This book presents a counter-argument to the Japanese belief that they are a homogeneous nation since the Meiji period. Eiji Oguma demonstrates that the myth of ethnic homogeneity was not established during the Meiji period, nor during the Pacific War, but only after the end of the war. The study covers a large range of areas, including archaeology, ancient history, linguistics, anthropology, ethnology, folk law, eugenics and philosophy, to obtain an overview of how a variety of authors dealt with the theme of ethnicity. It also examines how this myth of homogeneity arose and how the peoples of such Japanese colonies as Korea and Taiwan were viewed in the pre-war literature on ethnic identity. This is the first English translation of A Genealogy of "Japanese" Self-Images, which won the Suntory Culture Award in 1996.

Awards

Suntory Culture Award for Social Sciences and Humanities, 1996

About Authors

OGUMA Eiji is a Japanese sociologist and Professor in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University specializing in historical sociology and correlated social sciences. Although aspiring to study physics at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Nagoya University, he dropped out and instead went on to graduate from the Department of Agriculture, University of Tokyo, in 1987. He joined Iwanami Shoten, a major academic publisher in Japan, and worked as book editor until 1996. He then joined the Department of International Social Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, where he completed his PhD. He served as Lecturer at Keio University, and later as Associate Professor, before assuming his current position. He is actively involved in research and discussions on political thought largely focused on nationalism and democracy and based on history. His books have won prestigious academic awards such as the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award. He is also known as a guitarist.

Table of contents

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