The Quest for the Primordial: An Inquiry into the Nationalist Rhetoric of Contemporary Japan

Elisa Vitali

Jul 2023 · Sapienza Università Editrice

About this ebook

Although fifty years passed since the boom of the theories on Japanese national character and considerable academic literature was produced to debunk its ideological tenets, the Nihonjinron still plays a significant role in the mainstream public discourse on Japanese identity. Intellectuals, journalists, policymakers routinely repropose the ever-lasting cliché of Japanese cultural, linguistic, racial uniqueness. In doing so, they adopt a primordialist stance in the narration of Japanese identity, that is a conception of Japanese nation as a primordial entity, located in an original fatherland since immemorial times. Drawing on the writings of Suzuki Takao and Watanabe Shoichi, the book analyses the rhetorical strategies and discursive features supporting essentialist ideas of Japaneseness. At the same time, it highlights the heuristic value of primordialism as an effective descriptor of the nationalist ideology, thus challenging its widespread usage as a category of analysis.

About the author

Elisa Vitali has a PhD in Linguistic, Literary and Intercultural Studies in European and Extra-European Perspectives from the University of Milan. Her research focuses on Japanese nationalism, with insights from sociology, anthropology and political science. In her doctoral thesis entitled The Rhetoric of Primordialism in Suzuki Takao and Watanabe Shoichi’s Nationalist Discourse, she deals with nationalism theory by challenging primordialism as a category of analysis and the widespread tendency of reifying the concept of nation. Her areas of interests include the history of the idea of ‘nation’ and the cross study of racism in diverse societies.