Abstract
In this article, I propose a theoretical framework for analyzing the formation and transformation of the concepts of nationhood in Germany and Japan. Nationalism is understood here as a field of politics, in which such various agents as “nation-states, ” ethnic or national “minorities” and “majorities, ” and “co-nationals abroad” compete and cooperate with each other by claiming their own concepts of “nations.” The “nation” is thus constructed, reinforced, and reconstructed through the dynamic processes in this field. By using this framework, I examine the German and Japanese cases from the founding of the modern unified states (1871 in both cases) through the end of the Second World War (1945). Three issues are discussed. First, the “nation” formation in Meiji Japan and Imperial Germany were both territorially framed “state nations, ” which sought to assimilate several minorities. Second, the emergence and intensification of minority nationalisms, especially Polish and Korean nationalisms, had different impacts upon the concepts of the German and Japanese “nations” : the ethnic and exclusivist elements appeared in state policies and nationalist movements in Germany while the assimilationist stance was enforced in Japan. Third, the German “co-nationals abroad, ” which became salient in the political and public discourse in the Weimar period, played an important role in crystallizing the ethnic concept of the German “Volk” that was assumed to spread beyond the state boundaries. Although Japan had no counterpart to German “co-nationals abroad, ” the “Asianist” view that emphasized ethno-cultural similarities and “transnational” cooperation between Japanese and “Asian fellows” was widely used for justifying the expansion and consolidation of Japanese Imperial rule in the 1930s and the early 1940s. Overall, my analysis shows that the “nation” in Germany was often conceived in ethnocultural terms and relatively more autonomous of existing state boundaries, while the “nation” in Japan tended to be conceptualized within the territorial framework of the state.
