‘Self’ and ‘other’ in imperial Japan

Nationalisms are rarely consistent in content; what remains permanent are their bases in national consciousness. Depending upon the specific historical context, nationalism has most often been expressed in terms of economic or territorial expansion, the establishment of political sovereignty, or social and cultural norms of behaviour. In contrast, national consciousness, which serves as a pre-condition to the development of nationalism, implies the existence of historically embedded and culturally transmitted assumptions concerning the imagined community of the nation and its citizens. The modality of nationalism that emerged in the context of post-Restoration Japan was one that idealized cultural and racial homogeneity as the foundation of the nation state.