The Quest to "Overcome Modernity": War, State-Building and Nationalism in Japan and China

Drawing on Japan and China as two illustrative cases, this paper intends to shed new light on our theoretical understanding of modernity by articulating the relations between war, state-building and nationalist discourse in the non-Western context. From its very burgeoning, the historical formation of modernity in East Asia has been intertwined with the experience of the defeat of war (or war threat) that, in turn, gives rise to nationalism. Moreover, understood as originating from the West, modernity to the East has been regarded as something to be achieved and overthrown at once. On the one hand, it is considered that the East has to catch up with the West in terms of material achievements (particularly economic performance and military power); on the other hand, it is also contended that Western modernity has intrinsic contradictions that will eventually lead to self-destruction, of which the only redemption is through the alternative path provided by the East. Such a dichotomous view of modernity has been dominating nationalist discourses in many instances in East Asia. Thus, nationalist projects in East Asia often have a double task: to pursue modernization through state-building, on the one hand, and to "overcome (Western) modernity", on the other. However, due to the legacies of war, which leads to a lack of reflection on state ideology and violence, such nationalist projects often fall into the trap of modernity itself without being able to become the genuine critique of the latter. This paper will use the attempt to "overcome modernity" in wartime Japan and the search for "anti-modern modernity" in contemporary China as two examples to examine such a paradoxical situation. It is concluded that, to better theorize (and critique) modernity, the intertwined relationships between war, state-building, nationalism and global inequality have to be taken into account.