Formation and Transformation of Japanese National Identity
Akira TOKUYASU (Hosei University)
atokuyas@mt.tama.hosei.ac.jp


Introduction

At first I show you the outline of my presentation. My theme is "formation and transformation of Japanese National Identity". The problem is not whether Japanese national identity is really unique in its nature or not. Nor is it whether Japanese national identity is modernized enough or not. Rather I try to show that this type of discourse itself has been formulated in the process of Japanese national identity formation as self-observation and self-description. And I conclude that Japanese national identity has the hybrid nature in its essential aspects.

I would like to begin this presentation with two recent events relating to the present state of Japanese national identity. The one is G8 Kyushu-Okinawa Summit Meeting and the other is the issue of a new banknote for 2000 yen. Both are closely related to Okinawa, the southern end of Japan, where the national identity has always been problematic because of its marginal position historically compelled in Japanese national society.

G8 heads gathered in Okinawa for the Summit and had several meetings. They also enjoyed various performing arts peculiar to this region in the formal reception. Furthermore the Japanese government had asked a famous popular musician Komuro Tetsuya to compose the theme song of the Summit, and an equally famous singer Amuro Namie from Okinawa to sing this song. We can see here that the center and the periphery are combined and a message of Japanese national integration has begun to circulate in our everyday life through the mass popular culture market.

On the front of the new banknote a picture of Shurei-Mon, a historical site of Okinawa, the gate of Shuri castle (which is the main castle of Ryukyu dynasty: Ryukyu is the historical name of Okinawa) is arranged, and on the back a scene from the picture scroll of Genji-Monogatari (one of the greatest classic literatures) and a portrait of Murasaki Shikibu (the author of this story). Here too, we can see another combination of the center and the periphery. The issue of this banknote had been carefully scheduled for the period of the Summit. Another symbolic message of integration has begun to circulate in our everyday life through the market.

It might be easy to criticize that these cases are nothing but the superficial manipulation of the Japanese government in order to conceal the so-called "army base problem" and the problem of economic marginality of Okinawa. However, we can not ignore the symbolic effect which calls attention of ordinary Japanese people in the main islands to the Okinawa problems and makes them reflect their own national identity. The symbolic message of these events is that Japanese national identity should be no more regarded as homogeneous and that Japan should make a great effort to establish its new identity including heterogeneous elements.


The definition of the national identity

Anthony D. Smith, an English historical sociologist, defines a nation as a named human population which shares myths and memories, a mass public culture, a designated homeland, economic unity and equal rights and duties for all members. He argues that a national identity consists of these characteristics (Smith 1986, 1991, 1995).

In his definition Smith emphasizes the ethnic origin or the ethnic ground of a nation and denies the modernist view of a nation as a purely modern artifact. He says that there was a dominant ethnic community, which he calls an ethnie, in any nation building process. An ethnie is defined as a named unit of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories,elements of shared culture, some links with a historic territory and some measure of solidarity, at least among its elites.

Although there are several common elements between a nation and an ethnie, both are not to be seen as identical. A nation has several traditional elements, but it must also satisfy several modern conditions such as an integrated law system, an integrated economy, an intimate and cohesive territory, a single political culture, a mass public education system, mass media, and so on. In this sense a nation is not perennial.


formation of Japanese national identity

Let us describe the process of Japanese nation state and national identity formation.

According to Smith there is a general developing process of a nation state and national identity from its ethnic origin. Before the nation state building an ethnic state appears through the centralization of political power and development of the ethnic polity (Smith 1991). In Japanese history this ethnic state was established in Edo-Tokugawa era after a long turbulent disorder. This ethnic state lasted about 300 years until the Meiji revolution. Then the modernization process began and the Meiji government made a great effort to establish a modern state system.

As prof. Tominaga points out, the state formation process in Meiji era contained several traditional elements and was even a return to the ancient regime in a sense (Tominaga 1990, 1998). The revival of the 'Tenno' system and various ancient names of the governmental organizations was combined with the importation of modern Western institutions. However primordialistic it may appear, it surely was a modern phenomenon of nation building.

Parallel to this nation building process, the national identity was gradually formed on the ethnic ground. The identity consciousness needs some external different population, and in Tokugawa Japan the information of this external population was relatively short because of the isolation policy of Tokugawa shogunate. But at least among intellectuals and some of urban people various foreign information were shared through the printing media rapidly developed during this era. Information and knowledge from Netherlanders in Dejima-Nagasaki is one example, Korean missions parading in Edo-city is another. We can observe here rather sound curiosity and interest.

On the other hand, in 19th century Kokugaku, a new study of Japanese classic literatures, was founded by Motoori Norinaga. He emphasized the necessity of revitalizing Japanese ancient spirit (Yamato-gokoro) which had not yet been polluted by imported Chinese culture (Kara-gokoro). His study on Kojiki and Nihon-shoki was in a sense a (re)discovery or even an invention of common ancestry myths and historical memories. Kokugaku was ideologically radicalized by a successor of Norinaga, Hirata Atsutane, in the end of Tokugawa era and combined with the idea of Sonno-Joi, the reverence for the Tenno and expulsion of foreigners.

To sum up, all elements of an ethnic community became complete during Edo-Tokugawa era: Nihon/Nippon as a name of the population, myths in Kojiki and Nihon-shoki, classic literatures and a syncretic religious orientation, and so on. There was an ambivalent orientation in the formation process of Japanese ethnic identity; a positive/negative attitude toward foreign cultures, acceptance / exclusion, curiosity / hostility etc. This ambivalence was and still is succeeded in the formation process of Japanese national identity.

The national identity was gradually formed in Meiji era. Various modern elements such as a mass public education, economic unity through the promotion of industry, and equal rights and duties under the old Constitution were added to the main elements of the ethnic identity. On the other hand the Tenno system was established and enforced through the deification of the Meiji Tenno. Furthermore the wars with China and Russia, their victory, and the postwar intervention of the Western Powers aroused nationalistic consciousness among people.


Transformation of Japanese national identity

Japanese national identity has largely changed after the World War II. Anthony D. Smith points out two different aspects of this change (Smith 1991). One is the fluctuation of the ground of the political national identity. Under the new Constitution the Showa Tenno is no more a God governing this country, but only a human being symbolically presenting the national integration. Those who loudly claim the central significance of the Tenno for the national identity, are severely criticized as the right or even the ultranationalist. For example, this year before the national election, Prime Minister Mori said that Japan is a country of the God (of course this God is the Tenno). Whether carelessly or intentionally, I don't know. Almost all Japanese mass media attacked him very severely.

The other is the growth of interest in the cultural national identity. This interest appears again and again in the literatures known as "the discourse on the Japanese". Yoshino Kosaku defines the cultural nationalism as those activities which try to regenerate a national community by creating, maintaining and enforcing the national cultural identity when this identity lacks or is unstable or is faced to some threat (Yoshino 1997). The volume and variety of the discourses on the Japanese shows how eagerly Japan want to establish its cultural identity (Aoki 1990; Minami 1994).

We can count many examples. The household society (Ie Shakai), the vertical society (Tate Shakai), collectivism (Shudan-shugi) or contextualism(Kanjin-shugi), culture of shame (Haji), psychological dependence (Amae), and so on. These characteristics are sometimes criticized by modernists as the evidence of lag or deficit of the modernization of Japanese society. They are sometimes admired by nationalistic intellectuals as the unique cores of Japanese culture, and by business elites as the evidence of excellence in Japanese management (Nihon-teki Keiei). And now confronted with globalization and globalism, these opposite positions have begun a new version of controversy.

But some people criticize the discourse (Befu 1987; Sugimoto 1996). They point out the arbitrariness of selection of cultural characteristics, the assumption of cultural homogeneity, the confusion of fact and norm, and so on. We can also observe the sharp distinction and opposition characterized by such paired concepts as modernism / traditionalism, universalism / particularism, and multiculturalism / assimilationism. But the fact is, as we have seen above, that there is always an ambivalent orientation in Japanese cultural identity and that this ambivalence is divided into the two opposite attitudes in the discourse as if only one of them were correct and valid.


Hybridity or purity?

In the discourse on the Japanese the problem has been almost always whether Japanese national identity, especially its cultural identity, is or should be purely vernacular and domestic or not. The Western nations are usually referred for the purpose of comparison and distinction. Those who stand for the purity of Japanese identity emphasize the uniqueness, heterogeneity and particularity compared with the Western nations. Those who criticize this maintain that Japan is not yet modernized enough especially in its cultural aspect and should be emancipated from the magic garden (Zaubergarten) into the rational and universalistic state.

Is it, however, a valid distinction? We propose here another possibility to characterize Japanese national identity. Kato Shuichi, a well-known critic, has already in the 50s spoken about the hybridity of Japanese culture. He says that Japanese domestic endogenous culture has been hybridized with Western exogenous culture in its essential aspects since the Meiji revolution, and that Japan should develop its identity on the ground of this hybridity (Kato 1974). This concept of hybridity explains well the ambivalent orientation in Japanese cultural identity.

In 80s and 90s, with the emergence of the discourse on globalization and post-colonialism, the hybridity of culture has held attention in a different context. Roland Robertson says that Japan has been selectively accepting foreign cultures from the beginning, and that its religious syncretism may provide a new possibility of a national culture in the global age (Robertson 1992).

Jan Nederveen Pieterse even says that globalization is essentially hybridization of different cultures, and that traditional territorial cultures will become more and more hybrid and translocal (Nederveen Pieterse 1994). I myself has discussed the possibility of extreme pluralism of cultures two years ago in the 5th meeting of this society. But at the same time I have pointed out that some vernacular and emotional elements are inevitable for the identity formation (Tokuyasu 1999). Now I am not sure whether the hybridization or pluralization process really dissolves the territoriality of cultural identity. But even so, if cultural identity should contain some vernacular emotional elements, nationalism will survive as one of important candidates of these elements in the future.

hybridization of cultures
　　territorial culture　　　　　　　 translocal culture
　　endogenous　　　　　　　　　　　exogenous
　　orthogenitic　　　　　　　　　　 heterogenetic
　　societies, nations, empires 　　 diasporas, migrations
　　locales, regions　　　　　　　　 crossroads, borders, interstices
　　community-based　　　　　　　 networks, brokers, strangers
　　organic, unitary　　　　　　　　 diffusion, heterogeneity
　　authenticity　　　　　　　　　　 translation
　　inward-looking　　　　　　　　　outward-looking
　　community linguistics　　　　 　contact linguistics
　　race　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　half-caste, half-breed, metis
　　ethnicity　　　　　　　　　　　 　new ethnicity
　　identity　　　　　　　　　　　　　identification, new identity


References

Aoki, Tamotsu, 'Nihon Bunkaron' no Henyo [Transitions of 'the Discourse on Japanese Culture'], Chuokoronsha (in Japanese).

Befu, Harumi, 1987, Ideorogii to shite no Nihonbunkaron [The Discourse on Japanese Culture as an Ideology], Shiso-no-kagaku-sha (in Japanese).

Kato, Shuichi, 1974, Zasshu Bunka [Hybrid Culture], Kodansha (in Japanese).

Minami, Hiroshi, 1994, Nihonjin Ron [The Discourses on the Japanese], Iwanami-shoten (in Japanese).

Nederveen Pieterse, Jan, 1994, "Globalization as Hybridisation", International Sociology, Vol.9, No.2: 161-184.

Robertson, Roland, 1992, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, Sage Publications.

Smith, Anthony D., 1986, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Basil Blackwell.

Smith, Anthony D., 1991, National Identity, Penguin Books Ltd.

Smith, Anthony D., 1995, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Age, Polity Press.

Sugimoto, Yoshio, 1996, "Nihon Bunka to iu Shinwa" [The Myth of Japanese Culture], in: S. Inoue et al. (eds.), Nihon Bunka no Shakaigaku [The Sociology of Japanese Culture], Iwanami-shoten (in Japanese): 7-37.

Tokuyasu, Akira, 1999, "Pluralization of meaning-construction in the global age", in: German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences (ed.), Social and Psychological Change of Japan and Germany: The Last Decade of the 20th Century: Proceedings of the 5th Meeting of the German-Japanese Society for Social Sciences, Tokyo: 97-108.

Tominaga, Kenichi, 1990, Nihon no Kindaika to Shakai Hendo [The Modernization and Social Change of Japanese Society], Kodansha (in Japanese).

Tominaga, Kenichi, 1998, Max Weber to Ajia no Kindaika [Max Weber and the Modernization of Asian Societies], Kodansha (in Japanese).

Yoshino, Kosaku, 1997, Bunka Nashonarizumu no Shakaigaku [The Sociology of Cultural Nationalism], Nagoyadaigaku-shuppankai (in Japanese).