Yamato-damashii

Yamato-Damashii (大和魂?, "Japanese spirit") is a historically and culturally loaded word in the Japanese language. The phrase was apparently coined in the Heian period to describe the indigenous Japanese 'spirit' or cultural values as opposed to the cultural values imported into the country through contact with Tang dynasty China. Later, a qualitative contrast between Japanese and Chinese spirit was elicited from the term. Edo period writers and samurai used it to gloss the Bushido concept of 'valor'. Japanese nationalists propagandized Yamato-damashii – 'the brave, daring, and indomitable spirit of Japanese people' – as one of the key Japanese military-political doctrines in the Showa period. English translations of Yamato-damashii include the 'Japanese spirit', 'Japanese soul', 'Yamato spirit', and 'The Soul of Old Japan'. Lafcadio Hearn mentions the latter in connection with Shinto.

'For this national type of moral character was invented the name Yamato-damashi (or Yamato-gokoro), — the Soul of Yamato (or Heart of Yamato), — the appellation of the old province of Yamato, seat of the early emperors, being figuratively used for the entire country. We might correctly, though less literally, interpret the expression Yamato-damashi as 'The Soul of Old Japan.' (1904:177)