Yamato Damashii
Yamato damashii refers to the essential and inexplicable nature of being Japanese that is at the core of beliefs in Japan's uniqueness. The term appears in several contexts, most of them of nationalistic origin, and had its greatest impact during the years of Japanese imperialism, especially in the decades leading up to and during World War II.
In premodern Japan, wakon (Japanese native spiritual essence) was ideally complemented by kansai (Chinese learning). This evolved, during the period of Japanese nationalism starting in the late eighteenth century, into an idealization of the "Japanese spirit." Japanese intellectuals have historically extolled the special nature and characteristics of Japan's inner spirit. While rarely clearly defined, the idea is prevalent in the theories of premodern intellectuals (for example, Kitabatake Chikafusa and Motoori Norinaga), as well as in the writings of twentieth-century scholars such as Suzuki Daisetz and Umesao Tadao.
Since Word War II, Yamato damashii has often been viewed as related to the principle of seishin (selfcultivation), implying that it is a spiritual, internal, and subjective experience. Before and during the war, it was more closely associated with bushido (way of the warrior), a martial philosophy first formally expressed in the Edo period (1600/1603–1868), but elaborated upon and publicized outside Japan by Meiji-period (1868–1912) writers and ideologists. During World War II, Japanese ideologists emphasized that, notwithstanding Japan's material inferiority to the West, and particularly the United States, it could triumph by virtue of its superior Yamato damashii.
The nature of Yamato damashii is difficult to define precisely, since its expression is nonverbal and opaque to non-Japanese people, and the characterizations vary from writer to writer. The key to understanding Yamato damashii lies in the linguistic understanding of Yamato kotoba, that is, Japanese words as distinct from gairaigo (loanwords from Chinese and other languages) that have become part of spoken and written Japanese language. Most Japanese exponents of Yamato damashii believe that this key is inherently inaccessible to people who are not Japanese.
Further Reading
Dale, Peter N. (1986) The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. London: Routledge.
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