ARI Working Paper Series

I explore how the rhetoric of nationality or ethnos (minzoku) became a central element in Japanese imperial ideology of Manchukuo and Asia in the Pacific War. Japanese imperialism from the 1930s sought to put nationality at the center of its expansionist ideology. At the same time, anthropology or ethnology (minzokushugi), became the means to study nationality. Thus Japanese (like some European languages) tended to see a convergence between nationality and ethnography, while in the English language the two came later to represent divergent goals: the first a radical, progressive notion of liberated nationality and the second, a form of knowledge carrying evolutionist baggage and essentialism.  While the convergence was unquestionably part of a Japanese imperialist project, we will lose sight of the new goals and strategies for achieving regional dominance if we see it simply as a fig-leaf for old-style domination.