Seeking Economic Nationhood: The Political Economy of the Formation of the Japanese Community
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Wang, James W.Y.
Abstract
This is a study of “late nationalism” that originated from the second half of the nineteenth century, with specific attention to the Japanese nationalism. Theoretically it asks why the people in late-developed area came to shift identity from Hans, literally feudal clans in Japanese, to the modern state. Empirically it explains the rise, expansion, and transformation of national identity of the metropolitan Japanese and colonial natives. This study follows the historical structure approach to construe identity formation as a historical process. The East countries had to integrate and mobolize the people in order to react to the expansion of the West imperialism. Consequently nationalistic sentiment emerged as the main thinking to motivate the people in the East to stand behind the same national flag. Economically and politically, nationalism not only turned out to be the piloting strategy to build Japanese capitalism and to construct national identity, and became the ideology for the state to rule with political legitimacy. This was the identity strategy of the East countries for survival conforming the nineteenth-century hegemonic order of the Westphalia system. Considering that the poli-economical formation of national identity may transform according to different temporal-spactial scenarios, three typologies, ethno-nationalism, statism and Kukomin Shugi, namely civic-nationalism, are indicated to explore historical process of identity formation. apan, as the first non-western nation-state and imperialism, is a perfect, and unique as well, case to explore the approach of an East country to counter the pressure of double marginality, non-West and colonization. If nation-building and state-building in Japan are teleogical to reesist against the West hegemonic order, this origin that spawns Japanese national identity can be parodoxically liberative and oppressive. By reviewing the poli-economic formation of nation identity in three historical period, ethno-nationalism, statism, and civic-nationalism became main paradigm of nation identity in respective temporal frame: firstly, under the pressure of western imperialism, the legitimacy of Baku-Han Teisei (幕藩体制), liberally Baku-Han regime, was undermined and replaced by the modern Meiji state in order to unite the feud clans to build a strong country. Capitalist development and Koku-tai (国体) were imperative to resist against colonization of West imperialism; secondly, Japanese imperialism was substantialized after she defeated Ch’ing China and Russia and acquired new territories. But this would not alter the nature of “petty capitalism” that is vulnerable to external shocks. Since the mid-1920s, Showa panic and world-scale financial crisis seriously sabotaged Japan’s economy. Japanese fascists took the reign and were committed to transform the parliamentary governmnt as “total war” regime. The total war regime was built to mobalize political, economic, and thought forces to conduct expansive warfares in East Asia in order to change existent regional order that was dominated by West imperial states. Subsequently the statism turned into ultranationalism that ambitiously created Great East Asia Co-prosperity Circle and a new metropolitan Japan-colony-new occupied territory order to solve Japan’s dilemma of modernization. The state highly penetrated society during this period. Nevertheless, the defeat of the Pacific War set the demise of ultranationalism and terminated the Japan-center regional order; thirdly, democratization and non-militarization after WWII made Japan a U.S. ally in the west Pacific. Incrementally the revitalization of Keiretsu and civil society shrank the clout of the state to shape national identity. The rise of civic-nationalism became the focal point to understand post-war nationalistic movements.
Subjects
Japan
National Identity
Nationalism
Statism
Kokumin Shugi
civic nationalism
SDGs
Type
thesis
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