Twentieth-century Japan was an ideocracy. It was organized around an ideology called State Shintō which asserted, among other things, that the emperor was divine and the Japanese unique. It begat all manner of theories about the Japanese (Nihonjinron): it was claimed that the Japanese race is a unique isolate thanks to living in an island country (shimaguni) with a unique climate (fūdo); that the Japanese heart (Yamatogokoro) is the true heart or “spirit” (magokoro) as opposed to the Chinese heart (karagokoro); that the Japanese language is unique and causes the Japanese to think in particular patterns unparalleled in other human languages; that the Japanese have a special human relationship (ningen kankei) in which the self and the other are fused (jita gōitsu); and that there is no real individual (kojin), only groupism (shūdan-shugi). This kind of thinking was so strong that people were jailed for speaking out against it.
Author: BVE Hyde
Empire or nation-state? This question has driven much argument in Chinese academic circles. These arguments take more than one form, however. The political view of China as a nation-state has focused very much on the question of sovereignty and international relations. But there is also a claim about Chinese culture and national identity: the question of what China is vis-à-vis what it means to be Chinese.
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