Before nativism: Buddhist soteriology and Japan-centrism in the medieval Japanese imaginary.

This article attempts to clarify the form and development of the imagination of Japan as a Buddhist country in Japan's medieval period. Recent studies on the rise of nativism in the early modern period have tended to consider the privileging of Japan over other countries to be a uniquely early modern phenomenon. This article, by contrast, argues that a Japan-centric view of the world can be traced as far back as the early Heian period. Special attention is given to the formation of a soteriologically oriented Buddhist discourse on Japan's place in the Buddhist world, particularly in relation to the countries from which Buddhism was understood to have been transmitted—India and China. The articulation of this discourse in the fields of classical Japanese poetry (waka) and poetics from the late Heian through Muromachi periods is also considered. Whereas the nativist imagination of Japan in the early modern period valorizes that which is perceived to be native to the Japanese archipelago—its poetry, its deities, and its emperor—and hence may be considered 'cosmogonic' in orientation, the soteriologically grounded Japan-centrism of the medieval period articulates a framework that valorizes that which leads to the Buddhist end of salvation, or enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]