¹ See, for example, Vlastos, S., Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Najita, T. and Harootunian, H. D., “Japan's Revolt against the West,” in Wakabayashi, B., ed., Modern Japanese Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 207–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Though prevalent terms in Japan's discourse on spirit such as seishin (roughly “spirit,” “mind”) or tamashii (“spirit,” “soul”) have a long history, they come to be invested with new meanings during the Meiji period. Thus, for example, it became possible to approach seishin psychologically as the individual mind, but also culturally as the social mind, social consciousness, or collective spirit/soul of a people.

³ Here I am drawing upon and paraphrasing W. C. Dowling's helpful conception of a “hidden essence that may be invoked to explain a world of changing appearances otherwise unintelligible in their variety and apparent randomness.” While Dowling calls this “theological power,” I refer to this operation more broadly as the power of ideology. See Dowling, W. C., Jameson, Althuser, Marx: An Introduction to the Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 48Google Scholar.

⁴ Thus, following F. Jameson and L. Hjelmslev, we may speak of two contents: the content as the substance of the ideological narrative that relates the story of the German Volk or the Japanese minzoku (folk) and their respective “national characters” etc. and the equally ideological content of the narrative form itself (involving a subject unfolding through history toward “narrative closure” or a telos). On content and form, “master narratives,” and “narrative closure” see Jameson, F., The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 99, 147, 28–9Google Scholar. Also see Hjelmslev, L., Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, trans. Whitfield, F. J. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), 47–60Google Scholar.

⁵ For Herbart, one of philosophy's tasks was to analyze and explain the thoughts and ideas (i.e. the mind) of societies. This task, he maintained, must ultimately rely upon psychology. See Jahoda, G., “Johann Friedrich Herbart: Urvater of Social Psychology,” History of the Human Sciences 19/1 (2006) 33–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Crossroads between Culture and Mind: Continuities and Change in Theories of Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 164.

⁶ Kumaji, Yoshida, “European and American Influences in Japanese Education,” in Inazô, Nitobe, ed., Western Influences in Modern Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 40–42Google Scholar. On 1890s “Herbartianism” see Lincicome, M. E., Principle, Praxis, and the Politics of Educational Reform in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), 96Google Scholar. Historian of education Ogata Hiroyasu writes, “From 1888 onward, German pedagogical theories became influential [in Japan]; this was the period of the height of prosperity of the Herbart School.” See Hiroyasu, Ogata, Nihon kyôiku tsûshi kenkyû (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku, 1980), 241Google Scholar. Herbart's Lehrbuch zur Psychologie (Textbook in Psychology, 1809) appeared in Japanese translation in 1895 (Part III only), 1896 (Parts I and II), and 1897 (the entire text). Also appearing in 1895, and again in 1897, was a translation of Lehrbuch der empirischen Psychologie als inductiver Wissenschaft (Manual of Empirical Psychology as an Inductive Science, 1889), a work on Herbart's psychology by one of his followers, Gustav Lindner. These works, particularly the complete translation of Herbart's Lehrbuch in 1897 by Kamiya Shirô and of Lindner's Lehrbuch by Tanaka Jiroku, provided a general introduction to Herbart's approach to mental activity.

⁷ Herbart, J. F., “A Text-Book in Psychology,” in Robinson, D. N., ed., Significant Contributions to the History of Psychology 1750–1920, vol. 6, Herbart, Lewes, Lotze (Washington, DC: University Publications of America, 1977), 9Google Scholar. Also see Jahoda, “Johann Friedrich Herbart,” 23. Herbart offers as examples of simple Vorstellungen “red, blue, sour, sweet,” etc. Yuhara Motoichi's translation of Lindner's Pedagogy uses hyôshô, “idea,” and “presentation” to translate Vorstellung. He noted that the term kannen had been used to translate Vorstellung in the past, but that this did not do enough to clarify the original term. See Lindner, G., Rin-shi kyôikugaku, trans. Motoichi, Yuhara (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1893), 3–4Google Scholar. As early as 1881, in Inoue Tetsujirô's Tetsugaku Jii, Vorstellung appears as kannen. See Tetsugaku Jii (Tokyo: Fukyûkai, 1881), 98. Yuhara also discussed terms concerning spirit: “Called “Seele” in the original language, this translates also as “mind” or “spirit” in English. The original term for “shin-i” is Geist, and this translates as “spirit” or “mind” in English.” See Lindner, Rin-shi kyôikugaku, 6.

⁸ Jahoda, “Johann Friedrich Herbart,” 32. Herbart, G. F., Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, in Joh. Fr. Herbarts Sämtliche Werke, ed. Kehrbach, K., vol. 4 (Langensalza: Hermann Beyer & Sohne, 1907), 425Google Scholar.

⁹ Jahoda, “Johann Friedrich Herbart,” 34.

¹⁰ Lindner, G., Manual of Empirical Psychology as an Inductive Science (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1896), 164, 166Google Scholar; idem, Jikken shinrigaku, trans. Tanaka Jiroku and Mitsuishi Torakichi (Tokyo: Bokuya shobô, 1895), 328.

¹¹ Hideo, Higuchi, Shakai shinri no kenkyû (Tokyo: Shakaigaku kenkyûjo, 1908), 2–3, 7, 49Google Scholar. Toyonosuke, Tokutani, Shakai shinrigaku (Tokyo: Makotonoto, 1906), preface, 1, 6Google Scholar. On this same issue, see Ômichi Waichi, Shakai shinrigaku (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1913), 2.

¹² In recent years, various studies of history and theory have employed the idea of “mapping” an intellectual terrain. In formulating my views on the mapping of “spirit,” I have found the following helpful: Wigen, K., The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 3Google Scholar; Thomas, J. A., Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 35–8Google Scholar; and Yonemoto, M., Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868) (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), passimGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Thus my use of the term “mapping” has less to do with e.g. Fredric Jameson's “cognitive mapping” as a political means to resist global capitalism, though inasmuch as his concept is informed by Althusser's conception of ideology (which he paraphrases as “the Imaginary representation of the subject's relationship to his or her Real conditions of existence”), it is at least suggestive of Meiji psychologists’ political struggle to represent the “totality” of spirit. See Jameson, F., Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 51, 415Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Despite the ongoing effort to assert the racial, cultural, aesthetic, or moral unity of the Japanese people, the Japanese were not, and are not today, a homogeneous group. For a discussion of Japan's heterogeneity see Weiner, M., Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity (New York: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ômichi Waichi, for example, pointed out that some scholars speak of kokumin no seishin or Yamato-damashii, others refer to minzoku-shin or Yamato-shin. All of these, he (problematically) explained, are simply aspects of the social mind. Ômichi, Shakai shinrigaku, 4.

¹⁶ Tokutani, Shakai shinrigaku, 6, 13.

¹⁷ Ômichi, Shakai shinrigaku, 4–5; Higuchi, Shakai shinri no kenkyû, 55.

¹⁸ Nobukuni, Koyasu, Nihon shisōshi jiten (Tokyo: Pelican, 2001), 139Google Scholar; Pyle, K., The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 1885–1895 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), 94Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Katsunan, Kuga, “Kinji seironkô,” in Nihon no meicho 37 (Tokyo: Chûôkôronsha, 1971), 119–20Google Scholar.

²⁰ Lively, J., The Works of Joseph de Maistre (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965), 99–100Google Scholar. Katsunan, Kuga, “Shuken genron,” Kuga Katsunan zenshû, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Misuzu shobô, 1968), 224–5Google Scholar.

²¹ Chogyû, Takayama, “Nihonshugi,” in Meiji shisôka no shûkyô kan (Tokyo: Ôkura shuppan, 1975) 300Google Scholar.

²² In what follows, I understand “orientalism” as fragmented and multiple rather than monolithic and unitary, as the various styles of orientalism not only in Euro-America but in Japan as well suggest. Moreover, I emphasize that orientalism's capacity for determining its object (the “Orient,” or in this case Japan) was limited and illustrate this through Japan's appropriation, reconfiguration, and redeployment of orientalist representations. My interpretation of Japan's engagement with and resistance to orientialism is informed by a reading of Pratt, M. L., Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and her arguments concerning “contact zones” and “auto-ethnography.” For Edward Said's classic study of orientalism and for recent scholarship critiquing Said for his presentation of orientalism as a monolithic structure acting upon the entire “West” in a uniform manner and for his lack of attention to Germany, see Said, E., Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979)Google Scholar; Marchand, Suzanne, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; and Kontje, Todd, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ For a discussion of orientalism in terms of ontological or epistemological distinctions see Said, Orientalism, 2–3. While some recent works dismiss Said's theory as unhelpful (see Marchand, German Orientalism, xxv), I believe his insights (once qualified as in the preceding footnote) cannot be ignored without risking losing sight of the politicality (i.e. the non-neutral, non-innocent status) of so-called orientalizing representations.

²⁴ Quoted in Spence, J., The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New York: Norton, 1999), 99Google Scholar.

²⁵ Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of History, trans. Sibree, J. (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), 128, 131, 136, 138Google Scholar. For Hegel's use and definition of the term “personality” see Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 37 (§35). Here we should note that for British idealists like T. H. Green who drew on Hegel and for Japanese idealist philosophers at the end of the nineteenth century like Nakashima Rikizô, who drew on Green, “personality” was understood as the finite manifestation of infinite spirit.

²⁶ Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Berlin: Verlag von Dunder und Humblot, 1848), 415.

²⁷ See Lowell, P., The Soul of the Far East (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888)Google Scholar; and Rikizô, Nakashima, “Mr. Percival Lowell's Misconception of the Character of the Japanese,” New Englander and Yale Review 14/2, New Series (Feb. 1889), 97–102Google Scholar.

²⁸ Lazarus, M., “Über das Verhältnis des Einzelnen zur Gesammtheit,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 2 (1862), 421Google Scholar. For this translation I am indebted to D. J. Rosenberg, who cites this quotation in both English and German. See Rosenberg, “Patho-Teleology and the Spirit of War: The Psychoanalytic Inheritance of National Psychology,” Monatshefte 100/2 (2008), 215, 224, n. 13.

²⁹ Lazarus and Steinthal, “Einleitende Gedanken über Völkerpsychologie,” Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft 1 (1860), 7. This translation appears in Rosenberg, “Patho-Teleology and the Spirit of War,” 214, 223, n. 10. Note that here, at least, the “Orient” is not the backdrop against which notions of German spirit are formed, reinforcing the above point for a more nuanced approach to orientalism than provided by Said.

³⁰ Takayama Chogyû, for example, explaining the thought of Herder, quoted a section from Richard Falckenberg's 1885 “History of Modern Philosophy,” but his citation stops just before Falckenberg's summary of Herder on human development: “As nature forms a single great organism, and from the stone to man describes a connected development, so humanity is one great individual which passes through its several ages.” The Orient, in this statement, represented the stage of humanity's infancy. Falckenberg, R., History of Modern Philosophy from Nicolas Cusa to the Present Time (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1893), 311Google Scholar.

³¹ According to Herder, we are in error “when we immediately declare the manner of thought and taste of savages to be fanciful or foolish because it deviates from ours,” when we assume that our own truth and tastes, because they are true for us, must be true for all. Herder: Philosophical Writings, ed. M. N. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 248.

³² Herder does not use the term Volksgeist. He does use Geist des Volkes, Geist der Nation, Nationalgeist, Genius des Volkes, and Nationalcharakter. See Rotenstreich, N., “Volksgeist,” in The Dictionary of the History of Ideas (Charlottesville: Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, 2003), 3Google Scholar.

³³ Bon, G. Le, The Psychology of Peoples (New York: Arno Press, 1974)Google Scholar, xviii. Cf. idem, Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1895), 11–20, 21–30. The three Japanese translations of this work were idem, Rubon shi minzoku shinrigaku, trans. Tsukahara Msaji (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1900); idem, Kokumin shinrigaku, trans. Kokmin kyôiku gakkai (Tokyo: Kinshôdô, 1900); idem, Minzoku hatten no shinri, trans. Maeda Chôta (Tokyo: Dai Nihon bunmei kyôkai, 1910).

³⁴ Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples, 6–9.

³⁵ See Le Bon, Kokumin shinrigaku, 9–10.

³⁶ Le Bon, Psychology of Peoples, 27–8.

³⁷ Le Bon, Minzoku hatten no shinri, 34. Maeda chose not to insert the Japanese into the “superior” category. They are simply not mentioned.

³⁸ Le Bon, Psychology of Peoples, 84.

³⁹ Le Bon, Psychology of Peoples, 81, 85; cf. idem, Minzoku hatten no shinri, 83, 86.

⁴⁰ Stefan Tanaka addresses this strategy from the standpoint of oriental history (tôyôshi). See Tanaka, S., Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ For a discussion of the terms kokumin, minzoku, and esunishiti (ethnicity) see Nobuaki, Shiokawa, Minzoku to neishon: nashonarizumu to iu nanmon (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2009), i–vi, 2–13Google Scholar. While Shiokawa sees “some kind of commonality or relationship” among these concepts given their “partial accord of meaning” (ii–iii), Kevin Doak goes much further to historicize these terms. See Doak, K., A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 169, chap. 5Google Scholar, “Kokumin,” 164–215, and chap. 6, “Minzoku,” 216–64.

⁴² Juichi, Soeda, Hôsei kyôkasho (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1901), 7–9Google Scholar.

⁴³ Ômichi, Shakai shinrigaku, 38.

⁴⁴ Cf. Watsuji Tetsurô's discussion of these terms in the 1930s. See Sakai, N., Translation and Subjectivity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 112, 201, n. 3, and 209, n. 31Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Lindner, Manual of Empirical Psychology, 166; idem, Jikken shinrigaku, 331–2.

⁴⁶ Lindner, Manual of Empirical Psychology, 165.

⁴⁷ Ryûkichi, Endô, Nihonga (Tokyo: Eidangaku shuppanbu, 1912), 162–3, 176Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples, 225.

⁴⁹ Aritomo, Yamagata and Yatsuka, Hozumi, “Shakai hakaishugiron,” in Azusa, Ôyama, ed., Yamagata Aritomo ikensho (Tokyo: Hara shobô, 1966), 315–16Google Scholar. For additional discussions of late Meiji concerns over socialism and other forms of subversive thought see Gluck, C., Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 171, 176–7Google Scholar; Rubin, J., Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 62, 109Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples, 6.

⁵¹ See Michio, Nagazawa, Taishô jidai (Tokyo: Kôjinsha, 2005), 42–9Google Scholar; Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths, 175.

⁵² Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples, 213, 217.

⁵³ Lazarus, M., Grundzüge der Völkerpsychologie und Kulturwissenschaft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003), 124Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ M. Lazarus, “Über das Verhältnis des Einzelnen zur Gesammtheit,” 423. Cited in Rosenberg, “Patho-Teleology and the Spirit of War,” 215, 224, n. 11.

⁵⁵ Passin, H., Society and Education in Japan (New York: Columbia University, 1965), 233–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Tokutani, Shakai shinrigaku, 6–7.

⁵⁷ Masaji, Tsukahara, Kyôiku shinrigaku (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1898), 1Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Teiji, Kuroda, Ôyô shinrigaku kôgi (Tokyo: Dai Nihon shihan gakkai, unknown date), 9Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Iwatarô, Tominaga, Kyôiku no kiso toshite no shinrigaku (Tokyo: Shûeidô, 1900)Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Important in the dissemination of Herbart's pedagogical thought were of course Herbart's own works, but perhaps even more important were those by his disciple Lindner. Translations of Lindner's pedagogical works include: Nagao, Ariga, trans., Rin-shi kyôjugaku (Tokyo: Bokuya, 1888)Google Scholar; Motoichi, Yuhara, trans., Rin-shi kyôikugaku (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1893)Google Scholar; Suematsu, Inagaki, trans., Rin-shi futsû kyôikugaku (Tokyo: Tohôdo, 1893)Google Scholar; and Motoichi, Yuhara, trans., Rin-shi kyôikugaku kyôkasho (Tokyo: Kinkôdô, 1901)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Blyth, A., “From Individuality to Character: The Herbartian Sociology Applied to Education,” British Journal of Educational Studies 29/1 (1981), 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶² See Herbart, G. F., Outlines of Educational Doctrine, trans. Lange, A. F. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1901), 46Google Scholar; Also see Ufer, Chr., Introduction to the Pedagogy of Herbart, trans. Zinser, J. C. (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1896), 25–6Google Scholar.

⁶³ Ufer, Introduction to the Pedagogy of Herbart, 97, 100.

⁶⁴ Lincicome, Principle, Praxis, and the Politics of Educational Reform, 201.

⁶⁵ Ufer, Introduction to the Pedagogy of Herbart, 101.

⁶⁶ Tokutani Toyonosuke, for one, asserted that the social mind itself possessed volition just as the individual mind did. See Tokutani, Shakai shinrigaku, 13–14.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 13.

⁶⁸ Ufer, Introduction to the Pedagogy of Herbart, 104.

⁶⁹ Hegel, Philosophy of History, 457, translator's emphases. Cf. the Japanese version: Hegel, Rekishi kenkyûhô, trans. Shibue Tamotsu (Tokyo: Kôbunkan, 1894), 199.

⁷⁰ See, for example, Stern, R., Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 183–94Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Taylor, C., Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 39Google Scholar; Dowling, Jameson, Althusser, Marx, 44.

⁷² Kiyoko, Takeda, Ningen-kan no sôkoku: Kindai Nihon no shisô to kirisutokyô (Tokyo: Kôbundo, 1967), 246Google Scholar.

⁷³ Lindner, Rin-shi Kyôikugaku, “Seven Points on Translation,” 2–3. Also see Takeda Kiyoko, Ningen-kan no sôkoku, 246–7. I first became aware of this text by Lindner through a reading of Scheiner's, I.Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 241Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ See Ufer, Introduction to the Pedagogy of Herbart, 114–16.

⁷⁵ Lindner, Rin-shi Kyôikugaku, “Seven Points on Translation,” 2.

⁷⁶ Takeda, Ningen-kan no sôkoku, 246.

⁷⁷ For additional background on this incident see Thelle, Notto R., Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue, 1854–1899 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Teruomi, Yamaguchi, Meiji kokka to shûkyô (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan, 1999), 161Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Tetsujirô, Inoue, Kyôiku to shûkyô no shôtotsu (Tokyo: Keigyôsha, 1893), 144, 159Google Scholar. Also see Yamaguchi, Meiji kokka to shûkyô, 162.

⁸⁰ Chogyû, Takayama, “Gojin no shûkyô kan,” in Jidai kanken (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1899), 212–13Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Kanzô, Uchimura, “Nihonkoku no daikonnan,” in Katsuichirô, Kamei, ed., Gendai Nihon shisô taikei, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô, 1964), 395–403Google Scholar. This translation appears in Lu, D., Japan: A Documentary History (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 361–5Google Scholar.

⁸² Jahoda, J. F. Herbart, 23, 28.

⁸³ K. Doak discusses this issue as well. See his “Nationalism as Dialectics,” in Heisig, J. W. and Maraldo, J. C., eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), 174–96Google Scholar. Inoue Tetsujirô referred to the Imperial Rescript as the “sacred book of Meiji.” See Inoue, Kokumin dôtokuron gairon (Tokyo: Sanseidô, 1912), 12.

⁸⁴ The particular forms in which assertions of folk mind appeared—imperial proclamations, academic treatises in social psychology, scientific journals, textbooks for use in teachers’ colleges—also carried their own ideological content and helped to legitimize spirit.

⁸⁵ Lively, Joseph de Maistre, 109. Kuga, “Shuken genron,” 244.

⁸⁶ See, for example, Kanji, Nishio, Kokumin no rekishi (Tokyo: Sankei shinbun nyûsu sâbisu, 1999)Google Scholar; and Masao, Hamabayashi, ed., Tettei hihan “Kokumin dôtoku” (Tokyo: Ôtsuki shoten, 2001)Google Scholar.