Ohnuki-Tierney offers a compelling, central proposition: Japan’s culturally dominant nationalist ethos during World War II was enabled by “communicative opacity.” She defines this term as “an absence of communication or mutual understanding due to individuals in a given social/historical context drawing different meanings from the same symbol, or, more often, due to an absence of articulation in their minds of the meaning they are drawing” (2). Communicative opacity operates through polysemy, totalization, ellipsis, and aesthetics to convert “innocent cultural nationalism” into “dangerous political nationalism” (17). It is discernible not only in the discourses surrounding specific acts of fervent nationalism (such as the suicide flights of the tokkōtai, or kamikaze pilots) but also in the broader discursive framework within which the accountability—or lack thereof—of Emperor Hirohito was located.
Part I argues that various well-worn cultural symbols of Japanese nationalism (cherry blossoms, monkeys, and rice) became imbued with the various “meanings”...