The concept of national identity and the concept of a nation-state as a whole are some of the most contested issues in (modern) history so if you ask a dozen historians, chances are you get a dozen different responses. However, very broadly speaking there are two main ideas about the formation of the nation state and national identity.

The first is probably the oldest assumption about the nation-state, it is what we call primordialism. Simply put, this asserts that the nation-state is a continuation of older forces of unity and bonding like villages, urban identity, ethnic identity and more. In other words, primordialists believe that the nation-state builds upon clear identity markers that have existed throughout history in a certain geographical space. For example, one could believe that the modern nation-state of the Netherlands is a continuation of the Germanic people (like the Frysians) that lived in and around that same geographical area hundreds of years ago.

This also means that membership of the nation-state is not voluntary, but predetermined. If you are Dutch, you are Dutch and there is little you can do to change that. And indeed, nation-states have often insisted upon this idea to exclude and include certain people. Rogers Brubaker argues that 19th-Century Germany is a perfect example of a nation-state that acts on the idea of primordialism, where full citizenship (meaning having rights, duties and being commonly seen and accepted in the eyes of others and especially authorities as being a German citizen) was only achievable to those who were related to other ethnic Germans.

As you might have guessed, we run into some trouble when arguing in favour of this view. After all, people that live in our time are quite different from people that lived, say, hundreds of years earlier so what possible denominator do we still share with ancestors? Quite often, the primordialist is forced to, in one way or another, argue that genetical make-up determines citizenship. Given the unpleasant history of eugenics, exclusion and " othering" (especially in the German case that Brubaker talks about) this starts to become rather problematic. That is not to say that primordialism is no longer considered seriously, scholars like Azar Gat still argue in favour of it (in Gat's case: he argues that the nation-state grew out of bonds of kinship and tribal relations).

However, nowadays the more commonly accepted view of national identity formation and the formation of the nation-state is that of the constructivists. This school of thought originated in the 80s and suggests that the nation-state is not natural or has deep historical roots but is rather the conscious creation of elites that try to legitimise their own existence. Arguably, the two biggest names in constructivism are Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, who coined the ideas of Imagined Community and Invention of tradition respectively.

A nation-state according to Anderson is an imagined community because most of its members will never meet or form bonds together and yet can still imagine themselves as being Dutch, German or Swedish. This stands in stark contrast to pre-modern history where members of a tribe or village would know each other, which would be the reason they identified with one another. So how come we in our time identify as Dutch or American or indeed Japanese? According to Anderson, it is because we share common socio-cultural characteristics like a shared history, language and a set of traditions which are invoked through writing and made possible with better, national, education beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Hobsbawm builds upon this idea by arguing that traditions themselves are invented, constructed, to legitimise the rule of an educated upper middle class and build a national identity for the common folk to rally behind. Indeed, when we look at Europe we see a ton (and I do mean an enormous amount) of traditions being created in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century; from kilts to national anthems and from celebrations for the king to an emphasis on shared history through school curricula. (Indeed, if we take this idea one step further it is easy to argue that even the idea of primordialism as used by nation-states such as nineteenth century Germany is constructed to build national identity.)

In that regard, your friends are very correct in talking about Meiji Japan. Meiji Japan is an excellent and very clear example of a nation being built by its rulers to legitimise their own authority over the people and rally them behind something common, a national identity using socio-cultural characteristics such as Shintoism (which before that time had largely been a niche religion, but since Buddhism was “ imported” from India and China the Meiji rulers needed something quintessential Japanese). Other very clear examples of this legitimising through shared national identity can be found in France, Indonesia and the Netherlands.

So, if you follow the argument by the constructivists national identity began to set in for the common folk at around the early nineteenth century whereas if you follow the primordialist argument national identity has always (subconsciously) existed and grew organically out of kinships, tribal bonds and urban identity. It is important to say about the social sciences and history in particular that, as Brubaker has remarked: “we are all constructivists now.” This certainly seems to be the case in my field (I specialise in Migration, Nationalism and Identity from the 1800s onward) but there are still enough scholars out there that consider primordialism to be the more convincing alternative.

Below are some readings I found interesting and could recommend:

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983)

Barnett, Marguerite Ross. The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015)

Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (New York: Harvard University Press, 1992)

Gat, Azar. Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Hadfield, Andrew, David A. Bell, Azar Gat, Cesc Esteve, Kim P. Middel, Jan Waszink, Gregory Carleton, et al. The Roots of Nationalism: National Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600-1815 Edited by Lotte Jensen. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016)

Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Kemper, Steven, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)

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EDIT: spelling.