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ArticlesJapanese Nationalism and East Asia
KATSURAJIMA Nobuhiro*

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Popular Nationalism

The process of dissolution of “early modern empire” in East Asia and theformation of popular nationalism is situated between the end of the eighteenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries.1 Needless to say, the directcause of this transformation was the eastern advance of world capitalism (theworld=economics), but first, I will briefly summarize popular nationalism.2 In
general, popular nationalism is a limited sense of belonging to a community
imagined by the ancients as seen in texts. This sense of belonging is imagined to have been true for all of the people in the nation since ancient times;
it could be said to constitute a fabrication in the temporal phase of themodern era. Ethnicity and ethnic consciousness are nothing but products ofthis process. The root of that sense of belonging lies in imagined linguistic,
consanguineous, and cultural (emotional) communities. Nevertheless, despite
the fact that analysis of the documents bequeathed to us by the ancients
elucidates the imagined sense of belonging of only a small number ofancients, the impact of such texts extends into the modern era, and theirauthors are imagined as “peoples (ethnic groups) who existed historically.”	  * Ritsumeikan University
1 See my “Kinsei teikoku no kaitai to 19 seiki zenhanki no shisō dōkō”(Dissolution of Kinsei teikoku and Philosophical Trends in the Early Part of the
Nineteenth Century”『 近世帝国 』の解体と 19 世紀前半期の思想動向 in Nihonshisōshi kōza 3 (Lectures on Japanese Intellectual History 3) 日本思想史講座
3 (Perikansha ぺりかん社, 2012).
2 For information on popular nationalism I referred to the 2007 NTT Shuppan
Japanese translation by Shiraishi Saya 白 石 さ や of Benedict Anderson’s
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism(originally published in 1983); Kang Sang-jung 姜 尚 中, Nashonarizumu(Nationalism) ナショナリズム (Iwanami Shoten 岩 波 書 店, 2001); and Ōsawa
Masachi 大澤真幸, Nashonarizumu no yūrai (Origins of Nationalism) ナショナ
リズムの由来 (Kōdansha 講談社, 2007).

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These are imagined as self-evident. Of course, the print revolution and spreadof vernacular language, as well as the role of the military, should not be
discounted, but as Benedict Anderson postulates, a definitive role in theformulation of people’s nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe was playedby “editors of vernacular dictionaries, grammarians, linguists, and scholars ofliterature” in the formulation of an academic system for scholarship on
ethnicity. This was an important moment in the fabrication of popular nationalism (imagination) globally in the twentieth century. Accordingly, popularnationalism became axiomatic during a long process that spanned some
hundred years between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Ultimately, popular nationalism can be construed as becoming
embedded in popular consciousness as the result of the paradigm in whichimperialism constituted wars of aggression; schools, modern scholarship; andlanguages, national languages.

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Formation of Popular Nationalism in Tokugawa JapanThe first occurrence of popular nationalism in Tokugawa Japan could beconsidered the formation of modern National Learning as represented byMotoori Norinaga (1730–1801).3 Tracing nationalism back to its origins, thefirst set of issues in modern National Learning after the debate on Japaneseuta 歌 poetry and morality (Kokka hachiron), was the question of what new
significance was to be attributed to the uta and classical Chinese poetry, which
existed as class culture and ceremonies that transcended national boundaries,
and in which people of various social strata were beginning to participate.4
Kada no Arimaro 荷田在満 (1706–1751) understood the concept as poetry for
sport (ganka 翫歌 or tawamure 戯れ), while Tayasu Munetake 田安宗武 (1715–1771) attempted to explain the issue using Zhu Xi-style moral prescriptions.
The early period of the debate between Arimaro and Munetake was merely ademonstration of how contemporaneous uta were redefined, which was acontinuation of questioning of the origins of uta and Chinese poetry divestedof class culture, as well as its place in the culture of their day.5 Their cognition of the vicissitudes of uta in relation to those of classical Chinese poetry
and their interpretations had more commonalities than differences. That is, it
can be said that they and uta existed in an early modern imperial community.
3 Katsurajima Nobuhiro 桂島宣弘, Jita ninshiki no shisōshi (Intellectual Historyof Cognition of the Self and Others) 自 他 認 識 の 思 想 史 (Yūshisha 有 志 舎,
2008).
4 Usami Kisohachi 宇佐美喜三八, Kinsei karon no kenkyū (Study of Early Modern
Theories of Japanese Poetry) 近世歌論の研究 (Izumi Shoten 和泉書院, 1987).
5 Toki Zenmaru 土岐善麿, Zōtei Kokka hachiron (Enlarged and Revised Editionof Kokka hachiron) 増訂国歌八論 (Kaizōsha 改造社, 1943).

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Motoori Norinaga, however, published a commentary to Kokka hachironthat circulated among the intelligentsia and at the same time brought forward
a new debate centered on issues of “Yamato kotoba” (native Japanese words)
and the community of emotion. Prior to this was Kamo no Mabuchi’s 賀茂真淵 (1697–1769) praise of uta (poetry) in kamiyo 神代 (the age of the gods) andespecially of the nature uta 歌 selected from the Manyōshū, which he considered the essence of uta. Mabuchi claimed that the “spirit of the age of thegods”6 could be known through “uta,” and by extension, the “way of thegods” could also be known through what is “attained in nature.”7 Moreover,
Mabuchi’s emphasis on a “return to an ancient” natural, gentle “age of thegods” was equivalent to “restoration.” There is a tendency to interpret restoration as a pre-modern historical consciousness rooted in a historical view ofdecline, but here Japan in the age of the gods is linked to Mabuchi’s present(Tokugawa Japan). The focus must be on a temporally and successively
completed interior that gives rise to thought. The philosophy of restoration in
National Learning (as distinct from the philosophy of restoration found in
Confucianism) gives rise to an imagined “historical Japan” through the structure in which the current era is reflected via the age of the gods. In his Goikō
語意考 and Kokuikō 国意考 Mabuchi conceptualized this as “the country where
the sun rises.” He extolled the fifty sounds of Japanese, the language of the“age of the gods,” and criticized the country of the Tang (China).
It is noticeable that Motoori Norinaga’s imagined “imperial nation’s(Japan’s) language of the age of the gods” goes a step beyond Mabuchi’s. In
Kokuikō, Mabuchi also states that “one can know the spirit and language ofthe age of the gods through uta from the age of the gods, and through thatmeans, can understand the gods themselves.” He advocated a method for
elucidating “the way of the world of the gods” through the “language of theage of the gods.” Yet in Goikō, Mabuchi understood the “sounds” in thelanguage of the age of the gods to be “the natural sounds of heaven andearth” and did not change his stance that depended upon “nature.” Thus, the“language of the gods” in Mabuchi can be found in “nature.” Here vestiges of
pre-Mabuchi early modern imperial thought can be seen. Motoori contrasted
Chinese poetry, which “only expresses an unsettling rationalism,” withJapan’s “imperial” uta through which the “emotions and language of the age
6 I have used suitable modern translations for historical materials and quoted
sections. Same below.
7 I used the versions of the Niimanabi 邇飛麻那微, Goikō 語意考, and Kokuikō
国意考 in the 19-volume Kamo no Mabuchi zenshū (Collected Works of Kamo
no Mabuchi) 賀茂真淵全集 (Zoku Gunsho Ruijū Kankōkai 続群書類従刊行会,
1980).

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 5 2014of the gods” via the “elegant spirit and language of the age of the gods”
constitute the “disposition of the country of the gods.”8
While relying on this “spirit and language of the age of the gods,” Motoori
put forward a “difference” in languages fabricated in ancient times, thereby
interpreting “the largely different” “state of language” as the core of communality. That is, “the separation between the interior and exterior in all things
is of the utmost importance.” The difference arising from “Japan as the interior and China as the exterior” (in Karaosame no ureta migoto 馭 戎 慨 言) is
clearly fabricated in “the language of the age of the gods,” signifying ahomogeneity of “the empire of Japan” from the “state of the language” interpreted as having absolutely no compatibility. At the end of the eighteenth
century, Motoori’s statement naturally was not yet a discourse that had
acquired self-evidence. The role of modern scholarship was of definitive
importance for the assertions by Motoori and others to become culturalliteracy among the populace; indeed, a time span of over a century wasnecessary. It was the “discovery” of the work of Motoori and the Kojiki 古事記 and Manyōshū 万 葉 集 through modern Japan’s popular nationalism thatmade the discourse become a truism.9
Such assertions of National Learning arose in the peripheral “early modern
empire,” Tokugawa Japan, where Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism tookroot the latest of all. It could be said that the consolidated systematic andsocial Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism in Qing China and Joseon Korea
were never amenable to popular nationalism. But it is not our place to evaluate the phenomenon positively or negatively. Rather, what must be scrutinized is the unequal rise of popular nationalisms within the “early modern
empires” of East Asia. Eventually, this inequality strikingly damaged andimpaired East Asian cooperation and unity.

3

Modern Japanese Scholarship and East Asia: China

It is said that prior to Muraoka Tsunetsugu 村岡典嗣 (1884–1946), Motoori
was not considered a particularly important intellectual in Tokugawa Japan.10

8 I used the versions of Iso no kami no sesame goto 石上私淑言 and Karaosame
no ureta migoto 馭戎慨言 in the Motoori Norinaga zenshū 本居宣長全集, Vols.
2 and 8 (Chikuma Shobo 筑摩書房, 1965–1993).
9 Koyasu Nobukuni 子 安 宣 邦, “Norinaga mondai” to wa nanika (What Is theNorinaga Problem? 「 宣長問題 」とは何か (Chikuma Shobo 筑摩書房, 2000);
Shinada Yoshikazu 品 田 悦 一 Manyōshū no hatsumei (Discovery of the
Manyōshū) 万葉集の発明 (Shinyōsha 新曜社, 2001).
10 Maeda Tsutomu 前 田 勉, “Kaisetsu: Nihon shisōshigaku no tanjō” (Birth ofJapanese Intellectual History: Commentary) 解 説 ― 日 本 思 想 史 学 の 生 誕 in
Muraoka Tsunetsugu 村岡典嗣, Shinhen Nihon shisōshi kenkyū (New Edition:

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Even if there is no focus on Motoori, however, it must be said that modern
Japanese scholarship, from its origin as successor to Motoori, and above all,national Japanese history, which is an inseparable part of nationalism, theorized Asia—especially China—expressly as the “other” for self-representation. That is, where national history was recorded and its qualities narrated,“things not of Japan,” or “the source of Japan,” as well as “things without
common qualities” or “things with common qualities” assumed East Asia, andin particular, China, as the main actor in the background. Of course, the longshadow of Western Orientalism influenced the notion that East Asia (China)
is “the other.” In this sense, it is thought that it was the opposing position
toward “contempt” by the West toward East Asia and China that invited sucha structure. Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1856–1944), who is considered one of
the individuals who established national Japanese history and Japanese intellectual history, stated: “When Japanese walk down Western streets…they aredespised as Chinese. Being called a Chinese can be considered a slur.” Heplainly states that “in order to clarify the level of progress achieved by
Japan,” which differs from that of China, “it is imperative that we Japanese
research historiography and disclose to Europe Japan’s history so that theymight know about it in Europe.” Herein clearly lies “the value of Oriental
history.”11 Inoue eventually wrote the trilogy known as Nihon Yōmeigakuha
no tetsugaku 日本陽明学派之哲学 (Philosophy of Japan’s Wangyang Ming
School; 1900), Nihon kogakuha no tetsugaku 日本古学派之哲学 (Philosophy ofJapan’s School of Ancient Learning, 1902), and Nihon Shushigakuha no
tetsugaku 日本朱子学派之哲学 (Philosophy of Japan’s Neo-Confucian School,
1905), which I will discuss below. Of course, these works were composed inorder to “clarify the level of progress achieved by Japan.”
There is, however, an even more essential background for the necessityof Japanese intellectual history to make China “an inescapable other” fromthe beginning in order to attain a self-representation that was coincidental
with (and deeply related to) such counter Orientalism. Most works considered
to be examples of National Learning (including works understood as manifesting “pure” Japanese philosophy such as the Kojiki and Manyōshū) were
written in classical Chinese script (regardless of whether they were written inclassical Chinese 漢文 or in Manyō-kana 万葉仮名) or were written directly inthe language of Confucianism or Buddhism (that place over there: China)
Even in this sense, it must be said that for the writing of Japanese intellectual
Research on Japanese Intellectual History) 新編日本思想史研究 (Heibonsha
Tōyō Bunko 平凡社東洋文庫, 2004).
11 Shigakkai zasshi 史学会雑誌,Vol. 24, 1891. In Inoue Tetsujirō shū 井上鉄次郎集,
Vol. 9 (Kuresu Shuppan クレス出版, 2003).

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history, Chinese script, and China, which came to be recognized as the birthplace of Chinese characters in the modern era, was from the beginning literally an “inescapable” entity for self-representation.12 What Motoori did earlier
was to extirpate Chinese characters (kana-ji, 仮字) as the language of an “alienland.” He stated that through the removal of kana-ji he wanted to secure thetruism of “the imperial country,” which foreshadows the experience ofJapanese intellectual history in the modern period a priori.
Conversely, the fact that China could never be the “other” for Confucian
intellectuals in Tokugawa Japan within the paradigm of “early modern
empire” should not be overlooked. Looking solely at works on intellectual
history, the Confucian history texts most representative of the Tokugawa era,
Shinbun genryū 斯文源流, written by Kakuguchi Seisei 河口静斎 (1703–1754)
in 1750, and Naba Rodō’s 那波魯堂 (1727–1789) Gakumon genryū 学問源流
(1794), for example, reflect pithily on the conduct of Confucianists after
Fujiwara Seika 藤原惺窩 (1561–1619) from the following perspective seen in
Shinbun genryū: “How can I possibly say that Confucianism, the canon ofheaven and earth, is my own discourse? Adhering to personal theories anddisdaining the saints and previous scholars is something small-minded peopledo.”13
Gakumon genryū similarly describes the history of Confucianism, focusing
on the period after Fujiwara Seika. In particular, Naba Rodō devotes many
pages to the schools of Confucianism of Itō Jinsai 伊 藤 仁 斎 (1627–1705),
Ogyū Sorai 荻 生 徂 徠 (1666–1728), and Yamazaki Ansai 山 崎 闇 斎 (1619–1682). He criticizes their extreme theories and advocates instead a proper
Neo-Confucianist stance.14 What is of most importance here is that none of
12 For information on China as “the inescapable other” I have relied heavily on
Koyasu Nobukuni 子安宣邦, Kanji-ron 漢字論 (Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店, 2003).
Koyasu subsequently has continued poignantly dissecting modern Japan (especially “Showa Japan”) and the “China problem.” I learned much from him formy discussion points here from his texts, “Ajia” wa dō katararete kita ka「アジア」はどう語られてきたか (Fujiwara Shoten 藤原書店, 2003) and Nihonjin wa
Chūgoku o dō kattate kita ka 日本人は中国をどう語ってきたか (Seidosha 青土社, 2012), etc. In contrast, Korea has continued to be suppressed owing to its
self-image. “China, which is always mentioned, and Korea, which is
obscured,” could be said to be important issues for examining the structure ofJapan’s self-image even today (as well as its own referenced scholarship), buthere I must leave the “Korean problem” aside. Koyasu Nobukuni has also
made keen observations on the “Korean problem” and narratives of national
origins in Edo no shisō 江戸の思想,Vol. 4, 1996.
13 In Kinko bungei onchi sōsho 近 古 文 芸 温 知 叢 書, Vol. 3 (Hakubunkan 博 文 館,
1891).
14 In Nihon bunko 日本文庫, Vol. 6 (Hakubunkan 博文館, 1891).

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the texts on intellectual history or the history of Confucianism in the
Tokugawa era attempted to narrate histories of Japan or Japanese thought.
There is mention of the differences between “them and us,” as in: “TheKoreans have Korean customs and Ryūkyū and Japan have Ryūkyūan andJapanese customs; such phraseology is unavoidable. The poetry by Qing
Chinese has Qing Chinese expressions.” Naba’s main point was not to calibrate the singularity of each, but while recognizing divergence in era andplace, to advocate “that of course the keystone of the truth of Confucianism
could not be achieved without compositions and poetry, or without a truthfuland honest heart.” The “compositions and poetry” that Naba refers to were
naturally written in classical Chinese. While acknowledging the “Japanese
harmony in poetry recitations” 和気和習 (waki washū ), the Gakumon genryū
concludes that by striving for sincerity 誠 (makoto) it should be possible toarrive at the values common to China and Japan by excluding that “Japanese
harmony in poetry recitations.” In other words, China and Japan wereperceived to share a unified world and era (“empire”).
Accordingly, the otherization of China, premised on the dissolution of the“early modern empire” and severance of the imperial bond, was an inevitablestructure based on the creation (fabrication) of Japan’s self-image harking
back to the beginning of the ancient era. These primordial structures wereacknowledged by Motoori, as mentioned above, but can be considered problems encountered immediately at the point that Fukuzawa Yukichi 福 沢 諭 吉(1835–1901) wrote Bunmei-ron no gairyaku 文明論之概略 (1875) and Taguchi
Ukichi 田口卯吉 (1855–1905) wrote Nihon kaika shōshi 日本開化小史 (1877–
1882). It is common knowledge that Bunmei-ron no gairyaku presented Chinaas the opposite extreme when it asserted that “Western civilization was thegoal,” but Nihon kaika shōshi also vividly narrates the same structure of
tracing the civilization of Japan as a process whereby “what should be
conveyed about ancient writing in our country today is that it actually beganwith classical Chinese,” and from there, that “we write using Japanesegrammar.”

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Japanese Intellectual History and China

Next I will examine how Japan and China were described at the end of
the Meiji period, considered the beginning of Japanese intellectual history.
First I will discuss the text Nihon Sōgakushi 日本宋学史 (1909) by Nishimura
Tenshū (1865–1924). Of course, Nishimura became prominent as the chief
editor of the Osaka Asahi shinbun 大阪朝日新聞. Here the issue under review
is that he was already a scholar of Chinese classics who was aware ofmodern scholarship (and not a Confucianist). Nishimura states in the prefaceof the Nihon Sōgakushi:

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The foundation of the ethics of our Japanese citizens derives from ourintrinsic virtues since the age of the gods, influence of Confucianismthat arrived in Japan during the reign of Emperor Ōjin, and promulgation of Buddhism that began in the reign of Emperor Kinmei (509–571).
These three factors were forged in one “bellows.”… Confucianism andBuddhism worked together and contributed greatly to improvement in
ethics and development of the liberal arts. It must be said that it is thisthat makes our national polity different from that of China. With our
unbroken line of emperors, and unique virtues from the age of thegods—which is as eternal as heaven and earth—as our essence, we haveachieved a comprehensive assimilation of both Confucianism andBuddhism. Thus, Confucianism has become Japanese Confucianism, andBuddhism has become Japanese Buddhism. All three have become fused
into one, and have cultivated the Japanese spirit and the way of thewarrior (bushidō).15
Here the account in the Nihon Sōgakushi from the end of the Meiji period
describes thoroughly the kinds of perspectives and possibilities there were.
Nishimura traces the establishment of “unique virtues,” and interaction withthe two “foreign philosophies” of Confucianism and Buddhism as a history of“harmony” and “comprehensive assimilation,” the result of which was that
“Japanese Confucianism,” “Japanese Buddhism,” the Japanese spirit,” “theway of the warrior,” and ultimately, “popular ethics” arose. That is, inJapanese intellectual history, the “unique value” of Japanese philosophy could
be found by stripping away all “foreign thought.” The notion of “comprehensive assimilation” of the “foreign philosophies” of Confucian and Buddhist
thought to those “unique values” was itself Japanese philosophy. On the other
hand, he had a strong awareness of the source of such philosophy, China, inwhich, unlike the “harmony” of Japanese Confucianism and Buddhism, “theessence of Confucianism was the expulsion of heresy,” and “Buddhism
labeled Confucianism and Daoism as heterodoxies, so that these mutual accusations have been made for a very long time.”
I would like to elaborate a little more on how such theories formed thedescribed framework (proprieties) of Japanese intellectual history at the time.
15 Published in 1909 by Ryōkōdo Shoten 梁江堂書店, pp. 1–8. For information on
Nishimura Tenshū 西村天囚, see: Godaiin Yoshimasa 後醍院良正 (Original andSupplement) “Wakakihi no Tenshū”「（正・続）若き日の天囚」in Kaitoku 懐徳,
Vols. 36 and 37, 1968–1969; Umetani Noboru 梅 溪 昇, Osaka gakumonshi noshūhen 大阪学問史の周辺 (Shibunkaku Shuppan 思文閣出版, 1991); Machida
Saburō 町 田 三 郎, Meiji no Kangakusha tachi 明 治 の 漢 学 者 た ち (Kenbun
Shuppan 研文出版, 1998), etc.

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Haga Yaiichi’s 芳 賀 矢 一 (1867–1927) Kokuminsei jūron 国 民 性 十 論 (1907)
became the forerunner of Nihonjinron (theories of Japanese identity) against
the backdrop of Japan’s leap into imperial status after the Russo-Japanese
War (1904–1905). In Kokuminsei jūron, Haga states:
Our country was influenced from early times by Chinese culture, andtook in Indian civilization through China. Furthermore, while the countries of the Orient today all atrophy, only our nation has entered theleague of world powers. Recently, the effects of importing Western civilization have become strikingly notable. In what way was our country’s
culture influenced by the civilizations of India and China? To what
extent did the people of our country absorb them and develop themselves? At the same time that we reflect on our happiness today, we musttake serious precautions about our future. We must know the past to plan
well for the future.16
Haga states plainly that “only our nation has entered the league of world
powers” after the Russo-Japanese War, which is “our happiness today,” andthat to understand that process, the task should be assigned of learning how
Japan was influenced by “Indian and Chinese civilizations,” and how Japan“absorbed and developed them.” When we examine Haga’s ten “national
traits” today, they certainly appear to be listed arbitrarily, but it must be notedthat his references reflect a constant cognizance of the West and comparison
with China. Examples include his statement that “Chinese also observe
ancestor worship, but in revolutionary countries such as China, it is meaningless to link this attribute to the nation.” Here “ancestor worship” is considered a Japanese “national trait.”
The trilogy by Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 mentioned earlier is perhaps thefirst comprehensive treatment of Tokugawa intellectual history. Comprised of
Nihon Yōmeigakuha no tetsugaku, Nihon kogakuha no tetsugaku, and Nihon
Shushigakuha no tetsugaku, the trilogy contains the following such statements:
As expounded by Nakae Tojū 中 江 藤 樹 (1608–1648), the ancient sages
had a “Japanese spirit imbued with Chinese learning;” they analyzed theChinese classics with a Japanese spirit, and without being consumed by
the Chinese classics, our countrymen took the standpoints they shouldtake, and resolutely established [Japanese philosophy]….Tojū emphasized filial piety the most among the various virtues. We should take
16 Fuzanbō hyakka bunko 8 Nihonjinron 冨山房百科文庫⑧日本人論 (Fuzanbō 冨山房, 1977), p. 128.

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note of this point. Filial piety was the code of ethics of ancestor worship(Ahnenkultus). Wherever filial piety is found, ancestor worship is always
present….Filial piety links ancestors and descendants; the fate of bloodties depends on the strength of the state of filial piety. The Japanese race,
however, descends from one distant ancient tradition, and has never been
thrown into confusion by other races since the founding of our country;
we have formed one great blood-line and built a one-family nation
because we have a homogenous language, manners, customs, andhistory….It is for this reason that the cult of filial piety has an important
relationship with the destiny of the Japanese race. In particular, filial
piety in Japan is the loyalty that is inside oneself. Because the nation ofJapan is formed from one family system, just as one is filial to the fatherof the family, he is filial to the sovereign of the country.17
Nakae Tojū offers an evaluation from the viewpoint that they “analyzed
the Chinese classics with a Japanese spirit, and without being consumed by
the Chinese classics,” and in particular portrays them as the embodiment of a“filial piety” that is the “code of ethics of ancestor worship” with an “important relationship with the destiny of the Japanese race.” In addition, in Nihon
kogakuha no tetsugaku the “activism” “unique to the Japanese race” is understood as being advocated through the Confucianists of the Kogaku School 古
学 派 (School of Ancient Learning). For example, Yamaga Sokō’s 山 鹿 素 行(1662–1685) “theory of the nation” is praised; his “theory of the morality ofthe samurai” also examines critically Nitobe Inazo’s 新渡戸稲造 (1862–1933)
Bushidō: The Soul of Japan, and evaluates the “constitution” of bushidō, the“spirit of which continues in the minds of the masses.” He regards Itō
Jinsai’s “activism” “not as negativism,” but as the “manifestation of thenature of the Japanese race” “that innately requires active development.”
Further, in Nihon Shushigakuha no tetsugaku, Neo-Confucianism is ranked as“our own system of education during the three-hundred years of theTokugawa, which has influenced greatly the development of national ethics.”
Through these volumes, the process of the unique development of
Neo-Confucianism in Japan and the process of its convergence into a national
ethical theory is portrayed. The eras are divided into three periods; the firsttwo are described as a preparatory period for Neo-Confucianism to take rootin Japan from its flowering under Fujiwara Seika to the Kansei Edict 寛 政 異学 禁 of 1790, which banned all forms of Confucianism except Neo17 Fuzanbō 冨山房, 1900, pp. 155–156. Subsequent quotes are from first editionsof Nihon kogakuha no tetsugaku 日 本 古 学 派 之 哲 学 and Nihon Shushiha no
tetsugaku 日本朱子学派之哲学, which were all published by Fuzanbō Press.

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Confucianism. The third period is described thusly: “Even when direction was
lost during the encounter with the tempestuous period of the Meiji
Restoration, there was an eternal, indestructible truth in the ethical theory.”
Here, too, references are accompanied with declarations such as:“Confucianism is something that was produced together and was intoned by
the Chinese intelligentsia as ethical education beginning with Confucius.”“The people who came afterwards should have developed it even further, butthey did not develop it very much. Among the Confucianists in Japan,
Yamaga Sokō, Itō Jinsai, and Ogyū Sorai were such people, but none of thelater people did anything.”
As is clear above, whatever the content, the uniqueness of Japanesephilosophy is assumed. Theories dealing with the development of Japanesephilosophy, such as the manner of acceptance of the “two religions ofConfucianism and Buddhism” stipulated as culture from abroad, “can be seenin Japan’s own cultural homogeneity.” It is possible to see how theories that
understood the development of Japanese thought through interaction (inclusion, assimilation) with such foreign cultures arose as expressly modern
academic knowledge. A surgical operation was performed on all Japanesethought until the end of the Tokugawa period using the two scalpels of
uniqueness and difference. As an operation to extract Japan subjectively from
East Asia and China, the process prescribed the “proprieties” of Japanese
intellectual history.
Of course, if all self-expression is the product of the expression of theother, it is perhaps natural that the desire for self-expression inevitably
accompanies such a structure or “proprieties.” Nevertheless, the fact that theEast Asia (early modern empire), and China that were formerly within are still
understood with an extremely ambivalent feeling indicates that they must at
the very least be functioning to shake the very foundations of the Japanese
self-image. In that sense, Japanese popular nationalism and East Asia/China
share a profound and inescapable relationship even today. In order to disentangle that relationship and create transnational scholarship, a means to face
popular nationalism itself deconstructively must be sought.