Rehabilitating Tradition: Saigō Nobutsuna and Japanese Myths, 1945–1963

Abstract

Japan in the aftermath of World War II provides a unique opportunity to consider issues of innovation and tradition because of the rapid vicissitudes in attitudes towards Japanese tra­ditions during wartime, occupation, and postwar periods. In the early 1940s, Japanese tradition was deployed to support the war effort. Then, following Ja­pan’s surrender, Japanese tradition became a scapegoat that explained why Japan had fallen into ultranationalism and militarism. Finally, Japanese tradition was rehabilitated into a repository of cultural heritage for the racially unified people of a democratic nation. This paper examines the treatment of Japanese mythical tradition from 1945–1963, with special focus on the writings of literature scholar Saigō Nobutsuna (1916–2008), and argues that Saigō’s applications of myth and ritual were instrumental in creating a fantasy of antiquity for postwar Japan. Considering Saigō and the postwar Japanese case demonstrates that while innovation and tradition can work against each other, innovation can also rehabilitate, preserve, and create tradition.  Furthermore, this study illustrates that the innovation process does not operate independently of socio-economic factors and that the meaning and significance of tradition must be rigorously historicized for a particular era to reveal how it was reformed, rehabilitated, desacralized, or obviated.