Culturalism: Its Circulation In East Asia, Development and ‘Clash' With Nationalism

The paper examines the migration and development of culturalism, ‘a natural conviction of cultural superiority that sought no legitimation or defense outside of the culture itself’ (Duara 1996) in East Asia and its supposed ‘clash’ with nationalism as the face of modernity. Culturalism can be seen as one of models of political communities which was in circulation in China before the advent of the modern nation-state. The idea has been developed further as a useful tool in challenging the claim that emphasises the novelty of nationalism as a form of consciousness as proof of radical discontinuity between pre-modernity and modernity suggested by leading theorists of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson (1991) and Ernest Gellner (1983). If the novelty of nationalism as a form of consciousness lies in the co-extensiveness of political and cultural communities, nationalism was not totally novel in China where culturalism providing a similar kind of totalising view of community had long existed. Culturalism, originated from China, naturally migrated to its spheres of influence including Japan, where under Tokugawa shogunate, it stimulated various intellectual responses such Kokugaku, a ‘nativist’ school of learning focusing on the study of Japanese old text which produced a vision of community that bears close resemblance to Chinese culturalism. The conventional view is that culturalism both in China and Japan then experienced a clash with nationalism, a modern idea of political communities originated from the West, and was replaced by it. The paper first outlines the idea of culturalism as developed in China and investigates the way in which it migrated to Japan and facilitated a range of new ideas under Tokugawa rule. It then questions the assumption of the nationalism’s takeover of culturalism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan and China and explores possible transformation of nationalism.