Nation-State, Japanese Emperor, and the Margin : A Consideration of "State and Religion"(<Special Issue>State and Religion)

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  • 天皇制国家と余白 : 「国家と宗教」を論じるために(<特集>国家と宗教)
  • 天皇制国家と余白 : 「国家と宗教」を論じるために
  • テンノウセイ コッカ ト ヨハク : 「 コッカ ト シュウキョウ 」 オ ロンジル タメニ

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Abstract

Over the past twenty years or so, the study of Japanese history in Japan has been dominated by discussions of modernity. Meantime, research on time periods before the early modern period largely vanished, and these periods are dealt with as no more than a discourse of the past created by modernity. Shaking tremendously this orientation to historical origin was the critical discourse on modern nationalism. With the works by Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, Sakai Naoki, and Nishikawa Nagao, it became clear that what we tacitly assumed as the Japanese ethnic nation is the nation imagined/invented in modernity, and the ancient Japan that people had debated so earnestly turned out to be no more than a discourse conceivable only in the context of the rise of modern nationalism. Through the investigation into the early modern society, it becomes possible to seize the possibility of discovering a number of margins that shot through modern societies, and the possibility of overturning some modern inequalities. Of course, it behooves us not to forget that in those blanks also exists the danger of producing inequality in society, a danger more serious than the factitiousness of the Western, modern principle of equality.

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