Abstract
In the numerous comparative studies of fascism produced over the past several decades, scholars have tended to place greater stress on differences than parallels in their attempts to classify “third way” movements of the 1930s. Because the Italian party gained power first and its name (in non-capitalized form) has become accepted as the generic term for the broader phenomenon, Italian Fascism serves as the prototype.1 Strongly emphasizing governmental and political structures, the experts then proceed to develop complex definitions for a “fascist minimum” that, as Joseph P. Sottile pointed out in chapter 1, always exclude Japan from the fascist camp.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For example, James A. Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang write in “Nationalfascismo and the Revolutionary Nationalist of Sun Yat-sen,” Journal of Asia Studies, 39 (November 1979): 22 that in order to have a basis of comparison it is necessary to start with “the ideologues of Italian Fascism, who had indisputable fascist credentials.” For a review and sampling of various theories on fascism,
see Roger Griffin, ed., International Fascism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). The most comprehensive survey of “third way” movements is Stanley G. Payne’s A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).
Zeev Sternhell makes an argument for separate consideration of Nazism in “Fascist Ideology,” in Fascism: A Reader’s Guide, ed. Walter Laqueur (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 317.
For example, George M. Wilson, “A New Look at the Problem of ‘Japanese Fascism’,” in Henry A. Turner, Reappraisals of Fascism (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), pp. 199–214; Peter Duus and Daniel I. Okimoto, “Fascism and the History of Pre-War Japan: The Failure of a Concept,” Journal of Asian Studies, 39 (November 1979): 65–76;
Ben-Ami Shillony, “Wartime Japan: A Military Dictatorship?” in Shōwa Japan: Political, Economic and Social History 1926–1989, ed. Stephen S. Large (New York: Routledge, 1998), 2: 3–21.
George L. Mosse, The Fascist Revolution (New York: Howard Fertig, 1999), xi
R. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1935), p. 234. On the abortive international fascist movement, see Griffin, ed., International Fascism, pp. 1–2.
Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 338, note 18, argues in favor of such an approach, noting that this would be similar to “sugesting that the industrial revolution be defined, not with primary reference to the British case, but after consideration of the several national cases of industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, including Japan.”
John Gunther, Inside Asia (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938), pp. 119–120.
On antiSemitism in Japan, see Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 156–171.
Bernd Martin, Japan and Germany in the Modern World (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995), pp. 18, 22, 27, 35, 42.
Also, Richard J. Smethurst, A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese Militarism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 10
Frederick R. Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914–1919 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University East Asia Center, 1999), pp. 21–23
Ian Buruma, “Suicide for the Empire,” New York Review of Books, 49 (November 21, 2002): 26.
Herbert von Dirksen, Moscow, Tokyo, London: Twenty Years of German Diplomacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952), p. 139.
Ernst L. Presseisen, Germany and Japan: A Study in Totalitarian Diplomacy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1958), p. 187.
Ibid., pp. 124–163. On Chinese—German relations see William C. Kirby, Germany and Republican China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984). On differences among German diplomats over alliance with Japan at the expense of China
see John P. Fox, Germany and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1931–1938 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 5–6, 24–25, 29, 32–35, 38–39, 79–81.
William Henry Chamberlin, Japan Over Asia (London: Duckworth, 1938), p. 143. Gordon notes in Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan, p. 322, that Admiral Godo Takuo sounded these same themes in his 1938 book Nobiyuku Doitsu (Germamy on the Rise). Gordon writes that enthusiasm for fascism “grew not simply because the Germans had gained new international power, but also because the Japanese considered the Germans, Italians, and themselves to be facing similar dilemmas.”
Takafusa Nakamura, A History of Shōwa Japan 1926–1989 (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1998), p. 133.
Nogi Harumichi, quoted in Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History (New York: New Press, 1992), p. 51.
Quoted in Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), p. 149.
Victor A. Yakhontoff, Eyes on Japan (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1936), p. 104.
Beni-Ami Shillony, Revolt in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 64–65.
Leonard A. Humphreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 178–179.
Mark Metzler, “American Pressure for Financial Internationalization in Japan on the Eve of the Great Depression,” Journal of Japanese Studies, 28 (Fall 2002): 277–300
Harold James, The End of Globalization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 93–94.
Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 136, 240.
Masayo Ohara, Democratization and Expansionism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp. 115–141.
Willis Lamott, Suzuki Looks at Japan (New York: Friendship Press, 1934), p. 40. 64.
Frank O. Miller, Minobe Tatsukichi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965) and Brooker, Faces of Fraternalism, pp. 50–56.
Itō Takashi, “The Role of Right-Wing Organizations in Japan,” in Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations 1931–1941, ed. Dorothy Borg and Shumpei Okamoto (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), p. 493.
Quoted in Harley F. McNair, The Real Conflict Between China and Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), p. 184.
Robert K. Hall, ed., Kokutai No Hongi, tr. John O. Gauntlett (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), p. 80.
D.C. Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947, second edition), p. 89.
Brian Victoria, Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997), especially chapters eight and nine.
Brooker, Faces of Fraternalism, pp. 242–248 and Sheldon Garon, Moulding Japanese Minds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 60–87.
Otto D. Tolischus, Tokyo Record (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1943), pp. 78–79.
Joseph Newman, Goodbye Japan (New York: L.B. Fischer, 1942), pp. 187–188.
Stephen S. Large, Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 49.
Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 127–128.
David A. Titus, Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 189. Also, see p. 333.
Chitoshi Yanaga, Japan Since Perry (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966, reprint edition), p. 218.
Upton Close, Challenge: Behind the Face of Japan (New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1934), p. 348.
Harold S. Quigley, Far Eastern War, 1937–1941 (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1942), p. 31.
Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan Past and Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1958), p. 165.
Hugh Byas, Government by Assassination (London: Allen and Unwin, 1943), pp. 30, 33. Japanese specialists have tended to devalue accounts by Western journalists, like Byas, in large part because of the correspondents’ inability to speak or read Japanese. The journalists were, however, professional observers who were on the scene during the events of the 1930s.
Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 65.
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 301.
Robert O. Paxton, “The Uses of Fascism,” New York Review of Books, 46:22 (November 28, 1996): 49.
Galen M. Fisher, Creative Forces in Japan (West Medford, MA: Missionary Education Movement, 1923), pp. 39–40.
Relman Morin, Circle of Conquest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p. 16.
Quoted in Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation (Armok, NY M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 95–96.
Quoted in Wilfrid Fleisher, Volcanic Isle (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Doran, 1941), pp. 51–52.
Miles Fletcher, “Intellectuals and Fascism in Early Showa Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies, 39 (November 1979): 61.
Quoted in T.A. Bisson, Japan’s War Economy (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1945), pp. 16–17.
Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan and Her Destiny. ed. F.S.G. Piggott, tr. Oswald White (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1958), p. 189.
Gordon M. Berger, Parties Out of Power in Japan, 1931–1941 (Princeton: Princeton Univeristy Press, 1977), pp. 263–275, 290, 296–310.
Delmer Brown, Nationalism in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), p. 221.
Donald Keene, “Japanese Writers and the Greater East Asia War,” Journal of Asian Studies, 33 (February 1964): 209–225; Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, pp. 110–120 and Saburō Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931–1945 (New York: Pantheon Press. 19781. pp. 121–124.
Daikichi Irokawa, The Age of Hirohito: In Search of Modern Japan, tr. Mikiso Hane and John K. Urda (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 34.
Robert Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975 reprint edition), p. 392.
John Whitney Hall, Japan from Prehistory to Modern Times (New York: Dell Publishing, 1970), p. 342.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2004 E. Bruce Reynolds
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reynolds, E.B. (2004). Peculiar Characteristics: The Japanese Political System in the Fascist Era. In: Reynolds, E.B. (eds) Japan in the Fascist Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980410_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980410_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-52748-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-8041-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)