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The Cultural Career of the Japanese Economy: developmental and cultural nationalisms in historical perspective.
- Source :
-
Third World Quarterly . Apr2008, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p447-465. 19p. - Publication Year :
- 2008
-
Abstract
- This essay explores the connection between the economy and cultural identity in Japanese nationalism and the intellectual discourses that have historically defined it. Nationalism in the pre-war period was closely associated with the anxiety that Japanese modernity was deformed. After World War II Japan was part of the global trend towards developmental nationalism, including a transformation of its economy into both a wealthy and a highly egalitarian one. In the 1970s and 1980s ethnic nationalism re-emerged, this time arguing that economic success was the product of Japanese cultural uniqueness rather than of the developmental nationalist policies of the previous quarter-century. The economic downturn of the 1990s thus challenged Japan both economically and culturally, and reawakened anxieties about Japanese deformity. At first, this crisis led to a critical re-evaluation of national culture, manifested as serious attempts to both resolve tensions with Asia dating from World War II and to dismantle domestic social hierarchies. By the mid-1990s, however, this moment had passed and government and business leaders adopted fully fledged neoliberal policies, reversing the long postwar trend towards income equality, also expressing a more strident and militarist cultural nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 01436597
- Volume :
- 29
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Third World Quarterly
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 31747822
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590801931439