“Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan” by Matthieu Felt
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…
