In the 1930s, contemporary relevance was attributed to Kitabatake Chikafusa's Jinnō Shōtōki (1339) as a "standard work of national education" and an expression of "folk-national weltanschauung" for encapsulating the concept of kokutai, Japan's national essence. It was praised too for claiming that Japan is a shinkoku or "divine country" wherein the sun goddess bequeaths her line of rule to all eternity ; a concept of perpetual divine presence that has been described as the epitome of Shinto itself. In order to make the "Shinto" concepts of kokutai and shinkoku accessible to the uninitiated reader in Germany, Hermann Bohner, the first translator of Jinnō shōtōki into a Western language, in 1935 deployed Arthur Moeller van den Bruck's ideas, the socio-political milieu in Germany at the time, and Bohner's political and theological stance reveals Jinnō shōtōki's contemporary significance as being imbued with an almost metaphysical essentialism of the nation's character. This article traces a shift in Jinnō shōtōki's evaluation from the early Meiji period, examines the role Shinto actually plays in Kitabatake's work, and elucidates, via Bohner's comparative approach, its importance for early Shōwa period nationalism.
雑誌名
Japan review : journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
巻
24
ページ
127 - 150
発行年
2012-01-01
ISSN
09150986
書誌レコードID
AA10759175
フォーマット
application/pdf
著者版フラグ
publisher
その他の言語のタイトル
「国民的人格としての生ける過去」 : 『神皇正統記』と昭和初期ナショナリズムとドイツ第三帝国
出版者
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
A Living past as the Nation's Personality : jinnō shōtōki, Early Shōwa Nationalism, and Das Dritte Reich
JN2406.pdf
(615.62KB)
