Before the Nation

Exploring how theories of "nation-ness" that continue to be evoked in present-day Japan emerged and evolved, the author provides a close examination of kokugaku, a late-eighteenth-century Japanese intellectual movement.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Between Community and the Nation 1 1 Late Tokugawa Society and the Crisis of Community 16 2 Before the Kojikiden: The Divine Age Narrative in Tokugawa Japan 35 3 Motoori Norinaga: Discovering Japan 68 4 Ueda Akinari: History and Community 102 5 Fujitani Mitsue: The Poetics of Community 131 6 Tachibana Moribe: Cosmology and Community 158 7 National Literature, Intellectual History, and the New Kokugaku 187 Conclusion: Imagined Japan(s) 220 Appendix: "Reading" the Kojiki 227 Notes 231 Works Cited 259 Index 271