The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952 by Reto Hofmann (review)

Historians of Japan have often observed that the most sensible point of comparison for Japan in the 1930s was not Nazi Germany but Fascist Italy. Reto Hofmann’s slender new volume uses government and news media documents from Italy and Japan to show that “interwar Japanese culture and politics was steeped in fascism” (p. 7), without getting bogged down in the quagmire of arguments concerning whether Japan was fascist. The Fascist Effect critically analyzes the effort to define and execute a “revolution-restoration” from “the right” as a process that was stridently local (or “national”) while being necessarily global in its main references (pp. 136–37). Hofmann has produced a readable and exceptionally sensible volume on the global production of fascist ideology, which will be of tremendous value for scholars who teach comparative history.

In the first chapter, Hofmann focuses on Shimoi Harukichi, an “indefatigable propagandist of Italian Fascism in Japan” and, more important, a philosopher of fascism for the Japanese context (p. 8). Hofmann shows that Shimoi not only embodied the contradictions of the political right at this time (national uniqueness, global fascism), but he also discovered the importance of aesthetics (especially futurism and technology) for patriotism, youth mobilization, and finding “national and not strictly intellectual” (p. 18) audiences for his work. The appearance of a Roman column in Aizu, a gift from Benito Mussolini to celebrate the history of the byakkōtai (loyal samurai who died defending the Tokugawa shogunate) and supported by Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi, reportedly excited interest among Japanese youth outside urban centers through a mass media campaign (p. 36). To me, however, this 1928 event also exemplifies the parasitic and ideologically impoverished nature of fascism, which depended not only on foreign influences but also on indigenous Meiji practices dating back at least to the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War: youth mobilization (supported by Tanaka, of course, in the form of Seinendan), militaristic monuments in regional areas (ably detailed by Naoko Shimazu in Japanese Society at War¹), and mass media celebration of adventurism and warfare (e.g., Bōken sekai and science fiction writers like Oshikawa Shunrō). I mention this not to undermine Hofmann’s argument for the importance of the global production of fascism, but to point out why the ideology was able to have such an impact on Japanese society.

In chapter 2, Hofmann analyses the cultural reception of the figure of Mussolini in Japan, highlighting the ruminations of intellectuals, reporters, and political figures. Hofmann makes a compelling argument throughout that Mussolini was a kind of focal point for Japanese considerations of political rejuvenation in response to the perceived crisis of liberalism, without embracing him or Italian Fascism as an outright model. Hofmann points out that biographical treatments for children of Mussolini as a “great man” were in fact part of a long tradition of such writing (p. 58); what is unclear, however, is whether Mussolini portraits were unique, or uniquely influential, in comparison with other exemplars peddled by moralistic writers for children and youth. After all, magazines like Kodomo no kagaku were celebrating scientists, Shōnen kurabu favored adventurers, and religious educators were still praising the merits of famous priests.

Hofmann goes on to argue in chapter 3 that Italian Fascism remained more influential in the definition of fascism in Japan, despite the rising interest in both Germany and Nazism. By analyzing the writings of Tosaka Jun and Hasegawa Nyozekan, Hofmann shows that Japanese intellectuals understood fascism as a global trend that was necessarily articulated differently depending on the class, economic, cultural, and political systems from which it emerged (pp. 68–75). Still, I wonder if the exclusion of Germany here was wise. Japanese elite and popular fascination with Germany was ascendant in the 1930s, as one can see in popular science magazines like Kagaku gahō; Germany, not Italy, appeared to be the vanguard of right-wing revolutionary culture, so I remain a little skeptical regarding the...