Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms

Why did almost one thousand highly educated "student soldiers" volunteer to serve in Japan''s tokkotai (kamikaze) operations near the end of World War II, even though Japan was losing the war? In this fascinating study of the role of symbolism and aesthetics in totalitarian ideology, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney shows how the state manipulated the time-honored Japanese symbol of the cherry blossom to conv...