ABSTRACT
Insights from the field of cognitive studies shed light on how ritual can reconcile different, if not opposite, meanings. Over time, participation in repetitive yet low-intensity rituals, such as those performed on national holidays, are not remembered as specific episodes. As a ritual institution, monarchy can negotiate social complexities and contradictions necessarily present in every imagined community. Shinron stresses the importance of the emperor performing rites in public as a ‘living exemplar’, arguing that such a ritual system was vastly superior in creating social cohesion in comparison to ‘explanation or exhortation’. The ability of monarchs to bind together a nation’s various social groups derives not from ritual performance alone, as Bagehot had already noted; but rather, they have to be embodiments of virtue. Through ritual the monarchs could build ties between the court and various social groups that were nevertheless all members of the royal/imperial nation.
