「国民的人格としての生ける過去」 : 『神皇正統記』と昭和初期ナショナリズムとドイツ第三帝国

In the 1930s, contemporary relevance was attributed to Kitabatake Chikafusa\u27s Jinnō Shōtōki (1339) as a "standard work of national education" and an expression of "folk-national weltanschauung" for encapsulating the concept of kokutai, Japan\u27s national essence. It was praised too for claiming that Japan is a shinkoku or "divine country" wherein the sun goddess bequeaths her line of rule to all eternity ; a concept of perpetual divine presence that has been described as the epitome of Shinto itself. In order to make the "Shinto" concepts of kokutai and shinkoku accessible to the uninitiated reader in Germany, Hermann Bohner, the first translator of Jinnō shōtōki into a Western language, in 1935 deployed Arthur Moeller van den Bruck\u27s ideas, the socio-political milieu in Germany at the time, and Bohner\u27s political and theological stance reveals Jinnō shōtōki\u27s contemporary significance as being imbued with an almost metaphysical essentialism of the nation\u27s character. This article traces a shift in Jinnō shōtōki\u27s evaluation from the early Meiji period, examines the role Shinto actually plays in Kitabatake\u27s work, and elucidates, via Bohner\u27s comparative approach, its importance for early Shōwa period nationalism