Nihonjinron
Encyclopedia
The term literally means theories/discussions about the Japanese
. The term refers to a genre of texts that focuses on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. The literature is vast, ranging over such varied fields as sociology
, psychology
, history
, linguistics
, philosophy
, and even science
. Though published predominantly in Japan
by Japanese, noted examples of the genre have also been penned by foreign scholars, journalists and residents.
The term itself came into vogue after World War II
to describe books and articles that aim to analyze, explain, or divagate on the putative peculiarities of Japanese culture
and mentality, above all by comparison with foreign countries, especially Europe
and the United States
. However, Asian countries increasingly figure in recent works. Such texts share a general vision of what constitutes the uniqueness of Japan
, and the term nihonjinron can be employed to refer to this outlook. One may also speak of books written by non-Japanese authors as nihonjinron, insofar as they share, contribute to, or reflect the vision, premises, and perspectives characteristic of the Japanese genre.
Though the generic word nihonjinron is most frequently used to describe the phenomenon, a variety of topical terms are also current that classify the many sub-genres of nihonjinron, according to specific theme or subject-matter. For example:
, 698 books on nihonjinron had been published in Japan between 1946 and 1978. Their breakdown of the major themes of nihonjinron is as follows:
Often cited, but rarely read, this work is now outdated. It is 'merely a sample' not a definitive list. It omits many works that otherwise qualify as nihonjinron (the works of Kiyoyuki Higuchi (樋口清之), for example). It states that 16.5% of post-war nihonjinron has been written by foreigners. Yet production of books on Japanese identity soon assumed an industrial scale in Japan, and Dale writes of the 'unflagging productivity of the genre.' Just one writer, the doyen of the genre, Shōichi Watanabe (渡部昇一), has hundreds of articles and volumes on Japanese culture, society, politics, history, and identity to his credit, all replete with judgments about 'the Japanese.' Foreign writing, with its stereotypes, is an important sub-genre of nihonjinron, and was particularly strong in Meiji
Japan, where, as one observer wryly noted, 'not to have written a book about Japan is fast becoming a title to distinction.'
regime. Peter Nosco speaks of a collective identity already conceptualized at this time, which fashioned a "new understanding of Japaneseness" in which:
Thus, not only might the roots of the nihonjinron be traced back at least to the kokugaku
(国学, lit. "national studies") movement of the 18th century, but reputable authorities on the intellectual history of that period recognize in the debates on the nation, its identity, and popular sentiment, themes that are not dissimilar to those we encounter in the post-war nihonjinron. In this sense, the recent view that the term "nihonjinron" should be restricted to refer to the literature on Japanese national identity post-1945 appears to be a technical quibble. Indeed, as Hiroshi Minami, one of the foremost scholars of the genre, states in his survey:
All definitions of identity, national, social, ethnic or personal, use a comparative yardstick, be it explicit or implicit. National identity is typically associated with the early modern or modern nation, as one of the integrative elements of that nationalist ethos by which the disparate cultures of the pre-modern agricultural world are welded into a unified popular consciousness of patriotic belonging. Minami points to pre-early-modern sources for the nihonjinron, but the argument cannot be pressed too far back, since ancient polities lacked the nation-wide mobilisation which is a precondition for this kind of discourse. Yet there seems no doubt that intense feelings for one's native country and its identity were an early part of Japanese literary culture, and a value given aesthetic expression. Robert Borgen studies just one example from the life of the monk Jōjin
(成尋:1011-1081) and remarks:
and Nihonshoki. Kokugaku scholars thus traced their ideas on identity to these earliest chronicles, which recount the revolt of the Mononobe (物部) and Nakatomi
(中臣) clans against the foreign-descended Soga
(蘇我) clan, which had sponsored the introduction of Buddhist metaphysics and Chinese statecraft into Japan in the sixth century C.E. Medieval Buddhism in turn developed original sectarian positions which show a vigorous inclination to ‘Japanify’ and propagate native versions of that universal faith, and the form this reaction takes shows a heightened awareness of a unique national mission and identity.
The echo takes on resounding depth in the work of the Buddhist monk Nichiren
(日蓮, 1222-1282) whose Risshō Ankoku Ron (立正安國論: On Establishing Righteousness and Securing the Safety of the Nation: 1260), can be read as a brilliantly written foundational text for that vein of chiliastic populist nationalism which was to take the upper hand in the decade before 1945, in the heyday of Nihonshugi (Japanism: 日本主義).
In Nichiren's highly original thought, we find a dramatic reversal in Japan's dominant ideology of the state, with its aristocratic reliance on foreign models, be they Confucian or Buddhist. The variety of Buddhism he develops defines the doctrine in terms that are militantly patriotic, indeed, in terms which make his brand of Buddhism the creed par excellence of what had been a universal faith. At roughly the same time, Kitabatake Chikafusa
(北畠親房, 1293-1354) wrote his Jinnō Shōtōki
(神皇正統記: Chronicles of the Authentic Lineages of the Divine Emperors) which defines Japan's superiority in terms of the divinity of its imperial line and the divinity of the nation itself (Shinkoku: 神国). The general drift of such works is to pull the abstract, universal language and thought of Japan's foreign models down to earth, to reframe it in Japanese conditions, among the illiterate population at large, and assert the special historical characteristics of Japan as opposed to the civilizations which had, until that time, endowed the country with the lineaments of a universalist culture.
The comparative dimension of nihonron or discourse on the nation of Japan assumed seminal depth in the 16th.century, towards the end of the Sengoku period (戦国時代: Warring States Period) (1482-1558) and the subsequent Azuchi-Momoyama ((安土桃山) age (1568-1615), when European contacts with Japan gave rise to a considerable literature by travelers and foreign missionaries on the Japanese, their culture, behavior, and patterns of thinking. Though much of this belongs to the theatre of Orientalism
, it influenced European perceptions over the two succeeding centuries during which Japan, apart from a small trading base at Deshima, remained closed to foreign commerce with the West. It also had some impact on Japanese self-images, when this material began to be read by many Japanese after the Meiji Restoration. The connivance between foreign images and Japanese self-perceptions thus boasts of a long history dating back some four centuries, and this tradition of cross-cultural discourse forms an important background component in the rise of the modern nihonjinron.
of Japan's early classical literature, had suffered neglect at that time due to the powerful influence of Confucian orthodoxy, and sought to recover and evaluate these texts, some of which were obscure and difficult to read, in order to appraise them positively and harvest them to determine and ascertain what were the original indigenous values of Japan before the introduction of Chinese civilization. Thus the exploration of early classical texts like the Kojiki
(古事記) and the Man'yōshū (万葉集) allowed scholars of Kokugaku, particularly the five great figures of Keichū
, Kada no Azumamaro
(荷田春満, 1669-1736), Kamo no Mabuchi
(賀茂真淵, 1697-1769), Motoori Norinaga
(本居宣長, 1730-1801) and Hirata Atsutane
(平田篤胤, 1776-1843) to explore Japan's cultural differences with China, locate their sources in high antiquity, and deploy the results in a programmatic attempt to define the uniqueness of Japan against a foreign civilization. These scholars worked independently, and reached different conclusions, but by the 19th century were grouped together by a neo-Kokugakuist named Konakamura to establish the earliness of Japanese self-awareness. Implicitly or otherwise, they advocated a return to these ostensibly pristine ethnic roots, which involved discarding the incrustations of those Chinese cultural beliefs, social rites and philosophical ideas that had exercised a political ascendancy for over a millennium within Japan and had deeply informed the neo-Confucian ideology of the Tokugawa regime itself.
The irony was that the intellectual techniques, textual methods and cultural strategies used by nativist scholars against Confucianism borrowed heavily from currents in both Chinese thought (Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist) and their Japanese offshoots. Motoori, the greatest nativist scholar, is deeply indebted, for instance, to the thought of Ogyū Sorai
the most penetrating Confucian thinker of Tokugawa times. In similar wise, scholars detect in modern Japanese nationalism, of which the nihonjinron are the resonant if melodiously subdued, post-war echo, many features that derived from borrowings abroad, from the large resources of cultural nationalism mined in European countries during their own respective periods of nation-formation. Under the alias of assertions of difference, nationalisms, in Japan as elsewhere, borrow promiscuously from each other's conceptual hoards, and what may seem alien turns out often to be, once studied closely, merely an exotic variation on an all too familiar theme.
There ensued an intense period of massive social and economic change, as, under the direction of a developmental elite, Japan moved from the closed world of centuries of Tokugawa rule (the so-called sakoku [鎖国] period) to Meiji Westernization, and, again in close conformity with the prevailing occidental paradigm, to imperialist adventurism with the growth of the colonialism
. The Taishō period
marked a slightly more 'liberal' turn, as the pendulum swung towards a renewed interest in the Western model ("Japan must undergo a second birth, with America as its new mother and France as its father"). With the crisis of 1929 and the concomitant depression of the thirties, militarism gained the upper hand in this era of the 'dark valley' (kurai tanima, 暗い谷間), and nationalistic ideologies prevailed over all attempts to keep alive the moderate traditions of liberal modernity.
. Between the two alternatives, attempts were frequently made to mediate a conciliatory third way which would combine the best of both worlds (wakon yōsai, (和魂洋才): "Japanese spirit and Western techniques".
The frequency of these chronic transitional upheavals engendered a remarkable intensity of debate about national directions and identity (kokuminsei, 国民性/minzokusei, 民族性), whose complexity over time renders a synthetic judgment or bird's-eye view of the literature in question rather difficult. A major controversy surrounds the question regarding the affiliation of the post-war nihonjinron theories with the prewar conceptualization of Japanese cultural uniqueness. To what degree, that is, are these meditations under democracy on Japanese uniqueness innocent reflections of a popular search for identity, and in what measure, if any, do they pick up from the instrumental ideology of Japaneseness developed by government and nationalists in the prewar period to harness the energies of the nation towards industrialization and global imperium?
The questions are rendered more complex by the fact that in the early post-war period, the restoration of a 'healthy nationalism' was by no means something exclusive to right-wing cultural thinkers. An intense debate over the necessity to develop ideal, positive forms of national consciousness, regarded as a healthy civic identity, figures prominently in the early writings of Maruyama Masao, who called for a healthy "national civic consciousness" (kokuminshugi, 国民主義), and in the prolific debates of members of the Japanese Historical Science Association (rekiken, 歴研) who preferred to speak of 'ethnic national consciousness'(minzokushigi, 民族主義). These debates ranged from liberal center-left critics to radical Marxist historians.
Some scholars cite the destruction of many Japanese national symbols and the psychological blow of defeat at the end of World War II
as one source of nihonjinron's enduring popularity, although it is not a uniquely 20th century phenomenon. In fact the genre is simply the Japanese reflex of cultural nationalism, which is a property of all modern nations. The trend of the tone of nihonjinron argument is often reflective of the Japanese society at the time. Peter Dale, covering the period analysed by the Nomura survey, distinguished three major phrases in the development of post-war nihonjinron discourse:
Tamotsu Aoki subsequently finessed the pattern by distinguishing four major phases in the post war identity discourse.
In Dale's proposal, this drift from negative uniqueness to positive evaluation of uniqueness is a cyclical trend, since he believes the same pattern can be detected in the literature on identity for the period from 1867 to 1945, from early Meiji times down to the end of World War Two. Nihonjinron, in Dale's view, recycle prewar Japanese nationalist rhetoric, and betray similar ends. For Aoki, contrariwise, they are natural movements in a national temper which seeks, as has been the case with other nations, its own distinctive path of cultural autonomy and social organization as Japan adapts itself to the global world order forged by the West.
During the early post-war period, most of nihonjinron discourses discussed the uniqueness of the Japanese in a rather negative, critical light. The elements of feudalism reminiscent of the Imperial Japan were all castigated as major obstacles to Japan's reestablishment as a new democratic nation. Scholars such as Hisao Ōtsuka , a Weberian
sociologist, judged Japan with the measure of rational individualism and liberal democracy that were considered ideals in the U.S. and Western European nations back then. By the 1970s, however, with Japan enjoying a remarkable economic boom, Ōtsuka began to consider the 'feudal residues' in a positive light, as a badge of Japan's distinctive difference from the West (Ōtsuka, Kawashima, Doi 1976 passim). Nihonjinron books written during the period of high economic growth up to the bubble burst in the early 1990s, in contrast, argued various unique features of the Japanese as more positive features.
. Dale, for example, characterizes nihonjinron as follows:
The emphasis on ingroup
unity in nihonjinron writings, and its popularization during Japan's period of military expansion at the turn of the 20th century, has led many Western critics to brand it a form of ethnocentric
nationalism
. Karel van Wolferen
echoes this assessment, noting that:
As Japan is often deemed to be "almost as unique as its people like to think" (Pearl Buck, qtd. In Dale 1986:26) so too the Japanese people
are considered not just unique but, in the words of Sugimoto and Mouer, "more unique than other societies."
that the 'Japanese' brain processes both sounds in the left hemisphere.
Technically Japanese climate can be viewed as marked rather by two seasons. The four seasons celebrated in the nihonjinron reflect a division inherited from canonical distinctions in Chinese poetry
.
Some have argued that supposed aspects of Japanese culture widely reported in the West take on a life of their own as orientalist
clichés long after the phenomena in question have disappeared from the socio-cultural landscape.
Oscar Wilde
said: "The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them." (Wilde, Oscar, "The Decay of Lying, An Observation", 1899 )
• Amino, Yoshihiko (網野善彦). 1978 Muen, kugai, raku: Nihon chūsei no jiyū to heiwa (無縁・公界・楽. 日本中世の自由と平和:Muen, kugai, raku: Peace and freedom in medieval Japan), Tokyo, Heibonsha
• Aoki Tamotsu (青木保) Bunka no hiteisei 1988 (文化の否定性) Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha
• Aoki, Tamotsu (青木保) 1990. 'Nihonbunkaron' no Hen'yō (「日本文化論」の変容, Phases of Theories of Japanese Culture in transition). Tokyo, Japan: Chūō Kōron Shinsha.
• Befu, Harumi (別府春海) 1987 Ideorogī toshite no nihonbunkaron (イデオロギーとしての日本人論, Nihonjinron as an ideology). Tokyo, Japan: Shisō no Kagakusha.
• Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword : Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
• Berque, Augustin. 1986 Le sauvage et l'artifice: Les Japonais devant la nature. Paris, Gallimard.
• Burns, Susan L., 2003 Before the Nation - Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan, Duke University Press, Durham, London.
• Dale, Peter N. 1986. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness Oxford, London. Nissan Institute, Croom Helm.
• Dale, Peter N. 1994 'Nipponologies (Nihon-ron. Nihon-shugi' in Augustin Berque (ed.) Dictionnaire de la civilisation japonaise. Hazan, Paris pp. 355–6.
• Gayle, Curtis Anderson, 2003 Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism, RoutledgeCurzon, London, New York
• Gill, Robin D 1985 Nihonjinron Tanken (日本人論探険) Tokyo, TBS Britannica.
• Gill, Robin D. 1984Omoshiro Hikaku-bunka-kō, (おもしろ比較文化考) Tokyo, Kirihara Shoten.
• Gill, Robin D. 1985 Han-nihonjinron ((反日本人論)) Tokyo, Kōsakusha.
• Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela 1988 Das Ende der Exotik Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp
• Kawamura, Nozomu (河村望) 1982 Nihonbunkaron no Shûhen (日本文化論の周辺, The Ambiance of Japanese Culture Theory), Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha
• Mazzei, Franco, 1997. Japanese Particularism and the Crisis of Western Modernity, Università Ca' Foscari, Venice.
• Miller, Roy Andrew 1982 Japan’s Modern Myth: The Language and Beyond, New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill.
• Minami Hiroshi (南博) 1980 Nihonjinron no keifu (日本人論の系譜) Tokyo, Kōdansha.
• Mouer, Ross & Sugimoto, Yoshio, Images of Japanese Society, London: Routledge, 1986
• Nomura Research Institute. 1979. Sengo Nihonjinron Nenpyō (戦後日本人論年表, Chronology of post-war Nihonjinron). Tokyo, Japan: Nomura Research Institute.
• Sugimoto Yoshio (杉本良夫) 1993 Nihonjin o yameru hōhō, Tokyo, Chikuma Bunko.
• Sugimoto, Yoshio & Ross Mouer (eds.) 1989 Constructs for Understanding Japan, Kegan Paul International, London and New York.
• Sugimoto, Yoshio (杉本良夫) and Mouer, Ross.(eds.) 1982 Nihonjinron ni kansuru 12 shô (日本人論に関する12章) Tokyo, Gakuyō Shobō
• Sugimoto, Yoshio (杉本良夫)1983 Chō-kanri rettô Nippon (超管理ニッボン, Nippon. The Hyper-Control Archipelago) Tokyo, Kōbunsha.
• Sugimoto, Yoshio and Mouer, Ross. 1982 Nihonjin wa 「Nihonteki」ka (日本人は「日本的」か) Tokyo, Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha
• Sugimoto, Yoshio and Mouer, Ross. 1995. Nihonjinron no Hōteishiki (日本人論の方程式, the Equation of Nihonjinron). Tokyo, Japan: Chikuma Shobō
• Van Wolferen, Karel. 1989. The Enigma of Japanese power. Westminster, MD: Knopf.
• Yoshino, Kosaku. 1992. Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan: A Sociological Enquiry. London, UK: Routledge.
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
. The term refers to a genre of texts that focuses on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity. The literature is vast, ranging over such varied fields as sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, and even science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
. Though published predominantly in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
by Japanese, noted examples of the genre have also been penned by foreign scholars, journalists and residents.
The term itself came into vogue after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to describe books and articles that aim to analyze, explain, or divagate on the putative peculiarities of Japanese culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
and mentality, above all by comparison with foreign countries, especially Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. However, Asian countries increasingly figure in recent works. Such texts share a general vision of what constitutes the uniqueness of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and the term nihonjinron can be employed to refer to this outlook. One may also speak of books written by non-Japanese authors as nihonjinron, insofar as they share, contribute to, or reflect the vision, premises, and perspectives characteristic of the Japanese genre.
Though the generic word nihonjinron is most frequently used to describe the phenomenon, a variety of topical terms are also current that classify the many sub-genres of nihonjinron, according to specific theme or subject-matter. For example:
- shinfūdoron (新風土論): "new theories on climate" (implying the influence of climate on peoples)
- nihonbunkaron (日本文化論): "theories on Japanese culture"
- nihonshakairon (日本社会論): "theories on Japanese society"
- nihonron (日本論): "theories on Japan"
- nihonkeizairon (日本経済論) "theories on the Japanese economy"
Types of Nihonjinron
According to a survey conducted by Nomura Research InstituteNomura Securities Co.
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nomura Holdings, Inc. , which forms part of the Nomura Group. It plays a central role in the securities business, the Group's core business. Nomura is a financial services group and global investment bank. Based in Tokyo and with regional headquarters in Hong Kong,...
, 698 books on nihonjinron had been published in Japan between 1946 and 1978. Their breakdown of the major themes of nihonjinron is as follows:
- General books:
- Nihonjinron written by philosophers—5.5%
- Nihonjinron written by literary/dramatic authors—4.5%
- Nihonjinron written by social/cultural anthropologists—4.5%
- Nihonjinron written by historians and minzokugaku (folklore) scholars—4.5%
- Nihonjinron written by economists, political scientists, and legal scholars—4.5%
- Nihonjinron written by natural scientists—4.0%
- Nihonjinron written by linguists and literary scholars—3.5%
- Nihonjinron written by diplomats, social critics, and journalists—3.5%
- Nihonjinron written by psychologists—3.5%
- Nihonjinron written by foreign scholars—4.0%
- Nihonjinron written by foreign journalists—5.5%
- Nihonjinron written by other foreigners—7.0%
- Others—5.5%
- Investigative reports:
- General theories on national characters—7.0%
- Surveys on desire and satisfaction—3.5%
- Attitude surveys on work ethics—4.0%
- Attitude surveys on saving—4.0%
- Other generic attitude surveys—6.5%
- Time-budget surveys—3.5%
- Survey on foreigners' view on Japanese economic activities—6.5%
- Overseas opinion researches on Japan—4.5%
Often cited, but rarely read, this work is now outdated. It is 'merely a sample' not a definitive list. It omits many works that otherwise qualify as nihonjinron (the works of Kiyoyuki Higuchi (樋口清之), for example). It states that 16.5% of post-war nihonjinron has been written by foreigners. Yet production of books on Japanese identity soon assumed an industrial scale in Japan, and Dale writes of the 'unflagging productivity of the genre.' Just one writer, the doyen of the genre, Shōichi Watanabe (渡部昇一), has hundreds of articles and volumes on Japanese culture, society, politics, history, and identity to his credit, all replete with judgments about 'the Japanese.' Foreign writing, with its stereotypes, is an important sub-genre of nihonjinron, and was particularly strong in Meiji
Meiji period
The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
Japan, where, as one observer wryly noted, 'not to have written a book about Japan is fast becoming a title to distinction.'
History
If nihonjinron as a genre cultivating public curiosity about national identity grew out of the ashes of defeat, it is nonetheless true that most of the key ideas, and many of the themes, predate the official use of these ideas for inculcating a national identity in the pre-war period. Significant areas of thought on identity fermented over the long centuries of seclusion under the TokugawaTokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...
regime. Peter Nosco speaks of a collective identity already conceptualized at this time, which fashioned a "new understanding of Japaneseness" in which:
- 'This world view represented an overarching perspective from which a broad range of persons across classes in Japan viewed both the macrocosm of the world beyond as well as the microcosm of one’s own immediate world.'
Thus, not only might the roots of the nihonjinron be traced back at least to the kokugaku
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...
(国学, lit. "national studies") movement of the 18th century, but reputable authorities on the intellectual history of that period recognize in the debates on the nation, its identity, and popular sentiment, themes that are not dissimilar to those we encounter in the post-war nihonjinron. In this sense, the recent view that the term "nihonjinron" should be restricted to refer to the literature on Japanese national identity post-1945 appears to be a technical quibble. Indeed, as Hiroshi Minami, one of the foremost scholars of the genre, states in his survey:
- 'It is also possible to trace back and locate works worthy of the name "nihonjinron" to the Edo period and even before that.'
All definitions of identity, national, social, ethnic or personal, use a comparative yardstick, be it explicit or implicit. National identity is typically associated with the early modern or modern nation, as one of the integrative elements of that nationalist ethos by which the disparate cultures of the pre-modern agricultural world are welded into a unified popular consciousness of patriotic belonging. Minami points to pre-early-modern sources for the nihonjinron, but the argument cannot be pressed too far back, since ancient polities lacked the nation-wide mobilisation which is a precondition for this kind of discourse. Yet there seems no doubt that intense feelings for one's native country and its identity were an early part of Japanese literary culture, and a value given aesthetic expression. Robert Borgen studies just one example from the life of the monk Jōjin
Jōjin
Jōjin was Japanese Tendai monk who documented his journey to Chinese buddhist centres of Tiantaishan and Wutaishan in 1072–1073 in San Tendai Godai san ki .Jōjin’s home monastery was Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei...
(成尋:1011-1081) and remarks:
- 'he helps us understand Japanese national identity in the eleventh century. His nationalism--and, problematic though it may be, that term will be used--was not of the bellicose sort, but rather seemed to reflect an accurate awareness of cultural and political differences combined with a sense of self-confidence.'
Prehistory
The kokugaku school itself did found its assertion of distinctive identity on a reading of the earliest classics of Japanese literature. One can hear an early echo of the problem of identity, for example, in the narrative of struggles between 'nativist' (Shintoist) and Sinophile factions at the dawn of Japanese history, as recounted in the KojikiKojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
and Nihonshoki. Kokugaku scholars thus traced their ideas on identity to these earliest chronicles, which recount the revolt of the Mononobe (物部) and Nakatomi
Nakatomi clan
The Nakatomi clan was an influential clan in Classical Japan. Along with the Inbe clan, the Nakatomi were one of two priestly clans which oversaw certain important national rites, and one of many to claim descent from divine clan ancestors "only a degree less sublime than the imperial ancestors"...
(中臣) clans against the foreign-descended Soga
Soga clan
The was one of the most powerful clans in Yamato Japan and played a major role in the spread of Buddhism. For many generations, in the 5th and 7th centuries, the Soga monopolized the position of Great Royal Chieftain and was the first of many families to dominate the Imperial House of Japan by...
(蘇我) clan, which had sponsored the introduction of Buddhist metaphysics and Chinese statecraft into Japan in the sixth century C.E. Medieval Buddhism in turn developed original sectarian positions which show a vigorous inclination to ‘Japanify’ and propagate native versions of that universal faith, and the form this reaction takes shows a heightened awareness of a unique national mission and identity.
The echo takes on resounding depth in the work of the Buddhist monk Nichiren
Nichiren
Nichiren was a Buddhist monk who lived during the Kamakura period in Japan. Nichiren taught devotion to the Lotus Sutra, entitled Myōhō-Renge-Kyō in Japanese, as the exclusive means to attain enlightenment and the chanting of Nam-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō as the essential practice of the teaching...
(日蓮, 1222-1282) whose Risshō Ankoku Ron (立正安國論: On Establishing Righteousness and Securing the Safety of the Nation: 1260), can be read as a brilliantly written foundational text for that vein of chiliastic populist nationalism which was to take the upper hand in the decade before 1945, in the heyday of Nihonshugi (Japanism: 日本主義).
In Nichiren's highly original thought, we find a dramatic reversal in Japan's dominant ideology of the state, with its aristocratic reliance on foreign models, be they Confucian or Buddhist. The variety of Buddhism he develops defines the doctrine in terms that are militantly patriotic, indeed, in terms which make his brand of Buddhism the creed par excellence of what had been a universal faith. At roughly the same time, Kitabatake Chikafusa
Kitabatake Chikafusa
was a Japanese court noble and writer of the 14th century who supported the Southern Court in the Nanboku-cho period, serving as advisor to five Emperors. Some of his greatest and most famous work was performed during the reign of Emperor Go-Daigo, under whom he proposed a series of reforms,...
(北畠親房, 1293-1354) wrote his Jinnō Shōtōki
Jinno Shotoki
is a Japanese historical book written by Kitabatake Chikafusa , a court noble in the Nanboku-chō period. The work sought both to clarify the genesis and potential consequences of a contemporary crisis in Japanese politics, and to dispel or at least ameliorate the prevailing disorder.The text...
(神皇正統記: Chronicles of the Authentic Lineages of the Divine Emperors) which defines Japan's superiority in terms of the divinity of its imperial line and the divinity of the nation itself (Shinkoku: 神国). The general drift of such works is to pull the abstract, universal language and thought of Japan's foreign models down to earth, to reframe it in Japanese conditions, among the illiterate population at large, and assert the special historical characteristics of Japan as opposed to the civilizations which had, until that time, endowed the country with the lineaments of a universalist culture.
The comparative dimension of nihonron or discourse on the nation of Japan assumed seminal depth in the 16th.century, towards the end of the Sengoku period (戦国時代: Warring States Period) (1482-1558) and the subsequent Azuchi-Momoyama ((安土桃山) age (1568-1615), when European contacts with Japan gave rise to a considerable literature by travelers and foreign missionaries on the Japanese, their culture, behavior, and patterns of thinking. Though much of this belongs to the theatre of Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, it influenced European perceptions over the two succeeding centuries during which Japan, apart from a small trading base at Deshima, remained closed to foreign commerce with the West. It also had some impact on Japanese self-images, when this material began to be read by many Japanese after the Meiji Restoration. The connivance between foreign images and Japanese self-perceptions thus boasts of a long history dating back some four centuries, and this tradition of cross-cultural discourse forms an important background component in the rise of the modern nihonjinron.
Kokugaku
Kokugaku, beginning as a scholarly investigation into the philologyPhilology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
of Japan's early classical literature, had suffered neglect at that time due to the powerful influence of Confucian orthodoxy, and sought to recover and evaluate these texts, some of which were obscure and difficult to read, in order to appraise them positively and harvest them to determine and ascertain what were the original indigenous values of Japan before the introduction of Chinese civilization. Thus the exploration of early classical texts like the Kojiki
Kojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
(古事記) and the Man'yōshū (万葉集) allowed scholars of Kokugaku, particularly the five great figures of Keichū
Keichu
Keichu may refer to:* Keichu Do, a modern branch of the martial arts.* Keichū, a Japanese scholar of the Edo period....
, Kada no Azumamaro
Kada no Azumamaro
was a poet and philologist of the early Edo period, who hailed from a scholarly family that for generations had supplied Shinto priests to the Inari shrine in Fushimi...
(荷田春満, 1669-1736), Kamo no Mabuchi
Kamo no Mabuchi
was a Japanese poet and philologist of the Edo period.Mabuchi conducted research into the spirit of ancient Japan through his studies of the Man'yōshū and other works of ancient literature...
(賀茂真淵, 1697-1769), Motoori Norinaga
Motoori Norinaga
was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...
(本居宣長, 1730-1801) and Hirata Atsutane
Hirata Atsutane
was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the four great men of kokugaku studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was Ibukinoya.-Life and thought:...
(平田篤胤, 1776-1843) to explore Japan's cultural differences with China, locate their sources in high antiquity, and deploy the results in a programmatic attempt to define the uniqueness of Japan against a foreign civilization. These scholars worked independently, and reached different conclusions, but by the 19th century were grouped together by a neo-Kokugakuist named Konakamura to establish the earliness of Japanese self-awareness. Implicitly or otherwise, they advocated a return to these ostensibly pristine ethnic roots, which involved discarding the incrustations of those Chinese cultural beliefs, social rites and philosophical ideas that had exercised a political ascendancy for over a millennium within Japan and had deeply informed the neo-Confucian ideology of the Tokugawa regime itself.
The irony was that the intellectual techniques, textual methods and cultural strategies used by nativist scholars against Confucianism borrowed heavily from currents in both Chinese thought (Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist) and their Japanese offshoots. Motoori, the greatest nativist scholar, is deeply indebted, for instance, to the thought of Ogyū Sorai
Ogyu Sorai
, pen name Butsu Sorai, was a Japanese Confucian philosopher. He has been described as the most influential such scholar during the Tokugawa period. His primary area of study was in applying the teachings of Confucianism to government and social order...
the most penetrating Confucian thinker of Tokugawa times. In similar wise, scholars detect in modern Japanese nationalism, of which the nihonjinron are the resonant if melodiously subdued, post-war echo, many features that derived from borrowings abroad, from the large resources of cultural nationalism mined in European countries during their own respective periods of nation-formation. Under the alias of assertions of difference, nationalisms, in Japan as elsewhere, borrow promiscuously from each other's conceptual hoards, and what may seem alien turns out often to be, once studied closely, merely an exotic variation on an all too familiar theme.
Meiji period
In the second half of the 19th century, under strong military and diplomatic pressure, and suffering from an internal crisis that led to the collapse of the Bakufu, Japan opened its ports, and subsequently the nation, to commerce with the outside world and reform that sought to respond vigorously to the challenges of modern industrial polities, as they were remarked on by Japanese observers in the United States and Europe. The preponderant place of China as model and cultural adversary in the cognitive models developed hitherto was occupied by the West. But, whereas Japan's traditional engagement with Chinese civilization was conducted in terms of a unilateral debate, now Japanese scholars and thinkers could read directly what Westerners, themselves fascinated by the 'exoticism' of Japanese culture, said and wrote of them. Japanese contact with, and responses to these emerging Western stereotypes, which reflected the superiority complex, condescension and imperial hauteur of the times, fed into Japanese debates on national identity. As Leslie Pincus puts it, speaking of a later phase:- "one might say that Japanese travelers reappropriated Japan from Europe as an exoticized object. Just as ukiyoe were first reimported back into Japan from Paris museums and private European collections after World War 1, less tangible aspects of the cultural past were newly rediscovered by Japanese visitors in Europe. But whether material or etherial, the artifacts of Japanese culture had become indelibly inflected by Europe's fascination with, or depreciation of, one of its cultural others."
There ensued an intense period of massive social and economic change, as, under the direction of a developmental elite, Japan moved from the closed world of centuries of Tokugawa rule (the so-called sakoku [鎖国] period) to Meiji Westernization, and, again in close conformity with the prevailing occidental paradigm, to imperialist adventurism with the growth of the colonialism
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
. The Taishō period
Taisho period
The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...
marked a slightly more 'liberal' turn, as the pendulum swung towards a renewed interest in the Western model ("Japan must undergo a second birth, with America as its new mother and France as its father"). With the crisis of 1929 and the concomitant depression of the thirties, militarism gained the upper hand in this era of the 'dark valley' (kurai tanima, 暗い谷間), and nationalistic ideologies prevailed over all attempts to keep alive the moderate traditions of liberal modernity.
Postwar period
Total economic, military and spiritual mobilization could not stave off defeat however, and slowly, under occupation, and then rapidly with its reasserted independence, Japan enjoyed a decades-long resurgence as global industrial and economic powerhouse until the crisis of the 1990s. The cultural patterns over this century long trajectory is one of a continuous oscillation between models of pronounced Westernization and traditionalist autarkyAutarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...
. Between the two alternatives, attempts were frequently made to mediate a conciliatory third way which would combine the best of both worlds (wakon yōsai, (和魂洋才): "Japanese spirit and Western techniques".
The frequency of these chronic transitional upheavals engendered a remarkable intensity of debate about national directions and identity (kokuminsei, 国民性/minzokusei, 民族性), whose complexity over time renders a synthetic judgment or bird's-eye view of the literature in question rather difficult. A major controversy surrounds the question regarding the affiliation of the post-war nihonjinron theories with the prewar conceptualization of Japanese cultural uniqueness. To what degree, that is, are these meditations under democracy on Japanese uniqueness innocent reflections of a popular search for identity, and in what measure, if any, do they pick up from the instrumental ideology of Japaneseness developed by government and nationalists in the prewar period to harness the energies of the nation towards industrialization and global imperium?
The questions are rendered more complex by the fact that in the early post-war period, the restoration of a 'healthy nationalism' was by no means something exclusive to right-wing cultural thinkers. An intense debate over the necessity to develop ideal, positive forms of national consciousness, regarded as a healthy civic identity, figures prominently in the early writings of Maruyama Masao, who called for a healthy "national civic consciousness" (kokuminshugi, 国民主義), and in the prolific debates of members of the Japanese Historical Science Association (rekiken, 歴研) who preferred to speak of 'ethnic national consciousness'(minzokushigi, 民族主義). These debates ranged from liberal center-left critics to radical Marxist historians.
Some scholars cite the destruction of many Japanese national symbols and the psychological blow of defeat at the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
as one source of nihonjinron's enduring popularity, although it is not a uniquely 20th century phenomenon. In fact the genre is simply the Japanese reflex of cultural nationalism, which is a property of all modern nations. The trend of the tone of nihonjinron argument is often reflective of the Japanese society at the time. Peter Dale, covering the period analysed by the Nomura survey, distinguished three major phrases in the development of post-war nihonjinron discourse:
- First phase (1945-1960): Dominance of the Western model with a concomitant repudiation of Japanese specificity.
- Second phase (1960-1970): Recognition of historical relativity, of certain defects in Western industrial society, and certain merits in Japanese traditions, as they are re-engineered in Japanese modernization.
- Third phase (1970-?): Recognition of Japanese specificity as a positive model for a uniquely Japanese road towards modernity and its global outreach.
Tamotsu Aoki subsequently finessed the pattern by distinguishing four major phases in the post war identity discourse.
In Dale's proposal, this drift from negative uniqueness to positive evaluation of uniqueness is a cyclical trend, since he believes the same pattern can be detected in the literature on identity for the period from 1867 to 1945, from early Meiji times down to the end of World War Two. Nihonjinron, in Dale's view, recycle prewar Japanese nationalist rhetoric, and betray similar ends. For Aoki, contrariwise, they are natural movements in a national temper which seeks, as has been the case with other nations, its own distinctive path of cultural autonomy and social organization as Japan adapts itself to the global world order forged by the West.
During the early post-war period, most of nihonjinron discourses discussed the uniqueness of the Japanese in a rather negative, critical light. The elements of feudalism reminiscent of the Imperial Japan were all castigated as major obstacles to Japan's reestablishment as a new democratic nation. Scholars such as Hisao Ōtsuka , a Weberian
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
sociologist, judged Japan with the measure of rational individualism and liberal democracy that were considered ideals in the U.S. and Western European nations back then. By the 1970s, however, with Japan enjoying a remarkable economic boom, Ōtsuka began to consider the 'feudal residues' in a positive light, as a badge of Japan's distinctive difference from the West (Ōtsuka, Kawashima, Doi 1976 passim). Nihonjinron books written during the period of high economic growth up to the bubble burst in the early 1990s, in contrast, argued various unique features of the Japanese as more positive features.
Specific thesis of the Nihonjinron
- The Japanese race is a unique isolate, having no known affinities with any other race. In some versions, the race is understood as directly descended from a distinct branch of primates.
- This isolation is due to the peculiar circumstances of living in an cut off from the promiscuous cross-currents of continental history, with its endless miscegenation of tribes and cultures. The island country in turn enjoys a whose peculiar rhythms, the putative fact for example that Japan alone has , colour Japanese thinking and behaviour. Thus, human nature in Japan is, peculiarly, an extension of nature itself.
- The Japanese language has thus a unique grammatical structure and native lexical corpus whose idiosyncratic syntax and connotations condition the Japanese to think in peculiar patterns unparalleled in other human languages. The Japanese language is also uniquely vague. Foreigners who speak it fluently therefore, may be correct in their usage, but the thinking behind it remains inalienably soaked in the alien framework of their original language's thought patterns. This is the Japanese version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesisLinguistic relativityThe principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
, according to which grammar determines world-view. - Japanese psychology, influenced by the language, is defined by a particular cast of that conduce to a unique form of , in which clearly defined boundaries between self and other are ambiguous or fluid, leading to a psychomental and social ideal of the .
- Japanese social structures consistently remould human associations in terms of an archaic characterized by , , and . As a result, the cannot properly exist, since will always prevail.
Nihonjinron as cultural nationalism
Scholars such as Peter N. Dale (1986), Harumi Befu (1987), and Kosaku Yoshino (1992) view nihonjinron more critically, identifying it as a tool for enforcing social and political conformityConformity
Conformity is the process by which an individual's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by other people.Conformity may also refer to:*Conformity: A Tale, a novel by Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna...
. Dale, for example, characterizes nihonjinron as follows:
- "First, they implicitly assume that the Japanese constitute a culturally and socially homogeneous racial entity, whose essence is virtually unchanged from prehistoric times down to the present day. Secondly, they presuppose that the Japanese differ radically from all other known peoples. Thirdly, they are conspicuously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis which might be seen to derive from external, non-Japanese sources. In a general sense then, nihonjinron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism concerned with ostensible 'uniqueness' of Japan in any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of internal socio-historical diversity."
The emphasis on ingroup
Ingroup
In sociology and social psychology, ingroups and outgroups are social groups to which an individual feels as though he or she belongs as a member, or to which they feel contempt, opposition, or a desire to compete. People tend to hold positive attitudes towards members of their own groups, a...
unity in nihonjinron writings, and its popularization during Japan's period of military expansion at the turn of the 20th century, has led many Western critics to brand it a form of ethnocentric
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with...
nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
. Karel van Wolferen
Karel van Wolferen
Karel van Wolferen is a Dutch journalist, writer and professor, who is particularly recognised for his knowledge of Japanese politics, economics, history and culture....
echoes this assessment, noting that:
- In the nihonjinron perspective, Japanese limit their actions, do not claim 'rights' and always obey those placed above them, not because they have no other choice, but because it comes naturally to them. Japanese are portrayed as if born with a special quality of brain that makes them want to suppress their individual selves.
As Japan is often deemed to be "almost as unique as its people like to think" (Pearl Buck, qtd. In Dale 1986:26) so too the Japanese people
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
are considered not just unique but, in the words of Sugimoto and Mouer, "more unique than other societies."
Quotes
"Because of the unique properties of their language, the Japanese people have brain patterns that differ from those of most other people in the world." Whereas vowels and consonants are processed respectively in the right and left hemispheres of 'Western' brains, for example, it is argued by Tadanobu TsunodaTadanobu Tsunoda
is a Japanese author, most known for his ideas regarding the "Japanese brain". According to Tsunoda's theory, the Japanese people use their brains in a unique way, different than "western" brains...
that the 'Japanese' brain processes both sounds in the left hemisphere.
Technically Japanese climate can be viewed as marked rather by two seasons. The four seasons celebrated in the nihonjinron reflect a division inherited from canonical distinctions in Chinese poetry
Chinese poetry
Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
.
Some have argued that supposed aspects of Japanese culture widely reported in the West take on a life of their own as orientalist
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
clichés long after the phenomena in question have disappeared from the socio-cultural landscape.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
said: "The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them." (Wilde, Oscar, "The Decay of Lying, An Observation", 1899 )
See also
- Culture of Japan
- Japanese nationalismJapanese nationalismencompasses a broad range of ideas and sentiments harbored by the Japanese people over the last two centuries regarding their native country, its cultural nature, political form and historical destiny...
- Asian valuesAsian valuesAsian values was a concept that came into vogue briefly in the 1990s to justify authoritarian regimes in Asia, predicated on the belief in the existence within Asian countries of a unique set of institutions and political ideologies which reflected the region's culture and history...
- KokutaiKokutaiKokutai is a politically loaded word in the Japanese language, translatable as "sovereign", "national identity; national essence; national character" or "national polity; body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor's sovereignty; Japanese constitution". "Sovereign" is perhaps the most...
- Yamato-damashiiYamato-damashiiis a historically and culturally loaded word in the Japanese language. The phrase was apparently coined in the Heian period to describe the indigenous Japanese 'spirit' or cultural values as opposed to the cultural values imported into the country through contact with Tang dynasty China. Later, a...
Major Nihonjinron literature
- Hearn,LafcadioLafcadio HearnPatrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...
.1904.Japan:An Attempt at Interpretation.Dodo Press - Kuki, ShūzōKuki Shuzowas a prominent Japanese academic, philosopher and university professor.-Early life:Shūzō was the fourth child of Baron Kuki Ryūichi a high bureaucrat in the Meiji Ministry for Culture and Education...
(九鬼周造). 1930. 「いき」の構造 English tr. An Essay on Japanese Taste: The Structure of 'Iki. John Clark; Sydney, Power Publications, 1996. - Watsuji, Tetsurō (和辻哲郞). 1935. Fûdo (風土). Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten. trans. Geoffrey Bownas, as Climate. Unesco 1962.
- Japanese Ministry of EducationMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan)The , also known as MEXT or Monkashō, is one of the ministries of the Japanese government.The Meiji government created the first Ministry of Education in 1871....
(文部省). 1937. 國體の本義 (Kokutai no hongi). tr. as Kokutai no hongi. Cardinal principles of the national entity of Japan, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1949. - Nishida, KitarōNishida Kitarowas a prominent Japanese philosopher, founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of philosophy. He graduated from The University of Tokyo during the Meiji period in 1894 with a degree in philosophy. He was named professor of the Fourth High School in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1899 and later...
(西田幾多郞). 1940. 日本文化の問題 (Nihon Bunka no mondai). Tokyo. - Benedict, RuthRuth BenedictRuth Benedict was an American anthropologist, cultural relativist, and folklorist....
. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Houghton Mifflin, Boston - Herrigel, EugenEugen HerrigelEugen Herrigel was a German philosopher who taught philosophy at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai, Japan, from 1924-1929 and introduced Zen to large parts of Europe through his writings.While living in Japan from 1924 to 1929, he studied kyūdō, traditional Japanese archery, under Awa...
. 1948. Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens, = 1953 Zen in the Art of ArcheryZen in the Art of ArcheryZen in the Art of Archery is a short book written by Eugen Herrigel which brought Zen to Europe after World War II. The book was first published in 1948, in Germany.-Author:...
. New York, NY. Pantheon Books. - Nakane, Chie (中根千枝). 1967. タテ社会の人間関係 (Human relations in a vertical society) English tr Japanese SocietyJapanese Society (1970 book)Japanese Society is an analysis of the structure of Japanese society, written by Nakane Chie. The main theme of the book is the working of what Nakane calls "the vertical principle" in Japanese society, which is a series of social relations between two individuals, one of whom is senior and one of...
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, UK, 1970. - Mishima, YukioYukio Mishimawas the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
(三島由紀夫). 1969. Bunka Bôeiron (文化防衛論, A Defense of Culture). Tokyo, Japan: Shinchôsha. - Doi, Takeo (土居健郎). 1971. 「甘え」の構造 (The Structure of 'Amae). Tokyo, Japan: Kôbundô. trans.The Anatomy of Dependence Kodansha, Tokyo 1974
- Singer, KurtKurt SingerKurt Singer was a German economist and philosopher.Born in Magdeburg, he was a professor at Hamburg University .He taught at Tokyo Imperial University from 1931 to 1935.Singer died at Athens, Greece....
. 1973 Mirror, Sword and Jewel. Croom Helm, London - Izaya Ben-Dasan, (‘translated’ by Yamamoto Shichihei:山本七平) 1972 Nihonkyō ni tsuite (日本教について), Tokyo, Bungei Shunjû
- Hisao, Ōtsuka, Takeyoshi, Kawashima, Takeo, Doi. 「Amae」to shakai kagaku.Tokyo, Kōbundō 1976
- Vogel, Ezra FEzra VogelEzra Feivel Vogel is an Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University and has written on Japan, China, and Asia.-Early life:...
. 1978. Japan As Number One: Lessons for America.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. - Reischauer, Edwin O.Edwin O. ReischauerEdwin Oldfather Reischauer was the leading U.S. educator and noted scholar of the history and culture of Japan, and of East Asia. From 1961–1966, he was the U.S. ambassador to Japan.-Education and academic life:...
1978. The Japanese. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. - Tsunoda, TadanobuTadanobu Tsunodais a Japanese author, most known for his ideas regarding the "Japanese brain". According to Tsunoda's theory, the Japanese people use their brains in a unique way, different than "western" brains...
(角田忠信). 1978. Nihonjin no Nō (日本人の脳―脳の働きと東西の文化, The Japanese brain). Tokyo, Japan: Taishūkan Shoten (大修館書店) ISBN 4-469-21068-4. - Murakami, Yasusuke (村上泰亮), Kumon Shunpei (公文俊平), Satō Seizaburō (佐藤誠三郎). 1979. The 'Ie' Society as a Civilization (文明としてのイエ社会) Tokyo, Japan: Chūō Kōronsha.
- Dower,John W..War without mercy - Race and power in the Pacific war.1986.
- Berque, Augustin 1986. Le sauvage et l'artifice: Les Japonais devant la nature. Gallimard, Paris.
- Tamura Keiji (田村圭司) 2001. Futatabi 「Nihonjin」tare！ , (『再び「日本人」たれ！』) Takarajimasha Shinsho、Tokyo
- Takie Sugiyama Lebra 2004 The Japanese Self in Cultural Logic, University of Hawai’I Press, Honolulu
- Macfarlane,AlanAlan MacfarlaneAlan Donald James Macfarlane FBA FRHistS is a renowned anthropologist and historian and a Professor Emeritus of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China. He has focused on comparative...
.Japan Through the Looking Glass. 2007.
Critical bibliography
• Amino, Yoshihiko (網野善彦) 1993 Nihonron no shiza: Rettō no shakai to kokka (日本論の視座) Tokyo, Shôgakkan• Amino, Yoshihiko (網野善彦). 1978 Muen, kugai, raku: Nihon chūsei no jiyū to heiwa (無縁・公界・楽. 日本中世の自由と平和:Muen, kugai, raku: Peace and freedom in medieval Japan), Tokyo, Heibonsha
• Aoki Tamotsu (青木保) Bunka no hiteisei 1988 (文化の否定性) Tokyo, Chūō Kōronsha
• Aoki, Tamotsu (青木保) 1990. 'Nihonbunkaron' no Hen'yō (「日本文化論」の変容, Phases of Theories of Japanese Culture in transition). Tokyo, Japan: Chūō Kōron Shinsha.
• Befu, Harumi (別府春海) 1987 Ideorogī toshite no nihonbunkaron (イデオロギーとしての日本人論, Nihonjinron as an ideology). Tokyo, Japan: Shisō no Kagakusha.
• Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword : Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
• Berque, Augustin. 1986 Le sauvage et l'artifice: Les Japonais devant la nature. Paris, Gallimard.
• Burns, Susan L., 2003 Before the Nation - Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan, Duke University Press, Durham, London.
• Dale, Peter N. 1986. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness Oxford, London. Nissan Institute, Croom Helm.
• Dale, Peter N. 1994 'Nipponologies (Nihon-ron. Nihon-shugi' in Augustin Berque (ed.) Dictionnaire de la civilisation japonaise. Hazan, Paris pp. 355–6.
• Gayle, Curtis Anderson, 2003 Marxist History and Postwar Japanese Nationalism, RoutledgeCurzon, London, New York
• Gill, Robin D 1985 Nihonjinron Tanken (日本人論探険) Tokyo, TBS Britannica.
• Gill, Robin D. 1984Omoshiro Hikaku-bunka-kō, (おもしろ比較文化考) Tokyo, Kirihara Shoten.
• Gill, Robin D. 1985 Han-nihonjinron ((反日本人論)) Tokyo, Kōsakusha.
• Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Irmela 1988 Das Ende der Exotik Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp
• Kawamura, Nozomu (河村望) 1982 Nihonbunkaron no Shûhen (日本文化論の周辺, The Ambiance of Japanese Culture Theory), Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha
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Internet
- Community, Democracy, and Performance: Nihonjinron
- Gregory Shepherd: "Nihonjinron"
- Dissertation preview - Globalization and Japanese animation: Ethnography of American college students
- Maintaining Identities: Discourses of Homogeneity in a Rapidly Globalizing Japan, article by Chris Burgess in the electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies, 19 April 2004.
- Chrysanthemum’s Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan article by Sonia Ryang on the role of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in Nihonjinron
- Japan: Locked in the Self-assertive Discourse of National Uniqueness?