ABSTRACT
In this concluding chapter,1 I will attempt to make some general remarks about some of the more salient themes which emerged from our collective study. What comes out most strongly in each of the individual case studies in this volume is the complexity of nationalism in modern and contemporary Japan. There were many manifestations of nationalism, or to put it provocatively, many nationalisms, because there were many different nationalists with many different experiences. The fact that Goto-Shibata’s ‘internationalist nationalists’, Large’s ‘nationalist extremists’, Siddle’s ‘Ainu nationalists’, and Rose’s Tsukuru-kai (Society for History Textbook Reform), as well as Koizumi Jun’ichiro¯, can all be lumped together under the umbrella of ‘nationalist’ is remarkable to say the least. More to the point, it underlines the highly complex nature of nationalism which can be used (and, indeed, abused) to describe and explain a myriad of ideas and experiences.
