Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan : University of California Press : 9780520201347 : 0520201345 : 20 May 1996 : Nearly a half century after Japan opened its doors to Western knowledge, intellectual discourse there took a sharp turn inward. Drawing on the cultural resources of a forgotten past, Japanese thinkers of the 1910s and 1930s imagined a realm of authenticity impervious to the fragmenting processes of modernization. Ultimately these thinkers equated authenticity with something irreducibly Japanese and in so doing became complicit, even instrumental, in a repressive and imperialist state apparatus. How did this cultural complicity take shape, and what does it reveal more generally about the troubled relationship between modernity and national culture? To explore these questions, Leslie Pincus focuses on the work of philosopher Kuki Shuzo, in particular his classic study of Edo style, "Iki" no kozo - a text that demonstrates with unusual clarity the philosophical sources, t