Throughout the history of modern Japan there has been a continuous struggle to create an integrated conception of how a politically and/or culturally autonomous Japan might relate to a pluralistic and interactive world. The aim of this study is to scrutinise nationalist and internationalist rhetoric by means of comparatively constant factors such as personal views of humanity, civilisation, progress, the nation and the outside world, and thus to develop new approaches towards the question of the relationship between Japanese nationalism and internationalism. This project brings together a group of comparatively young scholars who analyse how different generations of opinion leaders in the Japanese pre-war modern era tried to solve what they perceived as the dilemma of nationalism and internationalism.

In Representing Empire Ying Xiong examines Japanese-language colonial literature written by Japanese expatriate writers in Taiwan and Manchuria. Drawing on a wide range of Japanese and Chinese sources, Representing Empire reveals not only a nuanced picture of Japanese literary terrain but also the interplay between imperialism, nationalism, and Pan-Asianism in the colonies. While the existing literature on Japanese nationalism has largely remained within the confines of national history, by using colonial literature as an example, Ying Xiong demonstrates that transnational forces shaped Japanese nationalism in the twentieth century. With its multidisciplinary and comparative approach, Representing Empire adds to a growing body of literature that challenges traditional interpretations of Japanese nationalism and national literary canon. “Representing Empire is an outstanding accomplishment, at once making clearer and complicating our understandings of the literary worlds of Manchuria and Taiwan, and the greater imperial empire within which all were transformed. ... add[s] substantially to the ways in which Japan’s empire and twentieth century East Asian history more generally might be interpreted.” Norman Smith, University of Guelph, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center Publication (February, 2015)

The International Minimum tells the history of internationalism in Japan from the 1930s to 1960s, shedding light on the deep connections between modes of diplomacy during times of aggressive imperial expansion and of peaceful cooperation. For most of the twentieth century, a rhetoric of international cooperation for peace and stability persisted as the lingua franca of foreign relations in Japan and around the world, even during the years of rampant nationalisms and global war. The advocacy and practice of multilateral cooperation, though attenuated and often distorted and abused, did not disappear during the years of aggression and war, but instead were channeled into new and unexpected directions. With a broad view of international relations that takes into account but also looks beyond the official sites of multilateral cooperation, this book uncovers a continuous evolution of internationalist thought and activity in Japan that extends across the dark valley of war and the historiographical schism of defeat. Acknowledging this continuity does not mitigate the violence and atrocities of the wartime regime. But recognizing that institutions, activities, and rhetoric that were derived from the Wilsonian internationalism of the 1920s contributed to imperialism and war, as well as to the postwar construction of a peaceful and democratic "new Japan," does help us understand the enthusiastic participation in war and empire in the years before 1945 by many of the same people in all sectors of Japanese society who eagerly embraced postwar structures of cooperation for peace and shared prosperity. This study rethinks the standard narrative of Japan's international cooperation in three ways: by taking seriously those international activities conducted outside of formal state-level relations, by examining cultural forms of international engagement, and by asserting the importance of rhetoric in cultivating what was then referred to as an "international mind." Rather than signaling the demise of multilateral participation, Japan's infamous withdrawal from the League of Nations became, in fact, the occasion for the diversification of internationalist activities. For instance, proponents of a "people's diplomacy" campaigned to bring the 1940 Olympic Games to Tokyo and established the Society for International Cultural Relations, a national organization for international cultural exchange. But as Japanese society was increasingly mobilized for war, even such popular and cultural efforts at international cooperation were made to contribute to the imperialist project. In the decade after the war ended, familiar internationalist rhetoric became a keystone in the construction of a so-called new Japan. This book traces the evolution of the internationalist worldview in Japan by examining both official policy and general discourse surrounding epochal moments such as Japan's withdrawal from the League and admission into the United Nations, the failed and successful attempts to host a Tokyo Olympiad, and wartime and postwar regional conferences in Tokyo and Bandung, Indonesia. Bringing these varied elements together produces a synthetic history of internationalism, imperialism, and the performance of diplomacy in the twentieth century, when new global norms required a minimum level of international engagement. This story is told through the materials of both high diplomacy and mass culture. Unpublished documents in government and private archives reveal one layer of the formation of Japanese internationalism. The public discourse found in popular journals, books, newspapers, advertisements, poems, and songs articulates what would become the common-sense views of international relations that helped delineate the realm of the possible in imperial and postwar Japanese foreign policy.

Lincicome offers a new perspective on Japanese educational debates and policy reforms that have taken place under the guise of internationalization since the mid-1980s. By contextualizing these developments within a historical framework spanning the entire twentieth century, he challenges the argument put forward by education officials, conservative politicians, and their supporters in the academy and the business world that history offers no guide for addressing the educational challenges that face contemporary Japan. Combining diachronic and synchronic approaches, Lincicome analyzes repeated attempts throughout the twentieth century to Ointernationalize educationO (/kyoiku no kokusaika/) in Japan. This comparison reveals important similarities that transcend educational policy to encompass Japanese conceptions of individual, national, and international identity; relations between the individual, the nation, the state, and the international community; and the type of education best suited to negotiating multiple identities among the next generation of Japanese subject-citizens.

Inventing the Way of the Samurai examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' - bushidō - which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan'. Rather than a continuation of ancient traditions, however, bushidō developed from a search for identity during Japan's modernization in the late nineteenth century. The former samurai class were widely viewed as a relic of a bygone age in the 1880s, and the first significant discussions of bushidō at the end of the decade were strongly influenced by contemporary European ideals of gentlemen and chivalry. At the same time, Japanese thinkers increasingly looked to their own traditions in search of sources of national identity, and this process accelerated as national confidence grew with military victories over China and Russia. Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidō became a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.

This book examines the history of the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) and through it offers a new account of the humanitarian movement in modern Japan. Michiko Suzuki argues that contrary to its typical portrayal, the JRCS was not wholly subordinate to the government and the Imperial Family, nor was it derivative of Western values and institutional models. Instead, the JRCS operated within a transnational discourse, both contributing to and borrowing from peacetime and wartime international humanitarianism. Grounded in extensive research in the JRCS archives and archives outside Japan, this book explores the melding of Western and Japanese humanitarian traditions and organizational forms. Suzuki examines the role of grassroots efforts in the steady growth of the JRCS, showing how the society became Japan’s largest international organization by the First World War, as well as its pioneering role in Red Cross disaster relief. She traces the inclusion of non-Western national societies in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the evolution of the JRCS from a national into a transnational organization with branches in Japan’s overseas empire as well as in the Asia Pacific and the Americas. A comprehensive chronicle of the JRCS, Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire provides a fresh vantage point on major historical questions relating to Japanese modernization and internationalism before the Second World War.

In this book, seven internationally renowned experts on Japanese and Asian history have come together to investigate, with innovative methodological approaches, various aspects of the Japanese experience during and after the First World War.

Covering a wide chronological period, this clearly presented book brings together leading specialists in the field to discuss how notions of 'nationalism' in modern Japan impinges on all aspects of social, political and cultural understanding of the Japanese nation.

The twentieth century, a time of profound disillusionment with nationalism, was also the great age of internationalism. To the twenty-first-century historian, the period from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Cold War is distinctive for its nationalist preoccupations, while internationalism is often construed as the purview of ideologues and idealists, a remnant of Enlightenment-era narratives of the progress of humanity into a global community. Glenda Sluga argues to the contrary, that the concepts of nationalism and internationalism were very much entwined throughout the twentieth century and mutually shaped the attitudes toward interdependence and transnationalism that influence global politics in the present day. Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism traces the arc of internationalism through its rise before World War I, its apogee at the end of World War II, its reprise in the global seventies and the post-Cold War nineties, and its decline after 9/11. Drawing on original archival material and contemporary accounts, Sluga focuses on specific moments when visions of global community occupied the liberal political mainstream, often through the maneuvers of iconic organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations, which stood for the sovereignty of nation-states while creating the conditions under which marginalized colonial subjects and women could make their voices heard in an international arena. In this retelling of the history of the twentieth century, conceptions of sovereignty, community, and identity were the objects of trade and reinvention among diverse intellectual and social communities, and internationalism was imagined as the means of national independence and national rights, as well as the antidote to nationalism. This innovative history highlights the role of internationalism in the evolution of political, economic, social, and cultural modernity, and maps out a new way of thinking about the twentieth century.

Mass Media, Consumerism and National Identity in Postwar Japan addresses Japan's evolving nationalism and national identity in relation to its newly rising consumerism during the two decades from 1952 to 1972, through a study of the transformation of the print media and the market for weekly and monthly magazines. Martyn Smith argues that the transformation of the print media in the 1950s and 1960s expanded the possibilities for social, individual and national identities in Japan. From the late 1950s, the growth in the market for weekly magazines was fuelled by the huge potential for advertising revenue, the rapid development of the Japanese economy, and the necessity for the growth of a consumer society. This resulted in the merging of national identity with individual subjectivity – which this book describes as 'national subjectivity' – as the Japanese media promoted individual consumption to aid the recovery of the Japanese nation as a whole. Examining housewife magazines such as Fujin Koron, Fujin no Tomo and Fujin Gaho, as well as news magazines such as Mainichi Graph and Asahi Graph, and publications aimed at young people – Shukan Heibon and Heibon Punch – Smith shows how the relationship of nationalism to everyday life is best understood by taking into account the changing nature of consumption in the period. By presenting an alternative to the traditional 'top-down' narrative of state-driven economic nationalism, this book therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of postwar Japanese history and Japanese nationalism.