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    Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History
    Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History
    Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History
    Ebook416 pages10 hours

    Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History

    By Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

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    About this ebook

    Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan's tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to convince people that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for the emperor.

    Drawing on diaries never before published in English, Ohnuki-Tierney describes these young men's agonies and even defiance against the imperial ideology. Passionately devoted to cosmopolitan intellectual traditions, the pilots saw the cherry blossom not in militaristic terms, but as a symbol of the painful beauty and unresolved ambiguities of their tragically brief lives. Using Japan as an example, the author breaks new ground in the understanding of symbolic communication, nationalism, and totalitarian ideologies and their execution.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2010
    ISBN9780226620688
    Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History

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    Reviews for Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms

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    • 4/5
      This is another book for the scholar, as Ohnuki-Tierney presumes that you have a good handle on anthropology, modern literary analysis, general Japanese history, and the history of World War II in the Pacific. The core of the book is the author's examination of the diaries of several volunteer pilots, and it seems that she fell in love with her subjects for their idealism and learning. I myself wonder how I would react to these young men when I was their age, as they didn't seem to have a cynical or even pragmatic bone in their bodies, as compared to the punk rocker I was in my early twenties. Anyway, the notion that Ohnuki-Tierney really wants to examine is the concept of "meconnaissance," which is a fancy structuralist way of talking about the process of bait-and-switch that the authorities run on the general public, so that regime objectives become confused with personal values & obligations.

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