Arrival of the Emperor at Tokyo after the Victory (1895), Source; Met Museum

National Myths and Nationalism in Contemporary Japan

Kiyonobu Date (Sophia University)

3.00 - 5.00 p.m. │ Des mythes nationaux du Japon contemporain : Entre le besoin de démythification et de déconstruction
Discussants: Jean-Michel Butel (INALCO), Patrick Michel (CNRS-EHESS)John Nilsson-Wright (University of Cambridge)
5.00 - 7.00 p.m. │ Identity, Populism and the Romantic Impulse: Japan and the Politics of Nostalgia
Discussants: Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS), Jean-Frédéric Schaub (EHESS)

Thursday 21 February 2019

From 3.00 to 7.00 p.m.
EHESS, Room BS1_28
54 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

National Myths and Nationalism in Contemporary Japan
Chair: Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS), Frédérique Matonti (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)

National Myths of Contemporary Japan

Wavering between Demystification and Deconstruction

Identity, Populism and the Romantic Impulse
Japan and the Politics of Nostalgia│3.00 - 5.00 p.m.

│5.00 - 7.00 p.m.

│Language: French│Language: English

Studying national myths can provide insight into (religious) faiths and sets of valuethat have contributed to maintaining the operation of a particular social system. It isespecially the case for a country like Japan, where the boundaries between the secularand the religious are not so clear-cut. Certain national myths have helped sustain ourbelief in the prolongation of so-called “postwar” era, but some of these myths have
proved not as tenacious as what people have believed. In this lecture, I will take up
three myths: the myth of ethnic homogeneity, the myth associated with the end ofwar and the myth that nuclear power is safe. This will enable us to critically revise theassumption about the “peaceful state” of postwar Japan. In the social sciences, myths
and faiths are often negatively perceived as something requiring disillusionment, but I
w ould like to argue that some aspects of national myths which have contributed to thesustenance of peace should be preserved or even renewed.

Anti-globalization and the emergence of populist/authoritarian politics in Europe andNorth America suggests that the pillars of the post-1945 era are crumbling. In Japanand South Korea, political tensions are frequently shaped by divisions over competingnarratives of national identity. Understanding the appeal of these narratives and theromantic impulse that drives some leaders to embrace contentious historical arguments
at home, while practicing rational, pragmatic politics abroad, highlights the danger ofassuming that countries such as Japan will remain immune to the populist contagion.

Kiyonobu Date is Associate Professor of the Department of French Studies in theFaculty of Foreign Studies at Sophia University (Tokyo). He received his PhD degree atUniversity of Lille 3 (co-direction with EPHE) in 2007. He has published a monograph,
L’Histoire religieuse au miroir de la morale laïque, Editions Keisô, nov. 2010. He iscurrently interested in religious studies in special reference to French, Quebecois andJapanese secularism.
Discussants: Jean-Michel Butel (INALCO) & Patrick Michel (CNRS-EHESS)John Nilsson-Wright is Senior Lecturer in Modern Japanese Politics and International
Relations in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University ofCambridge. His work concentrates on the Cold War relationship between the UnitedStates and Northeast Asia, with particular reference to the security and political
relationships between the United States and Japan and the two Koreas, but has
expanded to include contemporary regional security issues and political change.
Discussants
Hamit Bozarslan is Professor at EHESS. His research interests focus on the history ofmodern and contemporary Turkey, the Kurdish issue, the question of minorities in theMiddle-East, and the history and sociology of violence in the Middle-East.
Jean-Frédéric Schaub is Professor at EHESS, Director of Excellence Laboratory
TEPSIS and of Politika.io website, specialist in Iberian Studies. His latest book is Race
Is about Politics: Lessons from History (2019, Princeton University Press).