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Paper short abstract

This paper traces the role of mythical state founders such as Amaterasu and Jinmu Tennō in Meiji era framings of Japan as a family state and the ideological incorporation of Korean subjects into this state conception as well as Korean intellectuals’ engagement with these discourses.

Paper long abstract

This paper traces the role of mythical state founders in the construction of national identities in modern Japan and Korea. During the Meiji period, Japanese elites utilized the political myth of an unbroken dynasty stretching back to the sun goddess Amaterasu to justify the emperor’s exalted position as father of the nation. Describing Japan as a family state with the emperor at its apex allowed Meiji oligarchs to forge a connection between the imperial institution and the populace, while at the same time claiming distinctness from Western nation states. In this context, Jinmu, the legendary first emperor, served as a model for the modern image of the Meiji emperor as a military ruler. From the first decade of the 20th century, Tan’gun started to play a similar role in discourses on Korean national identity. Nationalist historians such as Sin Ch’aeho traced the history of the Korean nation back to Tan’gun as the founder of the first Korean state and ancestor of the Korean people. Like their Japanese peers, Korean intellectuals often likened the nation state to an enlarged family. With the annexation of Korea into the Japanese empire, Japanese thinkers started to incorporate the new Korean subjects into the Japanese family state by describing Tan’gun as Amaterasu’s little brother. While some Korean intellectuals resisted this so-called theory of common ancestry, others, such as Na Ch’ŏl, tried to modify it in order to raise Koreans’ status within the Japanese empire.

The paper emphasizes the significance of ancient mythical texts in the formation of modern national identities by arguing that mythical state founders occupied a central position in discussions of national identity in both Japan and Korea in the late 19th and early 20th century. Attention is called on parallels, such as a distancing from Chinese traditions, opposition to (Western or Japanese) Orientalism and the widespread use of family metaphors in discussions of the nation, but also to differences, such as the role of the respective royal families in Korean and Japanese discussions and the vastly different statuses of Japanese and Korean intellectuals in the colonial situation.