Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the intellectual structure of emperor ideology, the ideology of extreme Japanese nationalism that was used as a vehicle to bring about the concentration of power around and in the name of the emperor in prewar Japan. It focuses on the internal transformation within emperor ideology in a field of competing ideologies from the late Meiji period to the Taisho and Showa periods. To capture the essence of this transformation, this study examines the state theories of three preeminent constitutional legal scholars who established the theoretical basis for emperor ideology as the powerful state-sponsored orthodox ideology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Hozumi Yatsuka, Uesugi Shinkichi and Kakehi Katsuhiko. The state theories of Kita Ikki, Minobe Tatsukichi and Yoshino Sakuzo are also briefly reexamined and positioned within this ideological discourse over state and sovereignty in prewar Japan