Internationalization, Nihonjinron, and the Question of Japanese Identity

The recent discourse on intemationalizingJapanese education calls
for measures to bridge the differences that separate Japan from
other nations: improving foreign language skills, promoting greater
exchange of personnel, and developing a sense of world citizenship
and global community. Closer examination reveals, however, a
paradoxical similarity between this literature and that known as
nihonjinron, which stresses rather the uniqueness, and hence separateness,
of Japanese culture. In both discourses, for example, the
primary concern is for Japan's relationship with the West; there is
also a tendency in both to treat Japan and the West as monolithic
entities. Moreover, both discourses seem animated by the same
sense of ambivalence about Japanese cultural identity, an ambivalence
that generates anxiety about being judged inferior internationally
on the one hand, while supporting feelings of cultural, and
ultimately racial, superiority on the other. The different emphases
of the two discourses may thus be understood as alternate solutions
to the same underlying problem: the question of what it means to
be Japanese in the modem world. Persisting ambivalence about this
question may continue to confound Japanese attempts to achieve a
well-balanced sense of internationalization for a considerable time.