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In this paper, I discuss the conflicting views of Japan's mission in the world and national moral education held by Yamaji Aizan and Inoue Tetsujirō, two eminent intellectuals of the Meiji and Taisho periods. In doing so, I suggest that one can not understand the dilemma that Japanese intellectuals faced when they realized the limits of Meiji modernization if one simply labels them as 'nationalists'. Inoue Tetsujirō made a sharp distinction between Japanese culture and other cultures and regarded foreign countries as a threat to Japan. Inoue attempted to establish the Japanese spirit embodied in bushido as the basis of 'state-centred education' (kokkashugi kyōiku), while believing that Japan's mission was to spread this unique spirit to the world. In opposition to such arguments, Yamaji Aizan criticised Inoue's idea of Japanese cultural uniqueness, which he thought could hinder cross-cultural understanding. Yamaji was also opposed to Inoue's method of investigating Japanese spirit in history and utilising it as the basis of national moral education. Instead Yamaji asserted that there was a common humanity behind the different manners, customs and ways of thinking in each nation. Although often considered an imperialist, Yamaji believed that Japan's mission was to promote better cross-cultural understanding by removing prejudice and discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nihon fukeiron (Japanese Landscape), written by Shiga Shigetaka (1863-1927), a journalist and geographer, is widely recognized as his most representative geographical text and also one of his most controversial works. The debate centres on whether his purpose in broadening his contemporaries' understanding of Japan's natural environment was educational or imperialistic. Shiga is known among scholars of Japanese modern intellectual history as the pioneering advocate of kokusui shugi (maintenance of Japan's cultural identity) in the face of increasing pressure from the West in the late 1880s. He perceived that the traditional Japanese elements that were so much a part of the lives of the Japanese people had their foundation in geography. This paper demonstrates that his immediate goal in praising Japan's geography was to arouse national awareness and pride and to alert his countrymen to Japan's position in the fast-changing world order. Furthermore, Nihon fūkeiron was a rational geographic treatise and a travelogue in the Western style that suggested a new way of viewing the Japanese landscape. It was his attempt to express the abstract concept of kokusui in a more practical way and to provide concrete evidence of Japan's 'excellence and uniqueness'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1990s Japan appears to be in the grip of a revisionist trend which many people associate with the emergence of neo-nationalism. This paper argues that, while the leading proponents of revisionist history in the 1990s are superficial and intellectually unpersuasive, they nonetheless ought to be taken seriously by Japan scholars. Through a study of the 'Liberal School of History' and the ideas and person of its figurehead, Fujioka Nobukatsu, the logic expounded by revisionists and the alleged historical antecedents for these ideas are identified. The tumultuous context of the 1990s, including the Gulf War, death of Hirohito and the fiftieth anniversary of defeat in 1945, have provided a fertile environment for arguments in favour of a more patriotic history education for Japanese junior and senior high-school students. Conservative and rightist politicians across party lines have developed activist groups in support of Fujioka's programme, and he has received considerable financial backing from the private sector. Analysis of 1990s revisionism reveals a closer affinity with pre-war and wartime nationalism than with any kind of 'new' post-war nationalism. It has revived a Statecentred nationalism that explicitly regards post-war democracy as its ideological enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction provides a brief overview of some of the ways the Meiji Restoration is being commemorated at home and around the world in this sesquicentennial year. Doing so demonstrates the complexity of this history and current remembrances of the event and the new era it launched. It also serves to introduce the six essays in this volume, and the ways they problematize the Meiji national paradigm to reveal inherent tensions between the development of Japanese nation-building and nationalism and the country's engagement with globalizing forces. Focusing on the idea of "Global Meiji" highlights the era as both national and global. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's new treaties with the Western powers came into force in the summer of 1899. These signified Japan's recognition as a modern state, but also opened the whole of Japan to residence and commerce for the nationals of the Western powers. This article examines Japan's legislative response to this new era of both political equality and expanded foreign intercourse and exchange. This comprised two new laws, Japan's first nationality law and new entry restrictions, both of which defined the boundaries of Japanese identity. The West played a paramount role in the crafting of these laws, but often forgotten is the role played by China. By examining the international contexts and the debates that attended the passage of these laws, this article shows that each law enacted a form of exclusion: the former sought to mitigate Western influence, while the latter sought to minimize Chinese immigration. Together, they reflected Japan's international position between two others: China and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares and discusses the third series of kokugo tokuhon (national language readers) used in Japan between 1918 and 1932, and the first series of kokumin tokuhon (national readers), used in Taiwan between 1913 and 1923. The study points out that the materials introducing the world (including geography and history lessons, adaptations of foreign literary texts, episodes from the life of great men of science, etc) are considerably more numerous in the Japanese readers than in their Taiwanese counterparts. Following the two different processes of (intended) national identity formation via a detailed analysis of the materials and illustrations in the two sets of textbooks, the article also sheds light on the way the Taiwanese tokuhon attempt to replicate successful methods of earlier Japanese textbooks, while at the same time anticipating some of the trends visible in subsequent readers from Japan proper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often ideology is downplayed in the study of Japanese politics. The Seirankai is important because it was a clearly ideological right-wing group of politicians. The group and its former members certainly pushed forward the right-wing ideological agenda in the decades after its formation but assessing its impact is not straightforward. The Seirankai and the fate of its members demonstrate the tension between ideology and standard narratives of political success in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The promulgation of Japan's first modern constitution in 1889 was followed by a festival, which saw the inaugural cheering of banzai by crowds to greet the Meiji Emperor as he passed by. Respect for the imperial family had been gradually building during the previous decades, but for many of the Japanese people the Emperor remained a mysterious, distant being, when not simply an inconvenience. It was only in 1889, with the cheering of banzai, the singing of the national anthem and the dissemination of the imperial portrait, that the Emperor became a fully modern monarch. This article explores the significance of this moment for the relationship between Emperor and people and for the latter's development of their self-awareness as a nation. The constitution was problematic, in that many people were excluded from the electorate, but cheering banzai provided a moment when the Japanese people could experience a sense of unity with each other and their sovereign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the creation of a new visual environment in interwar Japan through the mass production and extensive distribution of movie advertisements. It explores both the theory and the practice surrounding the production of such advertisements, as well as the figural aesthetics by which they were informed. It argues that figural aesthetics amounted to the creation of a visual milieu, which can be characterized as ubiquitous, distractive and ephemeral. Moreover, the aesthetics was incorporated as an effective mode of appeal into both commercial ads and national/imperial propaganda from the 1920s through the early 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Sino-Japanese relations by looking at how negative sentiments towards Japan among the Chinese population are deployed as a form of political capital in struggles among the Chinese Communist Party elite. It gains insights into this process by looking at how such sentiments have been deployed to challenge the legitimacy of three CCP leaders since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, resulting in the downfall of two. The conclusions from these case studies are then used to understand how the current Chinese leadership has engineered the 'new starting point' in the relationship with Japan in the context of the movement from a 'winner takes all' type of factional politics into one characterized by 'power balancing' among the elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at animation in conjunction with jun'eigageki undo, the Pure Film Movement, that challenged the popularity of mainstream commercial shinpa film and period drama film to advocate the birth of 'Japanese cinema' in Taisho Japan. This means a return to an historical moment when the cinema was being discursively constructed as an object of knowledge in Japan. At that time, animation was not defined as distinct from cinema in terms of social regulations or production concerns. As a result, animation was largely treated in the same way as cinema, and was shaped together with it under similar conditions. Animation, together with cinema, came under the scrutiny of public educators, censors and national ideologues - at the same time that film reformers were arguing for effective uses of camera and narrative in cinema. The point of intersection for these diverse concerns was the construction of a national cinema for international dissemination. Cinema in Japan emerged as national cinema, formed by specific discourses on 'Japan' and on 'cinema'. Animation in Japan was inseparable from this 'Japanese cinema'. Thus, by exploring animation in conjunction with the construction of cinema in Taisho Japan, this article examines what it means to talk about something like anime or 'Japanimation' in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of nationalisms in Japan and China in the 1980s and 1990s aroused much interest in Western, Chinese and Japanese academic and journalistic circles and prompted some analysts to speculate about potential conflict between China and Japan. This article questions such arguments by examining nationalisms in China and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies similar trends in the resurgence of state nationalism and cultural nationalism in both countries, and argues that, although élites in both countries were active in promoting patriotism in the 1980s and 1990s, their efforts had limited impact, whereas cultural nationalism, on the other hand, managed to capture the popular mood. The article suggests that, nonetheless, because both types of nationalism were predominantly inward-oriented responses to domestic and external changes, relations between China and Japan remained relatively stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]