Deconstructing Nationality

Naoki Sakai (Edited by), Brett de Bary (Edited by), Toshio Iyotani (Edited by)

9781885445247

Paperback / softback, published 31 March 2010

276 pages
24.1 x 16.5 x 1.9 cm, 0.454 kg

How can a post-national Japanese Studies be defined? How might the postwar myth of a monoethnic Japan be historicized? Can new forms of nationalism be effectively criticized by evoking a spirit of nationalist democracy? This book contains a series of groundbreaking essays by major Japanese and American scholars seeking to locate "Japan" beyond the geographical and ideological boundaries established post-1945 and under the Cold War. Included are essays on such iconic cultural figures as Maruyama Masao and Takamura Kōtarō; on the impact of colonialism on prewar theories of race, language, and multi-culturalism; on gender and nationalism; on the critique of culturalist notions of the "native speaker" and "mother tongue," and on Asian nationalisms in the era of globalization.