Images of Japanese Society in the “New Civics Textbook”: Neo-Nationalist Antidotes for Demographic Challenges and Social Change

Discussions of Japanese neo-nationalism and activities of neo-nationalist groups like Tsukurukai have very much focused on issues of historiography. Compared to publications such as the group's “New History Textbook”, however, there has been little in-depth research on Tsukurukai's civics textbook (Atarashii kōmin kyōkasho) that remains largely unknown to a non-Japanese audience. To partially fill this gap, a close reading of Tsukurukai's civic textbook is presented in this paper. I will show that its narrative is fully in line with the claims of the neo-nationalist discourse published elsewhere. Focusing in particular on chapters that deal with the individual and the family, this reading helps to better understand Tsuku- rukai's view on gender relations and topics such as social and demographic change. Findings are put into perspective by comparing Tsukurukai's approach to other publishers' textbooks that present rather different images of these issues. I will argue that the “New Civics Textbook” represents a minority view on the role of family members and gender relations in contemporary Japan. On the other hand, the textbook's favourable view of an individual submissive to the state, juxtaposed with an alleged “excess of individualism” in postwar Japan, may find more approval in the present discussion on how to instil a sense of “patriotism” in Japanese school children.