JAPAN

Carol Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1985) (From the book jacket: "The ideology of imperial Japan (1890-1945) is associated first with Japan's rapid modernization in the nineteenth century and then with its catastrophe defeat in World War II. The way in which this ideology evolved is the subject of this book. Carol Gluck argues that the process of formulating new civic values and communicating them to the people was far more haphazard and inconsistent than is usually assumed." "To express her theoretical conception of 'ideology-in-process,' the author immerses the reader in the talk and thought of late Meiji times, recreating the diversity of ideological discourse experienced by Japanese of the period. She concludes that such elements of imperial orthodoxy as the divine emperor or the mystical national polity may have been less important than the 'denaturing of politics' or the belief in progress and success in explaining the course of twentieth-century Japanese history.).