ABSTRACT

I begin by examining the concept of nationalism in order to clarify the type of national myth examined in this essay. 1 Second, I locate the origins of one contemporary Japanese national myth in the historical condition of Japan's total defeat in World War II. The postwar myth of Japan as a homogeneous “ethnic nation” (minzoku) 2 gained hegemonic status in the national imaginary beginning in the 1950s and continued into the early 1990s, the “lost decade” of economic growth following the bursting of the “bubble economy,” when it went into decline. It survives to this day, although in a diluted form. 3 Third, I discuss the origins of this particular myth in the early stages of Japanese modern-state formation in the Meiji period (1868–1912). The Meiji myth of ethnic homogeneity, however, soon ran up against the state's commitment to a colonial policy of assimilation of the subjects of its overseas empire, and gave way to a political conception grounded in the status of all inhabitants of the empire as imperial subjects. Fourth, and finally, I relate the rebirth of the myth of the Japanese ethnic nation to the radically transformed conditions of Japan after 1945.