ABSTRACT
Rituals and performances have a vital role to play in the production and reproduction of nations everywhere. Nations, it seems, need ritual; they demand to be performed. The frequency with which modern nations have staged ritual performances proves the point. The modern Japanese nation is no exception. In Japan, as elsewhere, national ritual has commended itself as a vital technique for intervening in mundane time and space and to engage the people — without whom the nation has no meaning. Participants in national ritual performances go beyond a national ‘imagining’ to a corporeal, sensory experience of the nation. Rituals are emotional events, after all, and in turn they have a vital ability to generate and articulate the passionate yearning — otherwise known as nationalism — that people have for the nation.
