'Will You Go to war? Or Will You Stop Being Japanese?' Nationalism and History in Kobayashi Yoshinori's Sensoron

Abstract

As a study of the influence and nature of popular nationalism in Japan, this article examines the relationship between nationalism and history in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s best-selling manga comic, Sensoron (On War, 1998). Sensoron heralded the recent trend of nationalistic manga targeted at younger generations and has been instrumental in popularizing the ideas of new-generation rightists and historical revisionists over the last decade. Kobayashi explains his strategy as “using the language of daily life in order to discuss politics and ideas”, adding that he created Sensoron as “something that intellectuals cannot write - something that young people find pleasure to read and get completely absorbed in, and yet is not light but deep”. He also emphasizes that what he writes is based on the “common sense of common folks (shomin no joshiki)”. Such an anti-elitist strategy, along with constant caricaturizing of academics, journalists, political activists and politicians as “uncool old men (dasai oyaji)” as well as his well-constructed and marketed charismatic personality, has proved very successful. Indeed, via the popular medium of manga, Kobayashi has ostensibly “created a discourse that is more influential than that of any other “theorist” in the 1990s”.