"Margaret Sleeboom carefully analyses the role the nation state plays in Chinese and Japanese academic theory, demonstrating how nation-centric blinkers often force academics to define social, cultural and economic issues as unique to a certain regional grouping. The book shows how this in turn contributes to the consolidating of national identity while identifying the complex and unintended effects of historical processes and the role played by other local, personal and universal identities which are usually discarded.

While this book primarily reveals how academic nations are conceptualized through views of nature, culture and science, the author simultaneously identifies comparable problems concerning the relation between social science research and the development of the nation state. This book will appeal to not only Asianists but also those with research interests in cultural studies, Japanology and Sinology."--Jacket.