This book is a collaborative work of major Japanese and American scholars first published in Japanese in 1996. This volume contains a series of powerful essays, including eight original essays in Japanese, divided into three sections. Undertaking careful and meticulous analysis of Japanese studies as practiced in Japan, North America, and Europe, the book problematizes the discursive formation of nationality and the debate about nationality vis-à-vis the nation-state. The essays’ deconstruction of the very notion of postwar Japan addresses the problem of the institutionalized discourse of area studies and “nation,” and by doing so, they attempt to open up the illusionary boundary of Japan. Although the notion of national boundary as illusionary is commonly held by many scholars today, the book takes the next step of endeavoring to provide insight into the very mechanisms of its production.
Explicit in the essays is the problematization of the binary opposition by which...
