ARI Working Paper Series

This paper examines the formation of history as a modern academic discipline in the context of ideological formations of nationalism and imperialism in mid-Meiji Japan. Scholars have so far studied modern historiography in terms of the relationship between pure scholarship and the suppressive prewar Japanese state. Starting from the point that it is necessary to recognize the ideological nature of history, this paper develops two arguments. First, the ideal of scientific objectivity claimed by the historians and history’s ideological function was mutually constitutive rather than in conflict. The first half of the paper examines the ancient Japanese history created by the modern historians to show this mutual constitutive relationship. Second, more than just a case of suppression of academic freedom by the “emperor system” state, the Kume Incident of 1892 reveals a tension between two competing modes in defining the origin and the nature of the Japanese nation, the kokutai. Scientific and objective history of Kume was providing a “secular” definition of Shinto so as elevate the divine monarchy and the imperial nation above the relativizing challenge of the category of religion.