Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT The modernist argument that the nation of Japan emerged in the Meiji era (1868–1912) has achieved orthodoxy in the field of Japanese history. This article presents a challenge to this orthodoxy. My approach is two‐pronged. First, adopting a descriptive definition of the nation as a politically unified ethnicity, I analyse the social and symbolic processes that contributed to the political unification of ethnically related communities under the rule of the Yamato kingdom in Japan's Kofun period (200–600). Second, redressing a lacuna in the heterodox study of nation formation, I advance a theory of the wider context for the emergence of the Yamato kingdom. Through analysis of the linguistic, archaeological and textual evidence in light of the genomic data, I show that the Yamato kingdom arose in response to movements of people and culture across Northeast Asia in the wake of Inner Asian expansion in Late Antique Eurasia.
Source: Nations and Nationalism
DOI: 10.1111/nana.70063
Author: Ethan Bushelle
Institution: Western Washington University
Language: English
Topic: Japanese History and Culture
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7129099574