Social Science Japan Journal Vol. 10, No. 2, pp 281–286 2007
Published online November 1, 2007

doi:10.1093/ssjj/jym045............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Review Essays
Focusing in on Contemporary Japan’s ‘Youth’ Nationalism
HONDA Yuki*
Puchi Nashonarizumu Sh
o k
ogun: Wakamono-tachi no Nipponshugi (Petit Nationalism Syndrome: K
Young People’s Japan Doctrine), by Kayama Rika. Tokyo: Chuooron Shinsho, 2002, 208 pp.,
U680 (paperback ISBN 4-12-150062-8)
Warau Nihon no ‘Nashonarizumu’ (A Sneering Japan’s ‘Nationalism’), by Kitada Akihiro. Tokyo:
NHK Shuppan, 2005, 172 pp., U720 (paperback ISBN 4-14-091024-0)
Fuan-gata Nashonarizumu no Jidai (The Era of Unstable Nationalism), by Takahara Motoaki.
Tokyo: Y
osensha, 2006, 256 pp., U780 (paperback ISBN 4-86248-019-5)

Since around the turn of the century, the shift of Japan’s youth toward the political right and the upsurge of nationalism, in particular, has become the subject of much debate. The fanatical support of
the national team in World Cup Soccer tournaments, the singing of the national anthem ‘Kimi ga yo’
in unison; the ‘Japanese language boom’, the increase in young people worshipping at Yasukuni
Shrine, and the popularity of the comic book Ken-Kanryu (Hating the Korean Wave) are but someof the examples cited as evidence of this trend. In this article, I would like to take up some major studies in recent years that deal with this type of youth nationalism, and look back on how interpretations
and analyses of this phenomenon have come to proliferate.
As a representative study of Japanese youth nationalism, Kayama Rika’s Puchi NashonarizumuShok
ogun: Wakamono-tachi no Nipponshugi (Petit Nationalism Syndrome: Young People’s Japan
Doctrine) notes the ‘nonchalance’ of young people amidst events like the aforementioned World
Cup, assigning to their manner of remarking without hesitation that they ‘love Japan’ the label ‘petit
nationalism’. As a psychiatrist, Kayama points out that within the background of this type of petit
nationalism, which might also be thought of as a child-like ‘make-believe patriotism’ bereft of any
historical awareness, there exist factors such as the lack of an Oedipus complex based on conflictconcerning one’s birthplace or personal history, a ‘split’ or ‘estrangement’ that functions as............................................................................................................................................................................................................

HONDA Yuki is an Associate Professor of Comparative Sociology in the Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo.
Her research focuses on the sociology of education. She is the author of numerous books, including Wakamono to Shigoto(Young People and Work), Tokyo: Toky
o Daigaku Shuppankai, 2005, and Tagenka Suru ‘Noryoku’ to Nihon Shakai (Pluralizing ‘Ability’ and Japanese Society), Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2005. She has also coauthored ‘Nito’-tte
Iu-na (Don’t Say‘NEET’), Tokyo: K
obunsha, 2006, with Naito Asao and Goto Kazutomo. She can be contacted at the Faculty of Education,
University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan; or by email at yuki@educhan.p.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
*Translated from the Japanese by Reginald Jackson.
ª The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press in conjunction with the University of Tokyo. All rights reserved.

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HONDA Yuki

a psychological mechanism for attempting to avoid discord and distress, and a mentality that tries tomaintain one’s personal identity by taking another person to be one’s own ‘other self’ or ‘mirror image’.
Kayama also contends that the principal bearers of this petit nationalism are a clever and sophisticated elite class that easily embraces a realist worldview and a middle class attempting to align itself
with that outlook. On the other hand, she mentions that with the lower class in France, among people
such as those constituting the base layer of support for the extreme right, ‘patriots whose patriotism isexpressed as dissatisfaction with their nation’s society or criticism of the intelligentsia’ is set in motion
by a feeling of hopelessness and depression; she warns that if hereafter the class gap in Japan widens
further and the basic middle-class constituency sinks to become low class, there is a danger not of petit
nationalism, but of radical nationalism spreading.
One notable feature of Kayama’s argument is that in addition to performing an interpretive analysis
that invokes concepts from psychology, she also classifies multiple types of nationalism and indicates
the ways in which they correspond to their supporters’ social status. Overall, within an argument into
which numerous social scientific observations are incorporated, the parts of the explanation that depend upon psychology give the impression of being unsubstantiated. What’s more, other discussions
besides this one, too, are not based upon reliable data. Indeed, it could even be said that, from start tofinish, they put forth a theory of general impressions dependent upon examples and anecdotal episodes. That said, however, this book does grasp a portion of contemporary Japanese youths’ consciousness and behavior vis-à-vis ‘the nation’. Moreover, there is no disputing that it has had
a considerable impact in arousing social interest in such issues.
Nonetheless, the results of a few opinion surveys performed with high-school students as the objectof study substantiate the points Kayama makes regarding the correlation between categories ofnationalism and social status. For example, (OnoMichio 2003) points out that a ‘soft’ nationalism
involving a ‘disposition of mutuality’ (sogosei shiko) in which one enjoys both Japan and foreign countries can be observed among high-school students in society’s elite stratum. Moreover, Kim Akihide’s(2001) analysis demonstrate that among students at high schools grouped as having low academic
performance rates, the incidence of those who support ‘xenophobic nationalism’ was high, while atnonspecialized high schools having high rates of academic performance, the percentage of students
in favor of a ‘nationalism tolerant of foreign cultures’ was high. According to Kim’s analysis, thepercentage of students supporting ‘democratic antinationalism’ (minshuteki-na han-kokkashugi) in specialized high schools with high performance levels is rising; this is a very intriguing detail inasmuch as
it suggests a different kind of disposition among Japanese youth toward nationalism.
However, there are some who are critical of Kayama’s above-mentioned petit nationalism. For
example, (Asaba Michiaki 2004) criticizes the evidence Kayama presents as symptoms of young people’s shifting inclination toward the right as being ‘further evidence of nationalism’s attrition’, which
is like giving ‘the impression of crying wolf when startled by the withering pampas grass’. In rebuttal
to this criticism from Asaba, Kayama (2004) goes further to say: ‘While it is not really my intent to takeup the present state of affairs in a particularly exaggerated manner and lament them pessimistically, thereal circumstances can’t help but seem even more pressing, regardless of how one thinks about them’.
In the same book, Kayama points out that the individual feelings of anxiety and insufficiency at thefoundation of youth nationalism are amplified by the mass media as well as the discourse of voluntary
restraint wherein no one dares to utter a word of dissent. Kayama’s argument, that the anxieties andconflicts of an individual ‘me’ that get bound together with supporting the ‘nation’ has a profoundpersuasive force on people’s ideas of nationalism.
In line with Kayama’s fears, in the 30 August 2004 issue of the magazine AERA an article entitled‘20-Somethings’ ‘‘Hard’’ Nationalism’ appeared about the symptoms of a petit nationalism evolving

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into a ‘hard nationalism’. In this article, the results of a 4 April 2004 Asahi Shinbun public opinion
poll were published that showed a high rate of approval among people in their 20s and 30s for things
like Prime Minister Koizumi’s Yasukuni Shrine visits to pacify the nation as well as the dispatch of SelfDefense Forces to Iraq. Following from Kayama’s work, arguments based on this type of nationalism
theory, that attempt to situate contemporary youth nationalism within the circumstances of society as
a whole or within a longer historical span, have been developed by several scholars.
Two representative works in this vain are Kitada Akihiro’s Warau Nihon no ‘Nashonarizumu’(A Sneering Japan’s ‘Nationalism’) and Takahara Motoaki’s Fuan-gata Nashonarizumu no Jidai(The Era of Unstable Nationalism). The former puts forth an argument about the disposition bolstering the ‘nationalism’ seen in Japanese youth from 1990 to 2000 from a point of view that emphasizes
a series of changes in the form of ‘reflection’ (hansei) occurring in each period of postwar Japan.
Kitada terms the contemporary youth consciousness that he identifies as projecting simplisticallythe identity anxieties of ‘me’ onto ‘nation’ as ‘existentialist romanticism’, and he sounds out its origin
by examining retrospectively the ‘reassessment of one’s relationship with the world’ (i.e. reflection)
occurring in each earlier period.
According to Kitada, the first half of the 1960s and 1970s in Japan was a period of political reflection evident in the intensification of the student movement; and the Mt Asama Villa Incident
fomented by the Red Army in 1972 represents the pinnacle of this period of ‘reflection’. As a resultof the limits of this type of ‘self-criticism’ as self-reflection being felt strongly by people, in the following period of the mid-1970s until the start of the 1980s a ‘lack of reflection as protest’ arose against
the kind of reflection typical of the 1960s, expressing itself in the form of an irony (or parodic turn)of consumer society. But afterward, during the 1980s, 1960s had already been forgotten and theconsumer society-like cynicism, which did away with the ‘as protest’ part of the phrase, spread in popularity having assumed a self-perpetuating, institutionalized guise.
Kitada states that 1990–2000 was a period in which the cynicism reversed as the 1980s’ nonreflection turned to further reflection and, through that shift, a kind of romantic ‘emotion’ (kando) capableof connecting people to others was yearned for; and the nationalism of this period, too, was evoked asa romanticized object. But what is significant is the continuation of a formalized cynicism during thisperiod, and that, on that point, nationalism too ends up being nothing more than simply ‘source material’ selected to suit the needs of the moment. In this sense, at the same time that Kitada demonstrates fixed support for Asada’s observation of contemporary youth nationalism as ‘nothing
special’, he also makes clear with regard to Kayama Rika’s recognition of the danger involved that precisely because it is a nationalism supported not by thought, but by a grassroots feeling that guides devotion, it is not an unfounded concern.
Kitada depicts a social consciousness that moves of its own accord within Japanese society, one thatproceeds to change as it drags along the inheritance of a former epoch. This type of analysis makes
possible a multifaceted understanding concerning what kinds of meanings nationalism holds for contemporary Japanese youth. However, in Kitada’s analysis, the perspective attentive to social strata, as
pointed out by Kayama, falls away almost completely. As for how extensively the mixture of romanticism and cynicism he depicts in Japanese youth has been observed (i.e. what kind of social grouppossessing particular features has become the bearer of that amalgam) that much is left undemonstrated. This weak point is intimately related to Kitada’s technique of employing specific pundits’remarks and posts on the electronic bulletin board 2Channeru in order to add to his interpretation
as he strings together particular cases and episodes.
On the other hand, Takahara Motoaki builds upon the arguments of Kayama and Kitada, elaborating an analysis that adds the perspective of factors like macroeconomic shifts and employment

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HONDA Yuki

changes. Takahara emphasizes the pluralism within any country’s nationalism, differentiating in particular between the ‘rapid-growth type’ of nationalism called forth to foment things like a nation’s
development and citizens’ sense of unity, and the ‘individual anxiety type’ of nationalism held by thatclass of people put into a state of unease with the shift toward a technologically mobile society.
Namely, he argues that within the context of society’s progressive change from mass production to
rapid consumption, amidst bureaucracy’s shift to individual management and the widening income
disparity where everyone was once ‘entirely middle class’, that social stratum comprised of young people, in particular, cannot help but feeling extraordinarily disconcerted in terms of the infrastructure of
their daily lives and their outlook for the future. That unease and dissatisfaction is being expressed not
toward their own country, but instead as hatred toward countries like Korea and China: this, asserts
Takahara, is individual anxiety type (kobetsu fuan-gata) nationalism. Frequently, this is manifestedon the Internet in the form of caricatured portrayals of other countries, which he calls ‘nationalismcum-hobby’ (shumi-ka sareta nashonarizumu).
Additionally, Takahara also states that the fact that these two distinct types of nationalism show an
uncanny alignment is peculiar to Japan. Because the rapid-growth type of nationalism constituting thefoundation of a Japanese kind of ‘corporate ideology’ produces a stratum of unsettled youth outside
the bounds of the ‘company’ as the cost of preserving the stability of that elder generation residing withinthe ‘company’, it should be intrinsically opposed to the individual anxiety type of nationalism harboredby that group of young victims. However, Takahara takes a critical tone in pointing out that to thoseparticipating in the system, as well, the relationship between these two age groups is not recognizedor differentiated clearly and, consequentially, the latter is subsumed conveniently into the former.
According to Takahara, young people’s internal individual unrest and dissatisfaction manifests itself
outwardly as nationalism. As such, with regard to such aspects as the recognition that those anxieties
are encouraged by the escalation of society’s increasing fluidity and widening income disparity, hisargument shares much with the view Kayama designates as ‘petit nationalism syndrome’, and again, there
is also commonality with Kitada in terms of pursuing the origin of the contemporary situation through its
historical background. But Takahara himself, nonetheless, criticizes Kayama’s psychological explanation,
calling it ‘a posture in which the emergence of the problem is reduced to the individual’, whereby aspects
like social structural background and latent intergenerational conflicts of interest are spelled out more onjust the outer surface. Even on the point of presenting ‘rapid-growth type nationalism’ as a category ofnationalism, Takahara draws a line between people like Kayama and Kitada’s viewpoints and his own.
The existence of these two types of new and old nationalism, along with their possession of convergent aspects despite their being dissimilar, is demonstrated through Oguma Eiji and Ueno Y
oko’s
fieldwork, conducted at a branch of the Society for Creating New History Textbooks (Atarashii
Rekishi Ky
okasho o Tsukuru Kai). However—according to Takahara—(Oguma and Ueno 2003), like
Kayama and Kitada, merely place stress on describing the background rather than diagnosing suchthings as the actual circumstances of Japanese youth nationalism evident in the anti-Korean andanti-Chinese discourse on the Internet, with the result that a frequently mentioned symbolic phenomenon is no more than remarked upon briefly in the text.
In this essay, I have introduced the work of Kayama Rika, Kitada Akihiro and Takahara Motoaki as
the principal arguments concerning youth nationalism in contemporary Japan. While employing psychology, the successive transformation of societal consciousness and societal structure, respectively, as
explanatory schemata for macrocosmic shifts, these three scholars also present youth nationalism as
being tied to individual anxieties, insouciance or an inclination toward romantic feelings, hobbies
and elements of play—all aspects that evince the characteristic of a kind of common ‘lightness’ theirworks all share.

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However, one other feature common to these youth nationalism theories is that they do not placesignificance on the task of making conclusively clear the configuration of things like the level and typeof nationalism among contemporary Japan’s youth as a whole. Instead, they take prominent, pinpointed matters and incidents as the grounds upon which each of their respective interpretations
or explanations is constructed. Rather than term these ‘features’ of the theories, then, it might bemore apt to call them limitations.
With regard to this point, Suzuki Kensuke (2006) makes some interesting observations based onsocial survey data. According to Suzuki, the results of numerous surveys concerning the presenceof patriotism showed that more than young people, the feeling of love for one’s country strengthened
as age increased. In addition to this, a survey aimed at college students found that only 6% of them had and those who frequently followed 2Channeru did not exceed
read the comic book Ken-Kanryu,
roughly 10%. Based on these findings, Suzuki makes the following conclusions regarding young people’s
patriotism: ‘First, it’s a small strata of society; second, if you examine this small strata, it appears to be
merely an expression of opposition to adult society that is distinct to youth; third, if you examine the vast
part of society, it is something closer to a kind of nativism (kokyo-ai) than patriotism (aikokushin)’. He
then warns that the mass media’s demagoguery is far more dangerous than any threat posed by young
people’s beliefs.
In actuality, according to an Asahi Shinbun public opinion poll, as well, which was carried out in
December 2006 (Asahi Shinbun, morning edition, 25 January 2007: 16), the percentage of respondents who indicated that they felt ‘a great degree of patriotism’ was correspondingly higher with age,with less than 10% of people in their 20s answering positively to this item. The percentage of respondents agreeing with the views that ‘Japanese people should have love for their country’ and ‘love for
one’s country should be taught in schools’ was, in addition, generally lower with younger people.
The former notion was supported by 63% of the total survey participants and by 46% of respondents
in their 20s, while the latter notion was supported by 50% of the total sample population and only 34%
of people in their 20s. If these findings do indeed show Japanese nationalism to be a problem, thenthey speak to the fact that—more than young people—nationalism among the middle aged is a trendthat deserves closer scrutiny.
Nonetheless, while the percentage of people answering ‘I feel pride at my being Japanese’ was its
lowest within the 30-and-younger age tier polled in the ‘2005 Global Value System Survey’ conducted by the Dentsu Research Collective, among those below 29 years of age, it had once again increased moderately, making for results slightly different from those of the Asahi survey. Notably,
when one looks at the progression among all age groups on the same issue (e.g. 1990: 62%, 1995:
60%, 2000: 54%, 2005: 57%), no general increase is evident.1 In addition, according to the findingsof the 2000 survey, which included 60 countries worldwide, there were only three nations with percentages lower than Japan, which was close to the bottommost level.2
On the other hand, however, according to the results of Manabe Kazufumi’s (1995) comparative
survey among 23 countries on the issue of affection toward one’s country (Manabe 1995), the percentage of respondents expressing affection for their ‘country’ (kuni) was 95% in Japan, making it
the second highest among all 23 countries. In this manner, depending upon the survey entries’.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

1. See http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/;honkawa/9466.html.
2. See http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/;honkawa/9465.html.

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wording or the period when they were conducted, Japanese people’s nationalism exhibits differing
aspects. However, the trend that nationalism is strengthening in Japan among young people especially, at the very least, cannot be observed from these data. To be sure, this type of questionnaire
can capture no more than the mere surface of societal phenomena or people’s consciousness. In orderto grasp the real circumstances, a methodical investigation that makes the most of the advantages ofboth qualitative and quantitative data is needed.
However, what we might reconsider is whether or not nationalism among young people is reallya problem at all. Instead, is not the foremost problem that the efforts of politicians and the mass media
to drum up and exploit nationalism can be observed more and more blatantly? Regardless of whattypes of changes might hypothetically be seen among young people from this point forward, weshould probably take them to be the product of intentional manipulation or incitement. In orderto suppress and control the violent recklessness of nationalism, in addition to removing to the fullest
extent possible the fundamental factors causing young people’s internal unease and dissatisfaction,a constant critical investigation of policy and media, which possess ample power to influence society,has become crucial for the future of contemporary Japan.

References
Asaba Michiaki. 2004. Nashonarizumu: Meicho de Tadoru Nihon Shis
o Nyumon(Nationalism: An Introduction to JapaneseThought through the Classics). Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho.
Kayama Rika. 2004. Watashi no Aikokushin (Patriotism of ‘Me’). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo.
Kim Myonsu. 2001. ‘Kokosei no Itadaku Nashonarizumu’ (Nationalism as Embraced by High-School Students). In GendaiKok
osei no Keiry
o Shakaigaku (Computational Sociology of Contemporary High-School Students), ed. Ojima Fumiaki.
Tokyo: Minerva Shobo: 183–201.
Manabe Kazufumi. 1995. ‘Nashonaru Aidentiti no Koz
o’ (The Structure of National Identity). Kansai Gakuin Daigaku
Shakai Gakubu Kiyo (Kansai Academy University Sociology Department Bulletin) 82: 145–156.
Oguma Eiji and Ueno Yoko. 2003. ‘Iyashi’ no Nashonarizumu (A Nationalism of ‘Healing’). Tokyo: Keio Gijuku Daigaku
Shuppan-kai.
OnoMichio. 2003. ‘Nashonarizumu no Shoso’ (Aspects of Nationalism). Monogurafu/Kok
osei, vol. 69, Kok
osei kara Mita
‘Nihon’—Nashonaru-na Mono e no Kankaku (Monograph/High-School Students, vol. 69: A Sense of ‘Japan’ as
a National Entity as Viewed by High-School Students). Tokyo: Benesse Mirai Ky
oiku Senta: 45–49.
Suzuki Kensuke. 2006. ‘‘‘Aikokushin’ o Kataru nara Shiminteki Gimu mo Katare’ (If One Speaks of ‘Patriotism’, Speak Also of
Civic Duty). Senki 1238: 4.