When Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said that Japan is a "kami no kuni" (country of the gods), it can be argued he was doing little more than expressing a personal religious belief before a group of like-minded, Shinto-supporting Diet members. U.S. media claims that he was trying revive Japanese nationalism hinge on mistranslations that have him saying Japan was a "divine nation."
But his more recent claim that Japan is a "kokutai" (a national polity) based on the Emperor in which the Communist Party has no place really is alarming. It is a direct throwback to Japan's prewar fascism and throws severe doubt on Japan's claims to be a Western-style democracy.
Kokutai, like fascism, implies a nation bound by a sense of instinctive togetherness. That in itself is reasonable enough. But in the case of Japan it has required respect for the Emperor system and nebulous traditions as focus for the togetherness instincts. It automatically denies the status of those who seem to run counter to those icons.