In the Japanese language, the word kokutai is an evocative term that refers to the national essence or the fundamental character of the Japanese nation and people. Drawing both on long-established understandings and on recently developed nationalist ideas, the Ministry of Education in 1937 published a small volume, widely distributed in schools and homes throughout the country, titled Kokutai No Hongi (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan). That text, excerpted in Source 20.2, defined the uniqueness of Japan and articulated the philosophical foundation of its authoritarian regime. (See “Japanese Authoritarianism” in Chapter 20 for the background to this document.) When the Americans occupied a defeated and devastated Japan in 1945, they forbade the further distribution of the book.

Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan

1937

The various ideological and social evils of present-day Japan are the result of ignoring the fundamental and running after the trivial, of lack of judgment, and a failure to digest things thoroughly; and this is due to the fact that since the days of Meiji so many aspects of European and American culture, systems, and learning, have been imported, and that, too rapidly. As a matter of fact, the foreign ideologies imported into our country are in the main ideologies of the [European] Enlightenment that have come down from the eighteenth century, or extensions of them. The views of the world and of life that form the basis of these ideologies … lay the highest value on, and assert the liberty and equality of, individuals….

We have already witnessed the boundless Imperial virtues. Wherever this Imperial virtue of compassion radiates, the Way for the subjects naturally becomes clear. The Way of the subjects exists where the entire nation serves the Emperor united in mind…. That is, we by nature serve the Emperor and walk the Way of the Empire….

We subjects are intrinsically quite different from the so-called citizens of the Occidental [Western] countries….

When citizens who are conglomerations of separate individuals independent of each other give support to a ruler, … there exists no deep foundation between ruler and citizen to unite them. However, the relationship between the Emperor and his subjects arises from the same fountainhead, and has prospered ever since the founding of the nation as one in essence….

Our country is established with the Emperor…. For this reason, to serve the Emperor and to receive the Emperor’s great august Will as one’s own is the rationale of making our historical “life” live in the present….

Loyalty means to reverence the Emperor as [our] pivot and to follow him implicitly…. Hence, offering our lives for the sake of the Emperor does not mean so-called self-sacrifice, but the casting aside of our little selves to live under his august grace and the enhancing of the genuine life of the people of a State…. An individual is an existence belonging to the State and her history, which forms the basis of his origin, and is fundamentally one body with it….

We must sweep aside the corruption of the spirit and the clouding of knowledge that arises from setting up one’s “self” and from being taken up with one’s “self” and return to a pure and clear state of mind that belongs intrinsically to us as subjects, and thereby fathom the great principle loyalty….

Indeed, loyalty is our fundamental Way as subject, and is the basis of our national morality. Through loyalty are we become Japanese subjects; in loyalty do we obtain life and herein do we find the source of all morality….

In our country filial piety is a Way of the highest importance. Filial piety originates with one’s family as its basis, and in its larger sense has the nation for its foundation….

Our country is a great family nation, and the Imperial Household is the head family of the subjects and the nucleus of national life. The subjects revere the Imperial Household, which is the head family, with the tender esteem they have for their ancestors; and the Emperor loves his subjects as his very own….

When we trace the marks of the facts of the founding of our country and the progress of our history, what we always find there is the spirit of harmony…. The spirit of harmony is built upon the concord of all things. When people determinedly count themselves as masters and assert their egos, there is nothing but contradictions and the setting of one against the other; and harmony is not begotten…. That is, a society of individualism is one of the clashes between [masses of ] people … and all history may be looked upon as one of class wars….

And this, this harmony is clearly seen in our nation’s martial spirit. Our nation is one that holds bushido [the way of the warrior/samurai] in high regard, and there are shrines deifying warlike spirits…. Bushido may be cited as showing an outstanding characteristic of our national morality…. That is to say, though a sense of obligation binds master and servant, this has developed in a spirit of self-effacement and meeting death with a perfect calmness. In this, it was not that death was made light of so much as that man tempered himself to death and in a true sense regarded it with esteem. In effect, man tried to fulfill true life by the way of death….

To put it in a nutshell, while the strong points of Occidental learning and concepts lie in their analytical and intellectual qualities, the characteristics of Oriental learning and concepts lie in their intuitive and aesthetic qualities. These are natural tendencies that arise through racial and historical differences; and when we compare them with our national spirits, concepts, or mode of living, we cannot help recognizing further great and fundamental differences. Our nation has in the past imported, assimilated, and sublimated Chinese and Indian ideologies, and has therewith supported the Imperial Way, making possible the establishment of an original culture based on her national polity….

Since the Meiji restoration our nation has adapted the good elements of the advanced education seen among European and American nations, and has exerted efforts to set up an educational system and materials for teaching. The nation has also assimilated on a wide scale the scholarship of the West, not only in the fields of natural science, but of the mental sciences, and has thus striven to see progress made in our scholastic pursuits and to make education more popular….

However, at the same time, through the infiltration of individualistic concepts, both scholastic pursuits and education have tended to be taken up with a world in which the intellect alone mattered….

In order to correct these tendencies, the only course open to us is to clarify the true nature of our national polity, which is at the very source of our education, and to strive to clear up individualistic and abstract ideas.

Source: J. O. Gauntlett, trans., and R. K. Hall, ed., Kokutai No Hongi (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 53–183.