The Quest for the Primordial. An Inquiry into the Nationalist Rhetoric of Contemporary Japan

Although fifty years passed since the boom of the theories on Japanese national character and considerable academic literature was produced to debunk its ideological tenets, the Nihonjinron still plays a significant role in the mainstream public discourse on Japanese identity. Intellectuals, journalists, policymakers routinely repropose the ever-lasting cliché of Japanese cultural, linguistic, racial uniqueness. In doing so, they adopt a primordialist stance in the narration of Japanese identity, that is a conception of Japanese nation as a primordial entity, located in an original fatherland since immemorial times. Drawing on the writings of Suzuki Takao and Watanabe Shoichi, the book analyses the rhetorical strategies and discursive features supporting essentialist ideas of Japaneseness. At the same time, it highlights the heuristic value of primordialism as an effective descriptor of the nationalist ideology, thus challenging its widespread usage as a category of analysis.