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A HISTORY OF NATIONALISM IN MODERN JAPAN: Placing the People. By Kevin M. Doak. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2006. xii, 292 pp. US$93.00, cloth. ISBN 90-04-15598-8.
The expression "Japanese nationalism" typically evokes images of the "official nationalism," in Benedict Anderson's phrase, of Meiji-era modernization or the authoritarian nationalism of Japan's wartime aggression. Kevin Doak offers a highly welcome corrective to the view that nationalism in Japan is simply a handmaiden of the state. This volume brings together ideas Doak has developed over a number of essays. Not simply a collection of those essays, this new work provides a coherent critique of the sloppy thinking that informs many discussions of the topic. He argues that nationalism is fundamentally the principle of constituting the cultural and political identity of a people as a collective subject. Nationality and state may align, as in the conventional examples above. More often, nationality and state, and also different conceptions of nationality, are in...