The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan: Yudayaka/Jewish Peril Propaganda and Debates in the 1920s (review)

Japan is of great importance to our understanding of the mechanisms of antisemitism. In this society shaped by Shintoism and Buddhism, there are virtually no Jews; nevertheless, conspiracy theories centered on an alleged Jewish peril abound in Japan. In his recent work, Canadian historian and Japanese specialist Jacob Kovalio analyzes Japanese discussions concerning the putative Jewish danger. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the tsarist Russian publication purporting to present a document revealing Jewish plans for global domination, has played a pivotal role in this perception of threat.

Kovalio understands The Protocols as an expression of a "conspiracy and scapegoating" strain of antisemitism that spread in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through Europe, into Russia and the United States, and then to Japan. The Protocols are a report on a Jewish congress that supposedly took place in Lvov in 1869; in fact, there was no such congress. Though the authorship of The Protocols has not been definitively established, the text is believed to have originated in the Parisian branch of the tsarist secret police. It first surfaced in 1903, and soon after appeared in print in various forms (serialized in the newspaper Znamia; as a pamphlet; as a section of a book). One can best portray The Protocols as an evolving collection of antisemitic texts, many versions of which have circulated over the years.

The Protocols first came to be in Japanese hands during the Siberian Intervention (1918-1922), after Japanese soldiers landed in Vladivostok to fight alongside White Russian forces against the Red Army. Along with The Protocols, Japanese forces received from their tsarist allies an explanation for the Russian Revolution; namely, that it was part of a global Jewish conspiracy. Japanese translations of The Protocols soon appeared, the first in 1920—oddly, in the newspaper of a Shintoist sect. Another appeared in 1925, translated by Yasue Norihiro (1886-1950), who went on to become a "Jew specialist" working for the Japanese government. Another of these "specialists," Shiōden Nobutaka (1878-1962), translated The Protocols in the late 1930s. Some translations of The Protocols were reworked even after World War II—some up until the present day.

Kovalio presents some of these translations and revisions in great detail. Perhaps the most perfidious example is the version of The Protocols for children, published as a series in 1932-33. In that series, a "Superman of the Great Orient" battles against a secret Jewish organization that seeks to undermine the Japanese empire.

Yet, these abstruse theories of Jewish world supremacy do not remain wholly unrefuted in Japan. As Kovalio shows, they have been debated and criticized. Many Japanese recognized the irrationality of The Protocols. Sometimes, however, antisemitic theories were criticized because they conflicted with an important element of Japanese imperialist ideology. According to that ideology, the whole world—or at the very least Asia—was to be unified under the leadership of Japan. For proponents of "Pan-Asianism"—among them for example the nationalist Mitsukawa Kametarō (1888-1936)—the Jews were an Asian race, and therefore to be included in this unification. Jews were not to be discriminated against so long as they were prepared to acknowledge the Japanese right to power.

As a key example of the discussions about "the Jewish danger," Kovalio cites a roundtable talk on this topic organized in 1929 by the publishing house Heibonsha. The stated purpose of this discussion among Japanese intellectuals was to clarify the nature of the "Jewish danger" (Yudayaka). During the talks, The Protocols were cited as a reference text. However, members of the group stated clearly that they were dealing with a falsification and that there were in fact no Jewish plans for world domination. Only one participant of the discussion insisted until the last that the Jews indeed were striving for world dominance and wanted to take over global finance.

Yet this panel...