Description
In the 2012 Japanese general election, Abe Shinzo’s campaign focused on the ‘taking back’ of Japan not only from the Democratic Party of Japan but from the ‘grip of postwar history’, a consistent concern for Japanese conservatives. For such groups, “true” Japaneseness was lost in 1945, with contemporary productions and historical understandings of Japaneseness working to disrupt the national identity to which they are attached and pursue ontological security through. It is this attachment to and perceived loss of “true” Japaneseness that this paper will explore in the context of domestic contestations over Japanese national identity between conservatives and, as labelled by them, “anti-Japanese” Japanese. Starting from the point that conservative Japaneseness is grounded in narrations of virtuous masculinity, the paper will highlight how productions which challenge this virtuousness through the assignment of aggression and suffering disrupt the core of conservatives’ national identity, thus producing existential anxiety. That these have been written by other Japanese national subjects intensifies conservative concerns, which they have then sought to allay through weakening, removing, or making dangerous the production of “anti-Japanese” narratives.
