Walter Skya has written an excellent overview of changing formulations of imperial ideology from the Meiji period until 1945, especially as they were articulated by Hozumi Yatsuka, Minobe Tatsukichi, Kita Ikki, Uesugi Shinkichi, and Kakehi Katsuhiko. Skya details how ultranationalist Shintō thought shifted in response to changing sociopolitical conditions and how it employed or rejected facets of Western and Confucian conceptualizations of the individual, the ruler, the state, and sovereignty.
Skya begins his exposition by sketching how Itō Hirobumi's constitution left ambiguous the exact nature of the Japanese state—especially in terms of the respective powers of the sacred emperor and secular representative bodies—and for this reason led to political gridlock. In response to this crisis, Hozumi Yatsuka (1860–1912) advanced a theory of absolute monarchy, with the emperor ruling directly as a national patriarch in a völkisch family-state. Minobe Tatsukichi (1873–1948) located sovereignty not in the emperor but, like Hegel, in...
