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Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan
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Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan Paperback - 2003

by Susan L. Burns

From the publisher

Exploring the emergence and evolution of theories of nationhood that continue to be evoked in present-day Japan, Susan L. Burns provides a close examination of the late-eighteenth-century intellectual movement kokugaku, which means "the study of our country." Departing from earlier studies of kokugaku that focused on intellectuals whose work has been valorized by modern scholars, Burns seeks to recover the multiple ways "Japan" as social and cultural identity began to be imagined before modernity.

Central to Burns's analysis is Motoori Norinaga's Kojikiden, arguably the most important intellectual work of Japan's early modern period. Burns situates the Kojikiden as one in a series of attempts to analyze and interpret the mythohistories dating from the early eighth century, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki. Norinaga saw these texts as keys to an original, authentic, and idyllic Japan that existed before being tainted by "flawed" foreign influences, notably Confucianism and Buddhism. Hailed in the nineteenth century as the begetter of a new national consciousness, Norinaga's Kojikiden was later condemned by some as a source of Japan's twentieth-century descent into militarism, war, and defeat. Burns looks in depth at three kokugaku writers--Ueda Akinari, Fujitani Mitsue, and Tachibana Moribe--who contested Norinaga's interpretations and produced competing readings of the mythohistories that offered new theories of community as the basis for Japanese social and cultural identity. Though relegated to the footnotes by a later generation of scholars, these writers were quite influential in their day, and by recovering their arguments, Burns reveals kokugaku as a complex debate--involving history, language, and subjectivity--with repercussions extending well into the modern era.

First line

Miroslav Hroch, the pioneer social historian of European nation-formation, has argued that "for national consciousness to arise, there must be something for it to become conscious of."

From the rear cover

""Before the Nation" is a significant addition to the field of Japanese intellectual history and a very fine book."--Leslie Pincus, author of "Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shuzo and the Rise of National Aesthetics"

Details

  • Title Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan
  • Author Susan L. Burns
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Pages 296
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Duke University Press, Durham and London:
  • Date 2003-12-02
  • Features Bibliography, Index
  • ISBN 9780822331728 / 0822331721
  • Weight 0.93 lbs (0.42 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.18 x 6.14 x 0.73 in (23.32 x 15.60 x 1.85 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Asian - Japanese
  • Library of Congress subjects Kokugaku
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2003010583
  • Dewey Decimal Code 320.540

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 06/01/2004, Page 1938

About the author

Susan L. Burns is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago.

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Before the Nation � Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan

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Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan

Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan

by Susan L. Burns

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Before the Nation – Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan
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Before the Nation – Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan

by Susan L. Burns

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ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
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Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan (Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society)

by Burns, Susan L

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