ABSTRACT
There is a tension between Kawai’s assertion that “Japan is a society of ‘puer eternus’ grounded on the maternal principle” and Japan’s martial history: particularly the rise and expansion of the Japanese empire under the Meiji restoration. This chapter posits that the humiliating psychological seppeku demanded of Emperor Hirohito resulted in a cultural enantiodromia: from a Bushido, masculine culture prior to defeat in World War II to Kawai’s “strong maternal principle.” The psychic astriction of Hirohito’s with its concomitant abdication of divinity was a psychological emasculation. A god emasculated in front of his people lends credence to Kawai’s notion of puer eternus as it relates to the post-World War II Japanese psyche.
