"In spite of rapid changes taking place in Japan, the dominant identity discourse of Japan - Nihonjinron - has maintained its hegemonic position in the ideological landscape. Japanese intellectuals have been producing and continue to produce a massive and ever increasing literature on the subject with no end in sight. In Hegemony of Homogeneity, Harumi Befu, a bilingual anthropologist who has dedicated the past 40 years to studying Japan, dissects, analyzes, and interprets this discourse by consulting hundreds of original Japanese sources. Befu argues that Nihonjinron is, among others, a civil religion for the Japanese and a creature responding to Japan's changing geo-political and geo-economic environment." --Book Jacket.