NENGO AS IDEOLOGEME OF JAPANESE POLITICAL CULTURE (LATE 19TH – EARLY 21ST CENTURY)

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  S. Kapranov

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of Japanese nengo (era names) after the Meiji Restoration. The first part considers the essence of this phenomenon, its origin, the main stages of historical development of the chronological system based upon era names in China and Japan, as well as highlights the main features of the classical form of this system. The second part deals with five nengo, covering the period from 1868 to the present: Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa, Heisei, and Reiwa. The main attention is paid to the sources from which the hieroglyphs for nengo are taken, and to the specific fragments of the sources that form the direct context of the era names. The above-mentioned “new” nengo are also compared with the traditional ones. According to our research, nengo after the Meiji Restoration are not associated with auspicious signs or astrological calculations. The only event that determines them is the accession of the new emperor to the throne. In the context of modern Japanese culture, one cannot talk about the cosmic functions of the mo-narch (at least at the level of social consciousness). After 1945, the emperor could not influence politics, but he is, according to the Constitution, a symbol of the nation, and nengo is a kind of temporal correlate of this symbol. Thus, nengo in modern and postmodern Japan is first and foremost an ideologeme that expresses the socio-political ideal, a kind of program of the respective era. In their form and semantics, nengo remain quite traditional: according to the classification of Alexander Martinov, three nengo out of five (Shōwa, Heisei and Reiwa) belong to the group of “harmony and peace”, and two remaining (Meiji and Taishō) should be attributed to the group of “exemplary order”. The sources of most nengo remain traditional, i. e., the Chinese classics: “Yi Jing”, “Shu Jing” and “Historical Records” by Sima Qian. Only the name of the Reiwa era is taken from Japanese classical literature (“Manyōshū”), which may indicate to some extent the revival of the ideas of the kokugaku school of thought. Heredity in this period is expressed not directly through the repetition of hieroglyphs, but through their presence in the context of the source.

How to Cite

Kapranov, S. (2020). NENGO AS IDEOLOGEME OF JAPANESE POLITICAL CULTURE (LATE 19TH – EARLY 21ST CENTURY). The World of the Orient, (4 (109), 99-107. https://doi.org/10.15407/orientw2020.04.099
Article views: 200 | PDF Downloads: 73

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Keywords

emperor, era names, ideologeme, Ideology, Japan, nengo, political culture, tradition

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