Cultural Nationalism In Contemporary Japan

The debate about Japan's uniqueness is central to Japanese studies. This book aims to illuminate that debate from a comparative and theoretical perspective. It also tests theories of ethnicity and cultural nationalism through the use of Japan as a case study. The author uses interviews with a wide variety of people to examine the extent to which the agents of Japanese cultural nationalism, the nihonjinron , are no longer teachers and intellectuals, but businessmen. He also looks at the Japanese perception of their own uniqueness and at the ways in which ideas of cultural distinctiveness are formulated in different national and historical contexts. This book combines anthropology and sociology to present both a historical analysis of the roots of the Japanese sense of national identity and a discussion of the ways in which that sense is changing. Review: Dr. Yoshino has made a careful sociological study of the Nihonjinron. - Asian Affairs ... Yoshino rouses us from our exhaustion with Nihonjinron and demonstrates that much remains to be done toward analyzing the rhetorical conventions, substantive varieties, amd institutional structures of late Showa cultural nationalism. - Journal of Japanese Studies Yoshino's admirably lucid, unpretentious, methodical, and judicious study of the highly emotionally charged subject of Japanese cultural nationalism would benefit not only sociologists of various persuasions but also a wide spectrum of students of contemporary Japanese history and culture.. - The Journal of Asian Studies ... the style and presentation of ideas in this volume were thought provoking. Thumbing back through the pages, I see that the margins are generously marked with my questions [and] comments...which happens in books I find meaningful to read. -Scott Clark, Pacific Affairs