Rethinking “emperor-system fascism”: Ruptures and continuities in modern Japanese history

Abstract

A full half century ago the Great Depression and an upsurge of national liberation struggles in China and Korea took only three years to shake the foundations of Japan’s fragile political institutions, turning the question of reform into the major issue of the day. In the crisis of 1929–31, Japanese foreign policy underwent further militarization, authority at all levels become more coercive, dissent was suppressed, and disenchantment with the ambiguities of a highly limited parliamentarism spread to all levels of society. By the end of the 1930s, not only could some of the same fascist themes that were playing in Rome and Berlin be found in Tokyo, but Japan, too, had acquired a radical authoritarian regime which may be usefully labelled “emperor-system fascism.” A very tight embrace between the military cliques, the upper echelons of the civil bureaucracy, the imperial institution and the holders of industrial and financial power, particularly the zaibatsu, constituted its essential features. The authority of the imperial institution and of the bureaucratic ministries reigned supreme, however, over the Japanese type of composite ruling formation, giving control and direction to its other components. On the other hand, inner conflicts and intractable contradictions beset the entire formation as it struggled to advance economic revival and growth at a forced-draft pace while simultaneously pursuing aggressive war against the dependent peoples of East Asia. In August 1945, emperor-system fascism was defeated from without and the alliance of the different elements of Japan's wartime regime disintegrated. Almost immediately during the occupation years, an outburst of historical production on its nature followed. But the subject soon ceased to be of pressing political concern once it became clear that the old guard (minus the military) had returned to power and that there would be no revolution by Japanese hands in the post-surrender state.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 24 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.