The Culture of Japanese Fascism (review)

In The Culture of Japanese Fascism, 17 accomplished scholars in Japan studies from a rich diversity of academic disciplines such as history, film studies, languages, literature, anthropology, art history, and interdisciplinary studies have come together to reflect on the relationship between culture and fascism in Japan in the decades preceding the end of World War II. This is an important work since most of the studies by U.S. scholars who have taken up the thorny issue of whether Japan in the wartime period was fascist tend to emphasize the political, institutional, and ideological aspects of a Japanese fascism to almost the complete exclusion of cultural issues. Considering the fact that a substantial volume of literature exists on the cultures of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the two main regimes in the Axis alliance in Europe, such a work on the culture of the principal Axis power in Asia and the Pacific is long overdue.

Editor Alan Tansman states unambiguously in his introductory essay that this volume as a whole "does argue for the presence of a fascist culture in Japan" (p. 1). However, he cautions the reader not to expect "a unified definition of 'fascism,' or even a uniform picture of Japan in these years" (p. 1). Further, it should be noted that several of the contributors have concerns about applying the appellation "fascist" to the case of Japan. For instance, in the opening essay of this anthology, Kevin Doak, concurring with Walter Laqueur, questions whether it is possible to identify a single fascist theory of culture. Nevertheless, he does attempt to grapple with this issue by examining how, in the 1930s and early 1940s, two Japanese critics of Japanese fascism, liberal Christian Imanaka Tsugimaro and Marxist Tosaka Jun, understood Japan's political and cultural forms to be "fascist." He notes that Imanaka agrees with Laqueur that "fascism thought of itself as a movement of cultural revolution" rather than a state characterized by certain institutional forms (p. 35). From this insight, Doak argues that the key to grasping the essence of a culture of Japanese fascism was to recognize that it "centered on the ethnic appropriation of cultural identity" and that "'Japanism' [euphemism for fascism] was a theory of ethnic nationality (minzoku) that [Marxist] Tosaka bemoaned for displacing the rising potential of a proletarian culture" (pp. 42-43).

Richard Torrance offers the reader a glimpse of a fascinating debate among Japanese journalists, academics, writers, and literary circles in the early 1930s on the question of whether Japan was, or was becoming, a fascist country. Among the interesting aspects of this debate, he points out that liberal novelist and journalist Hasegawa Nyozekan "recognize[d] fascism as a dangerous international phenomenon" and that he was a pioneer in applying "a conceptualization of fascism to distinctively Japanese conditions" as early as 1931 (p. 58). "But did fascism really exist in Japan?" Judging from his study of the perspective of the writers associated with Jinmin Bunko (The People's Library), Torrance answers this question, stating, rather squeamishly, that it was "close enough" (p. 75).

By contrast, Harry Harootunian has no reservations about identifying Japan with fascism. In his thought-provoking chapter, "Constitutive Ambiguities: The Persistence of Modernism and Fascism in Japan's Modern History," he bemoans the fact that fascism has come to be "seen as simply a parenthesis in twentieth-century [Japanese] history rather than one of its constitutive and determining principles" (p. 91). He also boldly and unequivocally stresses that a culture of fascism continues on with much vitality even in the postwar period, despite a massive well-coordinated effort to forget and repress it.

Part 2, "Fascism and Daily Life," contains essays by Kim Brandt, Noriko Aso, and Aaron Skabelund. Brandt analyzes a wartime proposal by Japan's largest and most influential folk art organization, the Folk-Craft Association (Mingei Kyōkai), to reform the dormitory life of female workers at a nylon-spinning plant owned by the Kurashiki Silk Company in Okayama Prefecture...