Etnhic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

The Society for Japanese Studies
Ethnic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

Author(s): Kevin M. Doak
Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 77-103
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
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KEVIN M. DOAK
EthnicNationalismandRomanticismin
EarlyTwentieth-Century
Japan
In recentyears, studies on nationalismhave benefitedfrom a varietyof new

approachesthat have called attentionto the subtle and complex ways nationalism has historically interwovenissues of state structure,culture, and
ethnic identity. Hobsbawm and Ranger uncovered the artificial nature of
nationalidentities, revealinghow the nation is constructedand contestedin
a varietyof forms.' Benedict Andersonwent even furtherto show not only
that the state was able to mobilize its resources to constructan imaginary
community arounditself, but that others did avail themselves of the same
basic proceduresto constructalternativeforms of nationalismat the popular
level which then often were regardedas a threatby the state.2Anderson's
work suggested a more complex approachto the issue of nationalismby
revealinghow ambiguousand polysemic nationalismwas, particularlyfor
late-developing societies in Asia, and it called for more attention to the
uneasy relationshipbetween what he called popular and official forms of
nationalism.And JohnBreuillyhas presenteda sweeping analysisof nationalism in the modernworld that demonstratesconclusively how nationalism
has often served historically as an ideology of culturalidentity mobilized
againstthe state.3
But contributionsto the understandingof nationalism have come not
only from English-languagetheorists.T6yamaShigeki has been at the forefront of Japanesescholarsof nationalism,writing for over half a centuryon
nationalismboth as a generaltheoreticalproblemand in the specific context
of Japanesehistory. Reflecting on the course of Japanesehistory since the
1. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniversityPress, 1983).
2. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:Reflectionson the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism(London:Verso, 1983), esp. pp. 80-128.
3. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester:ManchesterUniversity Press,
1982; second ed., Universityof Chicago Press, 1994).
Journalof JapaneseStudies, 22:1
? 1996 Society for JapaneseStudies

77
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encounterwith the West in the 1850s, Toyamahas arguedthatnationalism

in Japanhas carriedwith it two distinctstrains:a "reactionarynationalism"
(handotekinashonarizumu)identifiedwith the capitaliststate, and a "progressive nationalism"(shinpotekinashonarizumu)thatembodiedmore populist aspirations.4These two forms of nationalismarose from the social
mechanismsthatshapedJapan'shistoricalencounterwith the West.Toyama
argues that since peasant rebellions in late TokugawaJapanwere focused
inwardagainstJapan'sown social elite, ratherthan outside againstthe foreign threat,Japanesepolitical elites were able to transferthe potentialoppressionfrom "outside"to repressionof the Japanesepeople from "above"
with considerableease.5 Political opposition to this state nationalismcollapsed,T6yamaconcludes,with the end of the FreedomandPeople'sRights
Movement around 1890, when public elections were first held under the
new constitution.Thereafter,alternative,more populist concepts of nation
and nationalidentitybecame the provinceof literature,especially for those
intellectualswho were attractedto romanticism.6
While T6yamamakes explicit the relationshipbetween reactionarynationalism and progressivenationalism,these categories remainedflexible,
indeed ambiguous,enough to incorporatewhatevermovements seemed to
him to promotethe interestsof the "people,"very broadlyconceived.7Consequently, a first step in reconsideringJapanesenationalismwould be to
effect a more precise understandingof what these differentforms of nation4. Toyama Shigeki, "Futatsuno nashonarizumuno taiko: sono rekishitekik6satsu," in
ToyamaShigekichosakushi, Vol. 5: Meiji no shiso to nashonarizumu(Tokyo: IwanamiShoten, 1992), p. 213. Here, it should be noted, T6yamawas simply applying Lenin'stheory on
nationalism(i.e., that therewas a good nationalism["oppressed-nationnationalism"]as well
as a bad nationalism[ "oppressor-nationnationalism"]) to Japan.On Lenin'stheoryof nationalism and Stalin'scontributionto it, see Yuri Slezkine, "The USSR as a CommunistApartment, or How a Socialist State PromotedEthnicParticularism,"Slavic Review,Vol. 53, No. 2
(Summer 1994), pp. 414-52.
5. Toyama, "Futatsuno nashonarizumuno taik6,"p. 216.
6. T6yama, "Kindaibungakukeisei no rekishitekizentei: bungakuto seiji no mondai,"
Bungaku,Vol. 17, No. 10 (October 1949). Reprintedin ToyamaShigeki chosakushti,Vol. 5;
see pp. 198-200. See also CarolGluck'sconclusion thatthe process of nationaldefinition(in
was largely completedby 1890 in her Japan's
the sense of the nation-stateor kokka/kokumin)
Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton:Princeton University Press,
1985), especially pp. 17-26.
7. Toyama candidly admits that his understandingof two types of nationalismis superimposed by the experienceof the polaritiesof postwarJapanin the Cold War.His "two kinds
of nationalism"are essentially "capitalistnationalism"(reactionary)and "Marxistnationalism" (progressive),an argumentthat seems less persuasivenow that Marxismgenerally has
come to new terms with ethnic nationalismsince the collapse of Stalin's attemptto control
ethnic nationalismwithin a soviet political structure.Moreover,T6yama'sargumentthat nationalismis merely a tool of otherpolitical interests,while remainingfaithfulto Stalin'sinterpretation,elevates nationalismbeyond the pale of history by denying it any historicalcontent
of its own, while seriously underestimatingits powerfulappealas nationalism.

Doak: EthnicNationalism
79
alism meantand, simultaneously,to reveal how imaginativeacts of identity

productionoperatedat varioussocial levels to constructcontestingforms of
nationalidentities.
Most studies of Japanesenationalismhave focused on what Anderson
has called "official nationalism,"or what I will call below "state nationalism" (kokkashugi).8Few have developedthe distinctionbetween a political
nationalism centered on a transcendentalstate and an ethnic nationalism
conceived in opposition to it.9 Several studies discuss culturalissues, particularly Carol Gluck's social and culturalapproachto Meiji nationalism,
but none fundamentallydisagreeswith KennethPyle's definitionof nationalism as "a process . . . by which large numbers of people of all social
classes are psychologically integratedinto active membershipin and positive identificationwith the nation-state."'0 The stateremainedat the core of
social identity,and cultureonly served to mediate the relationshipbetween
individualsubjectsand the state. In the end, such approacheshave provided
compelling evidence for the preeminenceof the power of the state over the
rights of the individualcitizen in Japan,but little in the way of an explanation for the compelling attractionof nationalismfor many Japanesepeople.
What has been lacking is an approachto the problemof nationalismin
Japanthat helps to explain how so many Japanesepeople could have been
attractedto nationalismin the early twentiethcentury,given several previous decades of heavy statistinterventionin theirlives. Statisteducationcertainly succeededin encouragingmany to identify with the modernstateand
its military exploits. But neither statism nor militarismcan be completely
8. Examplesare legion, but would have to include:Delmer Brown, Nationalismin Japan:
An IntroductoryHistoricalAnalysis (New York:Russell and Russell, 1955), a workthatbegins
its focus well before the modern period but sees early Japanese history leading inexorably
towardthe state nationalismof the Meiji period;IvanMorris,Nationalismand the Right Wing
in Japan (London:OxfordUniversityPress, 1960); MaruyamaMasao, Thoughtand Behaviour
in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1951); Byron K. Marshall,
Capitalismand Nationalismin Prewar Japan: The Ideology of the Business Elite, 1868-1941
(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1967); George M. Wilson, Radical Nationalist in Japan:
Kita Ikki, 1883-1937 (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1969); Gluck, Japan's
ModernMyths;and KennethB. Pyle, The New Generationin Meiji Japan: Problems in Cultural Identity,1885-1895 (Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1969) and TheJapanese Question: Power and Purpose in a New Age (Washington:AEI Press, 1992).
9. A recentexception is GermaineHoston'sTheState, Identity,and the National Question
in China and Japan (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1994) which recognizes the theoretical distinction between the nation as "ethnos" and the state, but eventually agrees with
IshidaTakeshi'sconclusion (cited below) thatno meaningfuldistinctionbetween ethnic nation
and state emerged in prewarJapan.
10. KennethB. Pyle, "Introduction:Some RecentApproachesto JapaneseNationalism,"
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (November 1971), p. 6. There are some suggestive
reflectionson the term "minzoku"scatteredthroughoutAndrewBarshay'sinsightful Stateand
Intellectual in ImperialJapan: The Public Man in Crisis (Berkeley: Universityof California
Press, 1988), especially pp. 106, 218-19.

80
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equated with nationalism.Many patriotic and nationalisticJapanesewere

not militarists,and some nationalistswere even critical of the state." And
for some Japanesewho were less then enamoredwith the military,the modern Japanesestate, wrappedin Westernconstitutionaltheories and parliamentary structures,seemed to hold a dubious claim on Japanesecultural
identity.To these culturalnationalists,the modernstate seemed less legitimate as an expressionof nationalculturethe more it relied on Westernculturalforms. In orderto graspwhy the solution to this modernparadoxthat
the "new generation"of Meiji youthhad devised in the late nineteenthcentury was no longer working 30 years later, we need to expand our understandingof what nationalismis and whatkinds of relationshipsnationalism
has had historicallywith the state.
WalkerConnorhas contributedgreatlyto clarifying the relationshipof
nationalismto the state by demonstratingthat, historically,the nation has
been much more closely associatedwith ethnicity than with loyalty to the
state. The terminologicalconfusion of nationwith stateis a recentdevelopment and one Connorshows derivesin partfrom postwarAmericanscholarshipthatreflectedthe United States' own experienceas a transnational,or
multinational,state.It also derives,significantlyfor scholarsof Japan,from
a heavy emphasisin theories of nationalismon Japanand Germanyduring
the wartimewhen a more perfectunion of nation and state occurredin the
In orderto clarify this fundamentalnaform of the militaristnation-state.12
tureof nationalismas loyalty to one's ethnic group,Connorhas emphasized
the term "ethnonationalism"in his writings.
11. One famous example of a patriotwho was not a militaristis DietmemberSaito Takao,
whose 1936 speech on the purge of militaryactivists and 1940 speech on the handlingof the
"ChinaIncident"led to his ousterfrom the Diet and to a widespreadconclusionin the postwar
years that he was a "progressive."But Saito's writings do not bear this out, and Yoshimi
Yoshiakihas revealed that Saito was merely expressing the belief of many ordinaryJapanese
that the militaryhad strayedfrom the pursuitof nationalinterestsin Asia. See Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kusa no ne nofuashizumu(Tokyo:Universityof Tokyo Press, 1987), pp. 3-21. While
Saito was indeed a statist,if not a militarist,the focus of this paperis, of course, on those who
sought to assert a distinctionbetween nationalism,on the one hand, and patriotismand militarism,on the otherhand,as emblems of the modernstate.
12. WalkerConnor,Ethnonationalism:The Questfor Understanding(Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 95-100. The emphasis on Germanyin studies on Japanese
nationalismalso seems to have led Ishida Takeshito conclude that Japanwas differentfrom
Germanyin his (mistaken)belief thatJapan,unlike Germany,had no historyof a clear conceptual distinctionbetween minzoku(Volk) and kokka(Staat). See his Nihon no seiji to kotoba,
Vol. 2: "Heiwa" to "kokka"(Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai,1989), p. 208. Ishida's
views on the subjectseem to have had a tremendousinfluencein the field and are reproduced
in GermaineHoston's Marxismand the Crisis of Developmentin Prewar Japan (Princeton:
PrincetonUniversityPress, 1986), especially her citation from a former Marxist, Kobayashi
Morito, who arguedthat in Japan "minzoku(nation or ethnic people) and kokka(the state)
were one" (p. 32).

81
Connor'stelling assessment of scholarshipon Japanesenationalismis

correct:there has been an underlying assumption that national loyalty in
Japanhas always centered on the state. Those who have sought to contest
this form of nationalismhave often pointed to subgroupsthat seem ethnically distinct from an equally pure "Yamato"race to suggest the existence,
however marginal,of otherethnic groupswithin the Japanesestate.'3Without denying the existence of ethnic minorities in Japan,it is also true that
such approacheshave derived their models of "ethnicity" from the same
body of postwar,and largely American,scholarshipthat Connoridentified.
It is importantto recognize that the association of minzokuwith "ethnic
minorities"in Japanis a ratherrecent development.Marxistscholarshipin
the immediatepostwaryears sharedwith prewarnationalistsan interpretation of minzokuas referringto a Japanesenation distinct from the modern
Japanesestate.'4The actual existence of multiple and large ethnic groups
within the modern state has not been necessary for the mobilization of a
discourseon ethnic nationalismin Japan.
In the remainingpages, I hope to show how ethnicity,never to be taken
for grantedas a naturalform of identity, was at the heart of the struggle
over how to representthe Japanesepeople and, consequently,the nation
itself. Ethnicnationalismbegan to take on a new significancein Japanafter
the turn of the century,just as the concept of the ethnic nation (minzoku)
enteredJapanesepolitical discourse.15 1 will begin with a brief overview of
13. See, for example, YazawaK6suke, "Ta-minzokushakaito shite no Nihon," in Rekishigaki KenkyfikaiandNihonshi Kenkyiikai,eds., KozaNihon rekishi(Tokyo:Tokyo Daigaku
Shuppankei,1985), Vol. 13, pp. 25-47; see also the essays in Arano Yasunoriet al., eds., Ajia
no naka no Nihonshi,Vol. 4: Chiikuto etonosu (minzoku)(Tokyo:Universityof Tokyo Press,
1992), especially KikuchiIsao, "Ky6kaito etonozu (minzoku),"pp. 55-80.
14. See, for example, T6yama Shigeki, "Futatsuno nashonarizumu,"Chuo koron, June
1951; Inoue Kiyoshi, "Nihon minzoku keisei to Meiji Ishin no igi," in Nihon gendaishi (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai,1951), Vol. 1; Eguchi Bokuro, "Nihon ni okeru minzokuteki na mono," Chuo koron, April 1952. Inoue's essay is particularlyhelpful: he offers an
extended footnote that demonstratesthat minzokuis best translatedinto English as "nation,"
not as "race." All three essays were reprintedin Band6 Hiroshi, ed., Minzokuno mondai:
rekishi kagaku taikei, Vol. 15 (Tokyo: Rekishi Kagaku Kyogikai, 1976). This work (which
ought to be requiredreadingon the subject of nationalismin Japan)also includes two essays
from the prewarMarxistappraisalof minzokuby MatsubaraHiroshi and HayakawaJiro, both
of whom explicitly identifiedminzokuwith the English word "nation."
15. The word "minzoku" was not completely unknown in Japanprior to the twentieth
century, and one of the earliest uses appearsto have been Miyazaki Muryu's in "minzoku
kaigi" to translatethe French "AssembleeNationale" in his adaptationof AlexandreDumas's
Ange Pitou, "Furansukakumeiki:jiyfuno kachidoki,"that appearedin the Jiyii shinbunfrom
August 12, 1882 to February8, 1883 (cited in YasudaHiroshi, "KindaiNihon ni okeru 'minzoku' kannenno keisei," Shiso to gendai, Vol. 31 (September1992), p. 62). But Yasudaadds
that the specific use of "minzoku"to mean nation, as distinct from the nation defined as "kokumin,"dates from no earlierthanthe 1890s (ibid., p. 66), while Yun Kon-chaarguesthat the

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how ethnicity and nationalismevolved in the political discourse of early

twentieth-centuryJapan,but focus mainly on the 1930s, for it was during
that decade that ethnic nationalismreemergedas an especially pressing issue. As T6yamanoted, nationalismwas taken up by a group of critics and
literaryfigures,many of whom had been exposed to Marxistandproletarian
writings before turningto romanticismin their attemptto develop a new
form of culturalproductionthatcould representethnic identityin ways they
initially hoped would not be coopted by state nationalism.Whetherthey
were successful (and, as I argue below, they were not), they did highlight
the complex relationshipbetween ethnicity,culture,and the state by insisting on the possibility of a creativeapproachto the problemof nationalism
throughan emphasison producingcollective forms of identitythatwere not
immediatelyreducibleto the state.And in the process,they sketchedout the
contours of an ethnic nationalismthat would survive the collapse of the
wartimestate to remaina problemtoday,especially as increasingnumbers
of Japaneseseek a closer relationshipwith theirAsian neighbors.
EthnicNationalismin Twentieth-Century
Japan
The rise of ethnic nationalismin Japanneeds to be understoodwithin
the context of a series of historical and political developmentsduring the
early twentiethcenturythat began to challenge previousunderstandingsof
the relationshipbetween nationalidentityand state development,as well as
the role of the West in Asia. Earlyculturalnationalistsin Meiji Japan,such
as Miyake Setsureiand Shiga Shigetaka,had also emphasizedthe particularityof Japaneseculture,but they locatedthis need for culturalappreciation
within the largerparadigmof state-buildingand saw culturalnationalismas
ideally strengtheningthe state.'6In the early years of the twentiethcentury,
as Japanpreparedfor waragainstRussia,ethnicnationalism(minzokushugi)
began to appearin powerfulif still inchoateform. One of the earliestnationalist groupsto appealto ethnicityin twentieth-centuryJapanwas the Amur
RiverSociety (Kokuryukai).Foundedin 1901 by Uchida Ry6hei, the Society announced,as one of its guiding principles,the encouragementof "the
Asian ethnicnations"(Ajia minzoku)andtheirresistanceto legalism, which
they felt had restrictedthe people's freedom.17 Yet, in spite of the potential
for this critiqueof "legalism" to encompassa critiqueof the modernJapaconsciousness of "minzoku"was not fully establishedin modernJapanuntil the turn of the
century.See his "Minzokugenso no satetsu:'Nihon minzoku'to iu jiko teiji," Shiso, No. 834
(December 1993), p. 17.
16. Yun Kon-chahas pointedout thatthe use of "Yamatominzoku"by Shiga Shigetaka
was an attemptto restructurethe "nucleus of the state" (kokkano shutai) on the foundations
of ancientJapanesehistory,tradition,and culture.Ibid., p. 14.
17. Ino Kenji, "Uyoku minzoku-haundi o tenb6 suru," in Ino Kenji, ed., Uyokuminzoku-hasoran (Tokyo:Nijiisseki Shoin, 1990), pp. 72-73.

83
nese state,the AmurRiverSociety workedclosely with the militaryin various forms of "continentaladventuring,"therebyunderminingany incipient
sense of a tension between the ethnic nation and the Japanesestate.
Subsequentdevelopmentsin the discourse on ethnic nationalismin Japan came from two general directions:changes in Marxisttheory concerning the role of nationalismin the global proletariatmovement, and rising
popularmovementsagainstthe Japanesestate afterthe disappointingterms
of the Portsmouthtreatythat concluded the Russo-JapaneseWarof 19045. Shumpei Okamotohas demonstratedthat the Hibiya riot, which broke
out in September1905 afterthe modest teims of the Portsmouthtreatybecame known, was closely relatedto a rising sense of alienationbetween "the
people," broadlyconceived, and the Japanesestate.18
While nationalistsand others in Japangroped for the means to account
for this new political force, socialists from aroundthe world gatheredat the
fifth general meeting of the Second Internationalin Stuttgartin 1907 to
debatewhethernationalismwas an appropriateresponseto imperialistwars.
Although the debate ended in a deadlock, largely over differences in the
ways socialists from wealthycountriesand those from developingcountries
appraisednationalism,the issues of colonization and nationalismit raised
receiveda warmreceptionin Asia, where hopes had been stirredby Japan's
victory against Russia.19At the same time, Stalin'sdefinition of ethnic nationalism as a social and historicalcategory in his 1913 "Marxismand the
National and Colonial Question" (translatedinto Japaneseas "Marukusushugi to minzokumondai") provideda strongeridentificationof the ethnos
(minzoku)with nation, distinct from the anthropologicalcategory of race
(jinshu), and thereforehighly attractiveto Asian nationalistswho sought
to distinguish various nationalist movements among the "yellow race"
and, collectively, against the dominationof the imperialismof the "white
race."20
18. ShumpeiOkamoto,"The Emperorand the Crowd:The HistoricalSignificanceof the
Hibiya Riot," in Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann,eds., Conflictin Modern Japanese
History (Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1982), pp. 258-75.
19. Eguchi Bokur6, "Gendaini okeruminzokuoyobi minzokushugi,"in IwanamiYuijiro,
ed., Iwanami koza gendai shist, Vol. 3: Minzokuno shiso (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1957),
pp. 19-21.
20. Ishimoda Sho, Rekishi to minzokuno hakken (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press,
1952), pp. 104-6; on the ways in which the ethnic nation (minzoku)and race (jinshu) were
understoodat the time, cf. the definitionsof the two concepts in the Daijiten (Tokyo:Keiseisha,
1917-37). "Race" (jinshu) is defined as "the divisions of humanity.Usually divided into the
yellow race, the white race, the copperrace, the black race, and mixed race" whereas "ethnic
nation"(minzoku)is "tribalgroupsof people" (jimminno shuzoku).Perhapseven more interesting is YamagataAritomo'sfamous letter of 1914 to Okumain which he outlines his belief
thatworld conflict is turninginto a strugglebetween "the white race" and the "coloredraces."
The word he uses for race is jinshu. An English excerpt from the letteris availablein Ryusaku
Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition,

84
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The outbreakof war in Europein 1914 precisely over issues of ethnic

nationalismand imperialismdealt a fatal blow to the existing international
order.But its impact on Japan,which played a ratherdistantrole overall in
the war itself, may very well have been in bringingthe issue of ethnic nationalistliberationto the forefrontof intellectualandpoliticaldebate.Prince
Saionji Kinmochi's delegation to the Versailles Peace Talks found itself
caughtbetween two apparentlycontradictorypositions of the leading powers. WoodrowWilson had decided that "the self-determinationof peoples"
must be an essential componentin the postwarworld order.This principle,
given ambiguousexpression with the English word "peoples," was translated into Japanesewith greaterfocus as the "self-determinationof ethnic
nations" (minzokujiketsu). Yet, if membersof the Saionji delegation concluded thatWilson's supportfor the equal claims of ethnic nationsmeant a
toleranceof racial diversity,they were soon disillusionedby Wilson'sjoining in the rejectionof the Japaneseproposalfor a clause in the League of
Nations' charterdenouncingracial discrimination(jinshu sabetsu kinshi).
Things were changing, and were Japanto pursuesuch national(as distinct from state) interestsas Japaneseimmigrationto the United States, it
would seem more advantageousto representthem in ethnic nationalterms,
ratherthan state interests(whose boundariesexcluded Japanesenaturalized
U.S. citizens) or racial terms (which would equate Japanesewith Chinese,
naKoreans,and other Asians). To be successful in the post-World-War-I
tionalist discourse, Japan,now a full-fledged imperialpower and hardly a
colonized nation, neverthelesswould find it advantageousto representitself as the victim of cultural(if not political or economic) colonizationby
the West.
This is indeed whathappened,in some cases. Yet,in light of this general
movementthroughoutthe world towarda reconsiderationof ethnic nationalism in the 1920s, it is not surprisingthatJapaneseintellectualsand critics
also began to reconsiderand redefinethe nation.Nor shouldit be surprising
that discussions of Japanas an ethnic nation were not reserved for ultrarightists.The liberal intellectualAbe Jiro included a section on ethnic nationalism in his Santaro'sDiary which he publishedin 1918. In it, Abe, or
"Santaro,"arguedthata trulyhumanistic,globally directededucationmust
begin with a full understandingof how one's identity is always embedded
in ethnicity.After emphasizingthe importanceof an appreciationof one's
ethnic identity,Abe concluded:
Vol. 2 (New York:ColumbiaUniversityPress, 1958), pp. 206-9. But to understandthe nuances of Yamagata'slanguage, consult the original in Tokutomilichiro, ed., KoshakuYamagata Aritomoden, Vol. 3 (Tokyo:Minyusha, 1933), pp. 923-24. For a commentaryon Yamagata's theory of racial competition,see George Akita and Ito Takashi,"YamagataAritomoto
'jinshu kyoso' ron," in Nenpo kindai Nihon kenkyi, Vol. 7, Nihon gaiko no kiki ninshiki
(Tokyo:YamakawaShuppansha,1985), pp. 95-118.

Doak: Ethnic Nationalism
85
I would like to close this memorandumwith the following note of caution.

WhatI mean here by ethnic nationalism[minzokushugi]is not synonymous
with state nationalism[kokkashugi].What unites the ethnic nation is blood
andhistory;but what unitesthe stateis sovereigntyandlaw as an expression
of its will. The differencebetween state nationalismand ethnic nationalism
will become most clear when one reflects on the political claims made by
each.... In political terms, ethnic nationalismopposes imperialistic,state
nationalismand is quite consistentwith the claims of cosmopolitanismand
humanism.It insists on the liberationof ethnic nations in the world,just as
we insist on the freedomof individualswithin a state.21
Abe was not alone among "liberals" in extolling the virtues of ethnic
nationalism. As late as 1934 Yanaihara Tadao tried to preserve this humanistic interpretation of a benign ethnic nationalism in his essay on peace and
the ethnic nation, which he published in the highly visible Chuo koron. He
too felt that the distinction between the ethnic nation and the state was an
essential one, if ethnic nationalism were to maintain a critical stance in the
context of an increasing Japanese imperialism. Yanaihara surveyed a variety
of theories on nationalism and nationality that were most influential during
the 1930s, concluding that "simply put, they all agree that the concept of
the ethnic nation [minzoku] should not be equated immediately with the
state [kokka] or the Staatsvolk [kokumin]."22 Whatever the nuances between
the ethnic nation and the Staatsvolk, it is clear from the rest of Yanaihara's
writings that the ethnic nation (minzoku) was not the same as the state.
But support for ethnic nationalism on the left was perhaps most characteristic of Marxists and was closely related to developments within the proletarian literary movement which dominated literary discourse in Japan during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Deeply imbedded in the proletarian
movement was a critique of universalist principles, particularly the bourgeois notion of individual identity grounded in a universal "ego." When
Georg Lukaics declared that "the proletariat is at one and the same time the
subject and object of its own knowledge," this and much more was implied.23 Once the rational, universalist constraints to subjective, collective
identities had been challenged, if not entirely lifted, a distinction between
definitions of the people based on the specific experiences of class or eth21. Abe Jir6, "Shis6jono minzokushugi,"in Inoue Masaji,ed., Santarono nikki(Tokyo:
KadokawaShoten, 1950), pp. 335-36. My thanksto Agustin JacintoZavalafor alertingme to
this importantpassage in Abe's work.
22. YanaiharaTadao, "Minzoku to heiwa," YanaiharaTadao zenshi, Vol. 18 (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shinsho, 1964), p. 47. Yanaiharaglosses kokuminas "Staatsvolk"on p. 45. To be
fair, he often equates both minzokuand kokuminwith the "nation":I have usually added
"ethnic" to help distinguish the kind of nation that he means by minzoku,a sense of nation
that is much more distancedfrom the state than is "Staatsvolk."
23. Georg Lukacs,Historyand Class Consciousness:Studiesin MarxistDialectics, trans.
by Rodney Livingstone(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1971), p. 20.

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nicity could only be maintainedthroughhistoricalpractice.The history of

the rise and fall of proletariatliteraturein Japanis a complex one and lies
outside the scope of this essay. Here I would like merely to draw attention
to how a theoryof culturalproductionthateventuallymeshed with the ethnic nationalismStalin had upheld in his 1913 essay grew out of the proletariat movement's earlier attempt to reconsider the relationshipbetween
"politics" and "culture."24
This debateon "politics" and "culture"can best be seen in the writings
of Kamei Katsuichiroand Hayashi Fusao, two influentialmembersof the
proletarianliteraturemovementwho laterbecamekey membersof the Japan
Romantic School. Particularlysensitive to the dilemma facing politicized
writers,they entereda debatewith KobayashiTakiji,MiyamotoKenji, and
other proletarianwritersover the contradictionsin contemporaryinterpretations of Marxist theories of cultural production. Hayashi suggested as
early as 1932 thatliteraryactivitywas not merely a transparentrecordingof
an externalpolitical reality,but carriedwith it its own "internal"reality.He
arguedthatthe ultimateresponsibilityof an authorwas "the completion of
the author'sown internalworld . . . [and then] to drag the readersalong,
willy nilly, to that other world.... It is only when this kind of passion is
realizedthatan authorhas the rightto expect the gratitudeof the masses."25
Kameifurtherdevelopedthis line of argumenttwo yearslaterin his own
essay on political desire as artistic temperament.He drew from Hayashi's
works to develop a theory of the artist as a perpetual"rebel" (as distinct
from a "revolutionist"who must become partof the new establishmentafter the revolutionsucceeds) whose own sense of identitywas always caught
between the rival demandsof skeptical reason and creativepassion. In the
same vein, in arguingthat literatureshould not be reducedto politics, he
stressed that he was not referringto politics "in the broad sense as manifested in all social class relations (including culture)"but "in the narrow
sense of politics as manifestedin partisanrelations."26Here it would seem
that this restrictedsense of "politics," along with his notion of a "revolutionist" who no longer rebels, might be seen as signifying the postRestorationpolitical elites and their own specific concept of the national
24. A very useful overview of the proletarianliterarymovementmay be found in Yoshio
Iwamoto, "Aspectsof the ProletarianLiteraryMovementin Japan,"in H. D. Harootunianand
BernardSilberman,eds., Japan in Crisis: Essays on TaishoDemcoracy (Princeton:Princeton
UniversityPress, 1974), pp. 156-82. The debate over politics and cultureis discussed in Takami Jun, Showa bungakuseisuishi, Vol. 2 (Tokyo:Bungei ShunjuShinsha, 1958), pp. 9-37;
and some key texts in the debate may be found in OdagiriHideo, ed., GendaiNihon bungaku
ronsoshi, Vol. 2 (Tokyo:Miraisha,1956), pp. 135-75.
25. Hayashi Fusao, "Sakka no tame ni," in Hirano Ken, ed., Gendai Nihon bungaku
ronsoshi, Vol. 3 (1957), p. 140.
26. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Geijutsutekikishitsu to shite no seiji yoku," in Hirano, ed.,
GendaiNihon bungakuronsosshi,Vol. 3, p. 167.

87
communityas the state (kokka).Both Hayashi'sadvocationof an "internal

reality" and Kamei's invocation of "rebellion"against the establishedpolitical orderconverged in laying the culturalfoundationsfor a broaderacceptanceof a subjectivelydefinedconcept of the nationbased on the people
and distinctfrom the realityof the modernJapanesestate.
While Kamei and Hayashi preparedthe way for the Japan Romantic
School through the highly proclaimed "CulturalRenaissance" (Bungei
Fukk6ki), one of Japan'sgreatest twentieth-centurynovelists, Yokomitsu
Riichi, strongly influenced the subsequentdevelopment of this debate on
culturethroughhis 1935 essay, "Junsuish6setsuron." Yokomitsusought to
bridge the gap between the realism of mass politics and the romanticismof
elite literature through an appeal to his fellow writers to create texts
groundedin the Japanese"ethnicnation"(minzoku).This returnto a Japanese "specificity"would liberatewritersfrom a universalrealism and open
up the possibility of creativeworks developed in line with the specific conditions of Japaneseculture.
Yokomitsuwas too much an artistto believe in a simplistic mimesis of
an ethnic "reality";rather,the thrustof his argumentwas directed at the
conditions for producinga literaturethat would represent,in literarypractice, a Japanese ethnic identity that was not completely compatible with
Europeanrationality.Yet, ironically,Yokomitsuknew that such a position
could only be imaginedthroughthe work of Westernwriterssuch as Andre
Gide, and he particularlyfound useful Gide's insights into the mechanisms
of self-consciousness and the liberationof the ego. Nonetheless, what most
contemporaryreadersof this complex essay rememberedbest must have
been Yokomitsu'sconclusion that "the moment has finally arrivedto think
aboutthe ethnic nation [minzoku]."27
EthnicNationalismand the Japan RomanticSchool
Certainly,the most sustainedattemptin Japanduringthe 1930s to heed
the call "to thinkaboutthe ethnic nation"and even to articulatea concept of
the ethnicnationas distinctfromstatenationalismwas carriedout by a group
of writers and literary critics who styled themselves the JapanRomantic
School. From the announcementfor the school publishedin Cogito in late
1934, one gains a sense thatthese Romanticswereaboutsomethingnew,even
if theirprecisegoal was still shroudedin heavy doses of romanticambiguity:
TheJapanRomanticSchoolis thepresentpoemof our"youthof theage."
We rejecteverythingbutthe lofty toneof thesepoemsof youthand,untroubledby yesterday'scustoms,move forwardin searchof tomorrow's
truth...
27. YokomitsuRiichi, "Junsuish6setsuron," in Hirano,ed., GendaiNihon bungakuronsoshi, Vol. 3, p. 79.

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22:1 (1996)
TheJapanRomanticSchoolpaysno attentionto history.Rather,theJapan

RomanticSchoolexcels in all thingsand is the mostpureandbeautiful
existence.Today,Japanneedssuchartistsandthepeoplerequiresomeone
whocanmostacutelysensetheirdemands.28
The tone of this announcementis remarkablysimilarto thatof many of
the early Germanromanticssuch as Novalis who, in this early,prereactionary stage of Germanromanticism,exhibiteda contrivedindifferenceto politics, a "lofty unconcernwith the particularform of state life," and sought
to grasp the Germannation as a culturalpeople in a way that was closely
relatedto the universalistand humanisticideals of modernism.29The similarity was no accident. Many membersof the JapanRomanticSchool had
studied Germanliteratureand culturein higher school and university,and
they often expressed their admirationfor such Germanwriters as Novalis,
FriedrichH1olderlin,
FriedrichSchlegel, and HeinrichHeine.
One of the earliestcritics of the day to graspthe significanceof the Japan
Romantic School and to criticize the new direction it proposed was Miki
Kiyoshi. In November 1934, the same monththatthe advertisementfor the
JapanRomantic School appearedin Cogito, Miki wrote an article in the
Miyakoshinbunon "the appearanceof romanticism"thataccusedthe Japan
RomanticSchool of merelyrepeatingthe universalist,culturalclaims of the
early GermanRomanticSchool, and he suggested that the JapanRomantic
School had little new to offer.Miki'scriticismof the JapanRomanticSchool
would take up a significantpartof his energies over the next severalyears,
but one finds a clue to the laterdevelopmentof his criticismof romanticism
in his descriptionin this article of the JapanRomanticSchool as "the protection of 'the artist's disposition' from the disposition of the citizen
[shimin]." 30
In Januaryof the following year, Kamei respondedwith a defense, suggesting thatMiki's argumentthatthe JapanRomanticSchool was merely an
exercise in comparativeromanticism"seemed as though he was speaking
of someone else." But Kamei did not addressthe question of whetherthe
Romanticsfelt threatenedby civic nationalismor whetherthey were proposing a differentconcept of nation or citizen.3' Miki, however, who was
drawingcloser to the rationaltechnology of the state as a means of saving
Japanfrom fascism, grew increasinglycertainthat "fascism in Japan[was]
a style of thought or an emotional mood that stressed emotion over ratio28. YasudaYojur6,"Nihonr6manhak6koku," Cogito, No. 11 (December 1934), p. 149.
29. YadaToshitaka,"Romanshugito minzoku gainen," in Iwanami,ed., Iwanamikoza
gendai shiso, Vol. 3, p. 56.
30. Miki Kiyoshi, "R6manshugino taito," Miyakoshinbun,Nov. 8-11, 1934. Reprinted
in Miki Kiyoshizensha, Vol. 13 (Tokyo:IwanamiShoten, 1967), pp. 157-67; see pp. 158-59.
31. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Romanshugino imi," Bungei shuto, Jan. 1935; reprintedin Kamei Katsuichirozensha (Tokyo:K6dansha,1971-75), Vol. 3, p. 323.

89
nality, and [Miki] implied that writers like those in the Romantic School
could fuel its growth."32
This debate between Miki and Kamei suggests how far apartconcepts
of the Japanesenation were growing in the mid-1930s. Miki believed that
the difference between "Westernknowledge" and "Japaneseknowledge"
merely reflected a variance in the topos or "place" where universaltechnology was put into practice,thus assuminga concept of a distinctnational
space that was essentially homogeneous.33But the JapanRomanticSchool
sought to contest the notion of a monolithic conflation of state and nation
by contesting the claims that a modern, rational state made on traditional
Japaneseculturalidentity. In attemptingto sever culturefrom the modern
state and relocateit back to the people, the RomanticSchool showed a prescient awarenessof how the modern discipline of history had been mobilized to provide narrativestructuresthat would make the identificationof
the state, nation, and Japaneseculture seem naturaland commonsensical.
Consequently,the rejection of "history" in the advertisementfor the Romantic School should be understoodin reference to the familiar form of
nation-statenarrativesand, particularly,the successful construction since
Meiji of a "wealthy state and strong military" (fukokukyohei), while "Japan" seems to have referredto the Romantics' ideal and eternalethnic nation ratherthanto the actualmodernJapanesestate.
There is, in fact, a fascinatingif incipientcritiqueof history in the writings of these romanticsthatin many ways foreshadowsthe critiqueof "History" offeredmorerecentlyby scholarsdrawingfrom deconstructionistand
subalterntheories and that sheds light on comparativeproblemsin how the
nation, state, and culture have been understoodand represented.For example, RobertYounghas suggested, in relationto EdwardSaid's work, that
"to the extent that all knowledge is producedwithin institutionsof various
sorts, there is always a determinedrelation to the state and to its political
32. Miles Fletcher, "Intellectualsand Fascism in Early Showa Japan,"Journal of Asian
Studies, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1 (November 1979), p. 49. Although Fletcher does not directly
address the problem of ethnic nationalismagainst the state, this importantessay remains an
essential startingpoint for understandinghow state ideologues could see their defense of the
rationalstate as protectingJapanfrom more radicalforms of nationalismand fascism.
33. Miki Kiyoshi, "Nihon-tekichisei ni tsuite," Bungakkai,Vol. 4, No. 4 (April 1937),
p. 68. Miki's views were in sharp contrastto those of Tosaka Jun who argued, at about the
same time, that "Japan"should be approached"dualistically"(nigen-tekini) ratherthan "monistically" (ichigen-tekini). His proposal,which was quickly dismissed by KobayashiHideo
and othersparticipatingin the symposium, was made in the context of wide-rangingand fascinating discussions on topics such as "the dualityof culture"and "the rivalryof internationality and ethnic nationality."In contrast,Miki's commentsat the symposiummainlybemoaned
the lack of state supportfor a strong cultural policy. See the transcriptsof the symposium
in "Gendai bungakuno Nihon-teki d6ko," Bungakkai,Vol. 4, No. 2 (February1937), esp.
pp. 210-17.

90
22:1 (1996)
practices at home and abroad."34Young suggests that "History," as it

evolved in the Westerntradition,is one of these institutionsand, as such,
developed a totalistic epistemology that fused all particularitieswithin the
universalmission of an expansive state, where traditionalidentity and the
modern world intersected.Recently, Gyan Prakashhas articulatedthe implications of this "WesternHistory" for the non-Westmore forcefully, arguing that "the dominanceof Europeas historynot only subalternizesnonWesternsocieties, but also serves the aims of theirnation-states."35
Similar argumentsthat positioned Japan as a non-Westernstate oppressedby Westernculturewere enjoying wide circulationin Japanduring
the 1930s. KawakamiTetsutaroargued against Tosaka Jun'sbelief in the
universalityof science by questioningthe culturalneutralityof history:
whatMr.Tosakais saying.I believeyou trust
Well,I thinkI understand
realnatureof whatyoucall scienceis history.
Mr.
Tosaka.
the
But
science,
is connectedto theconceptof "the
I thinkthatthisconceptof "historical"
West."... Nowthisconceptof theWestcanbe appliedin Japan,butI have
doubtsas to howit is applied.36
considerable
Tosakarespondedthat science workedquite well in Japan,as evidencedby
how well tramsand trains,apparentlyoblivious to the culturallimits of science, ran in Japan.Kawakamiand others at the symposiumremainedunmoved. As they saw things, the critical questionwas not the universalityof
the naturalsciences, but the relationshipof culturalsciences and national
power. For them, and for the Romantics,the most pressing issue was how
to restoreconfidence in nationalculturewhen the very future of Japanese
cultureseemed threatenedby the modernJapanesestate'sinternalizationof
Westernculturefor its own purposes.
Perhapsthe most powerfulcritiqueof history and its role in supporting
the statecame from YasudaYojiir, the acknowledgedleaderof the Romantic School. Yasudawas a fundamentallyironic thinkerwho sharedYokomitsu'sinsight thata Japaneseculturalidentitycould no longerbe produced
except throughWesternculturesince Japanhad alreadybegun the process
of modernization.After firstreaffirmingKamei'sdistinctionbetween "politics" in the narrowsense (which he too rejected) and politics as cultural
practice, Yasudadescribedhis fellow Romanticsas "first-rateand proper
transplantersto Japanof the spiritof the GermanRomanticSchool in order
to put into practicea political theory-political theoryin the truestsense34. Robert Young, White Mythologies: WritingHistory and the West (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 127. Emphasisadded.
35. Gyan Prakash,"SubalternStudies as PostcolonialCriticism,"TheAmericanHistorical Review,Vol. 99, No. 5 (December 1994), p. 1485.
36. Remarks attributedto Kawakami Tetsutaro in "Gendai bungaku no Nihon-teki
doko," p. 214.

91
that would lift the Japanese people to the heights of Goethe." 37He was quite
conscious of the contradiction in attempting to create a conception of the
people from a knowledge base that was foreign to most of the people themselves, but he saw it as inevitable that "before we can provide what the
people seek, we must freely construct the people that we seek." 38This dilemma was merely the result of the post-Meiji-Restoration social and political revolution in which certain forms of Western culture were mobilized by
the state to construct a specific version of national identity congruent with
its own interests. Consequently, Yasuda noted, nobody yet had told the real
history of Japan:
We are a world-class ethnic nation with a history and genealogy that we
need not discuss. This is why we have not had one historiansince the Meiji
Restorationwho really talks about our history.The majorworks of the famous historians at the government universities are mainly middle-brow
textbooks.39
How to recover this "history" of the Japanese people from within a modern
outlook that equated history with the fortunes of the state remained a critical
problem for Yasuda's cultural theory and one that helps explain much of his
attraction to the German romantics.
Yasuda saw the German romantics as an ideal means of illustrating how
culture had been marginalized by the mobilization of historical science in
the service of the modern state. This appeal to German romanticism positioned Yasuda within a critique of the modern Japanese state, not as too
Western or too universal, but for being too particularistic in rejecting the
universalism of human cultural ideals. From romanticism, Yasuda derived a
theory of art that promised "to correctly grasp the past" in ways that the
modern discipline of history had failed to do.40 In a wide-ranging essay on
German romanticism and cultural theory that touched on Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schlegel, Heinrich von Kleist, G. W. F.
Hegel, and others, Yasuda ultimately concluded that the most accurate "historian" of the spirit of the Romantic Age was Holderlin, a "pure poet" who
refused to accept "the affirmation of the alienation of art and life [which is]
the capitalist social theory that destroys the pure spirit of an artist."4'
Through Holderlin, Yasuda sought to uncover a premodern concept of art as
37. YasudaYojuro, YasudaYojurozenshu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985-89; hereaftercited
as YYz),Vol. 3, pp. 407-8.
38. YasudaYojuroi,"Konnichino r6manshugi,"in YYz,Vol. 3, p. 48.
39. YasudaYojuro,"Nihon roman-tekijidai," Yamatoshinbun,Aug. 12-14, 1938. Reprintedin YYz,Vol. 9, pp. 264-69; see p. 264.
40. KawamuraJiro, "YasudaYojuroron," in Tenbo,No. 93 (September 1966), p. 139.
41. Yasuda Yojiur, "Kiyorakanashijin," Bungakkai, Vol. 1, No. 5 (February 1934),
p. 218.

92
22:1 (1996)
history since "the contemporaryway of thinkingaboutart... is merely an

ideology thatappearedwith civil society-or at least with the maturationof
the humanistspiritthatarose duringthe Renaissance."42
Germanromanticslike Holderlincreatedworks that "drewone's attention to the flow of history,"and from this historicalvantagepoint, Yasuda
discerned a contradictionbetween the statism of Bonapartism and the
"revolutionof internationalism"offered by the Germanfocus on the cultural/ethnicnation:
He [Holderlin]
was probablythe firstto discoverthe ethnicnation[minzoku].His sentimentsdid notdiscerna dialecticbetweena constanteffort
to reachtheinfiniteandtheblissof a realitythatis consciousof limits.This
wassimplybecausehe wasnota politicianwhowroteliterature
to instruct
the citizens[kokumin];
he hadto be a writerwho sangof his own spirit.43
To Yasuda,the Germanromantics,and particularlyH6lderlin,remainedthe
most significantillustrationof a "spiritualhistory" of the humanquest for
liberationthathad been marginalizedby a more progressiveform of history
that had reducedpoetry and poets to the status of ornamentaldecorations
(tokonoma no okimono).44
Throughhis focus on Germanromantics,Yasudahoped to dislodge a

belief in the Japanesestate'srepresentationof Westerncultureas rational,
progressive,and supportiveof artificialpolitical forms, and to reveal the
polysemy inherentin Westernculture.Thus, he wrote, "I do not reject the
study of foreign culture.It is all we know.Furthermore,the studyof foreign
literaturehas finally taught us the necessity of determiningthe Japanese
classics."45 Yet, while Yasuda understood the necessity of using Western
culture to access Japanesetradition(the West's invention of the East), he

refusedto essentializeWesterncultureas the only locus of universalvalues.
Indeed,he sought to transcendthe simplistic oppositionof West (universal)
versusEast (particular)by reaffirmingthatculturecarriedwith it a universal
value that was only frustratedby the temporallyspecific structuresof politics (i.e., the nation-state).He looked back to eighth-centuryJapanas a period of flourishingcosmopolitanismand suggestedthatthis was the time the
Japanesetrulyexperienceda universalculture.
The nuanceshere of the early stages of Germanromanticismare strong,
but we should not overlook the implicit criticism of the modernJapanese
state as well. In his critique of "what is Japanese"(1938), Yasudaargued
stronglyand passionatelyagainstallegationsby critics such as Aono Suekichi thathe was a fascist, maintainingthathis views shouldbe distinguished
42.
43.
44.
45.
Ibid., pp. 218-19.

Ibid., p. 228.
Ibid., pp. 228, 230.
Yasuda,"Gendaihyoronkano tachiba,"in YYz,Vol. 3, p. 408.

93
from fascism since he was strongly critical of the Japanese state. The colonization of Japan, he noted, was internal and stemmed from the Japanese
state:
If we can say thatJapan'sconquest of the eighteenthcenturyis still incomplete, it is becauseJapan'sliberationfrom colonial forms is still incomplete.
Yet, when we look back on "history" and reflect on the "miracle" of the
"Meiji Restoration,"our attitudecannot be so easily rationalized.Simply
put, Aono's "miracle"is nothing but gratitudefor what is representedby
the name "Ito Hirobumi"[i.e., the modernJapanesestate].
At any rate,our generation,which set its sights on culturefrom a realization
of Japan'sincompleteconquestof the eighteenthcentury,has startedto write
a topographyof the Japanesesoul. Thatthe fascist forms of Japantoday are
being directed by the bureaucracyis an abominable disgrace. I have no
hopes that a new bureaucracymight bring our Japanin step with Russia
which is creatinga "wealthyproletariat"in the West and therebybring us
closer to overcomingeighteenth-centuryculturalforms. I just cannot bring
myself to trustthe "history"that is the special temperamentof the current
bureaucracy.46
Consequently, for Yasuda and his fellow Romantics, the problem confronting Japan in the 1930s was how best to resurrect this "eradicated history"
that would reveal the cultural and ethnic foundations for a new Japanese
national identity; they often argued, contra Miki, that this attempt to restore
a "universal Japanese culture" should not be reduced to fascism which, as
Yasuda concluded, was the "eradication of things through state power."47
To fully appreciate the Japan Romantic School's romanticism and its
critical orientation to the rational state, one might compare the School's
project with the poststructuralist and decolonization theories raised by recent critics. A shared romanticism underlies these critiques of history and
the state, as illustrated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's suggestion that
postcolonial criticism "consists in saying an 'impossible "no" to a structure, which one critiques, yet inhabits intimately.' "48 In a similarly ambivalent mood, Yasuda announced that the basis of the Japan Romantic School
lay in "the irony of a liberated Japan that simultaneously can ensure con46. Yasuda,YYz,Vol. 6, p. 193. Needless to say, Yasudadid not intendto apply Western
chronology indiscriminatelyto Japan.To him, "the eighteenth century" was not a universal
markerof history,but a specific, historicistreference to the time when he located the origins
of the modern state in Europe. It is in this context that he condemns those Japanese who
worshipthe foundersof the modernJapanesestate which, of course, appearedin Japannearly
one hundredyears after "the eighteenthcentury"had drawnto a close.
47. Yasuda,YYz,Vol. 6, pp. 190-91.
48. GayatriChakravortySpivak, "The Making of Americans, the Teaching of English,
the Futureof Colonial Studies," New LiteraryHistory,Vol. 21 (1990), p. 28; cited in Prakash,
"SubalternStudies as PostcolonialCricitism,"p. 1487.

94
22:1 (1996)
structionand destructionwhile Japan'snew spiritis still in its currentchaotic and inchoatecondition."49And Kamei added that the JapanRomantic
School arose as a form of "irony opposed to vulgar realism [which] . . .
would build a realism . . . by recovering as fundamental to the spirit of
realism those elements such as an intense subjectivity,an idealistic spirit,a

lofty intellectual character,and a scientific cultivationthat had been lost
underthe earlierform of 'realism.'"50 In highlightingthe impossibilityof
theirnecessaryresistanceto humanstructures,the Romanticsalso were suggesting their alreadyimplicatedposition within Westernculture and their
own nationaltraditionthathad constructedthe modernJapanesestate.
As suggested above, the role of poetry was centralin this construction
of a concept of the Japaneseas a culturalpeople, and it lay at the very heart
of the Romanticview of the nation.Poetrywas not merely seen as creating
a sense of sharedsocial space thatwould rival, if not negate, the "history"
of the post-Meijistate.As the tone of the announcementcited abovereveals,
poetry also was associated with some vague hope for a new concept of a
national people that would overcome the more recent painful realities of
a nation divided by class and regional differences. Romantic nationalists
have often turnedto poetry in a belief that "thereis a special kind of contemporaneouscommunity which language alone suggests-above all in
the form of poetry and songs .... there is in this singing an experience of
simultaneity.At precisely such moments, people wholly unknownto each

other utter the same verses to the same melody."5' Kamei reflected that
Plato's call for poets to be driven from his republic stemmed not from a
failure to appreciateculture, but from a recognition that technical artists
with no political concernsshould not have a place in his "idealcountry"and Kamei called for a realizationof Plato's2,000-year-olddreamby Japanese poets who understoodthat they were meant to address the nation.52
Whatremainedto be seen was whethersuch a "poeticization"of the nation
could resist totalizationsof the nationalspace thatmighteventuallycollapse
any distinctionbetween "nation"and "state"underthe aegis of a resurgent
"nation-state."
49. YasudaYojurO,"Wagakunini okeruromanshugino gaikan,"in YYz,Vol. 11, p. 302.
HashikawaBunzo has noted the similaritiesbetween this passage and Carl Schmitt'sdescription of the political romantic'sbelief that "the reservationof all infinite possibilities lies in
irony" in his Nihon romanhahihanjosetsu (Tokyo:Miraisha,1965), pp. 40-41. I have drawn
the line from Schmitt from Guy Oakes' translationof Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism
(Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), p. 72.
50. Kamei Katsuichiro,"Romanshugino imi," in Kamei Katsuichirozenshu, Vol. 3,
pp. 323-24.
51. Anderson,ImaginedCommunities,p. 132.
52. Kamei Katsuichirol,"Dorei-nakigirisu no kuni e," Nihon romanha,Vol. 1, No. 2
(April 1935), pp. 20-21.

95
The Reconciliation of Ethnic Nation and State

While Yasuda insisted on the differences between his interest in Japanese
culture and the cultural ideologies of fascism, he was mainly concerned with
producing a new historical perspective that would redefine the "people" by
providing a cultural framework for an alternative view that stressed a more
populist concept of the Japanese nation. Yet, ironically, in his view, as in the
post-Meiji political culture, the emperor was given a central role in what he
called, drawing from Asano Akira, "history as the emperor wants it" (tenshin rekishi). But in contrast to the Meiji state's appropriation of the modern, beef-eating emperor as the cornerstone of its state nationalism, Yasuda
represented the emperor in a thoroughly poetic, romantic way.53 He stated
his intention as "the clarification of a 'Japan' that must experience the present world historical moment and, in order to bring about such a loftier 'Japan,' the construction through cultural history of a genealogy of the lineage
of that 'Japan.' "54 This genealogy presented the emperor, not as a modern
individual, but as a collective line of tragic emperors who, imprisoned by
political elites, invariably expressed through their poetry a longing to be
reunited with their people.
Yasuda stopped short of suggesting a return to actual imperial rule, but
the implicit criticism of the false Meiji "Restoration" was clear. From Retired Emperor Gotoba and his failed bid at an imperial restoration in the
early thirteenth century through the wandering poet Basho of the seventeenth century, Yasuda described an imperial tradition of poetic culture that
was defined by its opposition to secular political power. Consequently, he
imagined poets as moral voices who best articulated this lost tradition; they
were, he wrote, "always at the forefront of history's will and the people's
determination." 55What made this poetic genealogy particularly appealing
in the context of ethnic nationalism was its absorption of the individual in a
collective identity, as each individual emperor was merely the most recent
incarnation of the same, enduring cultural tradition. As the unifying principle of the Japanese people, the emperor also suggested, however, the his53. George Akita and Hirose Yoshihirorecently have challenged the long-held view that
the modernJapanesemonarchywas constructedon a Prussianmodel, noting that some Meiji
elites, such as Inoue Kowashi, had a British model of the monarchyin mind. See Akita and
Hirose, "The BritishModel: Inoue Kowashi and the Ideal MonarchicalSystem," Monumenta
Nipponica, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Winter 1994). Both sides of the debate, however, agree on the
Westernorigins of the modernJapanesemonarchy,whetherBritish or Prussianin inspiration,
and this is the only relevant issue for Yasudaand the JapanRomantic School who saw the
redefinitionof the emperorin Westernform as the penultimateexpression of Westerncultural
colonization in Japan.
54. Yasuda,"Taikanshijin no goichininsha," YYz,Vol. 5, p. 11.
55. Ibid., p. 12.

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torical and cultural differences that separated the Japanese from other
Asians.
In spring of 1938, Yasudaembarkedon his first (and only) trip outside
Japan.He joined Sat6 Haruoas a special correspondentfor thejournalShin
Nihon (which Sato, HayashiFusao, and other membersof the Shin Nihon
Bunka Kai hadjust foundedin January1938-not to be confused with the
earlierjournalShinNihon [1911-18]) on ajourney thattook themto Korea,
Manchuria,andnorthernChina,wherehe touredBeijing underthe guidance
of the Japanesesinologist TakeuchiYoshimi.Whateffect, if any,experience
in a foreigncountryhad on this young ethnicnationalistis a matterof debate
among specialists.56But it was aroundthis time that a more historically
specific form of ethnic nationalismin modern Japan,with its ironic relationship to other nationalistmovements,both Easternand Western,begins
to surfacein Yasuda'swritings.Thatis to say, one can detect a shift around
late 1938 in Yasuda'sapproachto ethnic nationalismthat reflects the distinctionbetween the "primordial"and "boundary"approachesto ethnicity
thatKosakuYoshinorecentlyhas outlined.As Yoshinoexplains,primordial
approachesto ethnicity attach "supremeimportanceto the continuityover
time of the ethnic communityby emphasizingthese two aspects [kinship
and culture] of the primordialties." Boundary approachesto ethnicity
downplay culturaldeterminantsto emphasizethat the identity of members
of an ethnic group can "not be established in terms of their shared cultural traits, but only by considering their relationshipwith neighbouring
groups."57Priorto Yasuda'sexperience in foreign countries,his approach
was very close to that of primordialism,but increasinglyhe began to emphasize the unitary characterof the Japaneseethnic nation and the state,
while contrastingthe mission of this newly synthesized"Japan"with threats
from outside.
Yet, as Yoshino notes, the two approachesare not always mutuallyexclusive, and both cultureand boundaryremainedinfluentialin Yasuda'snationalism. His definition of the Japaneseas an "ethnic nation" (minzoku)
ratherthanpartof an Asian "race"(jinshu) reflecteda tentativerecognition
of the historicallegacy of the Meiji Restorationwhich had both yielded the
modern state and alienated the Japanesefrom other Asians. At the same
time, Yasudacontinuedto hope thatmodernitymight be overcomethrough
56. See my discussionof the debatein Dreams of Difference:TheJapanRomanticSchool
and the Crisis of Modernity(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1994), pp. 14-15. Perhaps the most provocativeview is thatof OketaniHideaki,who arguesthatYasuda'sdiscussion
of the Japanesevictory at Siichow in May 1938 was actuallya carefully coded critiqueof the
new constraintsthe state imposed on culturaldebatein Japanwhen the NationalMobilization
Law went into effect the same month.See Oketani, YasudaYojfro(Tokyo:ShinchTsha,1983),
pp. 79-80.
57. KosakuYoshino,CulturalNationalismin ContemporaryJapan:A Sociology Enquiry
(London:Routledge, 1992), pp. 70-71.

97
the constructionof a collective identity groundedin culturalspecificity. A

heightenedappreciationof ethnicity would fuse togetherthe ethnic nation
and the state into the nation-state(minzokukokka),58
therebyputtingan end
to divisivenessover how the nation ought to be represented:
That we have professional thinkers who maintainthere is a gap between
the thinking of those in the nation-statecrowd [minzokukokkagun] and
ethnic nationalism [minzokushugi]is really a reflection on the ratherunusual intellectual customs of our country. But with the establishmentof
the New Order,the professional principles and tendencies of writers will
change.59
Certainlyby 1940 when Yasudapublished this statement,his critical

attitudetowardthe statehad moderatedsomewhat.But he still believed that
the ethnic nation requiredbetterhistoricalrepresentation,since it was "the
cultural side [of ethnicity] that must be emphasized."60Consequently,he
walkeda narrowline between maintainingthe unitarycharacterof the Japanese nation and the state and arguingfor a new form of history that would
recoverJapan'strue historicalgreatnessfrom the "civilizationand enlightenment ideology" of the "official historiographers"whose work aided in
"the dominance of civilization which, since the Meiji period, had turned
Japaninto a place of colonial culture."61
It was a delicate balancingact. Ethnic nationalismwas to suggest both
58. This equation of minzokukokka with "nation-state"may strike some readers as
strange, since the precise definition of the nation-statehas largely been lost in the Englishlanguage literature.We now often use the terms "nation-state,""nation,"and "state" interchangeably,even though the terms originally referredto quite discrete entities. (See Walker
Connor, "A Nation is a Nation, Is a State, Is an Ethnic Group,Is a ... ," reprintedin Connor,
Ethnonationalism.)Connor'sanalysis, importantenough in its own right, takes on added significance when compared with prewarJapanese theorists of nationalism such as Yanaihara
Tadao, who make almost identical arguments,tracing the definition of the nation (translated
into Japaneseas minzoku)to the Latinroot nasci (cf. Connor,"A Nation is a Nation," pp. 9495, and YanaiharaTadao, "Minzokuto kokka," YanaiharaTadao zenshu [Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1965], Vol. 18, pp. 273-354, at pp. 278-79). Yet,withouta clear understandingof the
distinctionbetween the nation and the state, Yasuda'spoint is hardto follow. For a brief summary of some strategies the state employed to coopt the ethnic nation (minzoku) within a
renewed emphasis on the nation-state(minzokukokka), see my chapter on "Nationalismas
Dialectics: Ethnicity,Moralism, and the State in Early Twentieth-CenturyJapan,"in James
Heisig and JohnMaraldo,eds., RudeAwakenings:Zen, the KyotoSchool, and the Questionof
Nationalism(Honolulu:Universityof Hawai'i Press, 1994).
59. YasudaYojuro,"'Bungaku no tachiba'oboegaki," YYz,Vol. 7, p. 269. Yasuda'sargument on the unique Japanesetraditionof distinguishingbetween nation and state contrasts
nicely with IshidaTakeshi'sargument,noted above, thatprewarJapanwas unlike Germanyin
not having a traditionof distinguishingnationfrom state.
60. YasudaYojuro,"Minzokuno yuetsusei ni tsuite," YYz,Vol. 11, pp. 79-80.
61. YasudaYojuro,"Nihon rekishigakuno kensetsu:kokushikakuninno mondai," Minzoku-tekiyfietsukan,in YYz,Vol. 9, pp. 29, 39. See also "Atarashiikokushi no kensetsu,"
pp. 66-72, in the same volume.

98
22:1 (1996)
a culturaldifferencefrom the West and, simultaneously,a recognitionthat

no otherAsian nationhad yet achievedwhat Japanhad:
Japanists
todaydo notexplaintheessenceof Japaneseness
by rejectingeverythingof European
originorall elementsof foreignculture.Theyexplain
howJapanaloneacceptedEuropean
andAmericanculture,butdigestedit
in a waythatenabledit to spiritually
conquertheWest.Whatwasthisspiritualconquest?It is evidentin the fact thatJapanresistedthe invasionof
the West;preservedits dignityas the only independent,
civilizedcountry
in Asia;preventedthe completedestruction
of Asia;andis now a unique
nationthatpreservesAsia'shopes,history,andbloodline.62
island-empire
This sense of culturalisolation is essential to Yasuda'sinsistence that the
Japanesemust arriveat a "truesense of ethnic superiority,"which he tried
to separate from the current (modern) forms of ethnic superiority that
stemmed from the "ideology of global politics of the white peoples." Yasuda's "ethnicsuperiority"was meantto apply againstboth East and West.
A "true sense of ethnic superiority,"he promised, would also restorethe
confidence of the many Japanesewho "traveled"(as Yasudaput it, conveniently overlookingthe realitythat most Japanesewere thereas draftedsoldiers, not sightseers)to the Asian continentin the early 1940s only to conclude mistakenly that the "shallow civilization" of "Chinese despotism"
was superiorto Japan'sown "courtlyculture."63
Needless to say, Yasudaheld little sympathyfor other Asian ethnic nationalist movements, denouncingKoreanethnic nationalismas little more
than longings for a modernitywhose materialbenefits would displace traditionalcultureand morality,as only the Japaneseknew so well. Reflecting
on his time in Korea, he wrote: "This is what I told the Koreanyouths. I
won't express one iota of sympathyfor your ethnic nationalism,nor am I
any more inclined now to adopt a sentimentalview of your independence
movement."64 Nor was Yasudamore favorably disposed toward Chinese
62. Yasuda,"Nihon roman-tekijidai," YYz,Vol. 9, pp. 265-66. Although Yasudagenerally prefersthe term minzokuwhen discussing the Japanese,and this term dominatesin this
article as well, there is an exceptional use of the wordjinshu (race) in this essay in reference
to the Chinese thatdeserves attention.Yasudauses the word for "race"to arguethatthe Japanese are a race that is breakingnew ground with a world-historicalidee (minzoku)and are
thereforea more "progressive"race thanthe Chinese. But he also arguesthatthe Chinese, by
failing to develop their ethnic nationalismin the modernworld, "are an uncultured,illogical,
nonidealisticpeople who seem to be a completely differentrace from the classical Chinese"
(p. 266). That is, in both cases the word "race" emphasizes aspects of the Japaneseand Chinese that Yasudaascribes to modernity,while serving (like ethnicity) to furtherdistinguish
between Chinese and Japanesepeople. WhetherYasuda'sunusualuse of the word for "race"
is intentionalor whetherit reflects the natureof this piece (it was writtenfor a newspaper)is
unclear.
63. Yasuda,Minzoku-tekiyuetsukan,pp. 12-13.
64. Yasuda,"Kokugono fukyu undo ni tsuite," YYz,Vol. 11, p. 352.

99
nationalism.He called China "an ethnic nation that lost its idee" and even
went so far as to arguethat "it is Japan'smission to pulverize Chiang Kaishek'sNew Movementwhich is the last holdoutof Anglo-Americanculture
in China."65 There was a palpableirony to this argumentfor Japaneseleadershipin Asia, however,for even while Yasudacharacterizedhis position as
"beyondmodernity,"it should be quite clear thathe was merely projecting
onto his Asian neighbors what Henri Baudet has identified as one of the
centraltraditionsof the West: the myth of the noble savage.66Chinese and
Koreannationalismcould only be redeemedby renouncingWesternculture
and retainingtheir culturalpurityby cooperatingwith Japanin its mission
to preservethe authenticityof a traditionalAsia from the banefuleffects of
modernity.
Even as Yasudatried to erase the ironic tensions between modernJapanese "statenationalism"as a legacy of Westernizationand "ethnicnationalism" as partof its reimaginationof an Asian heritage,the problemdid not
completely disappear.In fact, one findsthe issue resurfacingin a remarkable
series of debateson "OvercomingModernity"held in Tokyoon July 23 and
24, 1942. The debateswere moderatedby KawakamiTetsutarowho openly
confessed his hopes that the Japanesedebate on modernity,sponsoredby
the JapaneseCouncil on IntellectualCooperation,would succeed in accomplishing what the League of Nations' sponsoredconversationson the universality of Europeanculture(1932-38) had not. That is to say, if the Europeanconversationspromoteda view of civilized cultureas rooted in the
Greco-Romantradition,thereby denying culturallegitimacy to nationalist
movementsin non-Europeancountries,67the Japanesesymposiumcould be
seen as an effort at encouragingrebellionsagainstthe West, so long as other
Asian nations accepted the intellectual and political guidance of Japan's
65. Yasuda,"Nihon no roman-tekijidai," YYz,Vol. 9, p. 267.
66. Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of NonEuropeanMan, trans.by ElizabethWentholt(Middletown,Conn.:WesleyanUniversityPress,
1988), pp. 10-11.
67. Drawing from Sato Masaaki'sJapanesetranslationof two of the League of Nations'
InternationalInstituteof IntellectualCo-operationmonographswhich appearedin 1936 and
1937, WatanabeKazutaminotes that the "conversations"became mired between "the European mind" and "nationalism"and never overcame the division. (WatanabeKazutami,Nashonarizumuno ryogisei [Kyoto:JinbunShoin, 1984].) This interpretationis borne out by the
recordsof the institute,which reveal that many influentialleaders within the instituteincreasingly turnedagainst the nationalismof colonial areas. The institutebegan with investigations
into the "futureof civilization"(Madrid,1933) and "the futureof the Europeanmind" (Paris,
1933), but by 1936 found its work increasinglydominatedby the problemof assuring "Peaceful Change." For example, Emanuel Moresco, who was responsible for Colonial Questions
and Peace (Paris:League of Nations, 1939), one volume in the institute'sseries on Peaceful
Change,cited Jules Brevie'sassessmenton Indo-Chinathat "nationalistaspirations,legitimate
in themselves, might not be adoptedto the needs of the life of nations" and then added that
"these words have an applicationto othercountriesthanIndo-China"(p. 272).

100
Journal of Japanese Studies
22:1 (1996)
wartime leadership. Yet, in order to succeed in "overcoming modernity,"

"modernity" itself first had to be effectively dislodged from association
with contemporary Japan. This proved to be an extremely difficult matter,
and ultimately led to a general consensus at the conclusion of the Japanese
debates that they had failed in this goal.
There is much to learn from this attempt at "overcoming modernity,"
and particularly from the contributions of members of the Romantic School
to it. While Yasuda declined to participate, Kamei and Hayashi did, and
they offered some of the most sanguine assessments of the Japanese attempt
to overcome modernity.68 This was not surprising, given the Romantic
School's belief that a culturally constructed "ethnic nation" (minzoku)
could eventually displace the modern reality of the Japanese state. Hayashi,
in fact, could now connect his earlier cultural theories with a cultural nationalism centered on the emperor as the sole legacy of a Japanese nation that
predated the modern state. He appealed to a spirit of devotion to the emperor
(kinno no kokoro), which he protested could not be equated with either
Western or Chinese concepts of loyalty, but which was the essential cultural
attribute that defined the Japanese as more than merely a biological "race"
and without which patriotism was impossible.69
Neither Kamei nor Hayashi made much reference to the ethnic nation
(minzoku) in the discussions on "overcoming modernity." 70But both emphasized the need to establish a "national literature" (kokumin bungaku)
that drew from elements of culture, ethnicity, and the state. Kamei described
the way that such a national literature would bring together the cultural
claims of ethnicity and the political reality of the state most explicitly:
Nationalliteratureis now our single commitment.... Whatis this commitment we speak of? It is the determinationto dissolve one's sense of self as
a writer or intellectual and to steep oneself in the depths of feeling as a
citizen [kokumin],to want to become one of the common people [somo no
tami], a martyrto the ethnic nation [minzokuno ichi giseisha].7'
68. See KawakamiTetsutaroand TakeuchiYoshimi, eds., Kindai no chokoku (Tokyo:
Fuzamb6, 1979), pp. 200, 264.
69. HayashiFusao, "Kinnono kokoro,"in ibid., especially pp. 83, 98, 110. The English
word Hayashicontrastswith kinno, "Royality,"must be a misprintfor "Loyalty."Minamoto
Ryoen agrees this was a misprint.See his "The Symposiumon 'OvercomingModernity,'" in
Heisig and Maraldo,eds., RudeAwakenings,p. 214, note 32.
70. One exceptionalreferenceto the ethnic nation is at the end of Kamei'sessay, where
he suggests that the fate of the ethnic nation (minzoku)will be determinedon the battlefields.
Of course, this argumentonly furtherreinforcesthe ties betweenthe ethnicnationandthe state
that was conductingthe war. See Kamei Katsuichiro,"Gendaiseishin ni kansuruoboegaki,"
in Kawakamiand Takeuchi,eds., Kindaino chokoku,p. 17.
71. Kamei Katsuichir6,"Minzoku no giseisha: kokumin bungaku no juritsu e," originally publishedin Yomiurishinbun,February28, 1941; reprintedin Kamei Katsuichirozensho, Vol. 4, p. 323.

101
For romanticssuch as Kamei and Hayashi,the developmentof this national

literaturewould enable the Japanesenation to shake off the debilitatingeffects of a culturalcolonizationby the West. Their reunificationof state and
nation was premisedon the belief that the wartimeJapanesestate was well
on its way toward"overcomingmodernity."
Other participants,such as KobayashiHideo, a leading literarycritic,
andNakamuraMitsuo,professorof Frenchliteratureat TokyoImperialUniversity,expresseddoubtsas to whetherJapancould ever "overcomemodernity." Yet, the willingness of the Romanticsto believe that Japancould do
so stemmed,at least in part,from theirultimatesuspensionof the separation
between ethnic nationand state. Whetherthis was due to theirforgetfulness
of the artificialnatureof the ethnic nation as their own representation,to
their romanticconviction that the "nation"must be a coherent totality,or
simply to a desperatehope thatthe Pacific Warwould liberatethe Japanese
people from Westernculturaldominancemattersvery little: in either case,
once the ethnic nation was superimposedon the state, whatevercritical impulses it might have possessed earlierquickly gave way to a very effective,
even if unintentional,supportof the Japanesenation-state'sexpansivepolicies in East Asia.
A Prospectuson Nationalismin ContemporaryJapan
I suggestedat the outset thata morecomprehensiveunderstandingof the
multiple dimensions of Asian nationalism in general might begin with a
reconsiderationof the specific case of Japanesenationalism.At least since
Japan'smilitarydefeat of Russia in the early twentiethcentury,nationalists
throughoutAsia have often looked to Japanas a model for their own aspirationsfor nationalistliberationfrom Westerncolonialism. Some are again
looking to Japantoday as a possible new leaderin Asia, afterthe presumed
decline of U.S. influence in the Pacific. A closer look, however,at the various historicalforms of nationalismin modernJapan,as I have tried to present them here, reveals some of the difficultieswith this model of Japanas
the "liberatorof Asia."
While much scholarlyattentionin the past has focused on the cause and
effects of statenationalismin modernJapan,this essay has arguedthatmuch
of the appeal of nationalismfor many Japaneserested on a belief that the
nation could also be reconceived as an ethnic people that might resist the
exploitationsof the Japanesepeople by their political elites carriedout under the concept of the modernstate. Such a belief carriedwith it the suggestion that Japanesenationalismmight be relocatedwithin a broader,Asian
nationalistmovementfor liberationfrom Westernimperialism,althoughinvariablyJapanesenationalismwas to accept its historicallyfated position at
the apex of Asian resistanceagainstthe West. That is to say, implicitly,and

102
22:1 (1996)
at times explicitly,in this constructionof Asian nationalliberationfrom the

West there was a recognitionof the presenceof modernitywithin the Japanese stateitself along with a very ambivalentattitudetowardthatmodernity.
Ultimately,of course, attemptsto escape such domestic oppressionof
the Japanesepeople by their modern, Westernstate by establishing some
culturalrelocationwithin a largerAsian whole exposed a paradoxicaland
painfulawarenessof the fact thatculturalnationalismas well as the modern
state had alienatedJapanfrom the rest of Asia. The very fact that Japan,of
all Asian nations,was the firstto successfully constructan independentand
powerfulstate also meantthatJapanhad internalizedall the problemsassociated with other powerfulmodernstates in the early twentiethcentury,as
evidencedby Japan'sown imperialismand colonizationin Asia.
Romanticismwas particularlyappealing as a means of mediating the
dilemma between East and West, traditionand modernity,for a variety of
reasons.First,modernintellectualssuch as Yasudaand his colleagues were
quite aware that the very longing for culturaland ethnic identity was part
and parcel of the modern world ("the eighteenthcentury") and therefore
Germanromanticismcould be effective, if not essential, in providing the
necessary tools for producingan alternativeconcept of the nation around
claims of ethnic similitude. The JapanRomantic School's astute grasp of
"modernity"as a polysemic conceptrife with internalcontradictionssurely
grew out of its adherents'own experienceas modernJapaneseand atteststo
the modern natureof their own attemptto escape modernity.Second, the
heightenedawarenessin romanticismof the process of representationand
the gap between reality and representationoffered a powerful intellectual
traditionof subjectivelyproducingthroughimaginativeacts what modern
reality seemed to foreclose. Third, Germanromanticismseemed to carry
with it its own negation. By calling attentionto the specificity of national
experiences, German romanticism made possible the Japan Romantic
School's eventualbelief that the Japanesenation had "overcome"the modernityof the West and had envisioned a new culturalorderthat could be
representedthroughthe non-West.This required,however, a double irony
of forgettingthe specific conditions of the Romantics' own representation
of "Japan,"a forgetfulnessthat also collapsed any meaningfuldistinction
between "ethnic"and "state"nationalisms.
In light of this history of a rathercomplicatedrelationshipbetween ethnic and statenationalismin prewarJapanesehistory,it is reasonableto conclude that the problem of ethnic nationalismhas not disappearedin the
postwarperiod.Indeed,given the wealthof scholarlywork on ethnicnationalism from the 1950s throughthe explosion of writings on Nihonjinronin
the 1970s and 1980s, and the currentresurgenceof interestin ethnic nationalism that enveloped much of the globe after the dissolution of the Soviet

103
Union, it would seem that ethnic nationalism in Japan may have gained
momentumin recent years.
Surely changes in postwar Japanneed to be taken into account when
assessing the specific lines of continuity in ethnic nationalistdiscourse in
Japantoday.72Yet, in the last few decades, surprisingcontinuities with the
earlierdiscourseon ethnic nationalismhave become apparent.In his sociological analysis of the literatureon cultural nationalism (Nihonjinron)in
postwarJapan,Kosaku Yoshinohas demonstratedthat a considerablebody
of this literatureoriginates from and is supportedby privatebusinessmen
and others who situatethemselves outside the state.73And the legacy of an
ethnic nationalismcritical of the state seems to have survivedon both ends
of the political spectrumin the postwarperiod.Althoughpolitically at odds
with each other,both right and left wings of the postwarethnic nationalists
sharea common antagonismto the capitalistpostwarJapanesestate. As Ino
Kenji (b. 1933), the "godfather"of the "right-wingethnic nationalists,"
declared, "We must completely rejecteverythingthe postwarera has given
us-its cultureand morals,the political parties,the new left, the established
rightwing, and of course, the constitutionandthe securitytreaty."He added
that "capitalismis also our enemy."74
Have the lessons of wartimemilitarismand statismyielded, not a resurgency of the exact same kind of prewarstate nationalismamong a more
prosperouspostwargeneration,but a growing sense thatit was state nationalism, not ethnic nationalism,that was discreditedby the war and occupation? How have the experiences of foreign occupation and American cultural influence in the postwar years providedsupportfor a sense of ethnic
nationalismas rebellion against Westerncolonization? And is this ethnic
nationalismagain sliding quickly, almost effortlessly, into Nakasone's renewed calls during the 1980s for an ethnic nation-state(minzokukokka),
with all the attendantproblemsthis createsfor the growing numbersof foreigners living in Japan?These questionswill confrontany attemptto understand the political possibilities of nationalismand the attemptto critically
reexaminequestions of culture,politics, and Asian identity as they are taking shape in Japantoday.
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
72. See Aoki Tamotsu, "Nihon bunkaron" no henyo (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1990),
especially his discussion on pp. 30-52 of how Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemumand the
Sword helped invent a new traditionfor postwarJapanese.
73. Yoshino, CulturalNationalismin ContemporaryJapan, esp. pp. 133-57.
74. Ino, "Uyoku minzoku-haund6 tenbo suru,"pp. 101-4.


Etnhic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

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The Society for Japanese Studies

Ethnic Nationalism and Romanticism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

In recentyears, studies on nationalismhave benefitedfrom a varietyof new

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encounterwith the West in the 1850s, Toyamahas arguedthatnationalism

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alism meantand, simultaneously,to reveal how imaginativeacts of identity

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equated with nationalism.Many patriotic and nationalisticJapanesewere

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Connor'stelling assessment of scholarshipon Japanesenationalismis

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Journalof Japanese Studies

how ethnicity and nationalismevolved in the political discourse of early

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

Journalof Japanese Studies

The outbreakof war in Europein 1914 precisely over issues of ethnic

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Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

I would like to close this memorandumwith the following note of caution.

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nicity could only be maintainedthroughhistoricalpractice.The history of

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communityas the state (kokka).Both Hayashi'sadvocationof an "internal

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Journalof Japanese Studies

TheJapanRomanticSchoolpaysno attentionto history.Rather,theJapan

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Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

practices at home and abroad."34Young suggests that "History," as it

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history since "the contemporaryway of thinkingaboutart... is merely an

Throughhis focus on Germanromantics,Yasudahoped to dislodge a

culture to access Japanesetradition(the West's invention of the East), he

Ibid., pp. 218-19.

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Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

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realism those elements such as an intense subjectivity,an idealistic spirit,a

simultaneity.At precisely such moments, people wholly unknownto each

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Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

The Reconciliation of Ethnic Nation and State

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Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

the constructionof a collective identity groundedin culturalspecificity. A

Certainlyby 1940 when Yasudapublished this statement,his critical

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Journalof Japanese Studies

a culturaldifferencefrom the West and, simultaneously,a recognitionthat

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

Doak: Ethnic Nationalism

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

Journal of Japanese Studies

wartime leadership. Yet, in order to succeed in "overcoming modernity,"

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

For romanticssuch as Kamei and Hayashi,the developmentof this national

This content downloaded from 158.170.220.29 on Fri, 9 Aug 2013 11:15:36 AM

Journalof Japanese Studies