Post-Fascist Japan: Political Culture in Kamakura after the Second World War by Laura Hein (review)

Many readers of this journal will have been on day trips to Kamakura while based at one of the many universities in the Kanto area. Some may have wondered why it is that, despite being right on the coast and close by train to central Tokyo, it manages to maintain an atmosphere in which it is possible to enjoy the shrines, temples, and magnificent Buddha as well as the beaches. Laura Hein argues that this is a by-product of the series of decisions taken by influential residents of the city soon after 1945 to promote a political culture that she calls "post-fascist."

This is both the title of the book and the main concept that guides Hein's argument so we need to deal with what she means by this before focusing on the book's content. This is NOT a variant of neofascism, some kind of new expression of fascist ideas. On the contrary, Hein wants to use the term to describe the postsurrender strategies and policies of those who had survived the period of Japanese fascism and who were determined to destroy its roots and thereby prevent its re-emergence. This of course raises the much-debated question of in what sense it is accurate to describe Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s as "fascist." Hein chooses not to become involved in this debate and rather seems to be arguing that it is good enough for her that many of those who were involved in mainstream and antimainstream politics during those times felt themselves to have been living, and to have lived, through a fascist era. In reaction to this, they sought after the war to create new institutions that would embed transparency and democratic practices into everyday life in order to prevent any future recurrence. Some of Hein's actors seem to be doing this as an act of contrition in that they recognized "they bore some responsibility for the war through their own cowardice or mistakes or weaknesses" (p. 14, quoting Murayama Tomoyoshi). Others had been imprisoned during the war and were determined to make sure the state could never act like that again.

The central sections of the book focus on three case studies of institutions within which we can see these attempts to create a "post-fascist" culture at work: a failed attempt to create a new kind of university, a history of the Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, and the work of progressives in Kamakura's municipal government. However, to set her case studies into context, Hein begins with a brief sketch of the historical background, in particular the 80 years between the Meiji Restoration and the Pacific War. A key event here was the decision of the crown prince (later the Taisho emperor) to build a holiday home in Hayama, soon to be followed by several former daimyō, senior government officials, and business leaders. A rail link had been established that meant Kamakura was less than an hour's commute from central Tokyo.

By the early twentieth century, the city had entered into the literary imagination. Novelists began to move there to live. Natsume Sōseki, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, and others featured seaside scenes at Kamakura in their work. Although badly affected by the earthquake in 1923–80 per cent of housing was damaged—it was rebuilt faster than central Tokyo, and scholars, journalists, and artists of all kinds moved in. The result of all this was to create in Kamakura "a place where the soil exudes modern culture" and which "swarms with cultural figures and intellectuals" (p. 55). Kamakura also started to promote itself as a tourist attraction such that by the 1930s it was receiving ten million visitors annually, some visiting the "great sites" and many more the beaches—33,000 people went to Zushi beach on one day in July 1928. However, as Japan...