Invention of tradition and imagined communities. Xxxxxxxx’x (1983) notion of invented tradition would appear to underpin the artefacts and practices which form the bedrock of the ideology of uni-raciality. According to this theory traditional artefacts and practices are re-presented to preserve continuity with the past during times of economic and social change. This is attempted by constructing and reconstructing the history and culture of modern nation states in order to establish social cohesion through the legitimisation of modern institutions as well as the standardisation of values and beliefs (Xxxxx, 1994). I believe that Xxxxxxxx’x (1983) notion of tradition, but only in the broadest sense possible, can be useful to understand the traditional artefacts and practices which are prominent in the Nihonjinron notion of uni-raciality. Although this notion of tradition may be useful for my thesis, I feel that a deep discussion about the extent to which a tradition is ‘real or invented’ or for that matter the precise point in a historical past when the tradition was thought to have originated/been invented is unnecessary for my thesis (see Vlastos, 1998 for a discussion of this). I am using the notion of tradition to illustrate how traditional Japanese artefacts and cultural practices are constructed and re-constructed within a Nihonjinron narrative of uni-raciality as having links with a distant past to give a sense of continuity. I, therefore, use Xxxxxxxx’x notion of ‘tradition’ very loosely to represent ‘a continuous cultural transmission in the form of discrete cultural practices of “the past” that remain vital in the present’ (Vlastos, 1989, p. 2).
