Making Majority Culture

Abstract

Goodman poses the rhetorical question, "Who are 'the Japanese'?" While there is evidence of attempts to construct ideas of Japanese ethnic identity that go back two millennia, most commentators point to the Meiji period (1868-1912) as when this process became particularly emphasized in Japan. Faced by both internal and external threats, the Meiji oligarchs developed a rich litany of symbols and rituals that helped to construct the ideas of Japaneseness that were disseminated through an education system constructed, in part, for that purpose. Scholarly research on Japanese ethnic identity together with popular notions of the superiority of Japanese culture came to the fore again in the 1980s as the Japanese economy went into overdrive. Goodman points out the presumption, in these dominant ideas of Japaneseness, that ''culture'' is static, timeless, and self-evident. © 2005 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.