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This paper investigates the intensification of nationalist discourses in Japanese society since the 1990s. One influential interpretation of this process sees it as a reaction to the economic crisis in Japanese society beginning in the 1990s. The aim of this article is to reevaluate this interpretation, stressing that the current nationalist discourse can actually be better understood if we consider not only the recent crisis, but also how this crisis is part of the wider context of profound transformations that Japan has faced after World War II. By analyzing the works of major Japanese social thinkers, this paper elaborates an interpretation in which nationalism emerges not simply as a reaction to a single event, but rather as a longer and more complex process, in which different and even contradictory discourses are formed, appropriated and reinterpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]