Han, EricSasaki, TomoyukiHubbard, JoshuaLing, Zhengyuan2025-06-122019-05-022019-04-01https://scholarworks.wm.edu/handle/internal/10727This thesis on pre-modern Japan’s intellectual history argues for the existence of a proto-nationalism in Japan since the seventeenth century, meanwhile Japanese Confucianism, as both affirmative and contrapuntal instrument, served a necessary function in constituting and facilitating the development of such proto-nationalism.© The Authorhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/honorsthesis_restricted