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Oguma Eiji has already achieved celebrity, such as it is, in the field of Japanese studies. This translation of his prize-winning Tan 'itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [Origins of the Myth of the Homogeneous Nation] (Tokyo: Shiny?sha, 1995) gives non-specialists access to scholarship frequently cited and occasionally raided by specialists. Since this substantial volume is the shortest of Oguma's major works by far, this translation may well serve as his representative work in English. Despite its uninspiring title-the subtitle of the original-this translation deserves the wide readership it seeks among non-specialists. This audience will, nevertheless, struggle with the idiosyncrasies of this translation.

Oguma's argument is clear: the self-image of Japan as a homogeneous society is not the product of the prewar discourse on Japanese identity. Prewar discourse drew on the discriminatory rhetoric of nationalism, racism and imperialism to justify Japan's political domination over others, but it also presented Japan as a polyglot society and its empire as one of ethnic and racial variety. It is the postwar discourse on the new peace state, Oguma asserts, that invented a pacifistic, homogeneous nation as the cornerstone of modern Japanese identity. Most of the book is dedicated to the complexities of prewar identity discourse.