Identity Formation

As the Japanese economy grew to unprecedented levels from the 1960s onward, many Japanese began to shift their attention from rebuilding to issues of national identity. Ultranationalist attempts to reinstate the prewar ideology met with fierce resistance. The old prewar flag and national anthem were not restored until 1999; attempts to resuscitate the prewar imperial house were opposed in the National Diet and by segments of the Japanese public. Nihonjinron (Discourse on Japaneseness) eschewed these prewar symbols of Japanese identity but emphasized themes that were present not only in the first half of the twentieth century but earlier.

The concept of a unique Japanese culture owes much to the pioneering ethnographer Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962), who in the 1930s and 1940s attempted to integrate his fieldwork observations of Japanese localities into a unified understanding of Japanese culture. The concept of a single "national character" underlying local diversity was also evident in the writing of intellectuals like the philosopher Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945), who sought to balance the influx of Western thought and values into Japan by identifying Japanese alternatives. Nishida argued that there was a distinctive Japanese consciousness which arose out of the relationship between Japanese and their land, mediated through the transcendent figure of the emperor. Unlike later Nihonjinron advocates, however, Nishida held a universalistic vision: Japanese consciousness was transferable to non-Japanese and should be communicated to the world community.

The influence of Yanagita and Nishida is evident in the Nihonjinron writings of the 1970s and 1980s. The Japanese people were assumed to be a homogenous group (see "Multiethnic Japan") that had derived much of its cultural character from wet-rice agriculture, which required cooperation in irrigation, encouraged collective efforts, and therefore led to a group orientation. Japanese culture was by definition unlike any other. Evidence for this proposition could be found in the Japanese language, which some claimed to be unique among world's languages. Nihonjinron proponents argued that the unspoken rules of social intercourse among Japanese had many subtleties that outsiders could never hope to comprehend. This unique blend of homogeneous ethnicity and shared values was ostensibly the prime reason for Japan's outstanding economic success in the post-war period. The Japanese management system and work ethic were supposedly products of Japanese cultural uniqueness.

That Nihonjinron had a mass audience was evident from the hundreds of books and articles written on the subject that were devoured by Japanese. Japanese firms who were expanding their presence overseas took up these ideas and propagated their own literature, both to explain themselves to foreign businessmen but also to instruct their employees on how they might improve their communications with non-Japanese.

Although Nihonjinron publications continued to appear in the 1990s, the peak of its popularity coincided with the peak of Japan's economic prosperity. The collapse of the economy in 1991 and its subsequent stagnation have cast doubt on the validity of the thesis of Japanese uniqueness for many Japanese. Although variations of the idea of a distinctive Japanese culture continued to be developed, recent scholarship re-evaluating Japan's relationships with Korea and China suggest yet another alternative in Japan's post-1868 quest for an identity that separates itself from a Eurocentric perspective. Whereas the Meiji period of nation-building saw Japanese scholars create a new field of "Oriental Studies" (Tōyōshi) that placed Japan at the pinnacle of Asian historical development, in the 1990s new scholarship openly acknowledged Japan's historical borrowings from ancient Korean states and analyzed premodern history in terms of Asian systems of economic and political exchange.