Statism in Shōwa Japan

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Shōwa Statism (國家主義, Kokkashugi) is the nationalist ideology associated with the Empire of Japan, particularly during the Shōwa era. It is sometimes also referred to as Emperor-system fascism (天皇制ファシズム, Tennōsei fashizumu),[1][2] Japanese-style fascism (日本型ファシズム, Nihongata fashizumu)[2] or Shōwa nationalism.

Developed over time since the Meiji Restoration, it advocated for ultranationalism, traditionalist conservatism, militarist imperialism and a dirigisme-based economy.

New Year's Day postcard from 1940 celebrating the 2600th anniversary of the mythical foundation of the empire by Emperor Jimmu

Origins

With a more aggressive foreign policy, and victory over China in the

Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan joined the Western imperialist powers. The need for a strong military to secure Japan's new overseas empire was strengthened by a sense that only through a strong military would Japan earn the respect of Western nations, and thus revision of the "unequal treaties"
imposed in the 1800s.

The

social welfare, to reduce the attraction of socialism and communism
in Japan.

The special relation of militarists and the central civil government with the Imperial Family supported the important position of the Emperor as Head of State with political powers and the relationship with the nationalist right-wing movements. However, Japanese political thought had relatively little contact with European political thinking until the 20th century.

Under this ascendancy of the military, the country developed a very hierarchical, aristocratic economic system with significant state involvement. During the Meiji Restoration, there had been a surge in the creation of monopolies. This was in part due to state intervention, as the monopolies served to allow Japan to become a world economic power. The state itself owned some of the monopolies, and others were owned by the zaibatsu. The monopolies managed the central core of the economy, with other aspects being controlled by the government ministry appropriate to the activity, including the National Central Bank and the Imperial family. This economic arrangement was in many ways similar to the later corporatist models of European fascists.

During the same period, certain thinkers with ideals similar to those from

Yen Block, and Amau doctrines,[3] which eventually served as the basis for policies such as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.[4]

Developments in the Shōwa era

International policy

The 1919 Treaty of Versailles did not recognize the Empire of Japan's territorial claims, and international naval treaties between Western powers and the Empire of Japan (Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Treaty) imposed limitations on naval shipbuilding which limited the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy at a 10:10:6 ratio. These measures were considered by many in Japan as the refusal by the Occidental powers to consider Japan an equal partner. The latter brought about the May 15 incident.

Based on national security, these events released a surge of Japanese nationalism and ended collaboration diplomacy which supported peaceful economic expansion. The implementation of a military dictatorship and territorial expansionism were considered the best ways to protect the Yamato-damashii.

Civil discourse on statism

In the early 1930s, the Ministry of Home Affairs began arresting left-wing political dissidents, generally to extract a confession and renouncement of anti-state leanings. Over 30,000 such arrests were made between 1930 and 1933. In response, a large group of writers founded a Japanese branch of the International Popular Front Against Fascism and published articles in major literary journals warning of the dangers of statism. Their periodical, The People's Library (人民文庫), achieved a circulation of over five thousand and was widely read in literary circles, but was eventually censored, and later dismantled in January 1938.[5]

Works of Ikki Kita

tenant farmers. Thus strengthened internally, Japan could then embark on a crusade to free all of Asia from Western imperialism
.

Although his works were banned by the government almost immediately after publication, circulation was widespread, and his thesis proved popular not only with the young officer class excited at the prospects of military rule and Japanese expansionism but with the populist movement for its appeal to the agrarian classes as well.

Works of Shūmei Ōkawa

Pan-Asian writer Shūmei Ōkawa

industrialization
and foreign cultural influences.

Works of Sadao Araki

Sadao Araki, Army Minister, Education Minister in the Konoe cabinet

Sadao Araki was a noted political philosopher in the Imperial Japanese Army during the 1920s, who had a wide following within the junior officer corps. Although implicated in the February 26 Incident, he went on to serve in numerous influential government posts, and was a cabinet minister under Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe.

The Japanese Army, already trained along

First Reich and the Teutonic Order
.

Araki modified the interpretation of the

Showa Restoration
movement into mainstream Japanese politics.

Some of the distinctive features of this policy were also used outside Japan. The

White Russian residents in Manchukuo
before war broke out.

Works of Seigō Nakano

Seigō Nakano

Seigō Nakano sought to bring about a rebirth of Japan through a blend of the samurai ethic, Neo-Confucianism, and populist nationalism modelled on European fascism. He saw Saigō Takamori as epitomizing the 'true spirit' of the Meiji ishin, and the task of modern Japan to recapture it.

Shōwa Restoration Movement

Ikki Kita and Shūmei Ōkawa joined forces in 1919 to organize the short-lived Yūzonsha, a political study group intended to become an umbrella organization for the various right-wing statist movements. Although the group soon collapsed due to irreconcilable ideological differences between Kita and Ōkawa, it served its purpose in that it managed to join the right-wing anti-socialist, Pan-Asian militarist societies with centrist and left-wing supporters of a strong state.

In the 1920s and 1930s, these supporters of Japanese statism used the slogan

Showa Restoration
(昭和維新, Shōwa isshin), which implied that a new resolution was needed to replace the existing political order dominated by corrupt politicians and industrialists, with one which (in their eyes), would fulfil the original goals of the Meiji Restoration of direct Imperial rule via military proxies.

However, the Shōwa Restoration had different meanings for different groups. For the radicals of the

national syndicalist
state with more equitable distribution of wealth and the removal of corrupt politicians and zaibatsu leaders. For the young officers, it meant a return to some form of "military-shogunate" in which the emperor would re-assume direct political power with dictatorial attributes, as well as divine symbolism, without the intervention of the Diet or liberal democracy, but who would effectively be a figurehead with day-to-day decisions left to the military leadership.

Another point of view was supported by Prince Chichibu, a brother of Emperor Shōwa, who repeatedly counselled him to implement a direct imperial rule, even if that meant suspending the constitution.[6]

In principle, some theorists proposed

political power
in the country from the moderate and democratic political voices.

Following the formation of this "political clique", there was a new current of thought among militarists, industrialists and landowners that emphasized a desire to return to the ancient shogunate system, but in the form of a modern military dictatorship with new structures. It was organized with the

shōgun) controlling the country. In this government, the Emperor was covertly reduced in his functions and used as a figurehead for political or religious use under the control of the militarists.[citation needed
]

The failure of various attempted coups, including the

February 26 Incident, discredited supporters of the Shōwa Restoration movement, but the concepts of Japanese statism migrated to mainstream Japanese politics, where it joined with some elements of European fascism
.

Comparisons with European fascism

Early Shōwa statism is sometimes given the retrospective label "fascism", but this was not a self-appellation. When authoritarian tools of the state such as the Kempeitai were put into use in the early Shōwa period, they were employed to protect the rule of law under the Meiji Constitution from perceived enemies on both the left and the right.[7]

Some ideologists, such as Kingoro Hashimoto, proposed a single-party dictatorship, based on populism, patterned after the European fascist movements. An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus shows the influence clearly.[8]

These geopolitical ideals developed into the Amau Doctrine (天羽声明, an Asian Monroe Doctrine), stating that Japan assumed total responsibility for peace in Asia, and can be seen later when Prime Minister Kōki Hirota proclaimed justified Japanese expansion into northern China as the creation of "a special zone, anti-communist, pro-Japanese and pro-Manchukuo" that was a "fundamental part" of Japanese national existence.

Although the reformist right-wing, kakushin uyoku, was interested in the concept, the idealist right-wing, or kannen uyoku, rejected fascism as they rejected all things of western origin. [citation needed]

Because of the mistrust of unions in such unity, the Japanese went to replace them with "councils" (経営財団, keiei zaidan, lit. "management foundations", shortened: 営団 eidan) in every factory, containing both management and worker representatives to contain conflict.[9] This was part of a program to create a classless national unity.[10] However, the nobles had a large amount of control in society in which there was no parallel in fascist countries.. The most famous of the councils is the Teito Rapid Transit Authority (帝都高速度交通営団, Teito Kōsoku-do Kōtsū Eidan, lit. "Imperial Capital Highspeed Transportation Council", TRTA), which survived the dismantling of the councils under the US-led Allied occupation. The TRTA is now the Tokyo Metro.

Kokuhonsha

Main article: Kokuhonsha

The Kokuhonsha was founded in 1924 by

totalitarian ideology.[12]

Divine Right and Way of the Warrior

One particular concept exploited was a decree ascribed to the legendary first

Jimmu, in 660 BC: the policy of hakkō ichiu (八紘一宇, all eight corners of the world under one roof).[13]

This also related to the concept of kokutai or national polity, meaning the uniqueness of the Japanese people in having a leader with spiritual origins.[8] The pamphlet Kokutai no Hongi taught that students should put the nation before the self, and that they were part of the state and not separate from it.[14] Shinmin no Michi enjoined all Japanese to follow the central precepts of loyalty and filial piety, which would throw aside selfishness and allow them to complete their "holy task."[15]

The bases of the modern form of kokutai and hakkō ichiu were to develop after 1868 and would take the following form:

  1. Japan is the centre of the world, with its ruler, the Tennō (Emperor), a divine being, who derives his divinity from ancestral descent from the great Amaterasu-Ōmikami, the Goddess of the Sun herself.
  2. The
    Dai Nippon
     and all its institutions are superior to all others.
  3. All of these attributes are fundamental to the Kodoshugisha (Imperial Way) and give Japan a divine mission to bring all nations under one roof, so that all humanity can share the advantage of being ruled by the Tenno.

The concept of the divine

Tennō
was divine, descended directly from the line of Ama-Terasu (or Amaterasu, the Sun Kami or Goddess).

The final idea that was modified in modern times was the concept of

militaries in the world, one respected by friend and foe alike.[citation needed] Eventually, however, this belief would become a combination of propaganda and fanaticism that would lead to the Second Sino-Japanese War
of the 1930s and World War II.

It was the third concept, especially, that would chart Japan's course towards several wars that would culminate with World War II.

New Order Movement

Main article: Imperial Rule Assistance Association
Tokyo Kaikan was requisitioned as the meeting place for members of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA) in the early days.

During 1940, Prime Minister

political parties were ordered to dissolve into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, forming a one-party state based on totalitarian values. Such measures as the National Service Draft Ordinance and the National Spiritual Mobilization Movement were intended to mobilize Japanese society for a total war
against the West.

Associated with government efforts to create a

Kokutai no Hongi ("Japan's Fundamentals of National Policy"), presenting a view of Japan's history, and its mission to unite the East and West under the Hakkō ichiu theory in schools as official texts. The official academic text was another book, Shinmin no Michi
(The Subject's Way), the "moral national Bible", presented an effective catechism on nation, religion, cultural, social, and ideological topics.

Axis powers

Main article: Axis powers

Imperial Japan withdrew from the

Fascist Italy, which was dissatisfied with the League. During the 1930s Japan drifted further away from Western Europe and the United States. During this period, American, British, and French films were increasingly censored, and in 1937 Japan froze all American assets throughout its empire.[16]

In 1940, the three countries formed the Axis powers, and became more closely linked. Japan imported German propaganda films such as Ohm Krüger (1941), advertising them as narratives showing the suffering caused by Western imperialism.

End of Shōwa Statism

Shōwa Statism was discredited and destroyed by the failure of Japan's military in World War II. After the

Tokyo tribunal, the government educational system was revised, and the tenets of liberal democracy were written into the post-war Constitution of Japan
as one of its key themes.

The collapse of statist ideologies in 1945–46 was paralleled by a formalisation of relations between the

court language of the Imperial family, an archaic Japanese dialect known as Kyūteigo – and content of this statement have been the subject of much debate. For instance, the renunciation did not include the word usually used to impute the Emperor's divinity: arahitogami ("living god"). It instead used the unusual word akitsumikami, which was officially translated as "divinity", but more literally meant "manifestation/incarnation of a kami ("god/spirit")". Hence, commentators such as John W. Dower and Herbert P. Bix
have argued, Hirohito did not specifically deny being a "living god" (arahitogami).

See also

References

Notes

  1. ISBN 9781576079409
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 9781134637669
    .
  3. ^ Akihiko Takagi, [1] [dead link] mentions "Nippon Chiseigaku Sengen ("A manifesto of Japanese Geopolitics") written in 1940 by Saneshige Komaki, a professor of Kyoto Imperial University and one of the representatives of the Kyoto school, [as] an example of the merging of geopolitics into Japanese traditional ultranationalism."
  4. ISBN 0-393-04156-5
  5. ISBN 978-0822344520
    .
  6. ^ Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 2001, p.284
  7. ISBN 978-0822344520
    . Careful attention to the history of the Special Higher Police, and particularly to their use by Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki against his enemies even further to his political right, reveals that extreme rightists, fascists, and practically anyone deemed to pose a threat to the Meiji constitutional order were at risk.
  8. ^ a b Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p246 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
  9. OCLC 49704795
  10. OCLC 49704795
  11. ^ Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, page 164
  12. ^ Reynolds, Japan in the Fascist Era, page 76
  13. ISBN 0-394-50030-X
  14. ISBN 0-312-04077-6
  15. ISBN 0-394-50030-X
  16. ISBN 978-0822344520
    .

External links
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