| abstract | - Kokutai (Kyūjitai: 國體, Shinjitai: 国体, literally "national body/structure") is a politically loaded word in the Japanese language, translatable as "national identity; national essence; national character" or "national polity; body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor's sovereignty; Japanese constitution". Historian John S. Brownlee gives this characterization: The most original political idea ever developed in Japan was that of the Kokutai [National Essence]. It served from the Meiji Restoration to 1945 as an inspiring and unifying ideology, and provided the national political framework within which to place the system of constitutional monarchy borrowed from the West under the Meiji Constitution of 1889. It solves many of the puzzles of understanding that Constitution. However, unlike the idea of democracy which has universal appeal, the idea of the Kokutai was useful only in Japan, and contributed nothing whatever to the development of political ideas anywhere else in the world, even when imperial Japan tried to export it to subject countries. In addition, its fundamental irrationalism is appalling and offensive to many, though this is a characteristic shared by many other political systems based on religious ideas. (2000:1)[citation needed] The most simple translation may be sovereign. For example, in the United Kingdom, the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Monarchy combine to form a sovereign, while in pre-war Japan, the Emperor alone was sovereign. The following will first trace the linguistic origins of the word kokutai and then outline historical changes in how Japanese political theorists framed this concept.
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