Many international relations (IR) theories examining the identity/alterity nexus share a dichotomized vision of the social and political reality sustaining their approach to "identity" by dividing the latter into either its "corporate" or its "social" dimension. This dichotomized conception of the social and political falls into what Norbert Elias termed "process-reduction," a fallacy leading to an isolation and essentialization of certain aspects of processes and bracketing the inherent eventness of the "international." This paper will theoretically identify the shortcomings of this dichotomized vision and then provide an empirical narration of what a non-dichotomized conception can look like and consider how it provides us with a more acute rendering of the social and political dimensions of collective political identity formation and politics of representation. To do so, a dialogical understanding of the variety of constellations of collective political identities that have informed questions regarding multiculturalism ranging from the Tokugawa (1603–1867) to the Taishō (1912–1926) eras in Japan will be developed.