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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
This essay explores the connection between the economy and cultural identity in Japanese nationalism. After World War II Japan was a pacesetter in the global trend toward developmental nationalism, including a transformation of its economy into both a wealthy and a highly egalitarian one. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethnic nationalism re-emerged, with the claim that economic success was the product of Japanese cultural uniqueness rather than of the developmental nationalist policies of the previous quarter-century. The economic downturn of the 1990s thus challenged Japan both economically and culturally, At first, this crisis prompted a critical re-evaluation of national culture, manifested as serious attempts to both resolve tensions with Asia dating from World War II and dismantle domestic social hierarchies. By the mid-1990s, however, this moment had passed and government and business leaders adopted full-fledged neo-liberal policies, reversing the long post-war trend toward income equality, while adopting a more strident and militarist cultural nationalism.
1. One can of course imagine scenarios in which such arguments perform exactly the same ‘cultural work’ as have arguments for Japanese uniqueness.
2 S. Vlastos, Mirror of modernity: invented traditions of modern Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. T. Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. C. Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. H. D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan. Princeton University Press: 2000. E. Oguma, A Genealogy of ‘Japanese’ self-images. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002, Japanese ed. 1995. D. Stegewerns, Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship?, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
3 T. Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-nationalism, London: NLB, 1977 an P. van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, show how the two developed together in Britain.
4. Loss of cultural authenticity per se has always accompanied modernity as the market, urbanization, and rationalization erode older cultural patterns. The difference is that Americans, Germans, and other Westerners were less likely to see these problems as imported wholesale from elsewhere. See R. Desai, ‘Nation against Democracy: The Rise of Cultural Nationalism in Asia,' in F. Quadir and J. Lele, eds., Democracy and Civil Society in Asia, vol. 1 Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. 81-110. T. Najita and H. D. Harootunian, ‘Japanese Revolt against the West: Political and Cultural Criticism in the Twentieth Century'. The Twentieth Century, vol 6. P. Duus, Ed. The Cambridge History of Japan Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
5. D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press, 2000. p. 6. T. Winichakul has developed the point about attention to imperialism even in non-colonized areas in, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geobody of a Nation, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994.
6. Harootunian and Najita, ‘Japanese Revolt against the West’.
7. L. Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, Japanese edition, 2001. Y. Yamanouchi, J. V. Koschmann, and R. Narita, eds., Total War and ‘Modernization’. Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series, 1998.
8. See The Special Survey Committee, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ed. Reconstruction of the Japanese Economy. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1992. Also see Hein, Reasonable Men, Chapter 4.
9. P J Katzenstein, Tamed Power: Germany in Europe, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
10. For representative examples, see Sekai, which published 102 articles by Tsuru, 19 by Uzawa, and 41 by Miyamoto between 1946 and 1995. Sekai Somokuji: 1946-1995, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1995.
11. H. Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity, p. 14 dates the explosion of Nihonjinron literature to the 1960s but the cumulative effect of this argument really gained far greater momentum in the following decade. See Chapter 5 for argument about national flag. T. Fujitani, ‘Inventing, forgetting, remembering: toward a historical ethnography of the nation-state’, in Befu, ed. Cultural Nationalism in East Asia emphasises the disappearance of the empire.
12. Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity and H. Befu, ed. Cultural Nationalism in East Asia: Representation and Identity, Research papers and policy studies; 39; Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993
13. Y. Miyazaki, Fukugo Fukyo: posuto baburu no shohosen o motomete (Compound recession: toward a prescription for the post-bubble economy). Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1992 (22cd printing by 1998). Also see K. Miyamoto, Nihon Shakai no Kannosei: Iji Kanno na Shakai e, (The Possibility of Japanese society: toward a self-sustaining society), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2000.
14. The official translation is available here.
15. C Moriguchi and E Saez, ‘The Evolution of Income Concentration in Japan, 1886-2005: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics, ‘Review of Economics and Statistics, Forthcoming.
16. S. Ishihara and Hitotsubashi Sogo Kenkyujo. ‘No’ to ieru nihon keizai; sensen fukoku: America no kinyu dorei kara no kaiho. (The Japanese economy that can say ‘no’; liberation from American financial slavery'.) Tokyo: Kobunsha, 1998. For a discussion of Ishihara's economic policy, see A. DeWit and M. Kaneko, ‘Ishihara and the Politics of his Bank Tax, ‘JPRI Critique, IX.4 May 2002.
17. S. Ishihara, ‘Tawara Soichiro no kakuto taiwa: ima koso jitsugen dekiru ‘Dai Toa Kyoeiken (No-holds-barred debate with Tawara Soichiro: Now is the time to realise the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,' Sansara. July 1991: 44-59. J. Nathan, Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004, pp. 191-2. S. Ishihara and M. Mahathir, ‘No' to ieru Ajia: Tai-obei e no hosaku. Tokyo: Kobunsha 1994 was also a best seller.
18. Nathan, Japan Unbound, Chapter 7.
19. G. W. Noble, ‘Koizumi and Neo-liberal Economic Reform, ‘Social Science Japan, March 2006, pp. 6-9, esp. p. 9.
20. When the Japanese government accepted the judgment of the Tokyo Trials, it acknowledged the enslavement of Dutch women in the Netherlands East Indies but not the Asian women who suffered the same fate.
21. T. Franks, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2004 makes the argument for the domestic basis of this stance, one that sounds very much like the compensatory cultural nationalism discussed in this collection.
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