Kokutai No Hongi: Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan

This is a careful translation -- with extensive introduction, notes and appendices -- of the official statement issued by the Japanese Government in 1937 for the guidance of those whose function it was to indoctrinate the youth of the country. It contains the mythology about the divine origin of the imperial family, and it sets forth the duties of the loyal subject toward his ruler as expounded in the imperialist and militarist philosophy of Shintoism.