the other hand, John Higham’s work does focus on specific
groups and institutions, despite the fact that the field of Japanese studies seems to
have adopted elements of Linton’s views more than Higham’s.3 The two important
groups in Higham’s study of American nativism are the Ku Klux Klan of the early
twentieth century, and the Know-Nothings of the nineteenth. While a careful
comparative study of these American movements with Kokugaku would poten-
tially yield useful insights into the cultures of both the United States and Japan,
one need not have intimate knowledge of either the KKK or the Know-Nothings
to see that American nativist movements bear little conceptual resemblance to
Kokugaku. In other words, Japanologists have not undertaken the task of a directly
comparative analysis of Kokugaku with any American institution, despite their
use of a concept with decidedly American origins, precisely because no such com-
parison is to be had. While the use of a term like nativism creates opportunities
for comparison in the Japanese context, no institution has ever presented itself
for such a comparison, at least not in any direct way. So far as I can tell, Tran-
scendentalism presents the closest American analogue to Kokugaku.
While the canonical figures of Kokugaku certainly had their exceptionalist
moments, they were neither exclusively devoted to the expression of such ideas
nor primarily concerned with exceptionalist themes. While many, perhaps even
most, of the followers of Transcendentalism rarely if ever expressed exceptionalist
ideas, the same is also true of many of the followers of Kokugaku. Murata Harumi
and Oyamada Tomokiyo eschewed Kokugaku as a term and concept, aligning
themselves with Wagaku and its Confucian framework for their studies of
Conclusion 197
Japanese antiquity, and the scholarship of Motoori Norinaga, the most prominent
of the Kokugaku scholars and one of the most ardent supporters of Tokugawa
exceptionalism, made them uncomfortable. Similarly, Norinaga’s son, Haruniwa
(1763–1828), and Norinaga’s student, Ban Nobutomo (1773–1846), were serious
philologists who had no time for the expression of subjective opinions.4 As the
examples of Confucian Shinto and Mitogaku demonstrate, there were intellectu-
als who expressed exceptionalist ideas contemporaneously with the Kokugaku
scholars, but who fell outside of the Kokugaku movement as such. Just as Ameri-
canists do not view Transcendentalism as in any way synonymous with American
exceptionalism, Japanologists should similarly not view Kokugaku as synonymous
with Tokugawa exceptionalism.
To free Kokugaku from nativism, thereby allowing us to explore the relevance
of concepts like exceptionalism, we must also free nativism from Kokugaku, which
would allow for the exploration of nativism outside of the very narrow confines
of Kokugaku.5 Just because the canonical figures of Kokugaku articulated con-
cepts that elude classification as nativism, that fact should not lead Japanologists
to conclude that nativism simply did not exist during the Tokugawa period. In
order to begin the process of evaluating the relevance of nativism to Tokugawa
Japan, we must first come to grips with the ways in which nativism is understood
outside of Japanese studies. Unfortunately for Japanologists, and also not surpris-
ingly, there is no universally accepted definition of nativism among humanists
and social scientists. While the origins of the term and concept of exceptional-
ism are thoroughly embedded in the American context, the same is no less true
in the case of nativism. The term was coined during the 1840s to signify opposi-
tion among the “native born” to foreign immigration, especially to Catholic im-
migrants from Ireland and from German-speaking areas of Europe. It is for this
reason that Ray Billington (1938) argues that nativism originally signified anti-
Catholicism in the United States. John Higham understood that nativism had the
potential to function as a broader historiographical, political, and social category
if it were divorced of its exclusive association with anti-Catholicism, a task that
he undertook in his own work on American nativism during the 1950s. Higham
argues that the critical aspect of nativism was opposition not to Catholicism but
to the immigrants who brought their Catholic faith with them to the United States.
Nativism, therefore, could become a broader category of analysis, not only for the
contemporary United States (in addition to its historical past), but also for other
societies of the past and present.
A potential impediment to the universalization of nativism for Higham was
that another attempt had already been made by Ralph Linton about a decade ear-
lier. Linton’s conceptualization of nativism was more far-reaching and inclusive
198 Conclusion
than Higham’s. Not only did Linton consider the reactions of the natives, he also
analyzed the reactions of the arrivals as well. Simply put, all of the reactions of all
of the parties that resulted from intercultural encounters qualified as nativism for
Linton. Higham was only interested in the hostile reactions of the natives toward
immigrant arrivals,6 so that positive reactions among the natives, like tolerance
and cultural accommodation, were not nativistic, and neither were the sentiments,
hostile or otherwise, of those arriving in a foreign land. In addition to this criti-
cal difference between Higham and Linton, the paradigmatic intercultural
encounter itself also varies between the two theorists. For Higham, the arrivals
were poor immigrants to the United States, while the natives were those who
claimed to be native born; indigenous peoples w ere not, generally speaking, par-
ticipants in these encounters between Catholic immigrants and the native-born
Protestants. Politically speaking, the native born in Higham’s scheme w ere more
powerful than the Catholic immigrants. For Linton, the situation is largely in-
verted, so that the natives are weak and the arrivals are strong. Colonialism,
not surprisingly, provides the context for Linton’s paradigmatic intercultural
encounter. The European colonizers, though strong militarily and technologi-
cally, are still a kind of immigrant group for Linton, so that immigration emerges
as a common trait of both views of nativism. Another commonality is the hostile
reaction of the natives to the presence of the arrivals, which is a critical criterion
of nativism for Higham but merely one of many for Linton.
Before applying nativism to Japanese history, we must first try to reconcile
these two similar yet divergent views of nativism. While Higham’s model works
well for contexts within which poor immigrants settle abroad for economic rea-
sons, it works less well in colonial settings, since the power dynamic is reversed.
Linton’s model functions best within colonialism, but it falls short in the case of
poor immigrants, which was typical of not only the United States, but also of
Canada, Australia, and other immigrant nations. His model, while acknowledg-
ing hostility as part of a range of human emotions that result from such encounters,
is simply too all-encompassing to be analytically meaningful. What Japanolo-
gists need is a concept of nativism that is more narrow in scope and focused on
hostility, like Higham’s, yet more accommodating of colonial and semicolonial
situations like Linton’s. Tokugawa Japan was not an era of large-scale immigra-
tion from abroad, so that a strict application of Higham’s concept of nativism
would be impossible. At the same time, a strict application of Linton’s concept
of nativism would ensnare too many cultural developments that w ere the result
of Japanese encounters with other cultures, such as the adoption of firearms, to
which Linton’s analysis points, and forms of scholarship focused on Western
knowledge, like Rangaku, which were generally tolerant of Western institu-
Conclusion 199
tions. Even the adoption of Buddhism and Confucianism could be analyzed as

different kinds of Japanese nativism in Linton’s scheme. A useful reconciliation
of their views would include an emphasis on the movement of people, namely,
foreign arrivals in Japan, and the hostile reaction of the Japanese to the pres-
ence of foreigners in their midst. For these reasons, Kokugaku cannot qualify
as nativism, since its development did not involve the arrivals of foreigners
in Japan, so that their hostility, such as it was, was not directed at a foreign
presence in Japan.
The politic al movement known as sonnō-jō’i fits these two fundamental
criteria well. The idea of sonnō connoted loyalty to the emperor as the leader of
Japan, rather than the shogun, who was the military commander in charge of
protecting the emperor and defending Japan from foreign invasion. These duties
of protection and defense w ere tested during the era of Japan’s first Bakufu, based
at Kamakura, whose leaders had to deal with the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281.
These invasions ended in failure for the Mongols due in no small part to unfavor-
able weather, but the perception among the victorious Japanese was that the sho-
gun, through the office of the regent who actually commanded Japanese forces in
the field, had carried out his duty to protect and defend the emperor and Japan.
While historians argue for a link between the “success” of Japan’s defense during
the years of the invasions and the downfall of the Kamakura Bakufu during the
1330s, the Mongol invasions are an example of warriors responding to their mil-
itary obligations to the imperial court. The arrival of the Europeans in the six-
teenth century was qualitatively different from the Japanese encounter with the
Mongols during the thirteenth century. Although there were certainly concerns
about European intentions in Japan, the Japanese did not view the Europeans as
enemies on the brink of invasion and conquest. The Europeans arrived for the first
time during the waning years of the Muromachi shoguns, the last of whom re-
signed in 1575, but they never had to issue a call to arms to deal with the Europe
ans in the way their Kamakura predecessors did with the Mongols. The Tokugawa
Bakufu came to power in 1603, and its leaders inherited these European rela-
tionships that had developed during the previous century. Fears of diabolical
European designs on Japan (e.g., converting its people to Catholicism) had
been brewing during the 1580s and 1590s among Japanese leaders, such that
the Tokugawa shoguns decided to expel all Europea ns from Japanese soil, al-
lowing only the Dutch to remain, who assumed control over Dejima (Deshima)
following the departure of the Portuguese. The ability of the Tokugawa Bakufu
to enforce its will on the Europea ns, thereby protecting Japan and its imperial
court, was another example of warriors fulfilling their military obligations, just
as they had done in the thirteenth century.
200 Conclusion
The cries of sonnō that reverberated among the ranks of the samurai during
the nineteenth century had these historical precedents in mind. After the arrival
of Perry, and the unequal treaties that were concluded with the United States, Great
Britain, Russia, France, Prussia, and the Netherlands, the image of a Bakufu that
was strong in the face of foreign threats began to evaporate quickly. The Bakufu
was simply unable to prevent Westerners from imposing their will on the Japa
nese. Once news began to circulate around Japan that the emperor himself had
not approved these treaties, at least not initially, the perception began to take shape
that the shogun not only was not fulfilling his duty to the emperor, but was also
actively working against the emperor. The slogan sonnō came to signify at this time
the effort to force the shogun to yield to the emperor’s wishes; following the em-
peror’s ex post facto approval of the initial round of treaties in 1859, sonnō began
to signify a desire to topple the traitorous Tokugawa Bakufu and to restore power
to the imperial court.
The combined slogan sonnō-jō’i encompasses elements of both Linton’s and
Higham’s concepts of nativism. One of the key aspects of nativism in Linton’s view
is revivalism, when natives respond to the arrival of individuals from a more power
ful society (like the Europeans) by asserting the need to revive certain elements
of their native culture in order to counteract the moral decline that led to the land-
ing of their uninvited visitors in the first place. While sonnō was a slogan with
very ancient origins, it never reached the proportions of a national political move-
ment until the final decades of the Tokugawa period, when it became a central
element of shishi ideology. For the supporters of sonnō, a return to imperial rule
was the best means the Japanese had for resisting what they thought was Japan’s
impending domination, a fate that had already befallen the Chinese. On the other
hand, jō’i, another term with an ancient provenance, seemed to signify the forc-
ible expulsion of Westerners from Japan. Beginning with Perry in 1853, Westerners
began arriving in Japan in contravention of the Bakufu’s policy of isolation, now
popularly called sakoku. With the unequal treaties, the Western presence in
Japan was not technically illegal, especially after 1859, so that violence and terror
in the name of expulsion seemed the only viable means of dealing with the un-
wanted Westerners. Reactions of extreme hostility to the arrival of outsiders are
the key characteristic of Higham’s view of nativism. Thus, sonnō-jō’i seems, at first
glance, to conform quite nicely to the contours of nativism, whether one relies on
Linton or Higham.
The resonance between nativism and sonnō-jō’i should not lead us to link them
together exclusively. There are two important reasons for scrupulously avoiding
an exclusive association of sonnō-jō’i with nativism. In the first place, sonnō did
not always signify the restoration of imperial power, even during the tumultuous
Conclusion 201
years following Perry’s arrival. Instead, it meant a reassertion of the traditional

hierarchy of the imperial court over the Bakufu. It was the revival of this hierar-
chy, rather than the revival of imperial rule as such, that characterized sonnō dur-
ing the 1850s. Similarly, jō’i did not signify the violent expulsion of Westerners
from Japan by the final decade of the Tokugawa period. Rather, jō’i became an
anti-Bakufu slogan, since Bakufu leaders had cooperated in the development of
Japan’s subservient relationship with the West. Years of Japanese efforts to effect
actual expulsion had proven fruitless, and it was clear by the middle 1860s that
literal jō’i was not a realistic option for dealing with the Westerners anymore. A
second caveat that should accompany any analysis of sonnō-jō’i as nativism is that
there were other instances of nativism in Japanese history, including in the
Tokugawa period. While the supporters of kaikoku often found themselves pitted
against the supporters of sonnō-jō’i, an interaction that had fatal consequences at
times, as the example of Sakuma Shōzan demonstrates so clearly, many of them
shared the same goal as their rivals of ridding Japan of the Western presence.
While the two sides diverged over critical issues like the timetable of expulsion,
whether immediate or eventual, or the means, whether with Western technology
or without it, supporters on both sides harbored similar visions of an indepen
dent and strong Japan. For this reason, those advocates of kaikoku who worked
toward the goal of an eventual expulsion of the Westerners, via the adoption of
Western military technology, were no less nativistic than their counterparts in
sonnō-jō’i. Aside from these Bakumatsu examples that center around interactions
with Europeans and Americans, there are certainly other instances of similar in-
tercultural encounters in Japanese history that can be analyzed as nativism, such
that an exclusive association of nativism with sonnō-jō’i would be a mistake.
The leaders of the Mito domain and the scholars who worked for it during the
nineteenth century were key figures in the history of sonnō-jō’i. The places of Mi-
togaku and the Mito domain are secure within the history of Tokugawa nativ-
ism. At the same time, the ideological message that the scholars of Mitogaku
crafted drew heavily from exceptionalist ideas that had developed during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They formulated this ideology during a
critical interval of the Tokugawa period, namely, the first half of the nineteenth
century leading up to the end of sakoku in 1854. While politic al activism
increased after 1854, including but not limited to the deeds of the shishi, the fun-
damentals of Mito’s ideology remained largely the same. In other words, while
exceptionalist thought predated the ending of sakoku, it changed little even after
Perry’s arrival and the advent of nativistic responses among the Japanese people.
Not only did exceptionalism and nativism coexist, they did so harmoniously and
even seamlessly; exceptionalism inspired nativism, and nativism perpetuated
202 Conclusion
exceptionalism during this time. Consequently, Mitogaku’s emergence and

decline during this period historically positioned it as a nexus between excep-
tionalism and nativism. Rather than arguing that this institutional connection
between exceptionalism and nativism was somehow unique to Tokugawa Japan,
or to Japan in general, we can use the example of Mitogaku to suggest that similar
connections between the two existed in other societies and cultures in other con-
texts. When one sees the development of nativism, exceptionalism may be lurking
nearby; similarly, if exceptionalism emerges, nativism may not be far behind.7
The same historiographical caution that produced the caveat regarding the
exclusive identification of Tokugawa institutions with Western ones should
also give us pause in the case of Mitogaku. Having arisen a few decades before
Mitogaku, Kokugaku was also a significant ideological player in the history of
Bakumatsu sonnō-jō’i. One major difference between the two, of course, was that
Kokugaku’s canonical figures were long since dead by the time Perry and the
Americans arrived, while Mitogaku’s most influential intellectual, Aizawa Seishisai,
was active at precisely this time. Aside from their intellectual development, the
two forms of scholarship w ere both ideologically relevant during the 1850s and
1860s, so that the historical position of Mitogaku at the confluence of exception-
alism and nativism was also likely true of Kokugaku. However, the classification
of Kokugaku as Tokugawa nativism can only be accurate for this narrow range of
years after Perry’s arrival; otherwise, its potential to inspire nativistic practices
was, at best, only latent, and conforms better to what scholars outside of Japanese
studies call exceptionalism.
As an analytical category, exceptionalism emerged from American history,
as was the case with nativism. During the early decades of the twentieth century,
Marxist scholars, in their attempt to account for the seeming aberration of the
United States, described it as the seeming “exception” to the rule of Marxian
historical development, even though analysts like Werner Sombart believed
that America’s exceptionality would eventually fade with time, and the theory
associated with American resistance to the Marxian model became known as
exceptionalism to those opposed to the Marxists. In the 1950s, anti-Marxian
intellectuals took the term and used it to advance their own ideological agenda
within the context of the Cold War, and exceptionalism began to evolve into an
explanation of American success and dominance in the world. About a genera-
tion later, historians began to examine how such thinking had developed over
time; they argued that Americans had held similar views regarding America’s
place in the world since the beginning of the republic—indeed, these views pre-
dated the republic by more than a century. These historians created a concept of
exceptionalism that was related to, but in certain critical ways was also opposed
Conclusion 203
to, the earlier view of the anti-Marxian scholars. Basically, this new historicist
(what I call subjective-evidential) view of exceptionalism appealed to intellec-
tuals interested in undermining exceptionalist interpretations of American
history, while the older view (what I call objective-evidential) appealed to in-
tellectuals who largely agreed with exceptionalist views of the United States.
Comparative analysis, interestingly, is more prominent in the latter concept of
exceptionalism than in the former. Scholars who believe in exceptionalism,
and also analyze it in a scholarly way, have used examples from contemporary
societies throughout the world, including, and perhaps critically so, Japan. Their
goal has not been to relativize exceptionalism, but to universalize it by proving
that its assumptions are legitimate and true. Believing in their own academic suc-
cess in this endeavor, they are unwilling to extend the concept of exceptionalism
itself to any society other than the United States. For American exceptionalists,
exceptionalism only applies to the United States.
The interpretations that emerge from the historicist view of American ex
ceptionalism are, not surprisingly, very different. Being Americanists for the most
part, historians of American exceptionalism have acknowledged the utility of
comparative analysis, but their training as Americanists places obvious limita-
tions on their ability actually to carry out such a comparative analysis. Support-
ers of the historicist view of American exceptionalism have had to broaden the
definition of exceptionalism so as to make it applicable to the American past; in
so doing, they have also opened it up for applications outside of the American con-
text, and this is something that they understand well. By taking the universalist
view of exceptionalism supported by their exceptionalist colleagues in the social
sciences, American historians have relativized American exceptionalism so as
to link it to the American past, a move that also has important implications for
other fields, like Japanese studies. By strongly suggesting that exceptionalism
as an analytical category has applications outside of the American context, Amer-
icanists expect scholars in other fields to assume the task of reuniversalizing
exceptionalism.
Understandably, historians of American exceptionalism include contempo-
rary Japan in their discussions of exceptionalisms outside of the United States,
something that their social science counterparts had already done. Both groups
of scholars have looked to Nihonjinron when discussing Japan in the context of
exceptionalism. For American exceptionalists, Nihonjinron is but a rough ana-
logue to American exceptionalism, since exceptionalism can only apply to the
United States. To historians of American exceptionalism, Nihonjinron is the
manifestation of exceptionalism in Japan. However, those American historians
who have written about exceptionalisms in other contexts have been unable to
204 Conclusion
see beyond developments of the twentieth century; while they freely roam all
throughout the American past in their own work, they are unable to do this out-
side of the very recent past for societies other than the United States, when dis-
cussing exceptionalisms elsewhere. They are either unaware of, or otherwise fail
to appreciate, the centrality of history to the authors associated with Nihonjinron
qua Japanese exceptionalism. The case of Tokugawa Japan presents an opportu-
nity to rectify this lapse in the application of exceptionalism to Japanese history.
American Exceptionalism: The Emic and the Etic

The problems that the exclusive identification of Kokugaku as nativism have cre-
ated for the field of Japanese studies in the English-publishing world might prompt
some to question the wisdom of linking Western concepts to Japanese concepts
in the first place. After all, Edward Said has famously shown how the West’s knowl-
edge of the “Orient” has always been more than an innocent academic endeavor,
so that the illusion of intellectual mastery that Orientalism creates eventually
becomes a justification for political mastery as well. Although the dynamic be-
tween the West (the United States in particular) and Japan diverges in significant
ways from the dynamic between the West and the Islamic world, with which Said
was primarily concerned, a hierarchical relationship between the United States
and Japan is at least implied by the ways in which Japanologists have analyzed
the Japanese people and their culture. In fact, the development of Japanese stud-
ies in the United States was largely the direct result of Japan’s defeat during World
War II, and Japan’s subsequent U.S.-led occupation. In the postwar period, the
search for commonalities between the United States and Japan was subsumed be-
neath the imperative to explain the ways in which the Japanese were inherently
different, since only difference could account for “what went wrong” with the Japa
nese. After the emergence of postcolonialism, such an imperative became less
acutely urgent, leaving Japanologists with the strong temptation to abandon
Western analytical categories in their work. The endurance of nativism, as well as
other Western categories, among Japanologists indicates that this has yet to occur
within the field of Japanese studies, and for good reason. The epistemological
issues that arise for Japanologists writing in Western languages concerning the
applicability of analytical categories generated externally to the culture under
analysis have already been addressed by anthropologists, whose field has pro-
duced analytical insights that have been useful for historians on more than a
few occasions.
Since the 1960s, anthropologists have grappled with the implications of anal-
yses that rely on categories alien to the culture to which they are applied with the
American Exceptionalism 205
concepts of emics and etics. Kenneth Pike derived these concepts during the 1960s
using the linguistic concepts of phonemic and phonetic as the basis for emics and
etics, respectively.8 Emic concepts are generated by the members of a particu lar
culture to describe phenomena within that culture; emics are associated with the
insider’s point of view. On the other hand, etics are associated with the perspective
of the observers of a given culture; etic concepts come from the observer’s culture
and are then applied to the study of a culture other than the observer’s own.9
Pike himself envisioned a discipline of anthropology that was focused on emics
rather than etics, viewing etics as a necessary first step in the eventual descrip-
tion of emics.10 Inspired by Pike’s conceptual categories, other anthropologists,
such as Ward Goodenough and Marvin Harris, insist that legitimate analysis
requires both emics and etics, rather than emphasizing one over the other.
Harris, however, argues that etics do have an intellectual status that is distinct
by comparison with emics, since etics describe commonalities among cultures
that make them intelligible to each other, a function that emics cannot fulfill.11
Commonly, anthropologists have little difficulty in keeping the emics and etics
of their analyses separate and distinct. Harris admits that, at times, this sepa-
ration can be a challenge to maintain, since emic concepts can be used etically
by cultural insiders, and the etic concepts of the observers are themselves emic
concepts at the same time. Scholars and researchers of culture should be mindful
of this conceptual flux and instability.
Harris has tied the concepts of emics and etics to a methodological approach
to anthropology that he calls cultural materialism. At the core of this approach
is the assumption that similar material conditions in disparate cultural contexts can
result in similar cultural developments. Since the emphasis within cultural ma-
terialism is on commonalities among cultures, it is a fundamentally comparative
approach that seeks to establish a study of human behavior in general, which
explains why Harris characterizes etics as the goal of anthropology, not emics.
Unlike other approaches to the study of culture, such as those in the humanities,
cultural materialism for Harris is distinguished by its commitment to science.12 In
fact, Goodenough insists that a focus on the etics of human behavior is itself an
indication of just such a commitment.13 For Goodenough, scientific approaches
are characterized by their lack of any bias on the part of the analyst, such that
objective knowledge is both the goal and the ultimate result of careful scientific
inquiry.14 Harris argues that anthropologists who use cultural materialism as a
method must subscribe in some way to the belief that scientific knowledge repre-
sents a special way of knowing that is distinct by comparison with other ways of
knowing.15 One significant advantage of a commitment to science within cultural
materialism is that it begins the process of overcoming the conundrum for
206 Conclusion
anthropologists posed by colonialism.16 Colonial subjects, therefore, need not

worry about the motivations of the anthropologists in their midst, as their work
is in the cause of furthering human knowledge, and not the goals of the coloniz-
ers. While lauding such advantages in the adherence to scientific principles, Harris
reminds his readers that their analytical conclusions must be subjected to rigor-
ous testing.17 Since etics is the conceptual foundation of cultural materialism, an-
thropologists must be willing to test and retest them with new case studies and
new data, in order to make them as broadly applicable as possible. Etics should
not apply only to some cultures and not to others; if the data indicate that such a
condition exists, then anthropologists need to reexamine their understanding of
the etic concepts in question.
For the present study, nativism and exceptionalism function as etic concepts
when applied to Tokugawa Japan. Their etic application to contexts other than
their emic American one is not limited to Japanese studies, and scholars seeking
to apply these concepts etically have not, generally speaking, done so with Japan
in mind, excepting the work of Ralph Linton for nativism and Seymour Martin
Lipset for exceptionalism. In the case of nativism, many Japanologists have ex-
clusively linked it to Kokugaku for more than a generation, despite the fact that
the two major versions of etic nativism, one associated with Linton and the other
with John Higham, are broad enough that such an exclusive classification is both
unnecessary and even odd. With the exceptions of John Breen and Carol Gluck
(and perhaps others), no one has attempted to articulate which etic version of na-
tivism is dominant within Japanese studies.18 Breen observes how usages of
nativism in Japanese studies generally conform to Linton’s model, with various
tweaks that were added by subsequent scholars, but he seems aware of neither
Higham’s concept of nativism nor the American provenance of emic nativism. For
this reason, he was unable to see the critical commonality between these other-
wise divergent etic concepts of nativism, namely, the direct interaction between
members of different societies. Both Linton and Higham assume that distinct
groups of people, one as insiders and the other as outsiders, coming into contact
with one another is the fundamental condition that must exist before nativistic
responses will ensue. For all of the antiforeign rhetoric of the Kokugaku scholars,
this condition simply did not exist during the era of Kokugaku’s intellectual de-
velopment, namely, the middle of the eighteenth century to the early decades of
the nineteenth. Kokugaku scholars directed their criticisms at the Buddhists, the
Confucians, and the scholars of Rangaku; in every case, Tokugawa intellectuals
voiced their opposition to the scholarship of their fellow Tokugawa intellectuals.
While the critiques of Kokugaku scholars against Buddhism, Confucianism, and
so on, did vaguely resemble historical examples of American nativism, chiefly the
Know-Nothings, the social encounter between members of distinct cultural groups

was critically missing from the Kokugaku case; in addition, it is not at all clear if
the American case was ever held up as a conceptual model with which to com-
pare Kokugaku.
While Breen focuses his analysis of Kokugaku as nativism using the work of
anthropologists, it is unclear whether Japanologists have, in fact, had the anthro-
pological view in mind when using the concept of nativism in their own work.
Similarly, it is unclear just what, precisely, was so nativistic about Kokugaku to
Japanologists. The two prominent intellectual aspects of Kokugaku upon which
Japanologists focus their collective attention are the rejection of foreign forms of
knowledge and the praise of all things deemed authentically Japanese. Of these
two aspects, the former carries with it the most potential for a classification as
nativism, since it involved the rejection of something foreign. While nativism is
certainly a kind of antiforeignism, it is more antiforeigner than it is simply anti-
foreign, as Higham’s work demonstrates so well. On the other hand, Linton’s view
of nativism, while it is also inclusive of antiforeigner sentiments, applies just as
well to proforeigner sentiments; for this reason, I argue that Higham’s concept of
nativism has more etic potential for Tokugawa Japan than does Linton’s. In nei-
ther conceptualization of nativism is antiforeignism directed primarily at an im-
age of foreigners, an image that was supported by insiders belonging to the same
culture as the nativists themselves. An analysis of cultural rejection in the writ-
ings of the Kokugaku scholars reveals the ways in which it conflicts with the etic
concepts of nativism; rejection, as the basis for the classification of Kokugaku
as nativism, does not pass the etic test. The same can be said of the other major
intellectual aspect of Kokugaku, namely, its praise of the authentically Japanese.
Cultural self-praise is nowhere to be seen in the theoretical articulations of
nativism, whether of Higham’s or Linton’s etic conceptualizations. While the
nativists of the specific case studies examined in the writings of either Higham
or Linton may have engaged in such cultural self-praise, self-praise itself did not
become a significant enough outcome to earn a conceptual promotion to become
one of the distinguishing features of nativism. For example, while the Know-
Nothings likely praised the greatness of American culture and their own WASP
ethnicity, it was their rejection of the Catholic Irish on which both Billington and
Higham focused their analytical attention, not the self-praise. Consequently, nei-
ther of the ways in which Kokugaku is marked as distinct and historiographically
significant qualifies it as nativism.
Kokugaku as nativism, at least as it is represented by the writings of its ca-
nonical figures (the shiushi), represents a novel addition to the etic understand-
ing of nativism. If the classification of Kokugaku as nativism were to endure, it
208 Conclusion
would make Tokugawa Japan nativistic in a way that makes it singularly unique
in the world and in human history. Another way to look at Kokugaku in the con-
text of nativism is to think of it as an anomaly for which the paradigm of nativism
cannot account. With this in mind, three options are available to Japanologists at
this point. First, Japanologists can simply force the case of Kokugaku to conform
with the etic concept of nativism, even though no change will result from doing
this, as far as the way in which nativism is understood by scholars outside of
Japanese studies is concerned. In other words, Tokugawa Japan will become the
outlier case of nativism, since it will be the exception to the typical cases that
helped shape the etic concept. The pitfall that the view of Kokugaku as the atypi-
cal example of nativism creates is that it encourages Japanologists to think of
Tokugawa Japan in ways that are reminiscent of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism,
of course, describes a kind of essential uniqueness in extremely positive terms,
reaching even proportions of superiority, with which an image of Kokugaku as
nativism would seem to be at odds; Kokugaku as nativism would become, instead,
the inverted image of exceptionalism. Another way to conceptualize the intel-
lectual implications of Kokugaku as nativism is to think of it as an example of
negative exceptionalism. As a rule, while nativistic responses have emanated only
from the direct interaction of two distinct societies, Tokugawa Japan was this rule’s
only exception, since Kokugaku scholars did not have to interact with foreign
peoples in order to hate them. Thus, Tokugawa Japan was a truly unique society
in the world; without groups of foreign outsiders upon which to heap their scorn,
Tokugawa antiforeignism was also truly unique. The Tokugawa Japanese were
more antiforeign than their nativist counterparts elsewhere, both temporally
and spatially. Such a view places not just Tokugawa Japan, but even contempo-
rary Japan, in an irredeemably negative light.
After studying the etic concepts of nativism, it is clear that the cultural price
that Japanologists must pay to maintain the identification of Kokugaku with
nativism is too high. A second option, then, would be to consider abandoning
the etic concepts of nativism altogether and to fall back on Japanese emics. There
are downsides to this option, too, not the least of which is the epistemological con-
fusion it would create. By dropping nativism from the conceptual lexicon, and oth-
erwise avoiding any etic classification for Kokugaku, there would still be numerous
instances within the writings of Japanologists in which the usage of Western etic
concepts would endure. By privileging the emic status of one particu lar concept,
in this instance Kokugaku, yet continuing to use etics in all other cases, its epis-
temological position within Japanese studies would be enhanced in ways that would
greatly exaggerate its historiographical importance. In order to avoid this di-
lemma, Japanologists could decide to abandon etics completely and opt, instead,
for an emics-only analysis of Japanese history and culture. Using etics as a point
of departure for an analysis of culture that would ultimately focus on emics was
the preferred methodology of Kenneth Pike, who originally conceptualized the
concepts of emics and etics during the 1960s.19 Unfortunately, the emics-only
approach can be achieved only at the expense of comprehensibility. By discuss-
ing Japanese institutions strictly through the use of emics, at best Japanologists
can only relate their work to one another, leaving Japanese case studies outside of
the etic discussions of their counterparts in other fields. In some ways, the use of
emics by Japanologists has already had the effect of allowing the development of etic
formations outside of Japanese studies without data from Japanese phenomena.
Thus, the emphasis on emics over etics within Japanese studies only perpetuates
perceptions of Japanese incommensurability and exceptionality. In the end, any
attempt to analyze Japan in a thoroughly emic way is doomed to failure, since
Japanologists must resort to translation in their research and scholarship. Fun-
damentally, translation involves the substitution of the emics of one language
with the emics of another. Yet the translator’s emics function also as etics, since
the signifieds to which they are assigned originated outside of their own cul-
tural context. This is especially true of scholars writing in languages other than
Japanese, but even those who write in Japanese must use etics as well.
A third and final option for Japanologists seeking a resolution to the prob-
lems caused by identifying Kokugaku with nativism is to do as Thomas Kuhn
suggests and begin the process of changing the paradigms. The exclusive identi-
fication of Kokugaku with nativism is a kind of paradigm that is oriented toward
a part icu lar set of issues that are themselves embedded in a larger interpretive
framework within which Japanologists produce their interpretations. For Kuhn,
this larger scholarly framework is itself another kind of paradigm, since it func-
tions as “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared
by the members of a given community.” Kokugaku’s association with nativism op-
erates as a paradigm within a paradigm, since “it denotes one sort of element in
that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or
examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining
puzzles of normal science.”20 Although it might masquerade itself as such, the
classification of Kokugaku as nativism is not the “truth”; it is nothing more than
an interpretation, that is to say, one way of apprehending a cultural, social, and
intellectual phenomenon (or set of phenomena), an endeavor for which anthro-
pologists created the concept of etics. Anthropologists employ the concepts of
emics and etics as part of a scientific approach to the study of culture and human
210 Conclusion
behavior. Consequently, Kuhn’s categories of paradigm, paradigm shifts, and sci-

entific revolutions should be applicable to the development of etics within anthro-
pology and, by extension, Japanese studies, through its use of etics in translation.
For Kuhn, paradigms develop in order to solve “a few problems that [a] group
of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.”21 In other words, the classification
of Kokugaku as nativism was supposed to address an issue or set of issues that its
previous classifications (like Neo-Shintoism) could not. While it is difficult to ana-
lyze directly the thinking processes of scholars who effected the paradigm shift
toward nativism more than a generation ago, it is possible to extrapolate some
aspects of this intellectual development within Japanese studies by looking at
the sorts of questions the concept of nativism could address. In the first place, the
concept of nativism resonates with nationalism, except that it can be descriptive
of behaviors within contexts that lack a coherent nation-state. By associating
Kokugaku with nativism, Japanologists can call attention to the similar ideologi-
cal messages articulated by the Kokugaku scholars and by their nationalist ideo-
logue counterparts in the modern era. In fact, the ideological resemblance of
Nihonjinron, as a contemporary and popu lar manifestation of nationalism, to
Kokugaku is one that its authors routinely acknowledge, as we saw in the context
of Japanese exceptionalism. In other words, nationalism in the modern context
functions in ways similar to nativism in the premodern context, whether there is
a direct link between the two or not. Associating Kokugaku with nativism, there-
fore, not only draws one’s attention toward connections with the modern era but
also highlights the Tokugawa period as the premodern vessel within which
Kokugaku developed. As a paradigm, nativism helps Japanologists answer re-
search questions related to the premodern origins of Japanese nationalism.
However, nationalism is not the only larger issue that is at stake in the para-
digm of Kokugaku as nativism. While nativism facilitates understandings of the
temporal extent of nationalism, it is also oriented toward the issue of assessing
the depth of that nationalism. Scholars of modern Japanese history are already
familiar with the superlatives used to describe Japanese nationalism during the
interwar and wartime years. Such superlatives w ere necessary in order to account
for the behavioral extremes to which the Japanese people went that otherwise de-
fied rational explanation, such as suicide, fighting to the death, and the refusal
to be taken prisoner. The Japanese were, in other words, nationalistic to an extent
not seen elsewhere in the world; Japanese nationalism was exceptional.22 This ex-
ceptionality was then projected onto interpretations of Japan’s premodern past,
and the connection between Kokugaku and this modern nationalism must have
seemed eminently natural to historians. The extreme rhetoric of the Kokugaku
scholars toward foreign cultures confirmed the pathological diagnosis of modern
nationalism. Since such antiforeign statements w ere not made in any context of
significant international intercourse, Kokugaku scholars became even more
antiforeign than their counterparts elsewhere. As Tokugawa antiforeignism,
Kokugaku was, like its modern counterpart, nationalism, exceptional. Unlike their
American would-be nativist counterparts, the Know-Nothings, Kokugaku schol-
ars did not even have to be around foreigners in order to despise them. They, and
by extension the people of Tokugawa Japan, were nativistic in ways that were
unique by comparison with the rest of the world, just as their descendants became
nationalistic in similarly unprecedented ways.
Kuhn tells us that it is not enough to undermine and eventually abandon a
paradigm without seeking to replace it with something else. Just as abandoning
an etic concept in favor of an emic concept represents a contradiction of cultural
materialism, abandoning one paradigm without replacing it with another signi-
fies a methodological contradiction for Kuhn as well. “The decision to reject one
paradigm,” Kuhn writes, “is always simultaneously the decision to accept another,
and the judgment leading to that decision involves comparison of both paradigms
with nature and with each other.”23 Both the use of etics and the use of paradigms
represent a commitment to science and to scientific ways of knowing. The impulse
that Japanologists felt to classify Kokugaku as something, using etics, is both
understandable and even admirable, and is indicative of their collective commit-
ment to an epistemology that scholars and researchers in the sciences share. To
retreat from etics in favor of a paradigm based on emics is to support a view of
Japan as incommensurable with the rest of the world. At the same time, to retreat
from interpretations as paradigms, or to deny their existence, also signifies an epis-
temological withdrawal that Kuhn associates with a rejection of science. There-
fore, Japanologists who acknowledge the shortcomings of identifying Kokugaku
with nativism not only must endeavor to find a paradigmatic replacement, they
must find another etic concept or set of concepts.
Before discussing the contours of a new paradigm for Kokugaku, it is neces-
sary to address the issue of the imperative to shift from one paradigm to another.
Since paradigms are geared toward “solving a few problems,” then the time to
abandon a paradigm in favor of another one is at hand when it can no longer
address these problems satisfactorily.24 While the concept of nativism seemed to
connect Japan’s modern era with its premodern era, especially as this connection
related to the issue of nationalism, it did so in a way that portrayed Japan in ex-
ceptional terms. Scholars of nationalism are not in universal agreement over the
importance of connecting modern nationalism to any premodern antecedents;
yet, for those who do believe in the importance of this issue, there must be a way
to address this connection without resorting to exceptionalist explanations.
212 Conclusion
The interpretation of at least some of the Tokugawa Japanese as nativistic in

ways that are part icu lar and unique to them makes Kokugaku the outlier case
within the larger discussion of nativism in a world or comparative setting. When
analyzing the classification of Kokugaku as nativism within the context of para-
digms, Kokugaku becomes the anomaly for which the nativist paradigm has no
rational explanation. The “awareness of anomaly,” Kuhn writes, “opens a period
in which conceptual categories are adjusted until the initially anomalous has be-
come the anticipated.”25 The anomaly of Kokugaku becomes apparent only when
nativism is conceived as both an etic concept and as a paradigm.
Ironically, while exceptionalism is part of the problem that the interpretation
of Kokugaku as nativism presents, it is also a critical part of its paradigmatic
solution. Specifically, rather than categorizing Kokugaku as nativism, whether for
reasons of its antiforeignism or narcissistic self-praise or even both, we can at least
conceptualize the latter issue of self-praise using the category of exceptionalism.
It should be made clear that those elements of Kokugaku ideology that qualify as
exceptionalist are merely intellectual components of Kokugaku scholarship, rather
than constitutive of that scholarship itself. Other forms of scholarship, like some
schools of Confucianism, chiefly Mitogaku, had the same kind of intellectual
components as well, so that Japanologists should view Tokugawa exceptional-
ism inclusively. At the same time, Japanologists should be aware of other distinctive
aspects of Kokugaku scholarship that were not especially exceptionalistic, such as
the commitment of its followers to Kōshōgaku (evidential learning).26 In other
words, exceptionalism is one valid categorization of a particular set of intellec-
tual features of Kokugaku scholarship, but there are other valid categorizations
that highlight its other features. While the link between Kokugaku’s canonical fig-
ures and exceptionalism is undeniable, some of its lesser-k nown figures are more
weakly associated with it, and others not at all. Therefore, to identify Kokugaku
exclusively with exceptionalism, and to claim that all of its followers and adher-
ents were exceptionalists, would be inaccurate.
The ending of the paradigm of Kokugaku as nativism prepares the way for
establishing a new one based on the concept of exceptionalism. This new para-
digm, however, does not simply replace nativism with exceptionalism, but instead
uses the latter to conceptualize aspects of Kokugaku, rather than apprehending
it in its entirety. The scope of this new paradigm should be more limited than the
one it is to replace. By focusing on the issue of self-praise as exceptionalism,
Kokugaku’s other prominent intellectual aspect, its antiforeignism, is left out. Anti
foreignism resonates more with nativism than it does with exceptionalism, so
long as the antiforeignism is focused on people rather than on cultural images
or institutions. Some American exceptionalists, to be sure, are or were also anti-
foreign, but antiforeignism itself is not shared widely enough among American
exceptionalists to qualify as one of exceptionalism’s quintessential features.
Similarly, not all Kokugaku scholars exhibited ideas that we can qualify as an-
tiforeignism; however, even for those scholars who were antiforeign, the sort of
antiforeignism that is focused on a foreign image constitutes neither nativism
nor exceptionalism. In this case, antiforeignism, as a category unto itself, may have
to suffice.27
While this study has analyzed the emics and etics of nativism and exception-
alism, we must remember that the same kind of analysis applies to Japanese con-
cepts as well. The most important of these Japanese concepts for this study is
Kokugaku, and there are important emic and etic implications to consider. Our
discussion can begin with an analysis of its status as an emic concept; in the case
of Kokugaku, there are two distinct emic layers that Japanologists need to bear in
mind. First, for scholars writing in languages other than Japanese, Kokugaku sig-
nifies the proper name of a particu lar kind of scholarship, whether as a network
of affiliated private academies or as a more broadly conceived intellectual move-
ment.28 As the name of a specific kind of scholarship, we can simply retain
Kokugaku as its emic signifier without having to resort to translation and etics;
this is the convention that scholars writing in Japanese follow, and the com-
parative example of Transcendentalism illustrates this convention as well. This
function as a proper noun preserves the importance of emics in scholarly anal-
ysis, something for which anthropological theorists like Pike, Goodenough,
and Harris advocated. While convenient, confining emics strictly to the status
of a proper noun is analytically insufficient, since the lure of categorization is too
strong, especially for scholars writing in languages other than Japanese. This is
not to say that scholars writing in Japanese are immune to the impulse to cate-
gorize Kokugaku, using concepts like gakumon and such, but their work is still
viable even without resorting to such concepts, which is generally not true of those
writing in languages other than Japanese. As soon as one assigns a category to an
emic, then the transition to etics is at hand.
The second layer of emic functionality for Kokugaku concerns its associations
with both a particular scholarly approach and a particular body of documents.
Specifically, Kokugaku signified a philological approach to the study of ancient
and classical texts from Japan’s literary past. For those Japanologists writing in
languages other than Japanese, Kokugaku’s function as a signifier of a specific
methodology and subject matter is emic; for those writing in Japanese, however,
this function is etic. Thus, we can say that, in the case of Kokugaku, meaning is
achieved via the simultaneous workings of both emics and etics; so long as these
emic and etic functions remain intertwined, conceptual confusion prevails,
214 Conclusion
making any attempt to define it difficult, if not treacherously so. As the name of
a specific kind of scholarship, Kokugaku assumes the role of an emic concept,
even for eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Japanese scholars. It was a signifier
that they used to help them distinguish specific forms of scholarship from one
another. In its capacity as a signifier of a philological investigation of Japanese
antiquity, Kokugaku was an etic concept as well for the Japanese.
It was due to its etic utility that Japanese scholars, even those of the Tokugawa
period, initiated a transition away from the usage of Wagaku and toward the
usage of Kokugaku. Wagaku was an older emic term, but one whose usage was
limited to the etic, unlike the dual functionality of Kokugaku. Both Kokugaku
and Wagaku were terms that had similar etic usages, so that the substitution of
the latter with the former may have seemed ideologically innocent to observers at
the time, but this was not the case. Both terms signified a philological study of
Japanese antiquity, but Kokugaku carried with it exceptionalist overtones, specifi-
cally the commitment to an inversion of the hierarchy of China over Japan, which
Wagaku did not. If anything, Wagaku upheld the traditional hierarchy of China
over Japan, otherwise known as Sinocentrism or what I call Chinese exceptional-
ism. By switching one term that symbolized Chinese exceptionalism with another
that symbolized Japanese exceptionalism, the supporters of Kokugaku w ere able
to create the impression that the two terms w ere synonymous, thereby associating
Kokugaku’s ideology with Wagaku’s, transposing Chinese exceptionalism with
Japanese exceptionalism. The ideological triumph of Kokugaku over Wagaku, as
far as its scholarly usage is concerned in the modern era, also signified the victory
of exceptionalism within Japanese historiography. Thus, the difficulty that schol-
ars have in rendering a coherent definition of Kokugaku for the Tokugawa period
stems from its dual functions as emics and as etics, and from its displacement of
and eventual substitution for Wagaku.
Exceptionalism, Etics, Deconstruction,

and World History
Although both nativism and exceptionalism are terms that have been in use for
some time, their relevance to contemporary societies endures, despite the fact that
their trajectories of usage are inverted. The word “exceptionalism” has entered the
popular lexicon in the United States, so that members of the mass media use it
alongside intellectuals and politicians. Generally speaking, it is not a term that
carries especially negative connotations, such that people today, to the dismay of
much of the rest of the world, proudly proclaim themselves to be exceptionalists
without hesitation or careful reflection. Although the impact of exceptionalism
Exceptionalism, Etics, Deconstruction, and World History 215
is felt across a variety of areas, including politics, economics, the military, and aca-
demia, it is in the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy that the
unfortunate effects of exceptionalism have been most apparent. Exceptionalism
is no longer the key ingredient in an anti-Marxian ideology, as it was in the 1950s;
it has morphed into the overarching explanation of American economic and mil-
itary power, and a justification for the use of that power, if even in contravention
of international law. The American government, in other words, gives itself in-
ternational dispensations that it does not extend to other nations in the world, as
the atomic bombings of Japan amply demonstrated.
While the awareness of exceptionalism is on an upward discursive trajectory
among Americans, the same is not true of nativism. Nativism continues to exist
as a specialized term whose use is almost exclusively confined to academics in the
United States. Scholars outside of the United States employ the category of nativ-
ism in their work rather rarely. Japanologists outside of the United States and
Japan still use nativism in their published writings, in reference to Kokugaku,
but their usage of nativism seems to be more the exception rather than the rule
among academics worldwide. Unlike the usage of exceptionalism, nativism has
not entered into popu lar circulation, so that politicians, intellectuals, and the
mass media rarely use it, likely out of a concern for intelligibility. For those who
do use the term, usually within the context of immigration, it does not have the
positive connotations that exceptionalism has. Its association with bigoted poli-
tics is undoubtedly related to its sparing usage by comparison with exceptional-
ism. While the enthusiasm for exceptionalism is at least partially indicative of
the pervasiveness of exceptionalist thinking among Americans, the reticence
with regard to the usage of nativism is not an indication of any lack of nativistic
thoughts among Americans. In fact, the situation with nativism is quite the
opposite—t he rare discursive appearance of nativism likely disguises the rather
common support among segments of the American public for nativist views. The
persistence of both American power and immigration demonstrates that the rel-
evance of exceptionalism and nativism will continue into the foreseeable fu-
ture. The usage of nativism should not be allowed to fade; so long as there is im-
migration, there will likely be nativism.
We need not be concerned with a similar discursive decline in the case of
exceptionalism. Its persistence, however, should not serve the cause of perpetuat-
ing exceptionalism itself, whether in the United States or elsewhere. In fact, the
more commonly it is used, the more its legitimacy will erode, especially outside
of the United States, where its etic conceptualization should prevail. Within
the United States, both its emic and etic conceptualizations exist simultane-
ously, a situation that contributes to intellectual confusion among Americans.
216 Conclusion
Comparative analysis is the sine qua non of etics; as long as scholars undertake
comparative studies of exceptionalism, the emic version of exceptionalism will
not go unchallenged.
In some ways, exceptionalism is a truly exceptional term, especially when
analyzed alongside a term like nativism. Although nativism is a term and a con-
cept that emerged as emics within nineteenth-century American history, its etic
applications outside of the nineteenth century and even outside of the American
context have not posed any significant problems to its ongoing emic status.
Whether one follows Higham’s or Linton’s view of nativism, etic examples of na-
tivism do nothing to undermine the American context of Catholic immigration
during the 1840s and 1850s that originally spawned the term itself. Similarly,
there is no resistance among Americanists to the development of etic nativism,
as the work of Higham clearly demonstrates. In some ways, nativism is a concept
that Americanists are pleased to export to other fields and disciplines, creating as
it does an image of intolerance that Americans share and have shared with people
from other times and cultures. Curiously, the nonproblematic nature of the eti-
cization of nativism is not reproduced in the case of exceptionalism. The ap-
plication of exceptionalism as an analytical concept to contexts other than the
American one does pose a serious threat to exceptionalism as it is commonly
understood. Exceptionalism cannot be valid outside of the American context
without forever undermining its validity among those who believe it to be true.
To its supporters, exceptionalism is an emic concept that can never become an etic
one; it must remain as emics, and efforts must be made to circumvent attempts at
its eticization. Seymour Martin Lipset understood this principle well, which is
why he resisted classifying Nihonjinron as exceptionalism; at best, it was concep-
tually close to exceptionalism, but it could never be exceptionalism itself. Drawing
attention to the ways in which other cultures exhibit or have exhibited excep-
tionalist thinking does detract from American exceptionalism for those who
agree with it. Exceptionalism is a concept that American exceptionalists are not
eager to export to other fields and other disciplines.
Motoori Norinaga opposed any effort to label his work on Japanese antiquity
as anything other than gakumon; although he was sympathetic with Kokugaku as
a term, he still resisted the application of any generic name for the kind of schol-
arly work that he and his students undertook.29 Even a reverent signifier like
Kokugaku relegated its signified to a relative status, reducing its intellectual
stature to that of other named forms of scholarship, like Confucianism, Bud-
dhism, and Western learning. Norinaga wanted to preserve the universal and
transcendent quality of Kokugaku by comparison with other kinds of learning,
since it was focused on Japan. Relativizing Kokugaku was tantamount to relativ-

izing Japan in Norinaga’s mind. He wanted to preserve Kokugaku’s emic status
by refusing to give it a name; without a name, Kokugaku would always remain
as emics, and it could never become etics. Norinaga understood that universals
could only be universal if they remained unnamed, an idea that was consistent
with his view that the ancient Japanese possessed the various Confucian virtues
because they did not have names for them, rather than the Chinese who did.
Contrary to Norinaga’s admonitions, his students and disciples, including his
self-styled successor, Hirata Atsutane, did exactly what he told them not to do—
namely, they used the term Kokugaku as a signifier for their work on Japanese
antiquity. By the end of the Tokugawa period, the usage of Kokugaku was ubiqui-
tous enough that scholars did not hesitate to label Norinaga’s work as Kokugaku,
over his protestations as well as similar objections to the term expressed by other
Tokugawa intellectuals. Norinaga’s thinking was not a product of what Derrida
has called logocentrism, that is to say, the penchant for dualism in which the “pres-
ence” of any concept is possible only through the suppression of another concept
that renders it absent.30 Monistic thinking, therefore, overcomes the dualistic
shortcomings of logocentrism. Although Norinaga knew that monism works only
through silence, his students and disciples failed to follow his intellectual lead.
Trapped as he was within logocentrism, Seymour Martin Lipset was unable
to resist the temptation to give exceptionalism its name. As soon as he did so, the
process of transforming exceptionalism from emics to etics began, a process that
was accelerated by his methodological reliance on comparative analysis. Compar-
ison opened a Pandora’s box of etic possibilities for exceptionalism, even as Lipset
and others believed it to provide critical data to prove the validity and legitimacy
of emic exceptionalism. Being exceptional forever diverged from pondering the
exceptional with the naming of exceptionalism; the state of exceptionalism
could no longer escape the idea of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism’s conceptual
exceptionality emerges from its own destruction at the moment of its naming.
As Derrida observes with the concept of writing in the thought of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, exceptionalism is always already deconstructed by affirming what it
actually seeks to deny.31 In Rousseau’s case, it was the affirmation of writing in his
denial of writing; in the case of Lipset, it is the affirmation of exceptionality
outside of the United States in his active denial of any such exceptionality. A
belief in exceptionalism is inherently logocentric, such that the invocations of
God that its supporters often assert should come as no surprise to anyone; excep-
tionalism is at its core theological. To assert that one’s culture is especially unique
and superior relies on logocentric thinking in order to make sense. This is true
218 Conclusion
even of the exceptionalists of the Tokugawa period, who, despite the fact that
premodern Japan was by definition not directly connected to Western logocen-
trism, exhibited logocentric intellectual tendencies nonetheless.
Just as deconstruction, which opens the philosophical door to “play” as the
“disruption of presence,”32 is critical to the process of undermining logocentrism
and all of the concepts that emanate from it, such as patriarchy, heteronormativ-
ity,33 and claims of ethnic or racial superiority, it is also a critical component of
the undoing of exceptionalism. Critics of American exceptionalism today seek to
undermine it by engaging in point-by-point refutations of its grandiose claims.
While such efforts are perhaps admirable, they do not undermine the idea of ex-
ceptionalism itself, that is to say, the existential condition of exceptionality. The
binary of the exceptional and the nonexceptional (the ordinary) remains intact,
just as addressing the issue of the absence of women from patriarchal histories
does not begin to assail the binary of patriarchal and nonpatriarchal simply by
producing histories with women in them.34 Rather, the best way to analyze ex-
ceptionalism is to deal with the modality of thinking from which it sprang. This
analysis can begin by contributing to the eticization of exceptionalism. It is vital
that scholars interpret all claims of exceptionality as discrete instances of a com-
mon phenomenon, so that no one claim is ever elevated to the status of a legiti-
mate description of being. The claims of Tokugawa exceptionalists, therefore, were
no more or less valid than the claims of their contemporary American counter-
parts; to separate these examples from one another perpetuates the impression
that some claims are more legitimate than others. Analyses of exceptionalism need
to remain on the side of etics, something that can only be accomplished in a com-
parative setting.
Emics and etics are relevant to the discipline of history in important ways. Just
as etics is crucial to any analytical approach to exceptionalism, the same is also
true of national histories. Histories that focus on the development of nation-states
rely on the strategic use of emics and etics, but their narratives are also depen-
dent on assertions of the unique and distinctive dimensions of these nation-states,
establishing conceptual borders as a supplement to geographic ones. An over
emphasis on commonalities (etics) erodes these conceptual borders, thereby di-
luting the distinct characteristics of given nation-states. World history, as the
field is widely understood, is fundamentally connected with comparative analy-
ses that uncover such commonalities and further the development of etics.35 As
Western constructs, nation-states are products of logocentrism, so that efforts
that question the conceptual dimensions of these nation-states are antilogocen-
tric and perhaps even deconstructive, or so some might conclude. More likely,
the reliance on etics within the discipline of history, including the field of world
history, does not necessarily result in antilogocentric conceptions of history.

World historians may lay siege to the conceptual boundaries of nation-states
through an emphasis on transnational phenomena or comparative analysis, but
these efforts may, in fact, continue to perpetuate other relics of logocentrism,
such as patriarchy or heteronormativity. On the other hand, scholars who employ
analytical strategies associated with cultural studies, in some ways as a response
to and resistance against the rise of etics, retreat into emics for their antilogo-
centric potential. In the case of premodern Japan, its emics and etics cannot be
tarred with the brush of logocentrism, such that analyses that eschew Western
etics in favor of Japanese emics or etics represent a legitimate antilogocentric
approach to the study of Japan. Emic-centered approaches to Japan, especially
when undertaken with the undermining of logocentrism in mind, succeed where
etic-centered approaches fail, namely, in deconstructing concepts such as patri-
archy. The results of these intellectual labors, as admirable as they are, leave the
conceptual borders of the nation-state intact, that vestige of Western history
whose roots are undeniably logocentric. Both world history, as an etic-centered
approach, and cultural studies, as an emic-centered one, represent intellectual steps
in the “right direction,” as far as working against aspects of logocentrism, despite
the fact that these steps are in opposing directions.
Within Japanese studies, scholars have already heeded the call to undertake
analyses that make use of both emics and etics, whether they were aware of this
fact or not. The writings of Japanologists routinely invoke Japanese emics and
Western etics, so that any attempt to synthesize the sensibilities of world history
with those of cultural studies should not seem overly strange or outlandish. It is
possible to preserve Japan’s difference while articulating its similarities in ways
that include Japan within the world context, rather than excluding it. Western
etics, even when their case studies involve non-Western cultures, too often omit
references to Japanese cases; Japanese examples should be a part of the develop-
ment of etics, or Japan will always represent counterexamples to conceptual rules
that otherwise reign everywhere e lse, an interpretive road that leads to exception-
alism. As the anthropologists tell us, etics are never set in stone, even if it may
seem that way. New case studies will either reinforce etic concepts or serve
as anomalies that require scholars to rethink and revise them. The phenomena
related to sonnō-jō’i and kaikoku should become Japanese contributions to the
world’s understanding of nativism, rather than Kokugaku, which should be of-
fered to the etic understanding of exceptionalism, along with Confucian Shinto,
especially Mitogaku. At the same time that Japanese case studies should become
a critical part of the ongoing development of Western etics, scholars should be
open to the idea of transforming Japanese emics into etics for analyses unrelated
220 Conclusion
to Japan. This process has already begun to some extent, with concepts derived
from social science research in Japan, such as karōshi (death by overwork) and
tōkō kyohi (school refusal), and those which emanate from popu lar culture, such
as manga (comics), anime (animated films), and the term for those who indulge
in manga and anime, the otaku (video game/manga nerd).
Just as these Japanese emics have etic applications within Japan, their poten-
tial as etics outside of Japan is now being explored. At first glance, Kokugaku also
seems to harbor a similar etic potential outside of Japan. Unlike other terms that
would be more difficult to use etically, like Wagaku or Mitogaku, as the study of
the culture and history of the kuni, Kokugaku presents interesting possibilities
for etic applications outside of Japan. Before pursuing any of these analytical pos-
sibilities, it would perhaps be necessary to interpret kuni as a case study for the
etic category of nation. Rather than denying the existence of a nation during pre-
Meiji times, it would be more historiographically fruitful to acknowledge what
did exist during premodern Japanese history, and to offer the concept of kuni as
a Japanese emics for the etic concept of nation. By injecting the concept of kuni
into etic discussions of the nation, Kokugaku would become for Japanologists a
form of scholarship that was focused on something analogous to the nation. As
an etic concept, Kokugaku could refer to scholarly efforts geared toward an under
standing of the ways in which a particular society was unique by comparison
with other societies, perhaps even superior. Unfortunately for any attempt to ren-
der Kokugaku as an etic concept, there already is a term for scholarly efforts of
this kind, as the work of Lipset and others demonstrates very clearly.
Instead of trying to enhance the stature of Kokugaku within Japanese studies
by promoting it as an etics outside of Japan, our efforts would be better directed at
reducing its stature instead. For intellectuals since the Meiji period, the kuni was
not an analogue of the nation; it was the nation, and Kokugaku became a Tokugawa
example of nationalism, the key ideological ingredient in the apprehension and
consciousness of that nation. It was the nationalistic goals of Meiji leaders that
placed the study of Kokugaku at the center of Japanese historiography. As we have
seen, the canonical figures of Kokugaku were exceptionalists, but not any more
so than their contemporary counterparts in Mitogaku or their Shinto forebears
of the seventeenth century. By analyzing it alongside other forms of exceptional-
ism, this study serves to counteract the historiographical attention that scholars
have traditionally given to Kokugaku, so as not to fall prey to the nationalistic
agenda that enhanced its stature in the first place. If world history helps to see
beyond the conceptual confines of the nation-state, the analysis of exceptional-
ism should similarly transcend interpretations that are dependent on the nation-
state. In the Japanese case, that means embracing alternative narratives to those
that emphasize the development of the Japanese nation. This study began with
what I argue was the incorrect classification of Kokugaku as nativism, but it should
not end with a new classification as exceptionalism that only perpetuates, in
another guise, the centrality of the nation. Tokugawa exceptionalism came in
many different forms, of which Kokugaku was one. As the link between nativism
and exceptionalism, Mitogaku’s importance should not be overlooked, despite the
fact that its association with the modern Japanese nation was perhaps weaker
than it was for Kokugaku.
Despite the opposition among Tokugawa scholars to Sinocentrism, their “solution”

to it was no less dependent on hierarchy than the Confucian tradition that up-
held it, and this legacy is important for those who are skeptical of exceptionalism
today. Confucian scholars could not conceive of their intellectual traditions in
nonhierarchical terms without undermining them to the point of destroying
them. Epistemological destruction as the outcome of transcending hierarchy is
something that European and American intellectuals have associated with de-
construction since the 1960s. In the Western case, it was not the concept of hierar-
chy itself that was seen as especially pernicious, but thinking in binaries that
plagued the Western philosophical tradition, which Derrida called logocentrism.36
Hierarchy was implicit in the ways in which binaries dominated Western thinking,
whether consciously, such as man/woman, nature/culture, white/nonwhite, sub-
jective/objective, emics/etics,37 and so on, or even unconsciously. Using decon-
struction to reveal these binaries unmasked the suppression of the Other that was
always at work whenever the primacy of the Self was asserted, as the two sides of
the binary opposition. While asserting the primacy of the Other over the Self was
a critical part of the deconstructive process, it was not the ultimate goal, which
was the elimination of the very binary itself. Derrida specifically envisioned de-
construction as the philosophical escape from logocentrism; as the Confucian
tradition was not a product of Western philosophy, it had its own oppositional
traditions that exhibited intellectual qualities not unlike deconstruction, espe-
cially Daoism and Buddhism.
Because of the persistence of logocentrism today, Derrida’s deconstructive
efforts notwithstanding, thinking in exceptionalist terms has endured, and it will
likely continue to endure so long as the lessons of deconstruction go unheeded.
Sombart recognized how his argument for America’s material exceptionality could
slip into assertions of its spiritual exceptionality, and he cautioned his readers
against drawing any such conclusions from his work. Despite his disclaimers,
American exceptionalists did just that, motivated as they were by an anti-Marxian
politic al agenda. Lipset preserved the Marxian model of America’s material
222 Conclusion
exceptionality to do exactly what Sombart told his readers not to do, namely,
argue in favor of America’s spiritual uniqueness. Interestingly, he, like Sombart,
cautioned his readers against intellectual overexuberance: America’s material
and spiritual uniqueness were not proof of its cultural superiority. The fact that
people cannot distinguish between subjective-evidential and objective-evidential
exceptionalisms indicates that Lipset’s disclaimers have been about as successful
as Sombart’s. Exceptionalism is no less hierarchical today than Confucianism
was in the Edo period; it is the reason why material uniqueness morphs into
spiritual uniqueness, which itself turns into claims of cultural superiority. The
fact that binaries that formerly passed as doxa have come under closer scrutiny,
especially in the areas of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, gives us some cause for
optimism that the binaries at the heart of epistemological hierarchy and excep-
tionalism will as well.
Epilogue
One might wonder why, if the conceptual resemblance between Kokugaku and
nativism was so distant, did it endure for so long in Japanese studies? Three ex-
planations immediately come to mind. First, the antiforeignism that seemed to
be so pervasive among Kokugaku intellectuals during the Edo period, even though
it was also common among others as well, was removed from the context of Sino-
centrism that was prevalent at that time. For this reason, nativism may have seemed
an appropriate description for the hostile anti-China comments made by Mabu-
chi, Norinaga, and others. In fact, these comments were directed not at the Qing
dynasty or its people so much as the idea that China should take precedence over
all other societies in the world, including Japan. Sinocentrism obviously could not
coexist, within the minds of Tokugawa elites who thought about such things, with
the belief that Japan was the world’s superior society. The intellectual hostility ex-
pressed by some Kokugaku scholars toward China performed the critical func-
tion of tearing down Sinocentrism, the necessary first step in replacing it with the
exceptionalism of a Japan-centered world.
A second reason for the “success” of the Kokugaku-as-nativism paradigm was
that it seemed to confirm the premodern existence of Japanese antiforeign atti-
tudes encountered by Americans during World War II. This was a view that Ruth
Benedict, who herself came to the study of Japan during that war, so eloquently
expressed in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She belonged to a generation of
Western scholars whose postwar efforts helped create the field of Japanese stud-
ies today, along with the various biases, gender, ethnic, and otherwise, that went
with it. As the leaders of the postwar Allied occupation of Japan, the Americans
felt the burden of understanding Japanese culture, as the key to controlling its peo-
ple, especially acutely. Japanese studies within the American academy during the
late 1940s and early 1950s was no less the intellectual fulfillment of Saidian colo-
nialism than Orientalism was for the British, the French, and the Germans of the
nineteenth century. Japanese studies assumed the role of informing American
policymakers who w ere responsible for the administration of occupied Japan, and
their success or failure had profound implications in the context of the Cold War.
223
224 Epilogue
A successful administration of Japan held the promise of fashioning it into Amer-

ica’s political ally in the region, while failure meant possibly pushing the Japa
nese into the waiting arms of the communists, the Chinese or the Soviets. With
such high geopolitical stakes, it was perhaps natural for the Americans to think
that transforming a once implacable enemy into a reliable ally was best accom-
plished by prescribing various intellectual cures to the cultural ailments of the
Japanese. In some ways, these attitudes faded with time, especially after the oc-
cupation ended in 1952, but did they vanish completely? By the 1960s, the Amer-
ican fascination with Japanese antiforeignism, in the era before World War II, had
not subsided, and the lure of giving it the pathological designation of nativism
was perhaps too strong to overcome. As Kuhn tells us, paradigms provide answers
to research questions, and nativism was the answer to the paradigm of antifor-
eignism seemingly so prevalent in Japan before World War II.
While the intellectual legacy of World War II is undeniable in the develop-
ment of Japanese studies, it only partially explains how nativism entered the lexi-
con of its practicing academics. It does not address the issue of why it has lasted
so long. The final reason for the fact that the identification of Kokugaku with
nativism has endured for more than a generation is a reluctance among Japanolo-
gists to investigate closely the applicability of their Western etics to Japanese emics.
I would argue that this was the attempt to compensate for the intellectual excesses
of the postwar generation of Japanologists who had fashioned the Japanese-
culture-as-pathology paradigm. Put simply, Western etics helped diagnose the
“problems” with Japanese culture but, by doing so, crafted an image of Japan that
was profoundly negative. Thus, the fitting solution to this problem was to avoid,
as far as intellectually possible, comparing Japanese culture to Western ones.
Unfortunately, the understandable reaction against comparison did not come with
a reassessment of the etic correspondences already in use by Japanologists, like
nativism, whose viability could be questioned only by looking into materials
having nothing to do with Japan, something the field had decided it had already
left behind.
As we have seen, attempts have been made by some (such as Gluck, Breen,
Teeuwen, and others) to come to grips with how nativism has been used outside
of Japanese studies, yet their efforts have not resulted in much change. In fact, their
efforts reinforced the flawed understanding of nativism within Japanese studies.
How did this happen? When one reads Higham’s work (or even Billington’s, even
though it is unclear if any Japanologist ever did use his work), it is not immedi-
ately obvious how nativism is connected to what we think of as Kokugaku. Rather
than questioning the considerable conceptual gap inherent in this association, it
was left intact, since Japanese and American history already seemed worlds apart,
Epilogue 225
culturally speaking. Linton’s work is even more interesting because he had already
indicated an avenue of research for Japanese nativism in the sixteenth century.
Japanologists who were familiar with Linton never pursued this suggested course,
despite the fact that a similarly wide conceptual gap existed between the adoption
of European military technology in the sixteenth century and Kokugaku, and
between it and examples from American history. In other words, certain Japanol-
ogists were on the brink of questioning the association between Kokugaku and
nativism but, ultimately, did not do so. Writing in 1979, Lyotard claimed “post-
modern knowledge . . . refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our
ability to tolerate the incommensurable.”1 A similar tolerance, I argue, exists
among Japanologists today, whether under the sway of postmodernism or not.
Such wide conceptual gaps between Western etics and Japanese emics, rather than
indicating something amiss with the assigned correspondences, actually indicate,
for some, that the correspondences are valid, a conclusion that can only result from
an intellectual position at ease with incommensurability.
Just as Derrida observed about the undermining of logocentrism as part of a
philosophical continuum with phallocentrism, so too is the undermining of in-
commensurability continuous with efforts to assail exceptionalism. At the same
time, upholding incommensurability preserves the intellectual viability of excep-
tionalism. Despite the fact that exceptionalism is both a pre-and postnationalism
phenomenon, that is to say, it can exist even outside of the context of a nation-
state, its ideological appeal today stems, in part, from the support it lends to the
preservation of nation-states. Some Japanologists may be drawn to the fact that
etic exceptionalism can be, perhaps even should be, comparative and transna-
tional; it can be a way to integrate certain parts of Japan’s history, like the
Tokugawa period, that heretofore Japanologists have found difficult to do other-
wise. Just as Sakuma Shōzan called for an end to the Bakufu’s political policy of
sakoku in the 1850s and thereby began the process of incorporating Japan into
the larger world, it is time to end the intellectual “policy” of a de facto sakoku,
immanent within Japanese studies today, that thwarts comparison. Historians
generally credit the Americans with ending the first sakoku, and so it is perhaps
fitting that they should also end the second one, a virtual intellectual isolation
that their intellectual forebears helped erect in the first place.
Notes
Prologue
1. I discuss these concepts in more detail in the Introduction.
2. I was a foreign research scholar at the Shiryō Hensanjo of Tokyo University collecting
materials for my project on seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Wagaku. Coincidentally, I
learned during my time there that it was the institutional descendant of the Wagaku Kōdansho
founded by Hanawa Hokiichi (1746–1821) in 1793. See Onko Gakkai 1981.
Introduction
1. Smith 2005, 404.
2. Ibid., 404.
3. Ichijo 2002, 55.
4. Smith 2002, 7.
5. See Toby 1991.
6. See Ikegami 2005; Nenzi 2008.
7. Smith 2002, 8.
8. Ibid., 8.
9. Uzelac 2002, 35.
10. Smith 2002, 12.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Ibid., 14–15.
13. Ibid., 25.
14. Smith 2005, 411.
15. Smith 2002, 15.
16. Ibid., 15.
17. Smith 2005, 413.
18. Smith 2002, 16.
19. Ibid., 16.
20. Wakabayashi 1986, 15.
21. Ichijo 2002, 56.
22. Smith 2002, 14.
23. Despite the fact that the biggest name in Kokugaku was certainly Motoori Norinaga,
he never actually referred to his scholarship as Kokugaku. For his views on naming conven-
tions for the study of Japanese antiquity, see his Tamakatsuma (Motoori 1975a, 25). One of the
leading literary scholars of Meiji Japan, Konakamura Kiyonori (1821–1895), observed how
227
228 Notes to Pages 10–16
Wagaku and Kokugaku were signifiers for the same Edo phenomenon. See his Kogaku shōden
(Konakamura and Seimiya 1886, 1a–2a). For a short biography of Konakamura, see Wachutka
2013, 276–277. While not disagreeing with Konakamura, Haga stated his preference for
Kokugaku over Wagaku, since the former was the older term. See his Nihon no bunkengaku
(Haga 1928, 2). He also observed how Kokugaku was more directly connected with the devel-
opment of the Japanese nation-state. See Haga 1928, 66.
24. Smith 2002, 17.
25. Uzelac 2002, 34.
26. Ibid., 37.
27. Ibid., 38.
28. While skirting the issue of whether or not the Tokugawa polity was a nation, Kuro-
zumi Makoto argues that critical terms like Nihon (Japan), Nihonjin (Japanese person), and
Nihonkoku (the country of Japan) did emerge during the Edo period, furthering the asser-
tion that a kind of nation did exist during that time. See Kurozumi 2003, 58.
29. Atsuko Ichijo cites the work of Amino Yoshihiko as an example of informed perenni-
alism in the Japanese case. Ichijo 2002, 70.
30. Harris 1999, 31.
31. Ibid., 31.
32. Harris 1979, 32.
33. Goodenough 1970, 108.
34. Ibid., 129.
35. Harris 1979, 32.
36. Ibid., 37.
38. Harris 1979, 32.
39. Ibid., 36.
40. Pike 1971, 38–39.
41. Harris 1999, 32. For Pike, an emic viewpoint “results from studying behavior as from
inside the system,” the “structure” of which “must be discovered,” and whose “descriptions
provide an internal view, with criteria chosen from within the system,” and whose “units are
different emically only when they elicit different responses from people acting within the
system.” However, “the etic viewpoint studies behavior as from outside of a particu lar system,
and as an essential initial approach to an alien system. . . . The etic organization of a world-
wide cross-cultural scheme may be created by the analyst. . . . Descriptions or analyses from
the etic standpoint are ‘alien’ in view, with criteria external to the system” (Pike 1971, 38–39).
42. Harris 1999, 33.
44. Ibid., 112.
45. Harris 1999, 33.
47. Ibid., 110.
48. Harris 1979, 41.
49. Harris 1999, 43.
50. Ibid., 141.
51. Ibid., 33.
Notes to Pages 16–30 229

53. Harris 1979, 41.
55. Ibid., 129.
56. Harris 1999, 32.
57. Ibid., 32.
58. Ibid., 33.
59. Harris 1979, 32.
61. Harris 1999, 38.
62. See Said 1978.
63. Feudalism presents an interesting problem, either because it is an example of emics
that people mistakenly believe to be etics, or because it is emics that, as Wayne Farris ob-
serves, “has not been satisfactorily defined by historians of Western Europe” (1992, 7).
64. Linton’s conceptualization of nativism is so broad, in fact, that it actually justifies co-
lonial domination as having a benevolent side, since it acknowledges cultural or technological
adoption by the colonized as a nativistic reaction.
65. Hereafter, I use sonnō (revere the emperor), jō’i (expel the barbarian), and kaikoku (open
the country), rather than their cumbersome Eng lish translations, and the same is true for
sakoku (isolated realm) as well.
Chapter 1. Kokugaku, Nativism, and “Exceptional” Japan

1. See De Bary and Tsunoda 1958. For a more detailed look at the context of Atsutane’s
succession of Norinaga in the nineteenth century, see McNally 2011. For a sustained analysis
of the efforts of Atsutane’s students, see Walthall 1998.
2. Keene 1969, 27.
3. Matsumoto 1970, 2.
4. Harootunian 1970, 11, 297; 1978, 63.
5. Harootunian 1970, 255.
6. Nosco 1990, x, xi.
7. Ibid., 244.
8. Hardacre 1989, 17.
9. Burns 2003, 189.
10. One of the earliest advocates for a connection between nativism and nationalism was
Wilhelm Mühlmann, who referred to nativism as constituting “the mental infrastructure of
nationalism” (1961, 7). Presumably, Mühlmann had what we could call ethnic nationalism in
mind, and it could help us understand Bakumatsu figures, like Sakamoto Ryōma, a key figure
in chapter 2, whose encounters with Westerners motivated him to think about Japan as a w
hole,
and not just his home domain of Tosa.
11. Totman 1993, 543.
12. Breen 2000, 429.
13. Doak 1994, 97.
14. Cornyetz 1999, 87.
15. Ibid., 34.
16. Ivy 1995, 18n37.
17. Assertions of uniqueness are more indicative of exceptionalism than nativism, in the

American case. Moreover, Linton and the other anthropologists whose ideas are discussed in
this chapter place no special emphasis on assertions of native uniqueness.
18. Gluck 1985, 76.
19. Ibid., 38.
20. For a sense of what the Know-Nothings and their political forerunners were like, see
Asbury (1927) 2008.
21. Ito 1991, 102.
22. Since scholars of modern Japan focus on the era after the ending of sakoku, one could
argue that their usages of nativism benefit from the fact that intercultural interaction, which I
argue is the sine qua non of nativism, was at hand, so that usages adhering to either those of an-
thropology or American nativism would be valid. This is only partially true, however. The colo-
nial or semicolonial domination that is so vital to the usages of nativism in anthropology is only
true for the Bakumatsu era, and perhaps even for the early Meiji, but would be true of Japan only
after perhaps 1876, the year the Meiji government imposed an unequal treaty on Joseon Korea.
However, Western immigration into Japan became a reality beginning in 1856, raising the po-
tential for the application of usages from American nativism, especially Higham. These applica-
tions of Higham would be valid so long as they emanate from contexts of hostility, and not from
nostalgic feelings about the way things used to be.
23. Linton 1943, 230.
24. Ibid., 235. It is unlikely that Linton had nineteenth-century Western encounters with
the Japanese in mind, since he was less than a century removed from the ending of sakoku (writ-
ing in 1943), and he makes no mention of the Americans (despite publishing his nativism
essay in American Anthropologist).
25. Ibid., 237.
26. Ibid., 231.
27. Ibid., 238.
28. Wallace 1956, 264.
29. Ibid., 267.
30. Ibid., 266.
31. Ibid., 266–267.
32. Ames 1957, 23.
33. Ames’ insight here is similar to Higham’s conceptualization of American nativism as
a reaction of the native born against the presence of immigrants and their descendants, which
he had formulated only two years earlier.
34. Ibid.
35. Terms like signifier, signified, and referent, which are so fundamental to cultural
studies–i nspired approaches to Japan, are products of Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857–1913)
structural linguistics. See Saussure 1993.
36. Higham 1988, 3. Subsequent citations are in the text.
37. Leonard and Parmet 1971, 33.
38. Ibid., 6.
39. My thanks to Marcus Daniel for suggesting that I read The Protestant Crusade, as well
as Frederick Jackson Turner’s work, discussed in chapter 3.
40. Billington 1938, 2. Subsequent citations are in the text.
41. In some ways, this antipathy for the Catholic Church is similar to the views of institu-
tional Buddhism held by Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) in the sixteenth century.
42. Billington 1938, 5. War with France, one of England’s dreaded Reformation enemies,
during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), deepened the anti-Catholic mood of Americans.
43. A popu lar tradition at this time, in fact, was the parading of “effigies of the Pope and
Devil, shooting firecrackers, and demanding money” from their neighbors, and culminated in
the burning of said effigies. These customs became a kind of holiday known as Pope Day, which
was “celebrated” every November 5. Ibid., 18.
44. Billington offers the interesting observation that the English encouraged the Irish to
emigrate to Canada, not America, even though the majority eventually made their way south
nonetheless. While some Ulster Irish came to America at this time, and in the eighteenth cen-
tury as well, they were not treated with the same contempt as the Catholic Irish, if they en-
dured any scorn at all. Ibid., 33.
45. Leonard and Parmet 1971, 124.
46. Billington 1938, 118. As the number of foreign arrivals increased into the 1840s, nativ-
ists tarred all immigrants with the brush of conspiracy, regardless of whether they were Cath-
olic or not. Plots to destroy the United States, therefore, were not exclusively laid at the feet of
the pope, but were associated with the decrepit European powers. See ibid., 194. It is for this
reason that Billington is forced, seemingly reluctantly, to acknowledge that nativism had be-
come more anti-immigrant and less exclusively anti-Catholic (ibid., 193).
47. This is perhaps an attempt to spare at least this segment of American society from the
scorn that the middle and lower classes were to receive as a result of his study.
48. The concern was not simply that immigrant voters would fail to vote “the right way”; it
emanated from fears that the number of immigrants would simply overwhelm the numbers of
natives, thereby giving them a permanent majority in any election. The assumption, of course,
was that immigrants all voted the same way; by consistently voting for Democratic candidates,
immigrants, especially the Irish, lent more than a little credence to this anxiety.
49. Billington 1938, 132. It is perhaps worth pointing out that neither of these concerns ad-
dressed Catholicism per se. This fact notwithstanding, Billington maintains his assertion that
nativism in pre–Civil War America was always primarily anti-Catholic in orientation.
50. It was common knowledge, however, that there was such a party that was known pop-
ularly as the Know-Nothings. Billington (ibid., 387) notes how the Know-Nothings had candy,
tea, and even toothpicks named after them during the 1850s.
51. See Gangs of New York (Asbury [1928] 2008) and also the 2002 film of the same name.
52. The Know-Nothings chose former president Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) as their can-
didate. Based on Fillmore’s political record, Southerners saw some hope that he would leave
slavery alone; Northerners hoped that he would work to preserve the u nion and advance their
anti-immigrant agenda. His support among the various factions within the party was never
very strong, and enthusiasm for his candidacy was generally low. His detractors argued that
Fillmore was never a staunch opponent of immigration. In fact, when he received the nomina-
tion, he was in Rome for an audience with the pope. See Billington 1938, 428.
53. Higham 1988, 75. Subsequent citations are in the text.
54. Europeanists view Fichte as one of the founders of German nationalism, especially with
the publication of his Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche Nation) in 1808.
Fichte is especially relevant to the history of exceptionalism in both the United States and
Japan, because of his influence on the Transcendentalists and the advocates of Nihonjinron.
See Gura 2007; Dale 1986, 1988. I would add to these discussions the fact that Fichte’s ideas
were remarkably similar to those of some Kokugaku scholars with regard to issues of lan-
guage, especially those of Motoori Norinaga. My thanks to my colleague, Matthew Lauzon,
for first suggesting Fichte to me, advice that was duplicated by Klaus Antoni and Michael
Wachutka during my time in Tübingen.
55. If one thinks of Anglo-Saxonism as a nineteenth-century form of American exception-
alism, then Higham’s observation undermines the idea that there is automatically a connec-
tion between exceptionalism and nativism. I explore this issue for the Tokugawa case in more
detail in chapter 5.
56. Billington’s work suffers from a general attempt to absolve Americans of any moral
condemnation for their conduct in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We see this reluc-
tance to criticize ordinary Americans in a number of ways in Billington’s work. In the first place,
the identification of nativism with anti-Catholicism is problematic, as it posits opposition to
either an institution, the Catholic Church, or to a concept, Catholicism itself, but it is not first
and foremost against Catholics as people. Billington (1938, 245) observes how Protestants
sought to convert Catholics, noting the efforts of the American Protestant Society to convert
Portuguese, French, and German immigrants in the 1840s. Even during the 1850s, which saw
the rise of the Know-Nothings, Protestants continued to be “more concerned with saving
Catholics than denouncing them” (ibid., 273). Despite the anti-C atholic stance of the Know-
Nothings, and their support of immigration restriction, devout Protestants actually supported
immigration, since each new immigrant represented an opportunity to convert another for-
eigner to true Christianity. Ibid., 280. Even the Know-Nothing movement with its secrecy and
exclusive club mentality created an initially alluring image that simple anti-Catholicism could
not do. Finally, Billington observes how at least some writers championing the cause of anti-
Catholicism were motivated by profit; there was money to be made by boarding the anti-Catholic
bandwagon in the years before the Civil War. Billington even suggests that many of these writ-
ers likely did not even believe in the cause: “more, undoubtedly, penned attacks on Rome to
share in the profits from the wide sale of books of this type” (ibid., 346).
57. Kaufmann 1999, 437.
58. Ibid., 438.
59. Ibid.
60. Brownson 2006, 130. Note how a focus on the Know-Nothings as representative of
nativism yields an interpretation that identifies them with anti-Catholicism. However, Brown-
son’s observation is at odds with Higham’s emphasis on immigration in general. This is an
indication that Higham had a certain analytical distance that Brownson did not. Also, Brownson
was not analyzing the historiographical (etic) category of nativism, but rather the Native
American Party (its emic form).
61. Kaufmann 2000, 141.
62. Kaufmann 1999, 447.
63. Ibid., 448.
64. Ibid., 447.
65. Kaufmann 2004, 13. Subsequent citations are in the text.
66. Kaufmann 2002, 112.
67. Ibid., pp. 108–109.
68. Ibid., p. 112.
69. Kaufmann 2000, 140.

70. Hegel 1997, 49.
71. Kaufmann 2004, 23. Here Kaufmann recognizes the role of nostalgia as a precursor to
nativism, rather than identifying it with nativism itself, as some Japanologists do.
72. Ralph Waldo Emerson earns Kaufmann’s special attention and regard, since it was
Emerson who first noticed the dilemma, coining the term “double-consciousness” in the process,
and who also attempted to explain it. The majority of writers who espoused cosmopolitanism,
Kaufmann observes, reverted to the racial discourses of Anglo-Saxonism, since “a recasting of
America along radically cosmopolitan lines was generally unthinkable to nineteenth-century
writers” (ibid., 42). As a Transcendentalist, Emerson was interested in ideas that seemed to prove
the existence of universal truths; Asian religions, such as Buddhism, were an object of study for
some Transcendentalists for this reason. Even as he rejoiced in the prospect of finding such
truths that individuals could explore within their own spiritual lives, he was also seduced by
the appeal of Anglo-Saxonism, as was common among nineteenth-century intellectuals. See
ibid., 45. Emerson, according to Kaufmann (ibid., 53), was a distinct figure during that era, since
he recognized this potential contradiction, which I call hypocrisy, and tried to find ways to rec-
oncile the simultaneous adherence to cosmopolitanism and ethnic nationalism. While Emer-
son is relevant to the present discussion of nativism, he and his fellow Transcendentalists were
opposed to the Know-Nothings; the Transcendentalists were not nativists. For a brief discus-
sion of how Transcendentalism fits into the narrative history of American exceptionalism, see
Madsen 1998.
73. On one side of this consciousness divide is cosmopolitanism, at the center of which is
the idea of liberalism. Liberalism represented a set of values that were crucial to the assertion
of American difference. As a nation that had earned its independence from monarchy, repub-
lican democracy, free from royalty and aristocracy, made the United States the sole example in
the world of liberal principles at work during the late eighteenth century. It separated the Amer-
icans from the British. See Kaufmann 2004, 16. It was important to Americans to assert their
differences from the British, since Anglo-Saxon discourses of identity that they had borrowed
from the British were better suited to conceptions of sameness. Thus, Anglo-Saxon assertions
of identity among Americans had to be modified in a certain way after independence in order
to maintain their efficacy, and liberalism assumed this ideological role. Invocations of liberal-
ism by Americans also served as reminders of the distinctions between themselves and their
northern and southern neighbors, who were “illiberal ethnies.” Ibid., 12.
74. The evidence for “double-consciousness” is abundant in the writings of Americans dur-
ing the nineteenth century, but it is on literary figures and historians that Kaufmann chooses
to focus his efforts. Writers such as Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Henry Wadsworth Longfel-
low (1807–1882), Herman Melville (1819–1891), Henry James (1843–1916), and William James
(1842–1910) w ere part of the “American subversive style,” whose members embodied the “lib-
eral individualist spirit” in their work, which “foregrounds the tension between dominant
ethnicity and American liberalism” (Kaufmann 2004, 42). Anglo-Saxonism as a literary move-
ment developed at roughly the same time as the subversive style, and some figures became
associated with both. In fact, Anglo-Saxonism is conventionally associated with the middle of
the nineteenth century. The fascination of earlier intellectuals, such as Thomas Jefferson, an-
ticipates the formation of literary Anglo-Saxonism.
75. The accepted narrative regarding Turner’s influence describes how he transformed
Anglo-Saxonism, doubtless hastening its demise, by de-emphasizing the role of Europe in the
development of the United States. Turner disagreed with his Anglo-Saxonist colleagues who
believed that the genius of the American people was due to an ancestry that was exclusively
Anglo-Saxon. See Kaufmann 2004, 51. For Turner, ancestry was not the most important factor
in the explanation of America’s greatness. The frontier, as he and others famously proclaimed,
made America unique, and its conquest made Americans superior to other peoples in the world.
I discuss Turner’s work in more detail in chapter 3, but there is an important issue regarding
Turner that is relevant to the present discussion. While giving credit to the frontier, and generally
avoiding the ethnic focus of the Anglo-Saxonists, Turner did not deny that Americans w ere
an Anglo-Saxon people. Since many of the intrepid pioneers who had helped to conquer the
American West w ere Germans, he viewed them “in a similar way” to the Anglo-Saxon “native
stock,” namely, that his “frontier thesis” only worked by including those of German ancestry.
See Kaufmann 2004, 51–52. As Higham (1988) observes, the Germans were largely assimilated
by the end of the nineteenth century, earning the recognition as “old” immigrants.
76. Emerson (1866, 298) espoused his beliefs in the Anglo-Saxon character of the Ameri-
can people, despite his avowed support for cosmopolitanism.
77. Kaufmann 1999, 457.
78. Of course, it is possible to analyze European colonizers as a kind of immigrant, and I
argue in chapter 2 that this is something that Japanologists should do, but we should bear in
mind that this can be done only after inverting Higham’s in-group-over-out-group hierarchy.
79. We should remember that Gluck cited Higham in 1985, but that Breen cited Linton et al.
in 2000.
80. A. Irving Hallowell, “Discussion,” appended to the end of Linton 1943, 240.
81. Wallace 1956, 278.
82. Clemhout 1964, 14.
83. Lanternari 1974, 488–489.
84. Linton 1943, 230.
85. Ibid., 234.
86. Ibid., 235.
87. As discussed earlier in this chapter, this is especially true of Japanologists focusing
on the Edo period, with some exceptions. Among those focusing on the modern period, the
exclusive identification of Kokugaku with nativism is less common.
88. Kokugaku is emics in this scheme, despite the fact that it had etic usages as well. The
assumption of Kokugaku as emics among scholars in Japan (and to some degree elsewhere) is
an intellectual legacy of Tokugawa exceptionalism that sustains exceptionalist thinking in
contemporary Japan (mostly associated with Nihonjinron). This debate between describing the
study of Japanese antiquity in either etic or emic terms played itself out among Edo intellectu-
als who were supportive of either Wagaku or Kokugaku. Among the terminological support-
ers of Wagaku w ere Kamo no Mabuchi, Shinozaki Tōkai (1687–1740), Matsumiya Kanzan
(1686–1780), Hanawa Hokiichi (1746–1821), Shimizu Hamaomi (1776–1824), Murata Harumi
(1746–1811), and Oyamada Tomokiyo (1782–1847). For a more detailed discussion of Wagaku in
the pre-Tokugawa era, see Carter 1996 and Varley 1990. Among the terminological supporters
of Kokugaku were Matsumiya Kanzan (who insisted that Kokugaku reflected a more ideo-
logically suitable attitude among its followers than was the case with the followers of
Wagaku), Ryūkō (1763–1824), Yamamoto Gakuhan (1805–1853), Ōkuni Takamasa (1793–
1871), Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), Konakamura Kiyonori (1821–1895), and Haga Yaichi
(1867–1927).
89. Miyahiro 1971, 295.

90. See Haga 1928.
91. See McNally 2004b, 231–259.
92. Linton’s focus on the in-group’s adoption of the out-group’s technology presents us with
the potential classification of Rangaku/Yōgaku as nativism, which is an indication that his
broader concept of nativism is actually problematic in the Tokugawa case. By focusing on the
hostile intent of the in-group with regard to the presence of the out-group, as is the case with
Higham’s concept of nativism, we can dismiss technological adoption itself as nativistic and
focus more on the intention to use the out-group’s superior technology to drive them out. For
this reason, I would argue that some of the leading figures of opening the country or kaikoku,
such as Sakuma Shōzan (1811–1864), Sakamoto Ryōma (1836–1867), Katsu Kaishū (1823–1899),
and Aizawa Seishisai (1781–1863), were actually nativists in this way because of their calls to
adopt Western military technology and use it to drive Westerners out of Japan. Thus, while
sonnō-jō’i, the topic of chapter 2, exhibits the hallmarks of nativism in ways that merit special
attention, one could argue that the same is true of kaikoku.
Chapter 2. Sonnō-jō’i
1. While the term “Bakumatsu” generally signifies the era of the end of the Tokugawa
Bakufu, and the end of the Tokugawa period, some historians specifically view Perry’s arrival
as the beginning of Bakumatsu. It marked, quite literally, the beginning of the end for the
Bakufu, but it was, in a sense, the beginning of Tokugawa nativism.
3. Interestingly, the term sonnō-jō’i itself seems to combine the concepts of nativism of both
Linton (sonnō) and Higham (jō’i), even though I argue against equating sonnō-jō’i with nativ-
ism. Historically speaking, sonnō-jō’i was antithetical to kaikoku, and people died because of
their allegiance to one or the other, but this opposition collapses when the discussion shifts to
Tokugawa nativism. Like the advocates of sonnō-jō’i, many supporters of kaikoku also advo-
cated for the expulsion of Westerners from Japan.
4. Breen 2000, 430.
5. Ibid., 430.
6. Six years after the appearance of Breen’s (2000) article, Mark Teeuwen, inspired by
Breen to follow Linton, defined nativism as a kind of revivalism aimed at the unwanted influ-
ences of another culture. See Teeuwen 2006, 227. While this definition certainly “works” for
Kokugaku, it does not work for the Know-Nothings (Higham’s paradigmatic example from
American history) or the adoption of European technology by the Japanese in the sixteenth
century (Linton’s paradigmatic example of Japanese nativism). By focusing the Japanologist’s
analysis on culture and not people, Teeuwen turns Kokugaku into an exceptional case study of
nativism, using the etic application of nativism to reinforce the perception of incommensura-
bility rather than emphasize conceptual commonalities.
7. Breen 2000, 429.
8. Hesselink 1994, 350.
9. According to Matthew Fraleigh, the locus classicus for the word shishi is the Lunyu
(J. Rongo) attributed to Confucius: “The Master said: ‘Gentlemen of high purpose and men of
benevolence never cling to life at the risk of harming their benevolence; but they may lose their
lives in the cause of achieving benevolence,’ [子曰：志士仁人無求生以害仁、有殺身以成仁。].” Zhu
Xi later glossed the appearance of shishi (Ch. zhishi) in the passage as “ ‘a gentleman who has a
purpose’ (志士、有志之士).” Fraleigh observes how it was Zhu Xi’s interpretation of the mean-
ing of the term shishi that was “most influential on nineteenth-century Japanese samurai” (2009,
113). Fraleigh also notes how the shishi of Bakumatsu Japan had “a preoccupation with death”
(ibid., 115).
10. Nabeya 1995, 8.
11. For Masayoshi, trade was critical for both economic and military reasons, since it could
prevent the Westerners from waging war on Japan. See Hotta 1976.
12. Jansen 1961, 58.
13. Nabeya 1995, 39.
14. Lamberti 1972, 107.
15. Nabeya 1995, 26.
16. Harris’ secretary, Henry Heusken (1832–1861), was not so lucky; he was assassinated
by shishi from Satsuma in January 1861. See Hesselink 1994, 344.
17. Nabeya 1995, 44.
18. Ibid., 69.
19. Dubois 1910, 245.
20. Cohen 1997, 57. Cohen refers to immigration within a colonial context as constituting
an “imperial diaspora.” It is perhaps not coincidental that the arrival of Americans in Japan
and the Irish and Germans in America occurred at nearly the same historical moment; such
migrations were the by-products of technological advancements in maritime navigation and
industrialization. My thanks to my colleague, the late Jerry Bentley, for this reference.
21. Hashimoto and Scheiner 1987, 73.
22. Jansen 1961, 93.
23. The Russians, in fact, arrived at Nagasaki within weeks of Perry’s departure from Uraga
in 1853. See Koishikawa 2010, 53.
24. Nabeya 1995, 95.
25. Ibid., 96.
26. Ibid. Many shishi came from the lower ranks of the warrior class, and many of them
were impoverished, a factor that likely fueled their radicalism. See Hesselink 1994, 338. Trade
with the West caused a spike in the cost of living for many Tokugawa samurai, and the “lower
samurai” were especially affected. See Miyauchi 1970, 278.
27. Nabeya 1995, 73.
28. Lamberti 1972, 102.
29. Ibid., 121.
30. Jansen 1961, 134.
31. Nabeya 1995, 126.
32. Ibid., 131.
33. Kikuchi and Yamamura 1996, vol. 1, 88–89.
34. Hashimoto and Scheiner 1987, 73.
35. Ibid., 77.
36. Jansen 1961, 101.
37. Huber 1981, 119.
38. Nabeya 1995, 141.
39. Ibid., 145.
40. Ibid., 148.
41. Ibid., 149.
42. Jansen 1961, 150.
43. Ibid., 215.
44. Nabeya 1995, 190.
45. Takatsukasa Masamichi (1789–1868) reported in September 1855 that Emperor Kōmei
had approved the initial round of treaties with the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Russia. See Lamberti 1972, 109.
46. Nabeya 1995, 191.
47. Jansen 1961, 249.
48. Bob Wakabayashi has shown how Tokugawa intellectuals, even prior to 1839, feared
that the Europea ns were preparing to invade China, followed by an invasion of Japan. See
Wakabayashi 1992, 3.
49. Jansen 1961, 95.
50. Koishikawa Zenji observes how Kokugaku ideas generated in the eighteenth century
and primarily associated with Motoori Norinaga were propagated in the nineteenth by the
scholars of Mitogaku. See Koishikawa 2010, 52.
51. Jansen 1961, 102.
53. Toyoda 1973, 340–341.
54. Ibid., 346.
55. Ibid., 346. Wakabayashi argues that the threat of opium was very much on the minds
of Japanese intellectuals after 1853, contributing to the emergence of a “concept of state sover-
eignty” among some Tokugawa intellectuals. See Wakabayashi 1992, 24.
56. Toyoda 1973, 348–349.
57. Koishikawa 2010, 50.
58. Shōzan’s support for Yoshida Shōin’s travel to the West was consistent with his
Neo-C onfucian attitude toward kakubutsu kyūri (the investigation of things and the ex-
haustion of principle). For a poetic and oblique reference to kakubutsu kyūri, see Sakuma
1971c, 240.
59. Koishikawa 2010, 50, 54. Yoshida Shōin undertook a journey of self-discovery in 1852
and went to Mito, where he met Mito scholars such as Aizawa Seishisai and Toyoda Tenkō.
60. Huber 1981, 17.
61. Koishikawa 2010, 53.
62. Koishikawa argues that the original plan was not to return with the Americans to the
United States, but to assassinate Commodore Perry. Once it was clear that they would not be
able to get close enough to kill Perry, they fell back on their story about wanting to study con-
ditions in the United States. Ibid., 60–61.
63. Yoshida 1978, 550–551.
64. Ibid., 548.
65. Ibid., 548. Koishikawa suspects that Kurokawa Kahee, Shōin’s Bakufu interrogator, did
not believe Shōin’s story, but recorded it anyway to give the Bakufu a reason not to execute him.
See Koishikawa 2010, 60.
66. Conrad Totman has analyzed the simultaneous feelings of loyalty to domain and
country held by intellectuals like Yoshida Shōin as evidence of the existence of “dual ethnicities”
during the Edo period. See Totman 1982, 282. Totman’s observations apply to Shōin, as evi-
denced by his memoirs, but they also apply to Sakamoto Ryōma as well. Ryōma famously in-
voked “Japan” (Nihon or Nippon 日本) as the higher calling of his political efforts. See Iwasaki
1926, 84–85.
67. Huber 1981, 19.
68. Yoshida 1978, 550.
69. Huber 1981, 49. Assuming he was not intent on killing Perry, George Wilson ob-
serves how Robert Louis Stevenson praised Shōin’s idealism in the British press. See Wilson
1992, 65.
70. For a discussion of how Kokugaku scholars of the Tokugawa era organ ized them-
selves into “schools,” see McNally 2005. For a short biography of Ōkuni’s life, see Ishiyama
1996, 73.
71. Takeo 1971, 491.
72. Ibid., 490, 521.
73. Ibid., 521.
74. As Marius Jansen tells us, this was a common sentiment among the Tosa loyalists, of
which Sakamoto Ryōma was one. See Jansen 1959, 203.
75. Takeo 1971, 528.
76. Shōzan’s desire to attain a deeply intellectual and even spiritual grasp of Westerners,
in fact, was related to his desire to know his enemy. See Sakuma 1971c, 247–248. He also har-
bored a profound distrust of Western intentions. See Sakuma 1971a, 296. While he was opposed
to an immediate war with the West, he believed that a successful war against Westerners could
be waged in the future so long as the Japanese adopted Western military technology. See Maeda
2009, 315.
77. Hereafter all lunisolar dates will be given numerically in parentheses as month followed
by day.
78. Iwasaki 1926, 60.
79. Jansen 1961, 82.
80. Iwasaki 1926, 38.
81. Ibid., 51.
82. Jansen 1961, 99.
83. Reproduced in Iwasaki 1926, 54–55.
84. Wakabayashi argues that the meaning of jō’i changed in a fundamental way after
Perry’s arrival, going from literal armed expulsion to holding Westerners to the terms of their
treaties. See Wakabayashi 1992, 22.
85. Iwasaki 1926, 60.
86. Ibid., 86–87.
87. See his letter to Kaishū dated 7/25 of that year in Kikuchi and Yamamura 1996, vol.
1, 114.
88. Ryōma was happy about becoming Katsu Kaishū’s student. See Iwasaki 1926, 71.
89. Ryōma’s switch from jō’i to kaikoku was similar to what modern scholars have referred
to as tenkō (ideological apostasy). Even in the 1930s, Andrew Barshay argues that these switches
were not always what they seemed. See Barshay 1988, 25.
90. Kikuchi and Yamamura 1996, vol. 1, 112–113.
91. Fraleigh 2009, 115.
92. Hesselink 1994, 350.
93. Ryōma never completely abandoned the dream of Japan regaining its international
independence via jō’i. See Kikuchi and Yamamura 1996, vol. 1, 114.
94. See Tokugawa 1976.
95. Ibid., 9.
96. Bob Wakabayashi observes how the meaning of sakoku changed as a result of the
Bakumatsu treaties with the West, going from literal isolation to the assertion of Japan’s “au-
tonomy” in charting its own course in foreign relations. See Wakabayashi 1992, 22.
97. Tokugawa 1976, 10–11.
98. One could argue that the Japanese of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
nativistic in ways that were similar to American nativism, namely, that both were strongly
anti-Catholic, despite the fact that the Japanese opposition to Spanish and Portuguese Ca-
tholicism was from an earlier era and was not based on Protestantism.
99. Tokugawa 1976, 14–15.
100. If there is any merit to the speculation that Shōin actually wanted to kill Perry, rather
than seek passage to the United States, then Shōin and Nariaki came up with similar tactical
strategies for dealing with the Americans. See Koishikawa 2010, 55.
101. Nabeya 1995, 1.
102. There were, however, resident Koreans and Chinese in Nagasaki, and likely elsewhere
in Japan during the Edo period, as well as Ainu in northern Honshū and in Hokkaido, and
Ryūkyūans in Satsuma. To what extent the presence of these groups elicited nativistic responses
among the Japanese people with whom they interacted is an interesting question, and one wor-
thy of some scholarly attention.
103. Nabeya 1995, 8. It is important to note that Seishisai, like Ryōma, converted from be-
ing an advocate of jō’i to a supporter of kaikoku. Seishisai argued that the former could only be
successful by pursuing the latter first. See Aizawa 1973a, 363. He also believed that jō’i would
never be successful in his own time, but that success could be achieved at some point in the
future. See Aizawa 1973a, 366–367.
104. Nabeya 1995, 26.
105. Ibid., 11.
106. Ibid., 44.
107. Quoted in ibid., 69.
108. Ibid., 73.
109. Ibid., 126.
110. Ibid., 130.
111. Ibid., 148.
112. Jansen 1961, 139.
113. Kōmei 1863, 319.
114. Ibid., 320.
115. Ibid.
116. A meeting of “prominent daimyo” took place within a few weeks of Kōmei’s letter. See
Totman 1975, 395–396.
117. Kōmei 1863, 320.
118. Ibid., 321–323.
119. Nabeya 1995, 6.
120. Ibid., 8.
121. Ibid., 40.
122. Jansen 1961, 7.
123. Koishikawa argues that the ideology underlying jō’i was kōkoku shisō (imperial
nation thinking), of which Norinaga’s ideas were the most prominent. See Koishikawa
2010, 52.
124. One wonders if Linton ever imagined an encounter between technologically superior
Europea ns and non-Europeans as not resulting in nativistic reactions.
Chapter 3. Proving Uniqueness and Asserting Superiority

1. David Rodgers observes how “postulating a universal rule, while holding one’s
own nation exempt from it, is to slip by necessity into a rhetoric of caricature and exaggeration.
It manufactures an artificially homogeneous ‘we’ bounded off, by the sharpest of imagined con-
trasts, from a universalized ‘they’ in the world beyond” (2004, 29–30). Thus, the Kokugaku re-
jection of foreign knowledge has more to do with exceptionalism than it does with nativism,
since the us-versus-t hem mentality that created it emerged out of the Sinocentrism of Con
fucianism (see chapter 4). Kurozumi Makoto also cautions Japanologists against making too
much of the supposed hostility of Kokugaku scholars toward Confucianism, since many of
them still identified themselves with it. See Kurozumi 2006, 216. Kurozumi’s observation on
this issue is confirmed by Murata Harumi’s declaration that he was a Confucian scholar after
all. See McNally 2005, 77. While both Motoori Norinaga and Kamo no Mabuchi recognized the
hold that Chinese knowledge had on the Japanese people via the concept of the Chinese mind
(karagokoro), it was this mind-set that they believed needed to be purged from Japan, not those
whom they believed had fallen under its spell. For a detailed analysis of the relationship be-
tween Confucianism and Kokugaku during the eighteenth century, see Flueckiger 2011.
2. For this reason, we should include Kokugaku in the history of Japanese exceptional-
ism, rather than in the history of Japanese nativism. As we will see later in this chapter, Amer-
icanists include Nihonjinron in their global studies of exceptionalism, unaware of the pro-
found linkages between it and Kokugaku. See Rodgers 2004, 26; Befu 1993, 122.
3. Lipset 1963, 15.
4. Lipset 1996, 17.
5. Ibid., 13.
6. Jack Greene argues that ideas of American exceptionalism assume two basic forms,
one focusing on the ways in which American society is exemplary, which includes ideas of
superiority, and those which assert that American society is exempt from historical forces
that affect the rest of the world. See Greene 1993, 201. While “exemplary” corresponds
roughly to my idea of subjective-e vidential exceptionalism and “exempt” to objective-
evidential exceptionalism, Greene sees these terms as divergent concepts within the same
analytical category without exploring the relationship between them. Because Lipset and his
supporters did not acknowledge the work of their colleagues working on subjective-evidential
exceptionalism as exceptionalism at all, I posit the existence of divergent forms of exception-
alism but suggest that “exempt” is simply a more ideologically acceptable way of saying “ex-
emplary.” Thus, Greene’s terms, exempt and exemplary, are conceptually continuous in my
analysis, even if Americanists working on the subject of exceptionalism do not see it that way.
7. For key secondary sources on subjective-evidential exceptionalism, see the refer-
ences, especially Madsen 1998; Greene 1993; Hodgson 2009; Rodgers 2004; and Appleby 1992.
8. Nelles 1997, 755.
9. By 1800, the association of America with exceptionalism was widely accepted among
Americans, including its strong connotation of national superiority. See Greene 1993, 7. Over
the course of the nineteenth century, the connection between America’s national superiority
and its divine status seemed to deepen in the minds of many Americans. See Rodgers 2004, 24.
The source of America’s superiority emanated from its democratic institutions, which seemed
bound to achieve a state of “perfection.” See Madsen 1998, 71. The most prominent institution
of American exceptionalism was Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans were charged by
God to spread American democracy across the continent, whose ultimate conquest was, of
course, divinely ordained. See Madsen 1998, 92. Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) wanted to
carry Manifest Destiny abroad, and it morphed into an ideological justification for American
expansion by the end of the nineteenth century. See Rodgers 2004, 24.
10. Greene 1993, 166.
11. Ibid., 58.
12. Interestingly, Japan has faded from the popu lar American imagination as America’s
biggest geopolitical rival, having yielded to China, which has now assumed the role of Ameri-
ca’s implacable foe. These American anxieties only increased after China’s economy overtook
Japan’s as the world’s second largest. Thus, as the story of American exceptionalism continues
to unfold, the Americans and the Japanese will both share a rivalry with China. The extent to
which Chinese ideas of their own exceptionality today are informed by those associated with
their imperial past remains to be seen.
13. The connections between Nihonjinron and Kokugaku are well known in the field of
Japanese studies. See Befu 1993, 122; Dale 1986, 48. Nihonjinron authors, such as Doi Takeo
(1920–2009) and Muraoka Tsunetsugu (1884–1946), w ere great admirers of Motoori Nori-
naga’s scholarship. See Doi 1972, 86–87; Muraoka 1934. For an English version of Doi 1972, see
Doi 1981. Adherents of Nihonjinron in the modern period and Kokugaku in the early mod-
ern era w ere focused especially on the unique qualities of the Japanese language. See Dale
1986, 56. Both Mabuchi and Norinaga believed that the Japanese language was the world’s
most unique, and therefore its only true, superior one. See Kamo no Mabuchi 1972, 395, and
also Motoori 1975b, 521–522. For both Mabuchi and Norinaga, the spoken language of
Japanese antiquity was one in which there were only signifiers and referents, so that it was
completely lacking in signifieds. Because of these connections between Nihonjinron and
Kokugaku, the latter is also implicated as exceptionalism by association, despite the fact that
Americanist observers are unaware of it. For a critical, yet sympathetic, interpretation of Ni-
honjinron, see Berque 1986.
14. Maruyama Masao (1914–1996), a scholar of Tokugawa politic al thought, identified
Kokugaku primarily with Kamo no Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga. See Maruyama 1974, 143.
Although he recognized the contributions of earlier scholars, notably Keichū (1640–1701), he
decided to adhere to these canonical figures instead, recognizing, I would argue, their ideo-
logical significance rather than their methodological innovations. Both Mabuchi and Norinaga
believed that the ancient Japanese followed a Way (michi) that was unique to Japan, and also
independent of the Chinese Way (Dao), the focus of Confucianism. It was, of course, under-
stood that Japan’s Way was superior to the Chinese Way; thus, by associating Kokugaku mostly
with Mabuchi and Norinaga, Maruyama himself recognized, even if unknowingly, the excep-
tionalist character of Kokugaku.
15. Lipset 1996, 77.
16. Rodgers 2004, 25. While Werner Sombart argued in favor of America’s exceptionality,
he believed that it was material and definitely not spiritual. In the end, he believed that Amer-
icans were not, in fact, different from their European counterparts. See Sombart 1976, 23.
17. While Tocqueville clearly predates Sombart and the Marxists, he never actually used
the word “exceptionalism” in his work. Sombart did not either, but his observations led to the
emergence of the term among his Marxian colleagues a decade or so after the publication of
his book.
18. Werner Sombart argued that the American case proved that Marxism’s theory of
historical development was true, even though the American attitude toward socialism was
very much at odds with that of the Europeans, especially the Germans. See Sombart 1976, 6, 18.
19. This was precisely the conclusion that Sombart reached. Ibid., 119.
20. Greene 1993, 5. Even Sombart made this observation about Americans in 1906, argu-
ing that the material circumstances of the Americans were measurably better than those of their
European counterparts. This included the higher quality of housing, food, and clothing that
Americans enjoyed by comparison with the Europea ns, conditions that squelched the fires
of class conflict: “All Socialist utopias came to nothing on roast beef and apple pie” (Sombart
1976, 106).
21. Greene 1993, 201. Note that Sombart did not believe that the American example un-
dermined the Marxian model. While Marxist observers of the United States noted this diver-
gence from the proper historical path, their postwar colleagues came to similar conclusions
about Germany, which they called its Sonderweg (special path). It was Sonderweg that seemed
to explain how National Socialism derailed Germany’s historical progress. Not surprisingly,
scholars of subjective-evidential exceptionalism have conceptualized the discourse of Sonder-
weg as a German example of exceptionalism. See Rodgers 2004, 27; Nolan 1997, 769.
22. Lipset 1996, 33.
23. Rodgers 2004, 31.
24. After World War II, America’s moral superiority became the basis for exceptionalism.
See Greene 1993, 208. The postwar era was a time when the objective reality of victory seemed
to confirm the American rhetoric of self-praise. By the 1950s, the convergence of these two
factors began to manifest itself in textbooks of American history in the form of narrative
tributes to American exceptionalism. See Hodgson 2009, 92–94.
25. Rodgers 2004, 25.
26. Greene 1993, 4.
27. Rodgers 2004, 45.
28. Ibid., 44.
29. Lipset 1996, 13; Greene 1993, 4.
30. Lipset 1996, 17.
31. Hodgson notes how Tocqueville’s observation about equality as an objective condition
gave way to ideas of the equality of economic opportunity during the postwar period. See Hodg-
son 2009, 100, 134.
32. Tocqueville 2006, 9. Hereafter cited in the text as Democracy.
33. Note how Sombart made a similar observation about the Americans in 1906: “Because
of the democratic system of government, universal education, and the higher standard of liv-
ing of the worker, there is genuinely a lesser social distance between the individual strata of
the population, and . . . t his distance becomes even smaller in the consciousness of the varied
classes than it really is” (1976, 110).
34. Interestingly, Tocqueville’s invocation of God and the Americans repeated assertions

by seventeenth-century Puritans who believed themselves to be God’s “chosen people.” The fact
that they faced tremendous hardship while living in North America only strengthened their
resolve, as it was proof of “God’s continuing commitment to their exceptional destiny.” See
Madsen 1998, 25–26.
35. Geography was of part icu lar interest to Yamaga Sokō, as I explore in more detail in
chapter 4.
36. For an enormously influential work on the historical formation of the European pub-
lic sphere, see Habermas (1962) 1993.
37. See Ikegami’s take on Habermas’ public sphere for Tokugawa Japan. Her claim is that
his concept of the public sphere is too “normative,” an indication of her sensitivity toward the
status of the public sphere as etics. Rather than the public sphere, she proposes the existence of
“aesthetic publics” during the Edo era, in which individuals were connected to one another via
“bonds of civility.” See Ikegami 2005, 4, 58. Ikegami’s concept functions as emics in response to
her discomfort with Habermas’ etics, rather than serving to hone it with case studies from
Tokugawa Japan, and thereby facilitate its global applications. As a result, Ikegami’s reliance
on the generation of new emics for the study of Tokugawa Japan suggests how it was incom-
mensurable with Western history.
38. Turner 1996, 320. Hereafter cited in the text as FAH.
39. The role of the natural environment in the development of America’s unique national
character is a common theme in studies of subjective-evidential exceptionalism. The idea that
American values such as individualism and self-reliance only truly emerged via the struggle
between individual Americans and their harsh environment was famously championed by the
Transcendentalists during the first half of the nineteenth century, especially by Ralph Waldo Em-
erson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). See Gura 2007. Interestingly, the Tran-
scendentalists occupy an important position within the history of American exceptionalism. See
Gura 2007, xv; Madsen 1998, 73. For Japanologists this is especially intriguing, since the connec-
tion between a harsh natural environment and the development of a superior national character is
something we see in Tokugawa exceptionalism as well, explored in more detail with Yamaga Sokō
in chapter 4. Hirata Atsutane also made similar observations. See Hirata 1976, 66–67. For an En
glish translation, see Odronic 1967. Because of this issue, and others, it is clear that Transcenden-
talism was perhaps the closest American analogue to Kokugaku, rather than Know-Nothingism.
40. Lipset 1996, 19.
41. Although Transcendentalism was an outgrowth of Protestantism, its leaders promoted
the study of all the major religions of the world, including, interestingly enough, Buddhism,
Confucianism, and even Islam. The leading intellectuals of Kokugaku during the Edo era as-
sumed a certain level of knowledge regarding Buddhism and Confucianism and so never actu-
ally encouraged people to study them. If anything, the problem from their perspective was that
these foreign philosophical-religious traditions had too much influence in Japan, thereby
obscuring its indigenous traditions, chiefly Shinto. Kamo no Mabuchi conceived of archaic
Shinto, namely Shinto before the sixth-century importations of Buddhism and Confucianism,
as eminently natural, so natural that he had difficulty denying its resemblance to Chinese Dao-
ism, an interpretation Norinaga refuted. See McNally 2005, 158–159; see also Kamo no Mabuchi
1942; Motoori 1942; see also Hirata Atsutane’s lionization of Shinto’s association with nature
(Hirata 1976, 49). For an English translation of Kokuikō, see Flueckiger 2008; for a German trans-
lation, see Dumoulin 1939.
42. Nelles 1997, 756.

43. Compare this observation with Sombart’s from 1906: “I fully believe that the fact sup-
plying the principal reason for the characteristic peaceable mood of the American worker is
that many men with sound limbs and no capital or hardly any were able to turn themselves
into independent farmers almost as they wished by colonising free land” (Sombart 1976, 116).
44. Lipset 1996, 23.
45. Ibid., 77.
46. Ibid., 87.
47. Ibid., 108.
48. Ibid., 18.
49. Ibid., 13.
50. Lockhart 2003, 59.
51. Lipset 1963, 144; 1996, 26.
52. Lipset 1996, 62.
53. Ibid., 61.
54. Lipset 1963, 94.
55. Lipset 1996, 238.
56. Lipset 1963, 161.
57. Ibid., 163.
58. Ibid., 161.
59. Lipset 1996, 19.
60. Ibid., 61.
61. Ibid., 19.
62. Ibid., 153.
63. Ibid., 151.
64. Ibid., 175.
65. Ibid., 174.
66. Ibid., 165.
67. Ibid., 157.
68. Ibid., 18.
69. Ibid., 51.
70. Ibid., 63.
71. Ibid., 51.
72. Ibid., 14.
73. Norinaga observed how the one, true Way was propagated only in Japan, even though
its effects were felt the world over. Thus, Japan’s possession of the Way made it both exempt,
in the sense that the rule everywhere else in the world was the absence of the Way, and also
exemplary, since it made Japan superior to the rest of the world. See Motoori 1975b, 514.
Thus, Kokugaku conforms to Greene’s (1993) definition of exceptionalism on this fundamen-
tal level.
74. Lipset 1996, 94.
75. Ibid., 130.
76. For scholars of subjective-evidential exceptionalism, the era before 1800 is critical, since
it was the time of several key figures, such as John Winthrop (1588–1649), Benjamin Franklin
(1706–1790), Philip Frenau (1752–1832), and Thomas Paine (1737–1809). See Madsen 1998, 6,
36–38; Rodgers 2004, 24; Hodgson 2009, 3; and Greene 1993, 132. Joyce Appleby refers to Amer-
ican exceptionalism of the early republic era as a form of “ethnocentrism” because it produced
narratives that completely omitted the presence of non-Europeans in America. See Appleby
1992.
77. Lipset 1996, 18.
78. Ibid., 20.
79. Ibid., 26.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., 160.
82. Ibid., 61.
83. Ibid., 26.
84. Hodgson 2009, 128–129.
85. Hodgson obliquely likens the rhetoric of American exceptionalism to that of the Nazis
and their ideas of the “master race” (2009, 188). Peter Dale made a similar observation about
the intellectual affinities between Nazi ideology and Nihonjinron. See Dale 1986, 214. While
adding another aspect to the family resemblance between Nihonjinron and American excep-
tionalism, these assertions, made, interestingly enough, by two British scholars, also implicate
National Socialism in the history of European forms of exceptionalism, in addition to the dis-
course of Sonderweg. Dale traces the intellectual similarities between Nazism and Nihonjin-
ron to the work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814). Perhaps unknown to Hodgson, there is
a similar link between American exceptionalism and Fichte, specifically the intense interest in
Fichte’s works among prominent Transcendentalists. See Gura 2007, 6. While Fichte had at least
some influence on the intellectual development of Transcendentalism via German idealism and
romanticism, his ideas regarding the cultural identity of the German people resonate in pro-
found ways with the ideas of Motoori Norinaga. See Fichte 1922. For an analysis of Fichte in
the context of ethnic nationalism, see Abizadeh 2005. See also Motoori 1942, 1975a, 1975b, 1983,
and 1936. For an English translation of Uiyamabumi, see Nishimura 1987; for a translation of
Naobi no mitama, see Nishimura 1991; for an English translation of Tamakushige, see Brown-
lee 1988.
86. Lockhart 2003, 160.
87. I would argue that “outlier” is a kind of code word for “exemplary or superior nation,”
and it highlights the ways in which objective-evidential and subjective-evidential exceptional-
isms interact with one another. Put simply, while the authors of works in the genre of objective-
evidential exceptionalism usually deny that they are trying to prove American superiority, as
Lipset did, this does not mean that they, in fact, deny the idea of American superiority itself, as
mentioned above. At the same time, it is critical to acknowledge that the popu lar consumers of
works in objective-evidential exceptionalism tend to be supporters of subjective-evidential
exceptionalism; in other words, they are believers in America’s superiority. To put it another
way, the United States, as the superior nation, is “misrecognized,” to borrow the words of Pierre
Bourdieu, as the “outlier” nation, so that the process whereby material uniqueness morphs into
spiritual uniqueness is erased. For more on the concept of misrecognition, see Bourdieu 1991,
163–164.
88. Lipset 1996, 208.
89. Harumi Befu refers to Nihonjinron as foundational for contemporary Japanese nation-
alism. See Befu 1993, 107.
90. Lipset 1996, 212. Japan is likely the first Asian society viewed by Americanists as
having exceptionalism, despite the fact that Japanese exceptionalism was derived from Con-
fucianism (as Chinese exceptionalism), as we will see in chapter 4. Even in the Japanese case,
Americanists have not attempted to look beyond Nihonjinron, especially to its roots in
Kokugaku.
91. For an interesting and polemical take on Nihonjinron, see Dale 1986, 1988.
92. Nihonjinron resembles both subjective-evidential and objective-evidential exception-
alisms because of the way it developed historically and in the way its contributors seek to prove
assertions of Japanese uniqueness empirically. While the emphasis on empiricism within
Nihonjinron marks it as intellectually akin to objective-evidential exceptionalism, it is also an
important source of divergence, since advocates of Nihonjinron look to both the social and
the natural sciences in proving their claims, while American exceptionalists stick exclusively
to the social sciences. See Dale 1986, 17, 189, 197. Of course, Nazi scientists sought to prove the
superiority of the “Aryan race” in various ways, and this infamous chapter in European history
may explain why American exceptionalists are wary of the natural sciences. I would argue that
Nihonjinron contributors and their allies rely on the epistemological power of the natural sci-
ences only because their claims of superiority have no underlying religious beliefs anymore, a
role that Shinto played during the Tokugawa and Meiji eras. In the American case, consumers
of objective-evidential exceptionalism usually invoke their religious beliefs in America’s divine
blessings and special mission in the world (including Lipset himself), ideas that echo those
of their forebears in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. For an interesting
look at how the Nazis viewed the Japanese during World War II, see Maltarich 2005. My thanks
to Klaus Antoni for suggesting this book to me.
93. Lipset 1996, 251.
94. During the 1990s, as much as half of the Japanese population subscribed to Nihon-
jinron ideas. See Befu 1993, 121.
95. Lipset 1996, 251.
96. Ibid., 254.
97. Ibid., 217.
98. Ibid., 250.
99. Ibid., 256.
100. Ironically, it was the Marxists who analyzed American exceptionality so as to bolster
Marxism, not undermine it.
101. The authors of works that I call subjective-evidential exceptionalism have no interest
in acknowledging the existence of a distinction between subjective-evidential and objective-
evidential forms, seeing the two in an intellectual, though not ideological, continuum.
102. This is something that the Chinese and the Japanese understood very well, as we will
see in chapter 4.
103. Sugimoto 1999, 90. We see a similar recognition of emics and etics in Motoori Nori-
naga’s emphasis on emic concepts like mono no aware, which also happens to be an ideological
favorite of Nihonjinron advocates. For Norinaga, and also Mabuchi, foreign etics transformed
native ways of knowing and thinking. They referred to the end result of this transformation, in
the case of Confucianism, as the Chinese mind (karagokoro), whose indigenous Japanese coun-
terpart was the yamatogokoro. See Kamo no Mabuchi 1942, 112; Motoori 1975a, 26. Within
the increasingly globalized context of contemporary Japan, contributors to Nihonjinron rec-
ognize that their ideas have an interested, if not eager, audience even outside of Japan, and so
their enthusiasm for meeting this international demand has led them to speak of exporting Japa
nese emics abroad, thereby initiating their transformation into etic concepts. These emics
then cease to delimit the ways in which Japan and the Japanese are different from the rest of
the world; they actually generate an image of Japan and its people as fundamentally similar in
heretofore unknown ways. The context of sakoku during Tokugawa Japan shielded the schol-
ars and supporters of Kokugaku from this conceptual dilemma, since they were unaware of,
and cared little for, any foreign intellectual interests in Japan. As long as their intellectual mar-
ket was composed exclusively of their fellow countrymen, they could cling to an emics-only
ideology in ways that their counterparts in Nihonjinron cannot.
104. Rodgers 2004, 44.
105. Hirata Atsutane actually used Western etics to confirm Japan’s superiority via the
concept of latitude. Since Japan was between thirty and forty degrees north latitude, he
argued, it had all four seasons, and was neither too hot nor too cold. See Hirata 1976, 58. Atsu-
tane’s assertion echoed Yamaga Sokō’s observations from the seventeenth century (without
the references to Western geography), as we will see in chapter 4.
106. Lipset realized how potentially useful comparative historical analysis could be, even
though he did not do this kind of work himself. Instead, he encouraged others to attempt such
a study. See Lipset 1963, 348.
Chapter 4. Seventeenth-Century Tokugawa Exceptionalism

1. I would like to thank my colleague at UHM, Professor Wensheng Wang, for checking
my translations of some of the kanbun documents used in this chapter.
2. It is worth noting that not all Tokugawa intellectuals who studied Japanese antiquity
did so with an exceptionalist agenda, chiefly some of the scholars associated with the Edo-ha.
See McNally 2005, 14–64.
3. Verschuer 2007, 266.
4. John Fairbank observes how Sinocentrism and “an assumption of Chinese superiority”
informed foreign relations for much of China’s history. See Fairbank 1968a, 2. Interestingly,
ethnocentrism was actually a commonality between Tokugawa/Japanese exceptionalism and
American exceptionalism, even though the supporters of the latter do not always see it that
way. A common assumption regarding Sinocentrism and ethnocentrism is that the former is a
Chinese example of the latter, so that China ends up sharing this commonality with the United
States and Japan. This is not entirely the case, however. As the examples of the Mongols of the
Yuan and the Manchus of the Qing demonstrate, the support of Sinocentrism was not limited
to the Han Chinese people. Rather than excluding members of other ethnicities, as was and is
the case with Japanese exceptionalism, and is also the case with white supremacists in the United
States, Sinocentrism supports the inclusion of non-Han ethnicities.
5. The issue of Sinocentrism is a significant one in the history of Kokugaku, since it is bound
up with both its very name and also exceptionalism at the same time. As I have analyzed pre-
viously (McNally 2005), certain intellectuals specifically identified their scholarly work with
Wagaku, and some even went so far as to condemn the terminological usage of Kokugaku.
Despite their objections, these intellectuals were included in the history of Kokugaku, a fact
to which their inclusion in the Kokugakusha denki shūsei attests. At the same time, the
Bakufu-sponsored research institute, the Wagaku Kōdansho, founded in 1793 and whose first
director was Hanawa Hokiichi (1746–1821), changed its name during the early Meiji period to
the Shiryō Hensanjo, a name it still bears to this day. While Wagaku was purged from the
name of one academic institution, Kokugaku was being added to another one, specifically
Kokugakuin, a name it acquired in 1919 when its former name, the Kōten Kōkyūsho, an insti-
tution founded in 1882, was dropped. During the early 1900s, Haga Yaichi expressed his
preference for Kokugaku over any other terms (like Wagaku) because it, he claimed, was the
oldest such term, because it was distinguished by a scientific attitude, and because of its connec-
tions to the modern nation-state. See Haga 1928, 56, 66. Finally, it is worth mentioning that
Wagaku is a name that historians today rarely use in place of Kokugaku. Thus, it is clear that a
terminological shift has taken place in which Wagaku fell out of use in favor of Kokugaku; this
shift, I argue, represented a triumph of exceptionalism over simple nationalism. We can exam-
ine usages of both Wagaku and Kokugaku during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
see how they reflect a belief in Sinocentrism, namely, Chinese exceptionalism, in the case of
the former, and support for Tokugawa exceptionalism, in the case of the latter. For usages of
Wagaku, see Murata 1972, Oyamada 1908, and Konakamura and Seimiya 1886. For excep-
tionalist arguments in favor of the usage of Kokugaku over Wagaku, see Ōkuni 1973; Mat-
sumiya 1987a (1936) and 1987b (1936); Ryūkō and Ezawa 1919; and Hirata 1977.
6. Wang 1968, 37.
7. Norinaga famously argued that everything about Japan was superior to China, includ-
ing its rice. See Motoori 1936, 154–155.
8. Mancall 1968, 63–64.
9. A lthough he was not discussing Chinese exceptionalism, John Cranmer-Byng’s de-
scriptions of Sinocentrism in late imperial Chinese foreign relations uncannily echo the descrip-
tions of exceptionalism given by Americanists. The Chinese believed their values were “univer-
sally valid” and that “China had a special role in the world as the guardian of these values.” They
believed that they were a “morally superior” people, whose culture “exemplif[ied] the correct
universal ethical system.” See Cranmer-Byng 1973, 68–69.
10. Mancall 1968, 64.
11. The Son of Heaven was charged with ruling “all under Heaven” (tianxia, J. tenka), a term
that usually signified “most of the known world.” See Fairbank 1968a, 2.
12. Ibid., 6.
13. Matsumiya Kanzan, a scholar of military studies (heigaku), expressed his admiration
for his Kokugaku colleagues because their loyalty was with Japan rather than China, in what
was a clear rejection of Confucian Sinocentrism. See Matsumiya 1987a (1936), 238–239.
14. Mancall 1968, 64.
15. Wang 1968, 39, 42.
16. Beginning with the Sui dynasty, China’s moral “virtue/power” (de, J. toku) supplanted
its military power in ideological justifications of the Sinocentric world order. Ibid., 43.
17. Cranmer-Byng 1973, 78.
18. Historians refer to Chinese foreign trade during the reign of the Hongwu Emperor as
kangō bōeki in Japanese or “tally-trade system.” See Verschuer 2007, 264.
19. Takara 2011, 79. The Ming Chinese became aware of the Ryūkyūans as a result of send-
ing their tribute request to Japan, and they sent envoys to Okinawa in 1372. The Okinawans of
the kingdom of Chūzan responded eagerly to the Ming request. Thereafter, the Ming asked the
Ryūkyūans to monitor the activities of the Wakō and report back to them. See Akamine 2004, 48.
20. After 869, the Koreans acted as mediators between Japan and China until the eleventh
century, when Chinese merchants began trading directly with Japan. See Akamine 2004, 25.
21. Akamine 2004, 25; Verschuer 2007, 268.
22. Verschuer 2002, 429n41.
23. The Ryūkyūans sent the most tribute missions of any country during the Ming dy-
nasty, perhaps as many as 171; Annam, in second place, sent 89 missions over the same period.
See Takara 2011, 82. Of course, there were three independent kingdoms (Chūzan, Sannan,
and Hokuzan) in Okinawa prior to the pol itical unification of the island in 1422.
24. Hokama 2010, 70.
25. Kaneyoshi executed members of the first Ming delegation because the Hongwu Em-
peror’s tone in the letter they carried was both aggressive and threatening. For an excerpt from
this letter, see Akamine 2004, 34.
26. Ibid.
27. Kamiya 2010, 28.
28. It is not clear to historians exactly what motivated Yoshimitsu to accept investiture from
the Ming. It is possible that his concerns were primarily economic in nature, and that subject-
ing Japan to the status of a Ming vassal state was simply the price of doing business in the re-
gion. The demand for Chinese trade goods was very high during the Muromachi period, as elite
warriors sought to display their great wealth and power in Kyoto, the traditional seat of the
civilian aristocracy and the imperial institution. The demand for Chinese goods was so high
that the Muromachi Bakufu cultivated close ties with the Ryūkyū Kingdom, a state that had
also received and accepted a tribute request from the Hongwu Emperor. Since Ryūkyū was able
to trade with the Ming, it was a critical source of Chinese trade goods for the Muromachi
Bakufu prior to 1401. Unlike the Japanese, the Ryūkyūans maintained their tributary status
continuously for 507 years. See Fukushima, Taira, and Takara 1998, 24. One theory about why
Yoshimitsu accepted the title of “king” from the Chinese is that he was trying to assert his sta-
tus as the de facto ruler of Japan to both his allies and political rivals within Japan. Although
Yoshimitsu was retired at the time, the example of the “cloistered” (insei) emperors of the Heian
period demonstrated that being retired actually enhanced one’s claim on power, rather than
weakening it in any way. Another theory is that the title of “king,” even though it was conferred
on him by the Chinese, actually contributed to Yoshimitsu’s image as a loyal vassal of the Japa
nese emperor at the time. Interestingly, Taira no Kiyomori was also retired when he responded
to the letter addressed to the “king of Japan” by sending tribute.
29. This was not the case with the Ryūkyūans, however, who w ere required to seek the for-
mal investiture of any new king who came to the throne. As a rule, the Ming, and their succes-
sors the Qing, simply recognized the Ryūkyūan king, so the Ryūkyūans never really worried
about whether or not their kings would receive investiture from the Chinese.
30. Ron Toby (1991, 24) dates the ending of Japan’s tributary relationship with China to
1547, while Kenneth Swope (2002, 766) dates it to 1548. Charlotte von Verschuer (2007, 265)
dates it slightly later to 1550, and Akamine Mamoru (2004, 78) dates it even later than that,
to 1551.
31. Akamine 2004, 46; Verschuer 2007, 265.
32. A colorful episode in 1523, which contributed to the severing of ties between the Mu-
romachi Bakufu and the Ming, involved rival ethnic Chinese representatives in the employ of
both the Hosokawa and the Ōuchi. See Chan 1968, 411–412.
33. Interestingly, Hideyoshi was to be exempt from sending tribute. See Swope 2002, 774.
34. Relations with Korea were restored in 1607, while trade between the two countries
resumed in 1611. See Toby 1991, 43, 55–56.
35. Swope 2002, 777–778.
36. Ibid., 774. Apparently, the Chinese disregarded their brief relationship with Prince
Kaneyoshi.
37. The Chinese were allowed to trade with the Japanese via the Bakufu’s shuin system. See
Toby 1991, 60–61. As of 1635, the Bakufu confined the trade conducted by private Chinese
merchants to Nagasaki, along with the Dutch.
38. Ibid., 63.
39. Ibid., 216.
40. Note that what I see as assertions of parity, Toby sees as feelings of superiority “among
some Japanese before the Tokugawa period” (ibid., 219). I argue that the rejection of Sinocen-
trism was not yet tantamount to an assertion of Japanese exceptionalism prior to the Edo pe-
riod. Note also that Charlotte von Verschuer argues that “the rulers of Yamato, and then
Nihon, from Suiko on by and large submitted themselves to the rules dictated by Chinese
sovereigns” (2007, 267). Rather than assert superiority over China, “the early Yamato rulers,”
she observes, tried “to avoid being incorporated into a subordinate position within a Sinocen-
tric world order” (Verschuer 2007, 268).
41. The Muromachi Bakufu used neither the title “king” nor Chinese-era names on its cor-
respondence with Korea. See Akamine 2004, 57–58.
42. Among others opposed to Yoshimitsu’s accept ance of Ming investiture was Zuikei
Shūhō (1392–1473), author of Zenrin kokuhōki, a contemporary source from the early 1400s.
See Verschuer 2007, 270.
43. The Japanese of the Muromachi era regarded the Koreans as equals, but the Koreans
did not agree. The Koreans regarded the Japanese island of Tsushima as theirs, since it was a
tributary of Joseon, and they knew that their society was more highly ranked within the Ming
list of vassal states than was Japan, both of which contributed to Korean views of superiority
over their eastern neighbors. See Swope 2002, 761.
44. Joseon-Tokugawa relations were ambiguous enough that each side was able to make
claims of superiority over the other. See Toby 1991, 35–36.
45. The Ōuchi controlled Hakata and the Hosokawa controlled Sakai. See Akamine
2004, 78.
46. Toby 1991, 60.
47. Ibid., 221.
48. Nakai 1980, 196.
49. Toby 1991, 224.
50. The Chinese themselves had difficulty maintaining the idea of Chinese superiority fol-
lowing the rise of the Yuan dynasty nearly 400 years earlier. See Wang 1968, 44–45.
51. Razan composed a list of Asian tributary states of the Bakufu. See Toby 1991, 59–60.
52. Ibid., 223–224.
53. Ibid., 227.
54. The Hongwu Emperor was a strong supporter of Neo-Confucianism, and he made it
clear that he wanted to use its ideas to mold the world order in its metaphysical image. See Aka-
mine 2004, 33. For a more detailed study of Neo-Confucianism and the Hongwu Emperor, see
Dardess 1983.
55. Even though Hidetada’s refusal to renew Japan’s tributary status amounted to a rejec-
tion of the Chinese world order, the Bakufu and the Tokugawa Confucians retained the excep-
tionalist structure of hua and yi in their thinking. See Toby 1991, 211. Fairbank observes how
the “organizing principle of superordination-subordination” at the core of “the Sinocentric re-
lationship” was common throughout the region, even when China was not directly involved.
See Fairbank 1968a, 9.
56. Maeda Tsutomu argues that the advent of Western learning in the eighteenth century
gave Kokugaku scholars the “intellectual weapons” (shisō-teki na buki) with which to assail Sin-
ocentrism (Chūgoku chūshin) even further, such that we can conclude that the efforts of schol-
ars like Ansai, Sokō, and Banzan in the seventeenth century, while weakening it, were not
enough to destroy it utterly. In the nineteenth century, Kokugaku scholars found the dismissal
of Western learning ideologically useful in enhancing a doctrine of Japanocentrism (“Kōkoku”
chūshin shugi). See Maeda 2009, 108–109.
57. This is very close to the view argued by Nakai (1980). Although she does not use the
word “exceptionalism,” she does observe how feelings of parity and superiority were common
among Tokugawa Confucians, and that admissions of Japan’s inferiority to China were essen-
tially nonexistent among their ranks. She admits that Ogyū Sorai seemed to vacillate between
praise for Japan and praise for China, and Sorai and his followers exerted more than a little
influence on Tokugawa intellectuals during the eighteenth century. Hayashi Razan, as head of
the Bakufu College (Shōheizaka Gakumonjo), was similarly ambivalent on the issue of superi-
ority. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Matsumiya Kanzan asserted that the Sinocen-
tric views of Tokugawa intellectuals amounted to disloyalty to Japan. It would have been odd
for him to make such a statement if everyone was already thinking the same thing. Murata
Harumi tackled the same issue a generation later and argued against Kanzan’s position. That
is to say, Harumi argued in favor of retaining the term “Wagaku,” its Sinocentrism notwith-
standing, and his student, Oyamada Tomokiyo, later supported this view in the 1820s
and 1830s. Of course, arguing in favor of Sinocentric terminology did not necessarily mean
that they also supported Sinocentrism. At the same time, praise for Japan by scholars like Ra-
zan and Shundai did not mean that they were against Sinocentrism.
58. Interestingly, a commonality between the ideology of German Nazism and Nihonjinron
is the respect and admiration that their supporters had for the works of Fichte. See Dale 1986,
214. Because of the lack of any direct influence, not much has been said about Fichte’s strong
affinities with the writings of Kokugaku scholars, especially Norinaga. Like his eighteenth-
century Japanese counterpart, Fichte believed in a linguistic foundation for German unique-
ness and even superiority. See Fichte 1922, 56, 68–71. Compare Fichte’s views of the German
language with those of Norinaga on the Japanese language. See Motoori 1983, 416.
59. Kurozumi Makoto argues that a fascination with Shinto was common among early
Tokugawa Confucians because of the lack of a “foundational spirit” (konpon no seishin), but
that an effort to “deny or transcend” (hitei naishi chōetsu) Shinto began with Satō Naokata
(1650–1719) and Muro Kyūsō (1658–1734). See Kurozumi 2003, 20.
60. Ooms 1985, 221.
61. Kurozumi Makoto observes how Shinto matters largely filled a religious niche within
Tokugawa Confucianism. See Kurozumi 2006, 215. The turn toward Shinto was likely the re-
sult of a general repudiation of Buddhism among Tokugawa Confucians.
62. Tillman 1992, 138.
63. Kurozumi argues that Ansai was the first Confucian scholar to examine rigorously
the creation stories of kamiyo using the “power of Zhu Xi Learning’s study of li” (Shushigaku
no rigakuteki na chikara). See Kurozumi 2003, 24.
64. Ooms 1985, 289.
65. Yamazaki 1970, 249.
66. Ibid., 273.
67. Ibid., 276–277.
68. Ibid., 280–281.
69. The episode upon which this play was based is also known as the Incident of the Forty-
Seven Rōnin.
70. Maruyama 1974, 40.
71. Yamaga 1933, 66–67.
72. Ibid., 87.
73. Ibid., 98.
74. According to Matsumiya Kanzan, Wagaku (or Kokugaku) was indispensable for Japa
nese scholars since it helped maintain the critical balance between wen and wu. See Matsumiya
(1936) 1987a, 230. Kurozumi Makoto shows how ideologues of the early Tokugawa era, espe-
cially the authors of the Buke shohatto (rules for military households), emphasized military mat-
ters over civilian cultural pursuits, which reversed the hierarchy established during the Muroma-
chi period. See Kurozumi 2003, 102–103.
75. Note that geography and a harsh natural environment were also cited by key figures
in the history of American exceptionalism as critical to understanding America’s unique-
ness, including the Puritans in the seventeenth century and Frederick Jackson Turner in the
twentieth.
76. Yamaga 1933, 60.
77. Hirata Atsutane used his knowledge of Western latitudes to argue that it demonstrated
Japan’s geographic superiority. See Hirata 1976, 58.
78. Yamaga 1933, 80–81.
79. It is more common in Western historiography to see Zhongguo translated as Middle
Kingdom than as Central Realm. However, Middle Kingdom is a misleading translation, since
“middle” does not convey the same sense of perfection that “center” does, and “kingdom” is
simply not accurate, since historians have already decided that late imperial China was an
empire with an emperor. Within the context of the tributary system, kingdoms, or wangguo
(J. ōkoku) were vassal states of China, each one led by a king.
80. Although some of Banzan’s distinctive ideas are critical to the history of Tokugawa
exceptionalism, he was also renowned for his attempts to find workable solutions to the politi
cal, social, and economic ills of his time. Although he was employed by Ikeda Mitsumasa, he
suggested reforms with all of society in mind, especially the impoverishment of the warrior and
peasant classes. See Soum 2002, 51.
81. Totman 1993, 131.
82. Miyazaki 1995, 64–65.
83. Kumazawa Banzan, Denshūroku, quoted in ibid., 65.
84. Compare Wang Yangming’s idea of the unity of thought and action with Emerson’s
(2006a, 83) in “The American Scholar.” The encounter between the individual and the natural
environment brought about a kind of enlightenment experience in which individuals experi-
enced the cosmic truth within themselves. See Gura 2007, p. 103. For Emerson, the realization
of such cosmic truth was the true essence of Idealism, of which Transcendentalism was an
American incarnation. See Emerson’s (2006b, 108) “The Transcendentalist.” Both Emerson
and Thoreau deeply admired John Brown (1800–1859) as “a man of rare common sense and
directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and princi-
ples.” Quoted in Gura 2007, 261. Like the Transcendentalists, Tokugawa admirers of Wang
Yangming had their heroic figures as well, including Ikuta Yorozu (1801–1837) and Ōshio
Heihachirō (1793–1837), both of whom died fighting for their beliefs. See Totman 1993,
514–518.
85. Totman 1993, 128.
86. Ibid., 131.
87. Ibid., 128.
88. Kumazawa 1971a, 450.
89. Miyazaki 1995, 88.
90. Kumazawa 1971b, 380–381.
91. Miyazaki 1995, 86.
92. Kumazawa 1971a, 449.
93. Ibid., 448–449.
94. Ibid., 449.
95. Miyazaki 1995, 87.
96. See McNally 2005, 69–78. For Norinaga, the fact that the Japanese people of remote
antiquity, before the importation of Buddhism and Confucianism, lived in social harmony
was proof of the true power of Japan’s indigenous Way. See Motoori 1942, 130–131.
97. Kumazawa Banzan, Miwa monogatari, quoted in Miyazaki 1995, 87.
98. Kumazawa 1971b, 148–149.
99. Miyazaki 1995, 91–92.
100. Kumazawa 1971a, 449.
101. Miyazaki 1995, 88.
102. Kumazawa 1971b, 179.
103. Ibid., 222.
104. Ibid., 151. Compare Banzan’s claim of Chinese praise for Japan with Norinaga’s claim
that the name of Japan, as Nihon or Nippon, a name he claimed the Chinese recognized and
used for Japan, was proof of its superiority. See Motoori 1983, 384.
105. Ansai’s influence was strong throughout the eighteenth century, influencing even the
policies of Matsudaira Sadanobu. See Ooms 1975. For Kurozumi, it is perhaps impossible to
overstate Ansai’s influence throughout not only the Edo period but the Meiji period as well.
See Kurozumi 2003, 24.
Chapter 5. From Exceptionalism to Nativism

1. For an interesting discussion of Mitsukuni’s efforts at religious reforms in Mito dur-
ing his time as its daimyō, see Kouamé 2004.
2. Michael Wachutka argues that Mito ideas were absorbed into Kokugaku after the
Meiji Restoration. The ideas of Mitogaku, in other words, endured in the guise of Kokugaku
during the Meiji period, which itself had reverted back to an emphasis on the philology of the
eighteenth century. Moroever, Kokugaku continued to be intellectually relevant in the Meiji
period, despite the general association of its heyday with the Edo period. See Wachutka 2013,
240, 243.
3. Koschmann observes how nineteenth-century Mitogaku was a particu lar combina-

tion of intellectual influences from the seventeenth century (chiefly, Yamazaki Ansai and
Ogyū Sorai) and the eighteenth (especially Motoori Norinaga). See Koschmann 1987, 54.
4. Despite their support for the imperial court, Koschmann notes how the Mito “zealots
never proposed the overthrow of the bakufu or the bakuhan social order” (ibid., 4).
5. Koschmann sees the distinctiveness of Mitogaku as emanating from its status “as a
case study in the relationship between thought and action” (ibid., 4). This conceptualization
resonates with my contention that nativism was the practical application of exceptionalist
ideas, even though I believe this to be the case with the shishi and the advocates of kaikoku,
not just the Mito scholars.
6. Toby 1991, 211; Nakai 1980, 168.
7. Attributed to Yoshida Katsudō (1791–1844), quoted in Kajiyama 1997, 266. Note the
idiosyncratic reading of the expression, which can otherwise be read as uchū dai ichi no kuni
(the first realm of the cosmos).
8. For Koschmann, Mitogaku more commonly refers to the nineteenth-century scholar-
ship of Mito-based scholars than the scholarship of earlier eras, even the seventeenth century,
the inaugural era of the Dai Nihonshi. See Koschmann 1987, 3. He argues that the “Confucian-
ized Shinto framework” of Mitogaku was “a revival of the synthesis forged by Yamazaki Ansai in
the early eighteenth century” (ibid., 39).
9. Wakabayashi 1986, xii.
10. Totman 1993, 524. Koschmann notes that the “final complex measured 178,200 square
meters and was easily the largest such facility in Tokugawa Japan” (1987, 119).
11. Totman 1993, 547.
12. Kajiyama 1997, 282.
13. Suzuki 1998, 2.
14. Kajiyama 1997, 21.
15. As Peter Dale (1986, 1988) has argued, emics and etics have been fundamental to
understanding the ideological position of Nihonjinron, and I have extended this observation
to include American exceptionalism as well. However, the issue of emics and etics is critical to
the discussion of the controversy surrounding the terminological choice between Wagaku and
Kokugaku during the Edo period. Put simply, Wagaku acted as emics in Japan because it was
comprehensible in contexts other than that of Tokugawa Japan, whereas Kokugaku, as a signi-
fier for the study of Japanese antiquity, made sense only within the Tokugawa context. This rec-
ognition was at the heart of the observations made by various Tokugawa intellectuals, such as
Shinozaki Tōkai and Matsumiya Kanzan. See Shinozaki 1917, 175; Matsumiya 1987a, 231. While
Wagaku made sense in China, Korea, and Japan, Kokugaku could only signify scholarship re-
lated to Japanese antiquity in Japan itself, and this was one of the reasons why Oyamada
Tomokiyo ridiculed it as a term. See Oyamada 1908, 2: 583. While the utility of Kokugaku as an
emic term was undeniable, it could also serve as etics as well, signifying not only an exception-
alist (namely Japanocentric and non-Sinocentric) approach to the study of Japanese antiquity
but also even a nonexceptionalist (namely Sinocentric) approach, so that Kokugaku could ter-
minologically supplant and replace Wagaku. This is exactly what happened to the Sōgakkōkei,
attributed to Kada no Azumamaro (1669–1736), in which the word “Wagaku,” from an early
copy of the text, was replaced by “Kokugaku” in a later version during the eighteenth century.
See Miyake 1932, 1: 269; Hirata 1977, 483–486; and Yanase 1942, 64–65.
16. Mabuchi was officially a scholar of Wagaku. See Nosco 1990, 117; Terada 1979, 132.
Murata Harumi observed how Wagaku was an official part of the curriculum at the Shōheizaka
Gakumonjo. See Murata 1972, 448.
17. Interestingly, the Mitogaku scholars chose not to adopt the term Kokugaku for their
work, in spite of their avowed exceptionalism. At the same time, they avoided using Wagaku
as well by the nineteenth century. They preferred to use various Confucian terms for scholar-
ship, rather than supporting one side or the other of the Wagaku/Kokugaku controversy. In
this way, they navigated a course between the etics-over-emics of orthodox Confucianism and
the emics-over-etics of Kokugaku.
18. Wakabayashi 1986, 52–53.
19. Fujita 1973, 11.
20. Tokugawa 1973b, 210.
21. Ibid., 212–213.
22. Suzuki 1998, 132.
23. Ibid., 135.
24. Tokugawa 1973a, 230.
25. Suzuki 1998, 1.
26. Ibid., 39.
27. Ibid., 44.
28. Kajiyama 1997, 280–281.
29. Fujita Tōko 1973, 278.
30. Ibid., 296.
31. Ibid., 318–319.
32. Ibid., 260–261.
33. Ibid., 261.
34. Ibid., 331.
35. Wakabayashi 1986, xii.
36. Kajiyama 1997, 279.
38. Kajiyama 1997, 277.
39. Ibid., 281.
41. Aizawa 1973c, 241–242.
42. Ibid., 250.
43. Ibid., 256–257.
44. Aizawa 1936, 343.
45. Aizawa 1973b, 81. For an English translation of Shinron, see Wakabayashi 1986.
46. Toby 1991, 222.
47. Aizawa 1973c, 240.
48. Aizawa 1936, 343.
49. Aizawa 1973b, 52.
50. Seishisai was uncomfortable with the idea of overly criticizing China as a way of en-
hancing Japan. Perhaps the most influential treatise that did just that was Mabuchi’s Kokuikō
(1765). In his effort to criticize Chinese ideographs as burdensome and especially unwieldy,
Mabuchi had to position Japan’s syllabaries alongside the writing systems of the Indians and
the Europeans, so that he could portray the Chinese writing system as the world’s worst. See
Kamo no Mabuchi 1942, 99. This was also a strategy used by Lipset to demonstrate the ways in
which American exceptionalism was not about the assertion of superiority. Hodgson refers to
this as “negative” exceptionalism. See Hodgson 2009, 128–129.
51. Hirata Atsutane openly declared Japan the world’s supreme realm, so that its emperor,
in fact, presided over the whole world. See Hirata 1976, 48.
52. Aizawa 1973b, 50. Koschmann argues that Seishisai’s belief that Japan was the “head” of
the world, a view that I argue was exceptionalist, was based on the “unprecedented continuity
of the imperial line . . . [which was in Seishisai’s mind] a standard for the rest of the world” (1987,
65). Seishisai’s suspicions of Westerners were largely informed by his interactions with a group of
twelve English whalers who had landed in Mito the year before. See Koschmann 1987, 56–57.
53. Aizawa 1936, 340–341.
54. Ibid., 342.
55. Matsumiya (1936) 1987a, 238–239.
56. Shinozaki Tōkai observed how Wagaku made sense only from an external perspective,
what we have been calling etics. For Tōkai, external terms that were used for internal phenom-
ena (emics, in other words) were disrespectful of Japan. See Shinozaki 1917, 175.
57. He preferred Kokugaku over Wagaku, terminologically speaking, but he used neither
term to refer to the work of the Mito scholars.
58. Aizawa 1973c, 242–243.
59. Hirata Atsutane shared Seishisai’s disdain for Buddhism. See McNally 2005, 49. Dur-
ing the Meiji period, some of his followers participated in the destruction of temples during
the years of the shinbutsu bunri. See Hardacre 1989, 27–28.
60. Aizawa 1936, 382.
61. Norinaga admonished his students to learn about Rangaku in order to deepen their
belief in Japan’s superiority, which was something Atsutane tried to do in his own work,
especially as it related to Western astronomy. See McNally 2005.
62. Aizawa 1973c, 242–243.
63. Kajiyama 1997, 269.
64. Note that he used the more reverent term Kōkokugaku (imperial Kokugaku).
65. McNally 2005, 158–159. On Mabuchi and Daoism, see ibid., 40.
67. Aizawa 1936, 356.
68. Ibid., 356–357.
69. Shōzan believed that Japan needed to maintain its ties with the West in order to buy
modern weapons and learn how to manufacture them in Japan. Thus, Shōzan’s kaikoku atti-
tude was hardly pro-Western. See Beasley 2000, 25; Sakuma 1971b, 323. Unlike other advocates
of kaikoku, such as the scholars of Rangaku, he was driven less by curiosity about the West than
by the potential advantages gained by studying their military technology. See Sakuma 1971c,
251–252.
70. Totman 1993, 507.
71. Aizawa 1973b, 145–146.
73. Koschmann borrows his concept of ideology from Louis Althusser’s (1918–1990) work.
Rather than distinguish between ideology and practice, Althusser saw them as part of a con-
tinuum. See Koschmann 1987, 6.
74. Koschmann argues that “Mito discourse was always ‘in action’ ” (ibid., 80).
75. The opposition to Know-Nothingism among Transcendentalists emanated from their
devotion to “universal humanitarianism,” in other words, their efforts to improve the lives of
all peoples belonging to all cultures. See Gura 2007, 266. Emerson was aware, however, of a gap
between the ideology of universalist assertions and the reality of particularism, especially as it
related to the issue of the existence of a truly American ethnicity. He referred to this gap as
“double consciousness,” an intellectual contradiction that he tried to reconcile in his own writ-
ings. See Kaufmann 2002, 114; 2004, 42. In his book English Traits, Emerson celebrated the
ways in which the American people shared a common cultural, and also ethnic, heritage with
the English, and this was what made the American people unique in the world. See Emerson
1866, 298. Since both Fichte and the Trancendentalists were inspired by the universalism of
German Idealism, it should not come as a surprise that the triumph of ethnic particularism in
the writings of the former also manifested themselves in those of the latter.
76. Koschmann reinforces the link between Mitogaku and nativism by observing how
“Mito scholars such as Fujita Yūkoku (1776–1826) w ere among the first to recognize the threat to
Japan posed by the Western powers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries” (1987,
2). In other words, Mitogaku scholars were concerned with the prospect of Western incursions
into Japan before they became a reality during the 1850s and 1860s. Since their scholars pro-
duced works that were influenced, at least in part, by the potential for a foreign invasion, one
could argue that they were nativists on that basis, despite the fact that neither Linton nor Higham
(nor the hybrid model of the two that I propose) directly addresses the issue of reactions to a
potential future condition of face-to-face contact.
Conclusion
1. Kurozumi Makoto observes how Confucianism underwent a “generalization” (ippanka)
during the Edo period that was unprec edented, not only among elites but among nonelites
as well. It was the “wellspring” (gensen) of early modern Japanese thought. See Kurozumi 2006,
214, 217.
2. Kurozumi argues that Confucianism lost much of its validity after the Meiji Restora-
tion because of its associations with the defunct Edo Bakufu. Rather than fading into obscu-
rity, Confucianism was still a vibrant part of Meiji intellectual and academic life, even though
it underwent a radical simplification as it was incorporated into the “national morality . . .
[which] subsumed all [of its] values under loyalty to the emperor and the state.” See Kurozumi
2002, 395.
3. Carol Gluck’s work is the “exception” to this “rule.” See Gluck 1985. See also Higham
1988. For an analysis of Linton 1943 within Japanese Studies, see Breen 2000.
4. For a more detailed look at these two Kokugaku scholars, see McNally 2005.
5. My thanks to Wilburn Hansen for the freedom metaphor, which he mentioned during
his presentation as part of a panel I chaired on rethinking Kokugaku, held at the annual AAS
conference in Honolulu (2011).
6. This meant that the foreign-born, their descendants, and minority groups in general (Afri-
can Americans and Native Americans) w ere victims of American nativists, especially the KKK.
7. While it may appear that nativism and exceptionalism have been closely linked during
the last several centuries of Japanese history, it would be a mistake to conclude that such a link-
age was universally common across both time and space. The case of Transcendentalism dem-
onstrates very clearly how exceptionalism can thrive without nativism, despite the fact that the
Know-Nothings and the members of the KKK were/are doubtlessly also supporters of Ameri-
can exceptionalism. Indeed, Transcendentalism is an example of the ways in which exception-
alism and cosmopolitanism can exist alongside one another. Eric Kaufmann’s work, however,
indicates that we should take the cosmopolitan rhetoric of the Transcendentalists with a grain
of salt, as not even Emerson himself was able consistently to escape the bonds of his own WASP
ethnicity.
8. Harris 1979, 35–36.
9. Harris 1999, 31.
10. Harris 1979, 32–33.
11. Ibid., 35–36.
12. Harris 1999, 141.
14. Ibid., 129–130.
15. Harris 1999, 32–33.
16. Ibid., 33.
17. Ibid., 32.
18. See Breen 2000; Gluck 1985.
19. Harris 1979, 35–36.
20. Kuhn 1970, 175.
21. Ibid., 23.
22. Ruth Benedict’s analysis, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, penned as it was in 1946,
reflects this American attitude toward the exceptionality of Japan as a cultural enemy: “The
Japanese were the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought in an all-out struggle. . . .
We had to understand their behavior in order to cope with it.” Since the Japanese were so very
different from the Americans, Benedict asked, “was the alternative the eradication of the Japa
nese people?” After all, she observed, the Japanese were diametrically opposed to the Ameri-
cans, culturally speaking: “No one is unaware of the deep-rooted cultural differences between
the United States and Japan. We have even a folklore about the Japanese which says that what
ever we do they do the opposite” (Benedict 1965, 1, 3, 10). I have argued that the atomic bomb-
ings in 1945 were likely motivated by exceptionalist beliefs regarding the Japanese and also
America held by the Americans themselves. See McNally 2008, 139–148.
23. Kuhn 1970, 77.
24. Ibid., 23.
25. Ibid., 64.
26. For more information on the impact of Kōshōgaku on Kokugaku, see McNally 2005.
27. This antiforeignism must be placed in a particu lar context in order to highlight the role
of Sinocentrism during the Edo period. The opposition that Kokugaku supporters asserted
against the trinity of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Western learning certainly seems to up-
hold the image of an antiforeign cultural and intellectual institution. Opposition to Buddhism,
however, was rather common among serious-minded scholars of the Edo period, beginning
with the Confucians, such that the criticisms of Buddhism expressed by Kokugaku scholars
like Mabuchi, Norinaga, and others were part of an intellectual continuum with their Confu-
cian colleagues. As I discussed earlier in this study, the refutation of Sinocentrism was com-
mon to seventeenth-century Confucian Shinto, eighteenth-century Kokugaku, and nineteenth-
century Mitogaku. The rise of Rangaku in the eighteenth century also eroded confidence in
Sinocentrism among some Edo intellectuals, so that its refutation in the nineteenth century
became, in some ways, more urgent than the refutation of Sinocentrism itself, especially after
the Opium Wars.
28. My own preference is to use Kokugaku as a signifier for a network of private academies
whose members claimed Motoori Norinaga and Kamo no Mabuchi as their intellectual and
spiritual inspirations. For this reason, I capitalize Kokugaku, and eschew rendering it in low-
ercase or italics. See McNally 2005.
29. See Motoori 1975a, 25.
30. Derrida’s discussion of the “center” is foundational for his critique of logocentrism, since
“a central presence which has never been itself, has always already been exiled from itself into
its own substitute. . . . The center had no natural site, [and] was not a fixed locus but a function,
a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play.” See Der-
rida 1978, 280. The center, as the “structurality of structure,” is the epistemological enabler for
the illusion of presence in language, yet Derrida shows how both undergo substitution or sup-
plementation and are, therefore, always deferred themselves. It is interesting that the “center”
(or middle) is crucial to Chinese exceptionalism, which explains why the tribute system was so
important to Ming and Qing emperors; China could only be the center so long as cultures on
its periphery participated in the tributary system. The Chinese ignored, ritually speaking, those
societies, like Japan, that did not participate in the tributary system, just as the centrality of
Japan to seventeenth-century Tokugawa exceptionalism allowed the Japanese similarly to
ignore the Chinese.
31. Derrida 1974, 97–194.
32. Derrida 1978, 292.
33. See Foucault 1990; Butler 2006.
34. See Scott 1999. Scott was inspired to compose these essays by Derrida’s concept of de-
construction. Derrida, however, dealt directly at times with the issue of gender, specifically as
it related to literary studies. The phallocentrism that gender scholars sought to undermine was
essentially, Derrida believed, the same as logocentrism, leading Derrida and others to refer to
them together as “phallogocentrism.” So, by deconstructing logocentrism, one was also decon-
structing phallocentrism, and vice versa. See Derrida 1992, 57–60.
35. Bentley 2007, 131.
36. Derrida associated logocentrism with a philosophy of “presence,” whereby the supple-
mental function of language, as the substitution of one thing for another (thought for words
and reality for thoughts, or signifieds for signifiers and signifieds for referents), was unrecog-
nized. For Derrida, supplementation effectively destroyed, epistemologically speaking, both
the referents of external “reality” and meanings as signifieds, since he demonstrated that
both could only be apprehended as signifiers. Thus, he sought to collapse the key binaries
of signifier/signified and signified/referent that were at the heart of logocentrism.
37. In some ways, the interplay of emics and etics is another manifestation of philosophi-
cal debates between advocates of universalism and those of particularism. Jürgen Habermas
has championed the notion that there are such things as legitimately valid universal values upon
which all people as communicative subjects can agree, provided that the proper communica-
tive context is created, and these values can become the basis for both universal ethics and ac-
tions taken on the basis of those ethics. Habermas began his work on the subject of universal-
ism with his famous study of the “public sphere” as the context within which transparent
communication (namely, communication without deception or obfuscation) takes place. He
later abstracted a theory out of his studies of the public sphere, the theory of communicative
260 Note to Page 225
action. See Habermas (1962) 1993, 1984, 1987. Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) denied that
such transparent communication is even possible, since communicative exchanges are a kind
of game in which people try to gain an advantage over those with whom they converse. Lyotard
referred to the intellectual suspicion of discourses presuming to be universal, what he called
“metanarratives,” as characteristic of “postmodernity.” See Lyotard 1984, 1985. The critical dif-
ference in the universal/particu lar opposition presented by etics and emics is the interplay and
interdependence of the two, rather than the representation of opposing poles between which
one must choose, as is the case with the debate between Habermas and Lyotard.
Epilogue
1. Lyotard 1984, xxv.
Glossary
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Personal Names

Abe Masahiro 阿部正弘 Kamo no Mabuchi 賀茂真淵
Aizawa Seishisai 会沢正志斎 Kaneko Shigenosuke 金子重之輔
Ashikaga Takauji 足利尊氏 Kaneyoshi (Prince) 懐良親王
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu 足利義満 Katsu Kaishū 勝海舟
Ashikaga Yoshimochi 足利義持 Keichū 契沖
Ashikaga Yoshinori 足利義教 Kōmei (Emperor) 孝明天皇
Ban Nobutomo 伴信友 Konakamura Kiyonori 小中村清矩
Cheng Hao 程顥 Kōno Masuya 河野万寿弥
Cheng Yi 程頤 Koxinga 國姓爺
Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門 Kumazawa Banzan 熊沢蕃山
Doi Takeo 土居健郎 Kurokawa Kahee 黒川嘉兵衛
Ezawa Tokinaga 江沢講修 Maruyama Masao 丸山眞男
Fujita Tōko 藤田東湖 Matsudaira Katamori 松平容保
Fujita Yūkoku 藤田幽谷 Matsudaira Sadanobu 松平定信
Fujiwara Seika 藤原惺窩 Matsudaira Shungaku 松平春嶽
Haga Yaichi 芳賀矢一 Matsumiya Kanzan 松宮観山
Hanawa Hokiichi 塙保己一 Miyahiro Sadao 宮負定雄
Hayashi Razan 林羅山 Mōri Takachika 毛利敬親
Hirai Shūjirō 平井収二郎 Motoori Haruniwa 本居春庭
Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤 Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長
Hitotsubashi Keiki 一橋景紀 Muraoka Tsunetsugu 村岡典嗣
Hongwu Emperor 洪武帝 Murata Harumi 村田春海
Hoshina Masayuki 保科雅之 Murata Ujihisa 村田氏寿
Hosokawa 細川 Muro Kyūsō 室鳩巣
Hotta Masayoshi 堀田正睦 Nakae Tōju 中江藤樹
Ii Naosuke 井伊直弼 Nakahama Manjirō 中浜万次郎
Ikeda Mitsumasa 池田光政 Nakane Yukie 中根雪江
Ike Kurata 池内蔵太 Oda Nobunaga 織田信長
Ikuta Yorozu 生田万 Oguri Tadamasa 小栗忠順
Imagawa Ryōshun 今川了俊 Okada Izō 岡田以蔵
Itō Jinsai 伊藤仁斎 Ōkuni Takamasa 大国隆正
Iwakura Tomomi 岩倉具視 Ōshio Heihachirō 大塩平八郎
Kada no Azumamaro 荷田春満 Ōuchi 大内
Kamei Katsuichirō 亀井勝一郎 Oyamada Tomokiyo 小山田与清
261
262 Glossary
Ryūkō 立綱 Tokugawa Ietsugu 徳川家継

Sakamoto Ryōma 坂本龍馬 Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康
Sakuma Shōzan 佐久間象山 Tokugawa Mitsukuni 徳川光圀
Satō Naokata 佐藤直方 Tokugawa Nariaki 徳川斉昭
Seonjo 宣祖 (선조) Tokugawa Narinobu 徳川斉脩
Shimazu Hisamitsu 島津久光 Tokugawa Yoshinobu 徳川慶喜
Shimizu Hamaomi 清水浜臣 Toyoda Tenkō 豊田天功
Shinozaki Tōkai 篠崎東海 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉
Shōtoku (Prince) 聖徳太子 Wu Taibo 呉泰伯
Sima Qian 司馬遷 Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行
Sō Yoshinori 宗義和 Yamamoto Gakuhan 山本学半
Suiko (Emperor/Empress) 推古天皇 Yamauchi Yōdō 山内容堂
Tachihara Suiken 立原翠軒 Yamazaki Ansai 山崎闇斎
Taira no Kiyomori 平清盛 Yang (Emperor) 煬
Takatsukasa Masamichi 鷹司政通 Yongle Emperor 永楽帝
Takeo Masatane 竹尾正胤 Yoshida Katsudō 吉田活堂
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 谷崎潤一郎 Yoshida Shōin 吉田松陰
Tokugawa Iemochi 徳川家茂 Zhu Xi 朱熹
Tokugawa Ienari 徳川家斉 Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋
Tokugawa Ienobu 徳川家宣 Zuikei Shūhō 瑞渓周鳳
Tokugawa Iesada 徳川家定
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Terms, Place-Names, and Such

Aizu domain 会津藩 Chūgoku 中国
Akō domain 赤穂藩 Chūgoku chūshin 中国中心
“Amae” no kōzō 甘えの構造 Chūshingura 忠臣蔵
Amenominakanushi-no-mikoto 天御中主尊 Chūzan 中山
anime アニメ Convention of Kanagawa (Nichibei Washin
Ansei 安政 Jōyaku) 日米和親条約
Ansei Jigoku 安政地獄 Dai Nihonshi 大日本史
Asano 浅野 Daiteikokuron 大帝国論
ashigaru 足軽 daotong 道統
Asuka era 飛鳥時代 Daoxue 道学
bakuhan 幕藩 Dazaifu 太宰府
banbutsu 万物 de 徳
Bizen province 備前国 Dejima 出島
Bōkai shinsaku 防海新策 Edo-ha 江戸派
bōron no tomogara 暴論の輩 Edo period 江戸時代
bukoku 武国 Ezo 蝦夷
Bunkyū 文久 Fukuhara 福原
chōnin 町人 Fukui domain 福井藩
Chōshū domain 長州藩 gaikoku bugyō 外国奉行
chū/naka 中 gakumon 学問
Chūchō jijitsu 中朝事実 Gakutō benron 学統弁論
Chinese, Japan ese, and Korean Terms, Place-Names, and Such 263
Genroku Akō Jiken 元禄赤穂事件 kangō bōeki 勘合貿易

gensen 源泉 karagokoro 漢意
Goryeo 高麗 (고려) karōshi 過労死
Hagakure 葉隠 kenjutsu 剣術
Hakata 博多 kenminsen 遣明船
haijin 海禁 kiki kōkō 熙熙皐皐
Han dynasty 漢朝 Kimon 崎門
Harris Treaty (Nichibei Shūkō Tsūshō king of Japan 日本国王
Jōyaku) 日米修好通商条約 King of Japan, Yoshikane 日本国王良懐
heidon 併呑 kinri goshu eisōtoku 禁裏御守衛総督
heigaku 兵学 kōbu-gattai 公武合体
hitei naishi chōetsu 否定ないし超越 Kōdōkan 弘道館
hō 法 Kōdōkanki 弘道館記
Hokkaidō 北海道 Kōdōkanki jutsugi 弘道館記述義
Hokuzan 北山 Kogaku 古学
honji suijaku 本地垂迹 Kogaku shōden 古学小伝
hua 華 Koishikawa 小石川
huangdi 皇帝 Kōkan 江館
Hyōgo 兵庫 “Kōkoku” chūshin shugi「皇国」中心主義
ikoku 異国 Kōkokugaku 皇国学
ikoku nimo tameshi naki onkoto nari 異国に kōkoku shisō 皇国思想
もためしなき御事なり Kokugakuin 国学院
Inland Sea 瀬戸内海 Kokugaku seigi 国学正義
insei 院政 Kokugakusha denki shūsei 国学者伝記集成
ippanka 一般化 Kokuikō 国意考
Ishin Tosa kinnō-shi 維新土佐勤王史 Kokushihen 告志篇
Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine 石清水八幡宮 kokutai 国体
Jimusaku 時務策 kokuyō ni kyōsubeshi 國用に供すべし
jinbutsu 人物 Komagome 駒込
jinkoku 仁国 konpon no seishin 根本の精神
jinnō 神皇 kore wo sute kare ni shitagau 舎此従彼
jitsu 實 Kōshōgaku 考証学
jō’i 攘夷 Kōten Kōkyūsho 皇典講究所
Jūjō goji kengisho 十条五事建議書 kotobuki nagashi 寿ながし
Kagoshima 鹿児島 kuni/koku 国
kaibyaku irai 開闢以来 Kusanagi no Tsurugi 草薙剣
kaikoku 開国 kyōwa seiji 共和政治
Kaikoroku 回顧録 li 理
kakubutsu kyūri 格物窮理 Lunyu/Rongo 論語
kakumei 革命 manabi/gaku 学
Kamakura Bakufu 鎌倉幕府 Man’en 万延
Kamakura period 鎌倉時代 manga 漫画
kami 神 Matsunoya hikki 松屋筆記
Kamo Shrines 賀茂神社 Meiji Restoration 明治維新
kane 金 Metsuke 目付
264 Glossary
michi/dao 道 shinju itchi, bunbu gappei 神儒一致、文武合

Ming dynasty 明朝併
Mito domain 水戸藩 Shinron 新論
Mitogaku 水戸学 shirashimu 知らしむ
Miwa monogatari 三輪物語 shirizoke 退け
Morokoshi もろこし Shiryō Hensanjo 史料編纂所
Munen Uchiharai No Rei 無念打払令 shishi 志士
Muninen Uchiharairei 無二念打払令 shisō-teki na buki 思想的な武器
Namamugi 生麦 shochi 処置
Nanbokuchō 南北朝 Shōheizaka Gakumonjo 昌平坂学問所
Nanjing 南京 Shōkōkan 彰考館
naru nari 成也 shū 秀
Nihon/Nippon 日本 shuin 朱印
Nihon bunkengaku 日本文献学 Shushigaku no rigakuteki na chikara 朱子学
Nihonjin 日本人の理学的な力
Nihonkoku 日本国 Sōgakkōkei 創学校啓
Nihon ni narabu beki kuni wa nashi 日本に Song dynasty 宋朝
並ぶべき国はなし sonnō 尊皇
Ninigi-no-mikoto 邇々芸命 sonnō-jō’i 尊皇攘夷
Okayama 岡山藩 sono tsumi wo yurushi 其罪ヲ免シ
Okinawa 沖縄本島 Straits of Shimonoseki 関門海峡
oshie 教え Sui dynasty 隋朝
otaku おたく Suikan 水館
qi 気 Suika Shinto 垂加神道
Rangaku 蘭学 sumeraki no mikoto 天皇命
reigi 礼義 tadashi 糾し
rōjū 老中 tairō 大老
Ryūkyū Kingdom 琉球王国 Taishoku kanwa 退食間話
Sagami province 相模国 Taishō period 大正時代
saisei itchi 祭政一致 Takamagahara 高天原
Sakai 境 Tamadasuki 玉襷
sakoku 鎖国 tenkō 転向
Sakurada Gate 桜田門 tennō 天皇
Sannan 山南 tianxia 天下
Santetsu shōden 三哲小伝 tianzi 天子
Sea of Japan 日本海 tōkō kyohi 登校拒否
sei 盛 Tokyo University 東京大学
Seikyō yōroku 聖教要録 Tosa domain 土佐藩
Seimeiron 正名論 Tosa Kinnō-tō 土佐勤王党
Shiji 史記 tozama 外様
shikai 四海 tsuchi 土
Shikoku 四国 Tsushima 対馬島
shikoku 師国 Uraga 浦賀
Shimoda 下田 Wagaku Kōdansho 和学講談所
Shimonoseki 下関 Wagakuron 和学論
shinjin 神人 Wagaku taigai 和学大概
Chinese, Japan ese, and Korean Terms, Place-Names, and Such 265
Wakō 倭冦 yin 陰
wang 王 Yokohama 横浜
wangguo 王国 yo no naka ni futatsu naki kuni 宇宙第一国
Wanli (Emperor) 萬曆 Yuan dynasty 元朝
wen 文 Zen 禅宗
wu 武 Zenrin kokuhōki 善隣国宝記
wuxing 五行 zhiliangzhi 致良知
yamatogokoro 大和心 zhixing geyi 知行合一
yang 陽 Zhongguo 中國
Yasakani no Magatama 八尺瓊曲玉 Zhonghua 中華
Yata no Kagami 八咫鏡 Zhou dynasty 周朝
yi 夷 Zoku saimu kiji 続再夢紀事
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Index
Aizawa Seishisai, 177–190, 202; and Emperor Billington, Ray: on anti-Catholicism, 50,
Kōmei, 95; and the Expulsion Edict, 93, 231n49, 232n56; on anti-Catholicism as
256n52; and kaikoku, 235n92, 239n103; nativism, 43, 48, 55, 59, 62, 99, 101, 197;
and Mitogaku, 171, 174, 237n59; and and anti-immigration, 231n46; on
nativism, 23, 28; and Shinron, 72, 98; Canada, 231n44; and the connection
and Tokugawa Nariaki, 192–194 between anti-Catholicism and
“all under Heaven.” See tianxia immigration, 36–41, 46, 57, 60, 100;
Amaterasu, 155, 164, 180–181 and emics, 66–68, 71; on the issue of
Ames, Michael, 33–36, 58, rejection, 207; and Japanese studies, 224;
230n33 on the Know-Nothings, 231n50; and
Anglo-Saxonism, 42–45, 48–51, 53–54, Millard Fillmore, 231n52
56–57, 68, 232n55, 233n72, 233nn74–75 Breen, John, 29–30, 69–70, 206–207, 224,
Anglo-Saxons, 21, 44, 50 234n78, 235n6
Ansei Jigoku. See Ansei Purge Brownson, Orestes, 49, 232n60
Ansei Purge, 76, 79, 91 Buddhism: Aizawa Seishisai on, 184; and
anti-Catholicism, 62, 71; and America, Confucianism, 153–154, 162–163,
36–37, 40–41, 50, 60, 100–101; and 165–166, 168, 195, 251n61; and
nativism, 21, 46–47, 57, 66, 197, 232n56, deconstruction, 221; Fujita Tōko on,
232n60. See also Catholicism 178–179; Hirata Atsutane on, 256n59;
antiforeignism: and jō’i, 79, 81, 99–101; and and Kokugaku, 2, 24, 27, 62–63, 84, 141,
Kokugaku, 18, 26, 63, 65–66, 211–213, 193, 206, 258n27; Motoori Norinaga on,
258n27; and nativism, 22, 30, 207–208; 253n96; Oda Nobunaga on, 231n41;
and premodern Japan, 223–224; and the and premodern Japan, 1, 199; and
shishi, 77 Transcendentalism, 233n72
Antoni, Klaus, xi, 232n54, 245n85 Buke shohatto, 252n74
Arai Hakuseki, 184–185
Arminianism, 128–129 Calvinism, 127–129
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, 148–151, 249n28, Canada, 41, 133, 198, 231
250n42 Catholicism: and America, 21, 37–38, 115,
118, 128; and Japan, 199; and nativism,
Bakufu College, 153, 251n57 46, 60–62, 103, 197, 231n49, 232n56,
bakuhan, 7, 254n4 232n60. See also anti-Catholicism
Benedict, Ruth, 223, 258n22. See also The Central Realm, 158–160, 166–167, 170, 180,
Chrysanthemum and the Sword 182, 252n79. See also Chūgoku; Chūka;
Bentley, Jerry, xi, 236n20, 259n35 Middle Kingdom; Zhongguo; Zhonghua
277
278 Index
China: and Japan, 107–109, 249n30, 176–182, 184–185, 187, 255n17; and
250n40; and jō’i, 80–81, 83; the Kokugaku Shinto, 251n61
rejection of, 4, 23, 25, 61, 214, 223, 248n7; Confucius, 186, 235n9
and Korea, 249n20; and Mitogaku, Convention of Kanagawa, 73–74, 86, 94–95,
173–177, 179–184, 187, 190–191, 194–195, 189
255n50; and the Opium Wars, 92, 98, cosmopolitanism, 31, 53–54, 233nn72–73,
237n48; and Sinocentrism, 247n4, 248n9, 234n76, 258n7
248n13, 248n16, 251n55, 251n57, 252n79, cultural materialism, 15–16, 205–206, 211
259n30; and Tokugawa Confucianism,
141–155, 158–160, 163–169; and the Daigaku wakumon, 163. See also Kumazawa
United States, 241n12; and Wagaku, Banzan
254n15 Dai Nihonshi, 171, 173–174, 254n8. See also
Chinese mind, 240n1, 246n103. See also Tokugawa Mitsukuni
karagokoro Daiteikokuron, 83. See also Takeo Masatane
Chinese tributary system, 145–151, 169, Dale, Peter, xiv, 232n54, 241n13, 245n85,
249nn28–30, 249n32, 250n43, 251n55, 246nn91–92, 251n58, 254n15
259n30 Daniel, Marcus, xi, 230n39
Chōshū, 76–80, 82–83, 88–90, 94–97, 102 Daotong, 154, 168. See also Zhu Xi
Christianity, 92, 118, 127–128, 131, 162, 166, Daoxue, 161. See also Zhu Xi
168, 195, 232n56 Darwin, Charles, 43–44
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, 223, Dazai Shundai, 179, 251
258. See also Benedict, Ruth Democracy in America, 104, 109–124,
Chūchō jijitsu, 158–159. See also Yamaga Sokō 127–130, 133, 137, 242n32.
Chūgoku, 144, 180, 182, 251n56. See also Derrida, Jacques, 217, 221, 225, 259n34,
Central Realm; China; Middle Kingdom; 259n36
Zhongguo A Discussion of the Rectification of Names,
Chūka, 144. See also Central Realm; China; 174. See also Seimeiron
Chūgoku; Middle Kingdom; Zhongguo; “divine people,” 164. See also shinjin
Zhonghua dōtō, 154. See also Daotong; Zhu Xi
Chūshingura, 158 double consciousness, 53–54, 233n72,
Chūzan, 248n19, 249n23. See also Okinawa; 233n74, 257n75. See also Emerson, Ralph
Ryūkyū/Ryūkyūan Waldo
Clemhout, Simone, 58 Dutch Learning, 1, 84. See also Rangaku
cloistered emperors, 249n28. See also insei
Cohen, Robin, 74, 98, 236n20 East-West Center, xi, xiv
Cold War, 11, 202, 223 Edo-ha, xiii, 247n2
Confucianism/Neo-Confucianism, Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 53–54, 161, 233n72,
257n1; and the connection between 234n76, 252n84, 257n75, 258n7. See also
exceptionalism and Kokugaku, 206, 212, Transcendentalism/Transcendentalist
241n14; and exceptionalism, 24–25, emics, xiv–xv, 228n41; and etics, 260n37;
27–28, 141–145, 152–158, 160–169, and exceptionalism, 103, 106–108, 126,
171–174, 190–195, 199, 222; and the 132, 135–139, 204–206, 208–209; and
Hongwu Emperor, 250n54; and Japan, Japanese studies, 224–225, 229n63; and
1–2; and Kokugaku, 59–60, 84, 216, Kokugaku, 70, 234n88, 246n103, 254n15,
240n1, 243n41, 246n103, 253n96, 258n27; 255n17, 256n56; and nativism, 36, 40, 46,
and Meiji Japan, 257n2; and Mitogaku, 61, 232n60; and paradigms, 211, 213–221;
Index 279
and the public sphere, 243n37, 259n37; Fukuhara, 147

and Tokugawa Japan, 12–24. See also Fukui, 89
etics
ethnie, 8–10, 53–54, 233n73 Gaikoku bugyō, 75
ethnocentrism, 245n76, 247n4 Gangs of New York (book, film), 102, 231n51
etics, xiv–xv, 12–22, 205–206, 228n41; and gender, 62–63, 222–223, 259n34
exceptionalism, 106, 138–139, 143; and Genroku Akō Jiken, 158. See also
Japanese studies, 224–225, 229n63, Chūshingura; Incident of the Forty-
235n6; and Kokugaku, 234n88, 246n103, Seven Rōnin
247n105, 255n17, 256n56; and nativism, Germans/Germany: and American
55, 70, 208–221; and Nihonjinron, 254n15; immigration, 36, 40–41, 74, 100–101,
and the public sphere, 243n37, 259n37. 103, 197, 232n56, 234n75, 236n20; and
See also emics exceptionalism, 108, 133, 242n18,
Evidential Learning, 212. See also 242n21; and Fichte, 231n54, 245n85,
Kōshōgaku 251n58, 257n75; and influence on
exceptionalism. See Anglo-Saxonism; America, 48–52; and Kokugaku, 243n41;
Hodgson, Godfrey; incommensurability/ and nativism, 61; and Orientalism, 223
incommensurable; Lipset, Seymour Gluck, Carol, 30–31, 206, 224, 234n79,
Martin; Lockhart, Charles; Manifest 257n3
Destiny; Nihonjinron; outlier; Sombart, gogyō. See wuxing
Werner; Sonderweg; superiority; Goodenough, Ward, 14–17, 19–20, 205, 213
Transcendentalism/Transcendentalist; Goryeo, 147
Turner, Frederick Jackson Gothicism, 42
Expulsion Edict, 87, 93–94, 187. See also Grant, Madison, 44–45, 48
munen uchiharai no rei/muninen Great Elder, 76, 96. See also tairō
uchiharairei Greene, Jack, 130, 240nn6–7, 241n9, 244n73,
Ezawa Tokinaga, 248n5 245n76
Ezo, 7, 174
Habermas, Jürgen, 243nn36–37, 259n37
Fairbank, John, 247n4, 248n11, 251n55 Hagakure, 89, 91
Farris, Wayne, xi, 229n63 Haga Yaichi, 10, 63, 228, 234n88, 248n5
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 42, 52, 231n54, Han, 25, 145, 159, 183, 247n4
245n85, 251n58, 257n75 Hanawa Hokiichi, 227n2, 234n88, 248n5
Fillmore, Millard, 73, 231n52 Hansen, Wilburn, xi, 257n5
Five Phases. See wuxing Hardacre, Helen, 29, 229n8, 256n59
Five Relationships, 145, 182 Harootunian, Harry, 27–30, 69
“forsake this, follow that,” 183–185, 187. Harris, Marvin, 12–17, 19–20
See also Aizawa Seishisai Harris, Townsend, 72–76, 79–80, 83, 86, 94,
Fraleigh, Matthew, 235n9, 238n91 189, 236n16
The Frontier in American History, 116, 118, Harris Treaty, 95, 97. See also Nichibei
124, 137. See also Turner, Frederick Shūkō Tsūshō Jōyaku
Jackson Hayashi Razan, 151–154, 157, 161, 251n57
Fujita Tōko, 171, 174, 177–180, 190 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 42, 52,
Fujita Yūkoku, 25, 95, 171, 174–177, 179, 183, 233n70
189–190, 257n76 Herder, Johann Gottlieb von, 42, 52
Fujiwara Seika, 151–152, 154 Heusken, Henry, 236n16
280 Index
Higham, John, 22, 36, 188, 257n76; on Ike Kurata, 86

Anglo-Saxonism, 232n55; on anti- ikoku, 85, 155
Catholicism, 232n60; on Billington, Ikuta Yorozu, 253n84
40–49; and etics, 62–63, 65–72, 74, Imagawa Ryōshun, 147
196–198, 200, 206–207, 216; on hostility, “imperial sovereign,” 144. See also huangdi;
230n22; and a hybrid concept of kōtei
nativism, 192; on immigration, 230n33, Incident of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, 252n. See
234n75, 234n78; and Japanese studies, also Chūshingura; Genroku Akō Jiken
30–31, 224, 257n3; on the Know- incommensurability/incommensurable,
Nothings, 235n6; and Linton, 235n92; 107, 172, 191; and emics, xv; and
and nativism, 54–57, 59–60, 100–103; exceptionalism, 109, 126, 134, 139;
and sonnō-jō’i, 80–81, 83, 85, 90, 93, 98, and Japan, xiv, 12, 20, 209, 211; and
235n3 postmodernism, 225; and superiority,
Hirai Shūjirō, 85 104, 132
Hirata Atsutane, xiii; on Buddhism, individualism, 117–118, 120, 122, 127–128,
256n59; on Confucianism, 141; and 131, 243n39
exceptionalism, 243n39; and the Hirata Inquiries into the Greater Learning, 163. See
School, 83; on Japan’s superiority, also Daigaku wakumon; Kumazawa
247n105, 252n77, 256n51; and Kokugaku, Banzan
26, 29, 62–63, 174, 234n88, 248n5; and insei, 249n28
Mitogaku, 178; and Motoori Norinaga, Institute for Pondering the Past, 173–174.
217, 229n1; and Transcendentalism, See also Shōkōkan
243n41; and Wagaku, 254n15 Institute for Propagating the Way, 173. See
The History of Great Japan. See Dai Nihonshi also Kōdōkan
Hitotsubashi Keiki, 76–77, 79 the investigation of things and the
Hobsbawm, Eric, 10 exhaustion of principle, 237n58. See also
Hodgson, Godfrey, 132, 240n7, 242n24, Kakubutsu kyūri
242n31, 245n84, 256n50 Irish (people): and diaspora, 236n20; and
Hongwu Emperor, 146–147, 248n18, 249n25, emigration, 231n44; and immigration, 36,
249n28, 250n54 38–41, 45, 74, 87, 100–101, 103, 231n48;
honji suijaku, 163 and nativism, 49, 59, 61, 65, 207
Hoshina Masayuki, 154, 157–158, 160 isolation policy, 64, 69, 200, 225. See also
Hosokawa, 151, 249n32, 250n45 sakoku
Hotta Masayoshi, 73, 236n11 Itō Jinsai, 162, 185
hua, 144, 191, 251n55. See also Sinocentrism; yi
huangdi, 144, 145. See also “imperial Jackson, Andrew, 120–121
sovereign”; kōtei Jansen, Marius, 79, 87, 100, 238n74
Huber, Thomas, 78, 83 Jefferson, Thomas, 50–51, 121, 233n74
jingoism, 41, 48, 65
Ichijo, Atsuko, 7 Joseon dynasty, 148, 151, 230n22, 250nn43–44
Idealism, 238n69, 245n85, 253n84, 257n75 Jūjō goji kengisho, 91, 93. See also Tokugawa
ideological apostasy. See tenkō Nariaki
Ii Naosuke, 76–77, 79, 86–87, 89, 91, 96, 102,
194 Kagoshima, 77, 88
Ikeda Mitsumasa, 160–161, 252n80 Kaikoku, xiv; and Aizawa Seishisai, 187, 189,
Ikegami, Eiko, 7, 227n6, 243n37 190, 239n103; and Hotta Masayoshi, 73;
Index 281
and jō’i, 99, 201; and Katsu Kaishū, 88; National Learning; Oyamada Tomokiyo;
and nativism, 219, 235n92, 235n3 Shinto; Takeo Masatane; Wagaku
(chap. 2), 254n5; and Sakamoto Ryōma, Kokugakuin, xi, xiii, 247–248n5
238n89; and Sakuma Shōzan, 256n69; Kokushihen, 176–177. See also Tokugawa
and Yoshida Shōin, 83–84 Nariaki
Kakubutsu kyūri, 237n58. See also the kokutai, 172, 182
investigation of things and the Kōmei (emperor), 71, 73, 76–79, 84, 88, 90,
exhaustion of principle 93–100, 237n45, 239n116
Kamakura, 1, 147, 150, 153–154, 199 “kore wo sute, kare ni shitagau.” See Aizawa
kamiyo, 154–157, 159, 163, 182, 252n63 Seishisai; “forsake this, follow that”
Kamo no Mabuchi: on Confucianism, 60, Koschmann, J. Victor, 254n3, 256n52,
65, 141, 240n1, 246n103; on Daoism, 186, 256n73, 257n74, 257n76
188; and Kokugaku, 174, 178, 234n88, Kōshōgaku, 212, 258n26. See also Evidential
241n14, 258n27, 259n28; on language, Learning
241n13; and negative exceptionalism, kōtei, 144. See also huangdi; “imperial
255n50; and Shinto, 243n41; and sovereign”
Wagaku, 255n16 Kuhn, Thomas, xiv, 209–212, 224
Kaneyoshi (prince), 147, 249n25, 250n36. Ku Klux Klan, 22, 31, 41, 45, 57, 64–65, 99,
See also Yoshikane 196
karagokoro, 240n1, 246n103. See also Kumazawa Banzan: on Buddhism, 178;
Chinese mind and Confucianism, 194–195; and
Katsu Kaishū, 77, 83, 88, 235n92, 238n88 exceptionalism, 25, 142, 153, 160–169; and
Kaufmann, Eric, 48–57, 65–67, 233nn71–75, Japan’s superiority, 173; on Sinocentrism,
257n75, 258n7 251n56; and ultranationalism, 152;
Kimon, 157, 168 and the unbroken imperial line of
Know-Nothings/Know-Nothingism, 4–5, descent, 175; and the Way, 179, 181–182,
243n39, 257n75; and Billington, 37, 185
39–41, 231n50, 231n52, 232n56; and Kurozumi Makoto, xi, 228n28, 240n1,
emics, 232n60; and exceptionalism, 251n59, 251n61, 252n63, 252n74,
258n7; and Gangs of New York, 230n20; 253n105, 257nn1–2
Higham on, 22, 31, 46, 196; and hostility, Kyoto: and Emperor Kōmei, 94–95, 97; and
80, 86, 207; and Japanese studies, 235n6; the imperial court, 20, 75, 159; and
and nativism, 63, 65, 72, 98–99, 101, Kumazawa Banzan, 160–161; and the
190–191, 211, 233n72; and slavery, 57. Mongols, 147; and the Muromachi
See also Native American Democratic Bakufu, 150, 249n28; and the shishi,
Association; Native American Party 77–80, 87, 194; and Yoshida Shōin, 83
kōbu-gattai, 96–97
Kōdōkan, 173, 177, 179, 190. See also Lanternari, Vittorio, 58–59
Institute for Propagating the Way Lauzon, Matthew, xi, xiv, 232n54
Kōdōkanki, 177, 180–181 li, 156–157, 161, 185, 252n63. See also qi
Kōkan, 174. See also Shōkōkan liberalism, 53, 233nn73–74
Kokugaku. See Confucianism/Neo- Lincoln, Abraham, 120–121, 130
Confucianism; Dutch Learning; Linton, Ralph, 21–23, 230n24, 240n124,
Evidential Learning; Hanawa Hokiichi; 257n76; and colonialism, 89, 93, 98,
Hirata Atsutane; Kamo no Mabuchi; 101–103, 229n64; and etics, 196–200,
Motoori Norinaga; Murata Harumi; 206–207, 216; and exceptionalism,
282 Index
Linton, Ralph (cont.) 62; and Shinto, 186, 246n92; and

230n17; and immigration, 74; and Yamazaki Ansai, 253n105
Japan, 68–71; and Japanese studies, 225, Meiji Restoration, 9, 26, 32, 81, 86, 171, 192,
234n79, 235n92, 235n6 (chap. 2), 257n3; 253n2
and nativism, 32–35, 55–59, 62–64, 192; Mencian/Mencius, 156, 160, 186
and sonnō-jō’i, 80–81, 83, 87, 235n3 Middle Kingdom, 144, 159, 170, 252n79. See
Lipset, Seymour Martin, 124–139, 247n106; also Central Realm; Chūgoku; Chūka;
and the concept of outlier, 245n87; and Zhongguo; Zhonghua
etics, 24; and exceptionalism, 105–107; Ming dynasty: the decline of, 25, 158, 167;
and Japan, 206, 246n90; and Marxism, and exceptionalism, 259n30; and Japan,
220–222; on Nihonjinron, 216–217; 249n25, 249n28, 249n32, 250nn42–43;
and superiority, 240n6, 246n92, and Ryūkyū, 248n19, 249n23, 249n29;
256n50 and the tributary system, 146–152, 169;
Lockhart, Charles, 127, 133 and Wang Yangming, 160–161, 185
logocentrism, 217–219, 221, 225, 259n30, Mitogaku, xiv, 177–187, 189–195, 197,
n34, n36. See also Derrida, Jacques 254n3, 254n5; and Confucianism, 212,
Lyotard, Jean-François, 225, 259n37 254n8; and exceptionalism, 5–6, 24–25,
170–174, 201–202; and jō’i, 77, 80–81;
Maeda Tsutomu, 238n76, 251n56 and Kokugaku, 10, 100, 162–163, 237n50,
Manchus, 151, 158–159, 164, 166–167, 247n4. 253n2, 255n17; and nativism, 29, 257n76;
See also Qing and Shinto, 167, 219–221; and the shishi,
Mandate of Heaven, 144–145, 175, 183, 98; and Sinocentrism, 258n27
194 Miwa monogatari, 164, 253n96. See also
Manifest Destiny, 155, 241n9 Kumazawa Banzan
Maruyama Masao, 158, 241n14 Mongols, 111, 147, 150–151, 199, 247n4. See
Marx, Karl, 123–124 also Yuan dynasty
Marxian/Marxism/Marxists: and the concept mono no aware, 246n103. See also Motoori
of outlier, 133; and the connection Norinaga
between exceptionalism and nativism, Mōri Takachika, 78, 88, 94–96
127, 137; and exceptionalism, 108–109, Motoori Norinaga, 84, 240n123, 241n14;
124–126, 130–131, 134–136, 138, 143, Aizawa Seishisai on, 192; on Buddhism,
203, 246n100; and the relations between 258n27; on China, 186, 188, 223, 240n1;
exceptionalism, nativism, and Kokugaku, and Confucianism, 141; on Daoism,
18–19, 24, 107, 202, 215, 221; and Sombart, 243n41; and etics, 246n103; and
242n18, 242n21; and Tocqueville, 123, exceptionalism, 197; and Fichte, 245n85,
242n17 251n58; and gender, 62; and Hirata
Matsudaira Sadanobu, 175, 253n105 Atsutane, 229n1; and Kokugaku, 26–28,
Matsudaira Shungaku, 76–77, 88–89 30, 174, 178–179, 216–217, 227n23; on
Matsumiya Kanzan, 183–184, 234n88, language, 232n54, 241n13; and Mitogaku,
248n5, 248n13, 251n57, 252n74, 254n15 237n50, 254n3; and nativism, 65; and the
Meiji era/period/state, 1, 227n23, 230n22; and Norinaga School, xiii, 259n28; and
Buddhism, 256n59; and Confucianism, Rangaku, 256n61; and Sakamoto Ryōma,
257n2; and exceptionalism, 172; and 100; and superiority, 144, 248n7, 253n104;
Kokugaku, xiii, 19, 29–31, 247n5, 253n2; and the Way, 244n73, 253n96
and the modern nation-state, 7, 9–12, munen uchiharai no rei/muninen
220; and nationalism, 180; and nativism, uchiharairei. See Expulsion Edict
Index 283
Murata Harumi, xiii, 196, 234n88, 240n1, Nichibei Shūkō Tsūshō Jōyaku, 73. See also
248n5, 251n57, 255n16 Harris Treaty
Murata Ujihisa, 89–90 Nichibei Washin Jōyaku, 73. See also
Convention of Kanagawa
Nagasaki, 61, 75, 82, 236n23, 239n102, Nihonjinron, 246n91; and exceptionalism,
250n37 24, 126, 134, 139, 203, 240n2, 246n90,
Nakai, Kate, 151, 251n57 246n92; and Fichte, 232n54; and
Nakane Yukie, 89. See also Zoku saimu kiji Kokugaku, 107, 142, 210, 234n88, 241n13,
Namamugi/Namamugi Incident, 76–78. See 247n103, 251n58; and nationalism,
also Richardson, Charles 245n89; and Nazism, 245n85, 254n15;
Nanbokuchō, 148, 150 and its relationship to exceptionalism
nationalism: and Aizawa Seishisai, 180; and and nativism, xiv, 5, 204, 216
exceptionalism, 195, 225, 248n5; and Nosco, Peter, 27–30, 229n6, 255n16
Fichte, 231n54, 245n85; and Kokugaku,
1–2, 10–12, 64, 220; and modern Ogyū Sorai, 162, 172, 179, 182, 184–185,
Japan, 31; and nativism, 29, 41–43, 47, 251n57, 254n3
210–211, 229n10; and Tocqueville, Okayama, 160–162
113; and Tokugawa Japan, 6–7; and Okinawa, 248n19, 249n23. See also Chūzan;
Transcendentalism, 233n72; and Turner, Ryūkyū/Ryūkyūan
118, 120; and ultranationalism, 152; and Ōkuni Takamasa, 83, 234n88, 238n70, 248n5
the United States, 52 Ooms, Herman, xi, 153–154
National Learning, 1, 28–29, 60. See also Opium Wars, 81, 92, 259n27
Kokugaku; Wagaku Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, 39. See
“national polity,” 172, 182. See also kokutai also Know-Nothings/Know-Nothingism;
national socialism/Nazi/Nazism, 242n21, Native American Democratic Association;
245n85, 246n92, 251n58 Native American Party
Native American Democratic Association, “orthodox lineage of the Way.” See Daotong;
39. See also Know-Nothings/Know- dōtō; Zhu Xi
Nothingism; Native American Party Ōuchi, 151, 249n32, 250n45
Native American Party, 49, 232n60. See also outlier, 24, 106, 125–127, 129, 131,
Know-Nothings/Know-Nothingism; 133–135, 208, 212, 245n87. See also
Native American Democratic exceptionalism; Lipset, Seymour Martin;
Association superiority; uniqueness
nativism. See anti-Catholicism; Billington, Oyamada Tomokiyo, xiii, 196, 234n88,
Ray; cosmopolitanism; ethnocentrism; 248n5, 251n57, 254n15
Gangs of New York; Higham, John;
jingoism; Kaufmann, Eric; Know- parity, 149–152, 169, 250n40, 251n57. See
Nothings/Know-Nothingism; Ku Klux also superiority
Klan; Linton, Ralph; nationalism; Native Pembroke, 78, 94
American Democratic Association; phallocentrism/phallogocentrism, 225,
Native American Party; Order of the 259n34
Star-Spangled Banner Pike, Kenneth, 13–15, 19, 205, 209, 213. See
nature, 34, 52, 211, 221, 243n41 also emics; etics
Nazis. See National Socialism/Nazi/Nazism pirates. See Wakō
Neo-Confucianism. See Confucianism/ Portuguese, 22, 32, 148, 199, 232n56, 239n98
Neo-Confucianism predestination, 118, 128. See also Calvinism
284 Index
Protestants/Protestantism, 38; and saisei itchi, 172

America, 21, 37, 87, 115, 118, 131, 198, Sakamoto Ryōma: and antiforeignism, 99,
232n56; and American ethnicity, 50, 238n74; and ethnicity, 93, 238n66; and
57, 61; and exceptionalism, 127–129; jō’i, 97; and kaikoku, 235n92; and
and immigration, 41, 49; and Japan, Motoori Norinaga, 100; and nativism,
239n98; and nativism, 46, 100; and 94, 229n10; as a shishi, 84–91, 178
Transcendentalism, 243n41 sakoku, 7, 229n65, 230n24, 239n96; and
public sphere, 114, 243nn36–37, 259n37. exceptionalism, 200–201; and jō’i, 91–92;
See also Habermas, Jürgen; Ikegami, and Kokugaku, 247n103; and nativism,
Eiko 64, 230n22; and Sakuma Shōzan, 225.
Puritanism, 128–129 See also isolation policy
Sakuma Shōzan, 82, 187, 189, 201, 225,
qi, 156–157, 161. See also li 235n92, 237n58, 238n76, 256n69. See
Qing, 158, 161, 167, 223, 247n4, 249n29, also Kaikoku
259n30. See also Manchus Satsuma domain, 76–78, 88, 94–95, 97,
236n16, 239n102
Rangaku, 1, 141; and kaikoku, 256n69; Seikyō yōroku, 157. See also Yamaga Sokō
and Kokugaku, 63, 65, 256n61; and Seimeiron, 174–175. See also Fujita Yūkoku
Mitogaku, 185–187, 206; and nativism, ‘senior councilors.’ See rōjū
83, 198, 235n92; and Sinocentrism, sexuality, 62–63, 222. See also gender
258n27; and Tokugawa Nariaki, 92. See Shimazu Hisamitsu, 77, 88, 95–98
also Dutch Learning Shimonoseki War, 23, 78–79, 88–89. See also
The Record of the Kōdōkan. See Kōdōkanki Straits of Shimonoseki
A Report of My Intentions. See Kokushihen; shinjin, 164
Tokugawa Nariaki shinju itchi, bunbu gappei, 177. See also
Richardson, Charles, 76–77, 88. See also Kōdōkan; Mitogaku; Tokugawa
Namamugi/Namamugi Incident Nariaki
Ripley, William Z., 44–45 Shinozaki Tōkai, 234n88, 254n15, 256n56
Rodgers, David, 240n1, 241n9, 242n21, Shinron, 72, 98, 181, 183, 187–189, 255n45.
245n76 See also Aizawa Seishisai
rōjū, 73, 175 Shinto, 3; and Confucianism, 26–29, 59,
Roosevelt, Theodore, 130, 241n9 61–62, 153–157, 160, 164–166, 220,
Rules for Military Households. See Buke 251n59, 251n61; and its connection
shohatto to Confucianism and Mitogaku, 25,
Russia/Russians: and Japan, 23, 84, 86, 162–163, 167, 176–179, 181, 184–187,
174–175, 200, 236n23, 237n45; and the 193, 254n8; and its connections to
Marxists, 109; and Tsushima, 74–75, 80, Confucianism, Mitogaku, and nativism,
88–89; and Yoshida Shōin, 82 5, 172–173, 190–191, 195–197, 219; and
Ryūkyū/Ryūkyūan, 7, 61, 151, 239n102, exceptionalism, 246n92; and the imperial
248n19, 249n23, 249nn28–29. See also institution, 145; and Kokugaku, 65, 210,
Chūzan; Okinawa 243n41; and Sinocentrism, 258n27
Shiryō Hensanjo, xi, 227n2, 247n5. See also
Sages, 156–157, 163–165, 167–168, 176–178, Hanawa Hokiichi; Wagaku Kōdansho
180–182, 186, 194. See also Confucianism/ shishi, 69, 90–91, 98–99, 192–194, 200–201,
Neo-Confucianism 236n26; and Bakumatsu politics, 79–81;
Said, Edward, xv, 19, 204, 223 and Emperor Kōmei, 95–97; and Henry
Index 285
Heusken, 236n16; the locus classicus of, 163–167, 194–195; and exceptionalism, 5,
235n9; and nativism, 83, 254n5; and 18–19, 23, 67, 104, 126, 131, 208, 241n9;
Sakamoto Ryōma, 85–87, 89–90; and and Fichte, 251n58; and Kokugaku, 83,
sonnō-jō’i, 71–72; and violence, 75–77, 247n105, 252n77, 253n104, 256n61; and
101–102, 178, 189 Korea, 250nn43–44; and logocentrism,
Shōheizaka Gakumonjo, 153, 251n57, 255n16. 218; and Mitogaku, 172–176, 178–184,
See also Bakufu College; Hayashi 191; and nativism, 32–35, 43–44, 48,
Razan 56; and Nazism, 246n92; and negative
Shōkōkan, 173–174, 176–177, 179. See also exceptionalism, 256n50; and objective-
Institute for Pondering the Past evidential exceptionalism, 106–107, 116,
Sinocentrism, 221; and Confucianism, 130, 132–133, 136–138, 222, 240n6,
240n1, 248n13; and ethnocentrism, 242n24, 246n92; and Rangaku, 92; and
247n4; and exceptionalism, 248n9; and Sinocentrism, 141–144, 146, 149–152,
Kokugaku, 61, 223, 258n27; and the 247n4, 250n40, 250n50; and subjective-
tributary system, 145, 169; and Wagaku, evidential exceptionalism, 106–107, 116,
xiii, 214, 247n5, 251n57 124, 129–130, 222, 240n6, 243n39,
slavery, 40, 48, 57, 231n52 245n87; and Tocqueville, 116. See also
socialism, 109, 124, 133, 242n18 outlier; parity; uniqueness
Sōgakkōkei, 254n15 Swope, Kenneth, 249n30, 249n33, 250n43
Sombart, Werner, 108, 126, 131, 136–138,
202, 221–222, 242nn16–21, 242n33, Taira no Kiyomori, 147, 249n28
244n43 tairō. See Great Elder
Sonderweg, 242n21, 245n85. See also Takamagahara, 145, 155
national socialism/Nazi/Nazism Takeo Masatane, 83–84, 98. See also
Song dynasty, 1, 146–147, 150, 153–154, 185, Daiteikokuron
195 The Tale of Miwa. See Kumazawa Banzan;
sonnō-jō’i, xiv, 22–23, 84, 229n65; and its Miwa monogatari
connection to exceptionalism and Teeuwen, Mark, 224, 235n6
nativism, 25; and Ii Naosuke, 76, 80; tenka. See “all under Heaven”; tianxia
and Mitogaku, 178, 187, 193–194; and tenkō, 238n89
nativism, 29, 69–72, 86, 98–102, 189, tenshi. See Son of Heaven; tianzi
191–192, 199–202, 219, 235n3; and Thoreau, Henry David, 243n39, 253n84. See
Tokugawa Nariaki, 91, 93, 235n92. See also Transcendentalism/Transcendentalist
also Expulsion Edict tianxia, 248n11
Son of Heaven, 144–145, 248n11. See also tianzi, 144, 145
tianzi Toby, Ronald: on the Edo Bakufu’s foreign
Southern and Northern courts. See policy, 151–152; on the Edo Bakufu’s
Nanbokuchō trade policy, 250n37; on Japan’s relations
special path. See Sonderweg with Korea, 250n34, 250n44; on Japan’s
Straits of Shimonoseki, 78–79, 88. See also superiority, 169, 250n40; on sakoku, 7;
Shimonoseki War on the tributary system, 149, 249n30,
Suikan, 174, 177. See also Shōkōkan 250n51, 251n55
Suika Shinto, 157, 168. See also Yamazaki Tokugawa Hidetada, 149, 169, 251n55
Ansai Tokugawa Iemochi, 76–77, 79, 94
superiority, xv; and Confucianism, 251n57; Tokugawa Ieyasu, 149, 151, 169, 173
and Confucian Shinto, 155–156, 158–159, Tokugawa Mitsukuni, 171, 173–174, 253n1
286 Index
Tokugawa Nariaki, 84; and Emperor Kōmei, Verschuer, Charlotte von, 247n3, 248n18,
76; and Mitogaku, 100, 171, 173–174, 250n40, 250n42
176–177, 180–181, 186, 190–191, 193–195;
and Perry, 73, 90–94; and the shishi, 71; Wachutka, Michael, xi, 228n23, 232n54,
and sonnō-jō’i, 97; and Yoshida Shōin, 253n2
239n100. See also Jūjō goji kengisho; Wagaku, 227n1; and Confucianism, 184,
Kōdōkanki; Kokushihen 252n74; and etics, 220, 254n15; and
Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 1, 80 Kokugaku, xiii–xiv, 196, 214, 228n23,
Tosa domain, 76–77, 85–86, 88, 97, 100, 234n88, 247n5, 255nn16–17, 256n56;
229n10, 238n74 and Mitogaku, 174, 256n57; and
Tosa Kinnō-tō, 87. See also Tosa Loyalist Sinocentrism, 251n57
Party Wagaku Kōdansho, 227n1, 247n5. See also
Tosa Loyalist Party, 87, 89, 100 Hanawa Hokiichi; Shiryō Hensanjo
Totman, Conrad, 29, 31, 58, 237n66, 238n66, Wakabayashi, Bob, 10, 81, 237n48, n55,
239n116, 253n84 238n84, 239n96
Toyoda Tenkō, 81, 177, 237n59 Wakō, 146, 248n19
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 148–149, 249n33 Wallace, Anthony, 33–35, 58
Transcendentalism/Transcendentalist: and Wang Wensheng, xi, 247n1
cosmopolitanism, 233n72, 258n7; and Wang Yangming, 160–162, 185, 195, 252n84
emics, 213; and exceptionalism, 6, Wanli Emperor, 148–149
190–191, 196–197; and Fichte, 232n54, WASP, 50–51, 207, 258n7
245n85; and John Brown, 253n84; and Why is There No Socialism in the United
nature, 243n39; and Protestantism, States?. See Sombart, Werner
243n41; and universalism, 257n75. See world history, 114, 123, 214, 218–220
also Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Thoreau, wuxing, 156
Henry David
Tsushima, 74–75, 80, 89, 250n43 xenophobia, 63
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 54, 105–106,
116–124, 126–132, 137–138, 230n39, Yamaga Sokō: and Confucianism, 153,
233n75, 252n75. See also The Frontier 157–160, 173; and exceptionalism, 25,
in American History 142, 166–169, 181–182, 185, 194; and
geography, 243n35, 247n105; and
“union of court and Bakufu.” See kōbu-gattai Kokugaku, 251n56; and nature, 243n39;
uniqueness, 172, 191; and exceptionalism, and ultranationalism, 152; and the
19, 30, 104, 106–107, 109, 208, 230n17; unbroken line of imperial descent, 164,
and Japan, 23, 134, 136–137, 246n92; 175
material, 113, 116, 131–132; spiritual, Yamamoto Gakuhan, 234n88
126, 222, 245n87; Tocqueville, 120, 129; Yamatogokoro, 246n103. See also karagokoro
Turner, 122–123. See also outlier; Yamauchi Yōdō, 76–77
superiority Yamazaki Ansai: and Confucianism, 25,
‘unite Shinto with Confucianism, combine 142, 152–163, 166–169, 173, 194–195,
wen and wu.’ See shinju itchi, bunbu 252n63; and exceptionalism, 182; and
gappei Kokugaku, 251n56; and Matsudaira
‘unity of religion and government.’ See saisei Sadanobu, 253n105; and Mitogaku,
itchi 254n3, 254n8; and the unbroken line
universalism, 53–54, 129, 257n75, 259n37 of imperial descent, 175
Index 287
yi, 144, 191. See also hua; Sinocentrism Zhongguo, 144, 159, 252n79. See also Central
yin/yang, 156, 181 Realm; Chūgoku; Chūka; Zhonghua
Yoshida Shōin, 76, 81–83, 98–99, 237nn58–59, Zhonghua, 144. See also Central Realm;
237n66, 239n100 Chūgoku; Chūka; Zhongguo
Yoshikane (king), 147–148. See also Zhu Xi, 1, 154, 156, 161, 163, 166, 168, 236n9,
Kaneyoshi 252n63. See also Daotong; Daoxue
Yuan dynasty, 146, 151, 247, 250n50. See Zhu Yuanzhang, 148. See also Hongwu
also Mongols Emperor
Zoku saimu kiji, 89. See also Nakane Yukie
Zenrin kokuhōki, 250n42. See also Zuikei Zuikei Shūhō, 250n42. See also Zenrin
Shūhō kokuhōki
About the Author
Mark Thomas McNally is associate professor in the Department of History at

the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa. He received his BA in Asian Studies from Po-
mona College and his MA and PhD degrees from UCLA. He is the author of Prov-
ing the Way: Conflict and Practice in the History of Japanese Nativism (2005). He
has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese
Studies (Harvard University), a foreign research scholar at the Historiographical
Institute (University of Tokyo), a guest professor at the Eberhard Karls Univer-
sity, Tübingen, and a Fulbright Scholar.

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Introduction: Nativism, Exceptionalism, Emics, and Etics 1

Table 1. The Salient Aspects of Three Distinct Concepts of Nativism 62

Kokugaku to standard narratives of Japa­nese history is meaningful only in the

nativism reached paradigmatic proportions. Kokugaku was nativism, and nativ-

Japan has already been made, mostly by Americanists looking at developments

exceptionalism. By conceptualizing these institutions as branches on a trunk

The Nation, Nationalism, and Tokugawa Japan

case. In any event, Smith’s ethno-­symbolic paradigm generates interesting pos-

aspects or features (“constituent elements”), promotes a certain skepticism among

exceptionalism in American history have found important examples of it in peri-

Emics and Etics

ticipants themselves as similar or different, real or meaningful, significant, or

theories about the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities.” 59 Logically,

The Case of Tokugawa Japan

United States is the exception to a Marxian rule, namely, that it is therefore

policymaking, such that Orientalism supported and perpetuated Western domi-

chapter focuses on the development of exceptionalism from an emic concept that

of a bold creativity among Tokugawa intellectuals. During the seventeenth cen-

Kokugaku, Nativism, and “Exceptional” Japan

As postwar Western scholars began their studies of Tokugawa Japan, it is not

in favor of a range of categories in accordance with historical circumstances. Just

Nativism, Native Learning, Neo-­Shintoism,

Subsequent to Nosco and Harootunian, a few scholars have formulated views

and he questions the simple equation of Kokugaku with nativism.12 He surveys

too loosely. Generally speaking, in situations where members of two different

case with Bakumatsu Japan’s semicolonial one. It is not an exaggeration to say

Wallace’s work places nativism within a larger continuum of societal reactions to

Nativism in American History

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the first half of the nineteenth

Billington and Anti-­Catholicism

cultural and po­liti­cal history of anti-­Catholicism in the United States, it is not

r­everted back to anti-­C atholicism, since the problematic immigrant groups

Higham and “Racism”

Billington versus Higham: Implications

reservations about their immigrant employees. Radicalism, as an outgrowth of

intense negative emotions directed at abstract concepts or images. In his discus-

Eric Kaufmann and American Hypocrisy

politanism connected to Protestantism. Scholars have assumed that while other

age of Americans as an Anglo-­Saxon race of yeoman farmers began to emerge

the latent ethnic identity among American colonists. Ascription in sociology is

Hopefully, this oversight can now be corrected.”77 Exceptionalism, the subject of

Anthropological and American Nativism

in three significant ways. First, the assertion of a native identity is important to

As one anthropologist observed in the 1950s, nativism was a response among

chiefly Confucianism, intermingled with Japa­nese ones, especially Shinto, even

ism is still useful in discussions of Kokugaku as a categorization or classification.

Table 1. The Salient Aspects of Three Distinct Concepts of Nativism

century, then the assertion of religion seems to have an important place in

the case of the Know-­Nothings, they ­were an important manifestation of nativism,

(ethnic) nationalism. Nationalism, of course, is perhaps already a crowded field

arrivals in Japan, particularly Commodore Perry’s landing in 1853. It is possible

sion prevails in Japa­nese studies, it is necessary to refer to both, and, as a first

Table 2. Sonnō-­jō’i as Nativism

Bakumatsu Po­liti­cal History: A Narrative of Nativism

Matthew Perry at Uraga. Knowing of the failures of previous Western attempts

command of Shimazu Hisamitsu (1817–1887), complicating the efforts of moder-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kokugaku to standard narratives of Japanese history is meaningful only in the

case. In any event, Smith’s ethno-symbolic paradigm generates interesting pos-

Nativism, Native Learning, Neo-Shintoism,

Billington and Anti-Catholicism

cultural and political history of anti-Catholicism in the United States, it is not

reverted back to anti-C atholicism, since the problematic immigrant groups

age of Americans as an Anglo-Saxon race of yeoman farmers began to emerge

chiefly Confucianism, intermingled with Japanese ones, especially Shinto, even

the case of the Know-Nothings, they were an important manifestation of nativism,

sion prevails in Japanese studies, it is necessary to refer to both, and, as a first

Table 2. Sonnō-jō’i as Nativism

Bakumatsu Political History: A Narrative of Nativism

Chōshū, Mōri Takachika (1836–1871), viewed Satsuma’s political and military

anti-immigrant causes. Americans, who had proclaimed their moral authority

anti-Catholic views before independence, these feelings were significantly en-

embodied in the works of Tocqueville, Turner, Lipset, and others as objective-

Table 4. Objective-Evidential Exceptionalism

pecially by comparison with the Europeans, is also an important aspect of Ameri-

unrelated to the Way or w ere only connected by chance or coincidence. Ansai,

Two events were critical to the development of Tokugawa exceptionalism dur-

Table 5. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (Tokugawa Japan)

Table 6. Subjective-Evidential Exceptionalism (China and Japan)

widely known throughout Japan, including among a faction of anti-Western court-

Know-Nothings, the social encounter between members of distinct cultural groups

The interpretation of at least some of the Tokugawa Japanese as nativistic in