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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
From the Japanese point of view, the 1990s and 2000s are characterised by two broad historical shifts. The first is globalization. The word has many nuances but is most often taken to mean the expansion of economic interconnectivity between countries. In 1970 just under a million Japanese went overseas; by 2000 that number had risen to nearly 18 million. Likewise, in the 1970s, China was relatively isolated, its foreign trade a mere 20 billion USD in 1978. Now it is the axis of production on which the world economy turns, with about 3 trillion dollars in total imports and exports. Globalization also signifies the more rapid movement of people, information, ideas, and cultural forms across borders. In 1986 Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro made the shocking comment that “So high is the level of education in our country that Japan's is an intelligent society. Our average score is much higher than those of countries like the U.S. There are many blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in America. In consequence the average score over there is exceedingly low.” Why did he say what he was thinking? Perhaps he lacked awareness that something said in Japanese at a press conference in Japan would be picked up by the world outside Japan's borders. Japanese politicians are still gaffe-prone, but now all know their comments may be tweeted around the globe in seconds. Importantly, Japanese, Chinese, South Koreans, and others now have quick access to information about historical narratives prevalent in other societies.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan, last accessed September 2012
[1] Kobayashi Yoshinori (1998), Sensoron (on war), Tokyo: Gentosha. Other examples include Akiyama Joji (2005), Chugoku nyumon (introduction to China), Tokyo: Asuka Shinsha; Yamano Sharin (2005), Ken-kanryu (hating Korean wave), Tokyo: Shinyusha.
[2] Kobayashi Yoshinori, Takeda Seiji and Hashizume Daizaburo (1997), Seigi, senso, kokkaron (on justice, war and state), Tokyo: Komichi Shobō, p. 25.
[3] Kobayashi Yoshinori (2002), Shin-gomanizumu Sengen (new proclamation of arrogance) Vol. 5, Tokyo: Shogakkan Bunko, p. 54.
[4] Kitada Akihiro (2005), Warau nihon no ‘nashonarizumu’ (laughing ‘nationalism’ of Japan), Tokyo: NHK Books, p. 211.
[5] Kayama Rika (2002), Puchi-nashonarizumu Shokogun (petit nationalism syndrome), Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho Rakure.
[6] Iida Yumiko (2004), ‘Kashi-ka sareta kokumin-kokka to kairaku no ideorogî: johoshihonshugi-ka ni okeru nihon no nashonarizumu (visualized nation-state and ideology of pleasure: Japanese nationalism under information capitalism)’ in Ito Mamoru (ed.) Bunka no jissen, bunka no kenkyu (practicing culture, studying culture), Tokyo: Serika Shobo, 2004.
[7] Kitada (2005), Warau nihon no ‘nashonarizumu’ (laughing ‘nationalism’ of Japan).
[8] In this respect it is suggestive that Ueno Yoko's ethnography of a grass-roots conservative movement - which officially focused on history textbooks - has also shown that its participants were more interested in sharing a communicative space with other members via the use of certain key words than in the nation-state as their object of identification or nationalism as a political movement. See Oguma Eiji and Ueno Yoko (2003), ‘Iyashi’ no nashonarizumu (nationalism as healing), Tokyo: Keio-gijuku daigaku shuppankai.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Maruyama Masao (1964), Gendai-seiji no shiso to kodo (thought and behaviour in modern Japanese politics), Tokyo: Miraisha.
[11] Asaba Michiaki (2004), Nashonarizumu (nationalism), Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho.
[12] Kang Sangjung (2001), ‘Togi: kugatsu juichinichi ikou no nashonarizumu (discussion: nationalism after 9/11)’, Gendaishiso 29 (16), p. 40; Kayama Rika and Fukuda Kazuya (2003), Aikoku-mondo (A debate on patriotism), Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho Rakure, pp. 9-10.
[13] In addition to nationalistic comic books such as Akiyama's Chugoku nyumon (introduction to China)and Yamano's Kenkanryu (hating Korean wave), a number of films such as Puraido: unmei no toki (pride: fateful moment, 1998), Otoko tachi no Yamato (men's battleship Yamato, 2005), Kyoki no sakura (madness in bloom, 2002) also indicate the use of history in recent popular culture.
[14] This is not to say that Japanese popular culture only or even mainly transmits nationalist messages. For example, Matthew Penney has argued that the prevalent antiwar images in postwar Japanese popular culture have contributed to the considerable support of Japan's Peace Constitution today. See Penney, Matthew (2005), “The ‘most crucial education’: Saotome Katsumoto, Globalization and Japanese anti-war thought”, in Allen, Matthew and Rumi Sakamoto (eds) (2006) Popular Culture, Globalization, and Japan, London: Routledge. The use of popular culture for carrying right-wing and nationalist messages is a new phenomenon.
[15] The new history textbook group is a collection of conservative academics and others. They have produced a history textbook that glorifies Japan's past, and attempted to have it adopted in schools. Although the adoption rate was negligible, their activities sparked a lot of debate in Japan regarding to the interpretation of history and revisionist tendency within society.
[16] Originally serialized in Weekly Spa, from 1992 to 1995 but moved to Sapio in 1995.
[17] Prior to Kobayashi's “turn to history” he had addressed such issues as the HIV lawsuit over the infections via contaminated blood and Japan's new cult religion, Aum Shinrikyo. In both, he was actively involved, supporting the victims, fighting with the cult, and even at one point becoming a target of the assassination plot.
[18] They were not just scholars of media or popular culture, but those from a more traditional disciplines such as historians, philosophers, and sociologists.
[19] Uesugi Satoshi won in court and went on to write another book on this legal battle over the copyright issue regarding the use of Kobayashi's manga in his book.
[20] de Bary, WM T., C. Gluck, and A. E. Tiedemann (2005), Sources of Japanese Tradition: 1600 to 2000, Vol. 2., second edin, New York and London: Columbia University Press.
[21] Kobayashi Yoshinori (2000), Ko to koron (on the individuals and the public), Tokyo: Gentosha, p. 276.
[22] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 287.
[23] Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities, London: Verso, pp. 141-4.
[24] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 9.
[25] Ibid., p. 354.
[26] Ibid., p. 281.
[27] Ibid., p. 208.
[28] Ibid., p. 203.
[29] Ibid., p. 64.
[30] Ibid., pp. 292-6.
[31] Ibid., pp. 363-4.
[32] Ibid., p. 96.
[33] Ibid., p. 312.
[34] Similarly, individual heroism in the past slides into the image of Japan as the brave Asian nation that fought against “white imperialism”, despite the fact that individual heroism cannot establish Japan's role as the “liberator of Asia” as an objective historical reality.
[35] For example, Fuji Nobuo (1995), “Nankin daigayakusatsu” wa ko shite tsukurareta (this is how the “Nanjing Massacre” was created), Tokyo: Tentensha; Higashinakano Osamichi (1998), “Nankin gyakusatsu” no tettei kensho (a thorough examination of the “Nanjing Massacre”), Tokyo: Tendensha; Matsumura Toshio (1998), “Nankin gyakusatsu” e no daigimon (A big question on the “Nanjing Massacre”), Tokyo: Tentensha; Suzuki Akira (1999), Shin “Nankin daigyakusatsu” no maboroshi (the new illusion of the “Nanjing Massacre”), Tokyo: Asuka Shinsha; Fujioka Nobukastu and Higashinakano Osamichi (1999), “Za reipu obu Nankin” no kenkyu (study of “the Rape of Nanking”), Tokyo: Shodensha; Takemoto Tadao and Ohara Yasuo (2000), Saishin “Nankin daigyakusatsu” (the alleged “Nanjing Massacre”), Tokyo: Meiseisha.
[36] Buruma, Ian (2001), ‘The Nanking Massacre as a historical symbol’, in Li, Fei Fei, R. Sabella and D. Liu (eds) Nanking 1937, London and New York: M. E. Sharpe.
[37] Fogel, Joshua (ed.) (2002), The Nanjing Massacre in history and historiography, p. 3.
[38] Kobayashi (2000), Ko to koron, p. 233.
[39] Kobayashi, Sensoron, pp. 120-35.
[40] Fukuzawa, Yukichi [1883] (1981), ‘Toyo no koryaku hatashite ikansen (how to capture the East)’, Fukuzawa Yukichi Senshu (selected works of Fukuzawa Yukichi) Vol. 7, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, p. 147.
[41] Ibid.
[42] The image of China in Japan sharply changed in the nineteenth century from that of civilization and the Middle Kingdom to that of a backward and uncivilized people.
[43] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 123.
[44] Yamauchi, Masayuki (2005), ‘Restraint in the uses of history: recent developments in Japan-China relations’, Gaiko Forum, Fall, pp. 11-23.
[45] Kitano, Mitsuru (2005), ‘The myth of rising Japanese nationalism’, International Herald Tribune (12 Jan 2006), accessed on 10 April 2006.
[46] Despite the use of the sensational word “fabrication”, Sensoron does not actually deny the fact of violence itself; rather it minimizes the scale of the atrocity and justifies the action of the Japanese troops. This is also the case with most of the so-called “illusion-school” writers who write on the Nanjing Massacre.
[47] Uesugi Satoshi (1997), Datsu-gomanizumu sengen (leaving the proclamations of arrogance), Tokyo: Toho Shuppan, pp. 11-12. According to Uesugi, Kobayashi's visual style is similar to war propaganda used by Japanese military, while Tessa Morris-Suzuki has pointed out the similarity between Kobayashi's manga and the former Soviet Union's poster arts, which also used techniques of juxtaposing of past and present images, collage and photomontage, the contrast between realistic and nice-looking ‘we’ versus exaggerated and deformed ‘them’. See Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (2004), Kako wa shinanai (the past within us), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp. 230-5.
[48] Kobayashi, Sensoron, p. 127.
[49] Kobayashi Yoshinori, Fukuda Kazuya, Saeki Keishi, and Nishibe Susumu (1999), Kokka to senso (state and war), Tokyo: Asuka Shinsha, p. 42.
[50] Ibid., p.48.
[51] Iida Yumiko, ‘Kashi-ka sareta kokumin-kokka to kairaku no ideorogî: johoshihonshugi-ka ni okeru nihon no nashonarizumu (visible nation-state and ideology of pleasure: Japanese nationalism under information capitalism)’, p. 172.
[52] Kayama and Fukuda have observed that the readers/supporters of Kobayashi's works tend to be students who take social issues seriously. They speculate that those who in the past would have been attracted into student movements or volunteer work with some affiliation with the left, are now drawn to Kobayashi due to the diminished attraction of the traditional left in Japan. See Kayama Rika and Fukuda Kazuya (2003), Aikoku-mondo (A debate on patriotism). This portrait of the readers also fits with Kobayashi's stated target group as thinking young people who take history and society seriously.
[53] Maruyama Masao (1964), Gendai-seiji no shoso to kodo (thought and behaviour in modern Japanese politics), p. 274.
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