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Warrior Ghost Plays from the Japanese Noh Theatre.

adaptation of literary and historical techniques, an issue I believe has much to do with the disappearance of critical intellectualism in Japan. What took place was the ultimate rejection of self-reflective moments inherent in both literary and historical narratives, including those of the so-called popular culture. Of course, I should not exaggerate the critical self-reflectivity of those genres, but the novel genre could not avoid an almost self-destructive questioning about its generic formation itself, as represented, for instance, by Watakushi shosetsu or I-novels. These self-reflective or "theoretical" moments are, in fact, what have continued to transform those genres for, without those moments, the genres are duly ossified. In The Knowledge-Value Revolution, the reader cannot detect even the slightest trace of those critical commitments. As his ahistorical uses of concepts such as "race," "ethnos," and "nation" amply show, any references to historical facts merely dehistoricize the very historicity of the tremendous changes which all of us, no matter whether we are Japanese or not, have been undergoing, and limit us to seeing the future or the past as a mere forward or backward extrapolation of the present, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to that of "the Modernization Theory." Sakaiya's history encourages the readers to imagine that they could still view the world from the standpoint of governmental bureaucrats and enjoy the sense of being the managers in charge of the entire society. I cannot ignore the contradictions and ambiguities that Sakaiya could not manage to put in order. On the one hand, he deployed a typical conservative rhetoric about the disintegration of the nation as a result of the influx of other ethnic and racial groups, and thereby depicts it as a negative consequence of the coming of "the new Middle Ages." On the other hand, he had to admit that wide-scale immigration across national borders as well as the disappearance of the nation-state is an essential feature of the society to come. From this one can infer that, as long as the Japanese adhere to the idea of the homogeneous national community, they will not be able to adapt to the reality of "the new Middle Ages." I think this aspect of The KnowledgeValue Revolution is important precisely because it indicates a feature of current social changes that would radically call into question the very conventions and frameworks Sakaiya has deployed in his narrative: it points to a site where he begins to speak in spite of himself.