who oppose corporate power or unending technological development does not present the whole picture of the phenomenon where Japan is concerned. That is because, for the Japan case, it is possible to understand globalization in a third way. Japan's postwar economic miracle--even in the age of economic globalization--has not prevented either Japanese culture or Japanese corporate power from having and maintaining a distinctively nationalist character. The "for-itself" character of Japan as a unique community has been part of the Japanese worldview for a long time. That fact has had both positive and negative results.
Weiner places the modern origins of "development of national consciousness" in Japan as far back as the Tokugawa period, which lasted from 1603 to 1867 (Weiner, 1997, pp. 100-101). Even when the Meiji took power in 1868, the idea of the special nature of the Japanese culture (and to some extent race) survived. Indeed, it expanded. According to Weiner, the Meiji intelligentsia and political apparatus made a project of "disseminati[ng] [] 'raci
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