Harumi Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron (Paperback)

In spite of rapid changes taking place in Japan, the dominant identity discourse of Japan, Nihonjinron, has not vacated its hegemonic position in the ideological landscape of common people. Japanese intellectuals have been producing and continue to produce a massive and ever increasing literature on the subject with no end in sight. In Hegemony of Homogeneity, Harumi Befu, a bilingual anthropologist who has dedicated his past 40 years working on Japan, dissects, analyzes, and interprets this discourse by consultinghundreds of original sources in Japanese. Nihonjinron discourse is argued, among others, as a civil religion of the Japanese and a creature responding to Japan's changing geopolitical and geoeconomic environment.