 In the immediate years following Japan’s surrender in 1945, Kokugaku was virtually a taboo topic in Japan’s academic circles outside a handful of Shinto seminaries like Kokugakuin Daigaku in Tokyo. Specialized studies of Japanese history, literature and religions were of course permitted and even encouraged, but efforts to historicize Japanese essentialism were off-limits. Further, expressions of Japanese racial or cultural superiority such as those that had fueled the international excesses of the Asia-Pacific War years were replaced in popular discourse by alternative claims of Japanese uniqueness: that Japanese people were naturally or intrinsically inclined toward harmonious behavior, and are characterized by diligence, frugality, honesty, and sensitivity to seasonal change; that these qualities explain Japan’s success in economic development and social stability, and that those traditional qualities are uniquely configured in contemporary Japanese society. This began to change from the mid-1970s when scholarly studies of Kokugaku’s political and social thought—the so-called native ancient Way—resumed in Japan, as did academic appointments for scholars with these specialties at Japan’s leading universities. 