A nation is not just a territory. It’s a spirit. It raises and answers fundamental questions. How did the world begin? With divine creation in the Western tradition; with divine birth in Japan’s — a god and goddess loved, and the archipelago was born.

Fervor: Inspired by the poets of ages past, peasant-poet and ardent nationalist, Matsuo Taseko made the arduous journey to the capital at age 51. | WIKICOMMONS
Fervor: Inspired by the poets of ages past, peasant-poet and ardent nationalist, Matsuo Taseko made the arduous journey to the capital at age 51. | WIKICOMMONS

Why, then, is there evil? Nativist scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), ancestor of 19th- and 20th-century nationalism, in a 1771 essay titled “The Spirit of the Gods,” offers this explanation: