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This essay examines the challenges faced by government experts in thought crimes as they attempted to combat radicalized nationalist organizations during the 1930s. The established system of containing subversive political movements, organized around the Peace Preservation Law (1925), was built on the premise that challenges to the government would come from the ideological left. The fact that activists were now attacking political and financial leaders in the name of patriotism presented ideological and procedural difficulties and reveals a destabilization in the discourse of nationalism enabled by the advent of patriotic terrorism that threatened the state's monopoly over the mantra of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionally trained teachers shifted an ideological debate to a discussion of how to increase their students' potential to navigate within new power structures of the Japanese nation and empire. While other scholars have described how many teachers opposed the idea of kokugo not least on the periphery of nation and empire, this essay analyzes concrete recommendations made by classroom teachers. I argue that teachers trained at the new normal schools authored articles for journals of the Teikoku Kyoiku Kai (Imperial Education Society) that fundamentally changed the central discourse on kokugo by introducing theoretical and pedagogical considerations tested and inspired by classroom experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current historiography recognizes that modern Japanese cuisine is an expression of national identity and traces its origin to tea cuisine (kaiseki) said to have been perfected by Sen no Rikyū (1522-91). Yet, Rikyū's contributions to the development of kaiseki are not substantiated in the historical records. This article aims to clarify the role of Rikyū in the development of tea cuisine and to call for a broader investigation of the history of tea cuisine to consider more diffuse and diverse practices involving multiple actors over time rather than attribute foundational principles in national culture to individual genius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the ceremonies surrounding the enthronement of Emperor Showa in 1928 and their implications for Japanese nationalism. The 1928 celebrations displayed the contours of official nationalism at the time and furthered national integration, principally because they took advantage of the great technological and cultural developments of the 1920s. Though official versions of nationalism were powerful, people participated in the celebrations for a variety of reasons. The enthronement events were intimately related to the mass culture and consumerism of the 1920s and were a reflection and expression of urban life in that decade, not a predictor of foreign aggression in the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines gender symbolism in competing representations of nationalism in Japan. Analysis of images of masculinity; Threat of the feminization of culture; Responses of opposing representations of masculinity to the problem of modernity.

Examines ethnic nationalism and romanticism in early 20th-century Japan. Evolution of ethnicity and nationalism in the political discourse of the era; Reconciliation of ethnic nation and state.