Discussion Paper No. 1049

NATIONALIST THOUGHTIN PREWAR JAPANAtsushi Tsuneki

February 2019

The Institute of Social and Economic Research
Osaka University
6-1 Mihogaoka, Ibaraki, Osaka 567-0047, Japan

Nationalist Thought in Prewar Japani
Atsushi Tsuneki
1 Introduction
The purpose of this study is to clarify the nature and political effect ofnationalist political thought in prewar Japan (1800-1941). There exists a
persistent belief about Japanese nationalism that it is of a particular nature
unique to Japan, and anti-modern in the sense that it is anti-liberaldemocratic, feudal, hierarchical, and militaristic. This broad image ofJapanese nationalism has been believed and is shared until today both by
Japanese and foreigners at large. Furthermore, this image was shared bothby right-wing advocates who praise it and left-wing critics of it. However, bothgroups have perpetuated the debate over Japanese nationalism based on thismisinterpretation of Japanese nationalism. This study will try to correct therecord and end these misguided and therefore vain debates.
As this article shows, this type of Japanese nationalism was firstdeveloped in the period of oligarchic government in the Meiji era as aconvenient way for procuring the loyalty and war spirit of the Japanese people
by inculcating the virtue of obedience to the Ten-nō and hence to the Meiji
1government. It was promulgated more energetically in wartime in the 1930s
and 1940s by the army to encourage a war spirit amongst the people. Then,after 1945, this type of nationalism in Japan were viewed as the unified imageof the Japanese nationalism, in a flipped mirror image, via its interpretationby the old New Dealers in the General Headquarters (GHQ) office who led the
Occupation

Revolution ii

and

by

those

of

the

postwar-democratic

intelligentsia in Japan who welcomed the democratization policy by the GHQ
and the establishment of the present Japan Constitution.
Due to the tacit agreement among these two groups, the Japanese people
at large came to be represented as uneducated in what it meant to be
independent and democratic people, and sunk in feudal and militaristic
sentiment. Even compared with the cases of German Nazism or Italianfascism, where militarism and totalitarianism emerged from formerly
democratic polities without an imperial system, the putative backwardnessof the Japanese society and the consciousness of the Japanese people wasconsidered salient, and viewed as the fundamental driving force behind themilitary dictatorship that was established in the 1930s and behind Japaneseaggression abroad before 1945. iii
2

There were several dominant intellectuals who are regarded as belonging
to the group named postwar-democratic intelligentia. They shared the viewon the prewar Japanese society and the consciousness as seriously backward
and emphasized the importance of the democratization of Japan both in social
institution and in the consciousness of the people. Among the group of
intelligentia, Masao Maruyama was dominant in the area of political scienceand especially the history of political thought. iv He named this innate
mentality supposedly shared among the Japanese public and the prewar
political leaders ‘Ultra-Nationalism’ (Maruyama 1969).
This view is far from outmoded; it is still firmly ensconced among many
Americans and Europeans, and even more so among the Asian peoples who
experienced military occupation or intrusion by the Japanese military or
incorporation into the Japanese empire. It also became the basis of theattitude that any nationalism developing in Japan is egregiously dangerous
and threatening to the peace in the East Asian region. Therefore, among otherreasons to get a clear picture of the real danger of the recent rightward trend
in Japanese politics, I must start my argument by re-examining the thesisthat the aggression of the Japanese military in the prewar and war periods
3was essentially motivated by near-feudal sentiment and some ‘Ultra-National’social system particular to the Japanese nation and people.
In this article, I refute this idea and argue that Japanese nationalism hasa much more multilateral nature, and that its dominant aspect was neither
feudal nor anti-modern. Although not completely identical with Western
nationalism(s), Japanese nationalism was highly modern in the flexible way
it maintained substantial influence throughout the Meiji-to-1945 period,
whether the ruling power and order were more liberal-democratic or moretotalitarian-militaristic at a given time.
Before beginning our investigation of this aspect of political thought inprewar Japan, we remark on one reservation. First, I mean to study
nationalism in Japan as a social fact, intentionally avoiding value judgement.
Second, nor do I make any value judgement on Japanese imperial-colonial
policy and actions. This is not because I reject Japanese war responsibility,
but only because I want to avoid adding another ideological dimension andmaking the discussion unmanageable, as I hope to provide a definitive pictureof Japanese nationalism as a basis for the (re-)evaluation of past injustices
and present developments.
4

The next section surveys the development of nationalism in relation toliberalism and democracy in modern Japan up to the establishment of theImperial Constitution in 1890, giving an overview of the premodern roots ofJapanese nationalism and its reconciliation with modern liberal democracy,
culminating in the establishment of the constitutional monarchy through theImperial Constitution.
Section 3 studies the development of democracy under the constitutional
regime up to 1920, emphasizing the development and transformation ofnationalism in Japan accompanying its excessive democratization and theassimilation to the populism and state socialism.
Section 4 reconsiders the landscape of political thought in Pre–Second
World War and wartime Japan, 1920–1945, in relation to the politicaltransition from party democracy to military dictatorship and the evolution of
the militarism until the final defeat.
Section 5 concludes, summarizing the study and sketching the difference
between nationalism in present-day Japan and the militaristic nationalism
which assumed political power in the war period. It outlines the shortcomingsof the argument that the recent growth of Japanese nationalism presages the5resurrection of militarism and foreign aggressionism in Japan. v

2 The Development of Nationalism in Modern Japan until 1890
2.1 Early Modern Foundations
Before modernization in the late 19th century, Japan experienced a highly
distinctive pre-modern stage in the Edo era (1603–1868), under the regime of
the Tokugawa bakufu (military bureaucracy). Not only Marxist historians
who were constrained by their views of the material stages of social
development, but also dominant part of the historians have mistakenly
identified

theTokugawa-regimeasafeudalistic

historicalstage

corresponding roughly to that of Medieval Europe. They argued that theputative feudalistic economy and society then carried over even after the
Meiji Restoration. vi
Recent historical research, however, has revealed that the Edo era wascharacterized by completely different features from those of Medieval Europe.
The ruling warrior class (bushi, or samurai) in the Edo era were notlandowners like in Medieval Europe but more akin to bureaucrats drawing
salaries in koku of rice which served as a medium of exchange from a daimyō,
6the local head of the warriors in his domain or han. The daimyōs collected tax
from landless farmers within his han and paid salaries to his vassal warriors.
Nationwide, daimyōs themselves were under the rule of the Shōgun (militarygeneralissimo).
What this means is that the social division between farmers and warriorclass bureaucracy system was already accomplished in the Edo period, andthe level of productivity within Japan was already high enough to make thissocial division possible. Within the Edo era, Japan’s borders were largely
closed, both to trade and immigration (Sakoku), but steady domestic economic
growth occurred and the division of labor was extended from agriculture toindustry and commerce. Manufacturers and merchants left the land andgathered in urban centres. The division of labor and economic development
were far above that in Medieval Europe, more comparable to early-modern
European countries.
Under this stable regime, steady economic growth, and peaceful social
circumstances during its isolation, Japan extended education to the generalpublic and built social infrastructure in transportation and communication
all over the country, binding Japan together as a socially unified polity.
7

Simultaneously, a sense of nationalism developed among Japanese, as
reflected by political thinkers of the Edo era.
The overwhelming influence on political thought in the Edo era was(Chinese) Confucianism, but reinterpreted with ‘Japanese characteristics’ tojustify the Tokugawa regime (the Bakuhan Taisei) or even establish its
superiority to China itself.
Japanese Confucianism developed through contributions from politicalthinkers such as Ansai Yamazaki (1618-82), Sokō Yamaga (1622-85), Jinsai
Itō (1627-1705), and especially Sorai Ogyū (1666-1728). vii Though each ofthem have original, distinctive features to their philosophy, they also shared
a common theoretical basis distinct from Chinese Confucianism. Based onstudies of the philosophers above mentioned, Bitō (2014) distinguished thespecial character of Japanese Confucianism in terms of three features. First,
the nation and its geographical boundaries are naturally determined,
contrastingly with the idea of Chinese Confucianism where the concept ofnation hinges critically on the moral virtue of the governor. Second, theindependence of the nation and the prosperity of the people are the mostimportant value separated from its moral content, and they are protected8more by policies, promoting the safety of the nation, and advancing thesecular welfare of the people than the virtue of the governor. Third, people inJapan have an absolute obligation to their nation and its hierarchical classsystem. This obligation is rooted in the traditional festival rite made by the
Ten-nō (emperor), who prays for the unification of the nation and the welfareof the people. Therefore, the Japanese Ten-nō is the supreme politicalcomponent within Japan, but lacks any political power or responsibility, andexists only to conduct the festival rite to secure the people’s sense of obligation
to the Bakuhan Taisei system.
These characteristics within Japanese Confucianism culminated in purest
form within the late Mito-Gaku (Mito Studies), a school of Japanese
Confucianism developed in the 19th century in Mito-Han (the domain ofMito). viii Within this school, Seishisai Aizawa wrote Shin-Ron (A New

Treatise) in 1825. At this period, some foreign countries visited Japanese
coast with military equipment, and there arose debates if Japan should keep
the Sakoku policy by excluding foreign countries using the military power, or
it should start trade with other countries. Aizawa proposed that Japan should
discard the Sakoku policy and open the country to the world. However, he
9argued that Japan must at the same time recognize itself as a unified nationstate, politically controlled by the Tokugawa bakufu but under the Ten-nō assupreme organ and guarantor of unification as above—by recognizing thebinding or unifying role of the festival rite so that they would not be temptedby Western civilization if the country is opened. Aizawa named this entity—
with the Ten-nō on top as symbol of unification, Bakuhan Taisei for politicalcontrol, warrior class working for the security and safety of the state, and thecommon people working for their own welfare, the Kokutai ‘national polity’ or‘nationality’, the first time the term was used this way. After the contribution,
his theory which clarified the unity of Japan and its intrinsic nature wasnamed Kokutai-Ron and has exerted strong influence in the vision ofnationalism in Japan through all the prewar period and even until today.
Though Aizawa supported the Tokugawa regime when he wrote Shin-Ron,this treatise was passionately read by many revolutionists in Japan in the
final stage of the Edo era as they considered the establishment of a newpolitical system in Japan which unifies Japan as a modern nation state.
Though Aizawa first labelled Japan as a unified nation with the word Kokutai,
the treatise had revolutionary implications, subverting the existing10Tokugawa-regime to establish Japan as a modern nation-state.

2.2 The Constitutional Monarchy as the Harmonization of Kokutai andWestern Statecraft: 1868–1890
I noted in the last subsection that the Edo era, contrary to stereotype, wascloser to the early-modern stage of socioeconomic development in Europe thanthe medieval stage. However, it could not enter true modernity, as the securityof property right and the enforcement of contracts were not legally protected,
but were instead delegated to custom and convention.

Freedom to choose

one’s occupation was non-existent. The property right to land was not welldefined, and both farmers and daimyōs had their overlapping interests inland which were inalienably fixed by the conventional norm, and hence thesale of land was not only prohibited but also impossible. (See Kawaguchi(1998: 95-98)). Leadership was purely hereditary. Addressing these issues
was key to the agenda of the political leaders who accomplished the Meiji
Restoration in 1868.
Within the Restoration, conducted by political leaders such as ToshimichiŌkubo, Hirofumi Itō, and Aritomo Yamagata, the abolishment of the Bakuhan
11Taisei and the centralization of the administrative system were accomplishedby the mandatory return of the various han from the daimyōs to the new Meiji
government. The power of taxation was also concentrated in the central
government (and not the local daimyōs). The warrior class lost its position byreceiving some fixed amount of pecuniary compensation, and was replaced bya universal draft. Caste differentiation was abolished, and freedom of choiceof occupation was guaranteed. Private right to property, especially to land,
was more securely protected by law, and sale of land became legally allowed.
These reforms by the Meiji oligarchy correspond to the aspects of securing
civil rights among the people. From the Meiji Restoration to the late 1870s,
the great political philosopher Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote two important books
making an argument for modernization aimed at a mass audience. In the firstbook (Fukuzawa 1872–1876), which a best-seller, he made a thoroughgoingcriticism of the hierarchical ethics of Confucianism, and emphasized theimportance of the equality of the people under the law, freedom of choice, andpersonal effort at education to become a modern, independent person. In thesecond book (Fukuzawa 1875), he made somewhat more academic
observations on the significance of introducing Western civilization into12

Japan while renouncing the Confucian moral ethics that, in his argument hadbarred the development of civilization in Japan. ix
Alongside these arguments by Fukuzawa, we should note that, for
Fukuzawa, Western civilization and Western values were not the final goal ofJapanese modernization. For example, civil rights, especially freedoms of
religion, conscience, speech, and expression, are generally seen in the West as
having absolutely indispensable value and therefore are strictly protected byconstitutions or basic law. For Fukuzawa, in contrast, civil rights were only amechanism for making Japan wealthier and more powerful by encouraging
effort and competition among people, and thus protecting the independenceof Japan from the threat of Western imperialism. That is, protection of the
Kokutai was the final objective for Fukuzawa and the introduction of theWestern civilization was the instrument for attaining his objective. In thisway, Fukuzawa made an elegant theoretical reconciliation between the
traditional Kokutai-Ron and the Westernization project of Meiji Japan.
Beginning in the late 1870s, the Jiyū-Minken Undō (Movement for Civil
Rights and Freedom) flared up all over the country. In the framework of
Marxist history, it has long been interpreted that this movement represented
13

the development of bourgeoisie class in Japan countering to the absolutemonarchy by the Ten-nō system. In truth, it was more a political movementof the ex-oligarchy leaders who were expelled from the power, such as Taisuke
Itagaki and Shigenobu Ōkuma. To rerurn to the power, they started the
movement allied with some class of rich farmers and merchants to establish
the system of diet so that they can join the power again within legislation
countering to the oligarchy government that had monopolized the politicalpower. x
Inasmuch, the politicians and people who joined the movement had noantagonism toward the Ten-nō system itself. They instead argued that
establishing the institution of the diet strengthens the Ten-nō system bydeleting the political monopoly of the oligarchy leaders and reflecting the
public opinion into the government so that the unification of Japan as nation
state would be strengthened. In this sense, this movement was an alternative
way to reconcile the traditional Kokutai and the Western political institution.
The oligarchy government declared it would introduce constitution andlimited democracy to sooth the movement through reasonable compromise.
Before 1889, when the Imperial Constitution was promulgated, many models
14for a constitution were proposed and published by various politicalassociations, that is, would-be political parties under the promised
representative system. The political association the Kōjunsha, which wasunder the direction of Fukuzawa, proposed one such plan, promising to
introduce representative democracy on the contemporary British model,
dominated by two political parties generally alternating power at elections.
The Ten-nō was supposed to appoint the leader of the party which won theelection as prime minister, with substantial power and responsibility forconcrete politics; the role of the Ten-nō was highly limited.
The plan by Fukuzawa and the Kōjunsha faced a quick counter-response
by Japan’s most powerful political leader, Hirofumi Itō, and his adviser
Kowashi Inoue, who were opposed with the introduction of party democracy
into Japan. The Imperial Constitution written under their direction rejected
party democracy and stipulated that various ministers would have
responsibility directly to the Ten-nō, surpassing the cabinet. Especially, theministers of army and navy had strictly independent political power to veto
the decision of the cabinet, so that they had strong political power to control
the decision of the cabinet. The function of the diet was limited to deliberation15

of the budget and supporting legislation without explicit power to reject them.
Thus, the Imperial Constitution was often regarded as a reactionary, nearfeudal document and not a modern constitution, especially from a postwardemocratic perspective. Masao Maruyama emphasized that the prewar
Japanese political system based on the Imperial Constitution did not createa modern European state based on the key component of the neutrality of thestate to the internal value of the people, such as religion, conscience and soon. xi According to Maruyama, the prewar Japanese nation-state was instead
best characterized as a nationalist state, or what he called an ‘UltraNationalist’ state based on the state’s stance not of neutrality but of forcing
substantial moral precepts, especially the absolute duty of the subject to Tennō, with the consequence that freedom of religion or even of art and scientificresearch were not allowed until the Ten-nō’s Ningen-Sengen (Humanity

Declaration) just after the Pacific War.
Although Maruyama’s argument was not an exclusive consensus, it was ahighly influential view shared among the Japanese people, especially theintelligent class and the foreign researchers on the Japanese politics andsociety.
16

However, I think Maruyama’s evaluation is totally false. In truth, as thenext section points out, the political trend toward democracy constantly
advanced after the promulgation of the Imperial Constitution. More
importantly, the level of protection of human right such as the freedom ofpeople and their basic human rights were securely protected by the Imperial
Constitution at the similar level of other European countries under theconstitutional monarchy.
It is especially noteworthy that Kowashi Inoue attributed the basic
significance of the Imperial Constitution to the ancient way of political
governance through the Ten-nō. Inoue argued as follows: the monarchy inEurope and China was characterized by the privatization of people and land,
as if they were the private property of the monarch, but the ancient way ofpolitical governance through the Ten-nō was exclusively based on the ‘virtue’of the emperor, who had no private interest in the property of the people. In
this tradition, Inoue argued, that the sovereignty of the emperor and the rightof the subjects to the private property were strictly separated in Japan, andtherefore the logic of the constitutional monarchy had already been embedded
within this ancient Japanese political system, and hence he advocated17codifying the Kokutai in the written Constitution and constitutionalmonarchy in Japan, established without any ideological factors such as civil
revolution or social contract.
This may not be the factual historical truth per se but was regarded as a
fictitious construction; more important is that Inoue wanted to establish ahighly modernized constitutional monarchy while reflecting a tradition
pertinent to Japan, even to the extent of referring back to a mythicalargument on the tradition of Ten-nō system started at its ancient period.
Inoue was strictly against Fukuzawa’s stance on democracy, but bothmade serious effort to reconcile traditional Japanese convention, the Kokutai,
and the modern values and legal institutions which were meant to makeJapan a modern nation-state capable of strong economic and social
development. Their effort was disseminated among the Japanese people as‘modern moral values’ through political and journalistic activities and evenbuilt into the constitutional system.

3 The Development and Transformation of Democracy: 1890–1920
3.1 The Development of the Democratic Ideology
18Despite the careful deliberations of Itō and Inoue, the oligarchic
leadership could not survive the establishment of the constitution. The rightto deliberate the budget that was granted to the House of Representatives
was a powerful weapon reducing the power of administration and theoligarchs. The constitutional system was structured so that the increase oftax by the administration was de facto impossible without the assent of thediet. xiiIn 1900, Itō himself became the leader of the political party RikkenSeiyūkai (The Friends Club for the Constitutional Politics), which became theserious starting point for Japanese party democracy. At first, party leaders
shared political power cooperatively with oligarchs, who controlled theadministration, especially the army; however, this cooperative system wasrepeatedly criticized by various influential politicians outside this cooperative
regime, and liberal opinion leaders in academics and journalism, as party
politicians discarded the ideal for establishing democracy and instead hadchosen the compromise with government oligarchy leaders. As early as theend of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1905, the call for party democracy, or whatbecame ‘Taishō democracy’, was heard.
In the Taishō period (1912–1926) a two-party political system took form
19

and Kei Hara, the leader of Rikken-Seiyūkai, held power as the first prime
minister not formerly a Meiji oligarch. In the first stage of Taishō democracy,
two scholars proposed important political doctrines. The first was Tatsukichi
Minobe, a professor of public law at the University of Tokyo.
Minobe proposed a theory of the constitution called Ten-nō Kikan-Setsu(Emperor Organ Theory), which argues that the Ten-nō is the supreme organof government, but the sovereignty of the state belongs to the state as a public
corporation consisting of all the people in Japan. His argument, built on thetheory developed by the Prussian public lawyer Georg Jellinek of the state ascorporation, argued that the Imperial Constitution is not just a concrete
description of the government as dictated by the Ten-nō; even if the Ten-nō isregarded as occupying the highest position, his political power is limited by
the collective will of the state as corporation, where sovereignty resides. In
particular, the stipulation in the Constitution that the Lower House consistsof citizens selected by election, representing the will of the people, reflectsthat all Japanese people potentially share a part in sovereignty. This
restriction of political power by the rule of law and acceptance of sharing
political power among an extensive swathe of the nation, Minobe argued,
20

made the Imperial Constitution a ‘modern’ constitution. xiii
Minobe’s democratically oriented theory made him a target of terrorist
attacks in the prewar Shōwa era, but his theory was praised by the postwardemocratic intelligentsia as a pioneering doctrine that prepared the way forthe democratic postwar Constitution. He rejected the idea of any rebellious
intent within his theory, asserting that it was instead the most appropriate
interpretation of the Imperial Constitution. As discussed in subsection 2.1
above, the Japanese traditional polity (Kokutai) is characterized by the unityof the nation from Ten-nō down. For Minobe, the Imperial Constitution
restated the traditional Kokutai in a universally recognizable way—as aconstitutional monarchy comparable with the Western modern constitutionalmonarchies.
At first, the Ten-nō Shukensha-Setsu (Emperor Sovereign Theory),
Minobe’s competing doctrine proposed by his rival theorist Shinkichi Uesugi,
which argued that Ten-nō has unlimited political power as sovereign, wassupported by the oligarchs in the government bureaucracy and regarded as amore standard interpretation of the Constitution. However, it wasincompatible with the political system under the Imperial Constitution,
21

where party politics under the constitutional monarchy was steadily
developed.
Because of this, Minobe’s Kikan-Setsu had been the standard
interpretation of the Constitution in prewar Shōwa Japan, not only for liberalpoliticians and academics but also within the ruling administration and evensome groups in the army. In this sense, as he himself asserted, his theory had
no anti-regime implications. It may not be totally consistent with the ideas of
the constitution writers, such as Hirofumi Itō and Kowashi Inoue. However,both Minobe and the constitution writers made common efforts to reconcile
Japanese tradition and the modern political and legal system.
If Minobe is regarded as the proper successor of Inoue, we find Sakuzō
Yoshino to be the successor of Yukichi Fukuzawa in the Taishō era, extending
the conception of representative democracy under the two-party politicalsystem. A professor of political science at the University of Tokyo, Yoshino
called his ideological position Minpon-Shugi (the theory of government for thepeople). According to Yoshino, it is not democracy which is defined by thesovereignty of the people. Instead, Minpon-Shugi is concerned with the
maximization of the welfare of the people as the objective of government. In
22this sense, Minpon-Shugi is closely aligned with democracy but also
compatible with the supremacy of the Ten-nō in the government.
From this political position, Yoshino argued for realizing a representative
democracy with universal suffrage in Japan. As a devout Christian andfollower of Kantian moral philosophy, he strictly denied Marxism and any
radical political action based on direct democracy, he also evaluated theimportance of democratic socialism such as Fabianism positively forpromoting the welfare and equality among people, and expected that fullsuffrage would become the basis for socialism in Japan within the electoral
system.

3.2 The Advent of the Taishō Radicals
Yoshino’s two interests, universal suffrage and the resolution of labour
problems, were shared by an extensive group of intelligentsia, politicians, andeven people at large. They created a large social movement called Kaizō Undō
(Remodeling Movement) which purported to remodel Japanese politics andsociety to make Japan a more democratic country. However, the meaning of
democracy among this group and the purposes of its members were very
23

diverse. Yoshino himself considered the role of Kaizō to be to work toward
establishing representative democracy, but more radical members intended
to introduce direct democracy and socialism. More interestingly, various
right-winger elements also joined the Kaizō in order to resolve the election
and workers’ rights issues, to make Japan a more powerful state by creatingstronger ties among people in Japan.
Furthermore, these two radical groups, left and right, were not necessarily
against each other, but in many aspects shared interests. xiv This tendency
became more explicit after the First World War, with the subsequent rise of
pacifism and isolationism in international politics. The prominent argument
was that of President Woodrow Wilson, named Wilsonian idealism or
Wilsonianism. Wilson criticized the international power politics that caused
the world war, and achieved the establishment of a League of Nations whereequal sovereign states could come together and work out their differences; healso supported the gradual development of democracy within those states.
In Japan, two conflicting views appeared with respect to the Wilsonian
ideal and the new international regime based on the governance of the League.
The first was represented, again, by Sakuzō Yoshino, who regarded the24League. as representing universal ideals of democracy and pacifism. He
argued that Japan should follow Wilson and support the League and (whathe saw as) the dominant tendency of world politics. From this point of view,
Yoshino began to support the democratization and prospective independenceof the Japanese colonies in Korea and Taiwan. xv
The rival argument with respect to Wilsonianism regarded it as reflecting
the vested interests of Western countries and fixing those interests as aninternational status quo. This argument was based on the sense of impending
crisis in Japan after the war, based in turn on the expectation that the next
war would require total mobilization. Within the Kaizō Undō this argument
was supported by right-wing groups who wanted not only to establish
democracy per se but also to prepare for total mobilization in Japan bystrengthening the integration of the state.
Such attitudes were aggravated by Washington Naval Conference (1921–
1922), where Japan was seriously criticized for its colonization of Asian
countries and its interests in the Chinese continent were severely limited. In
reaction, Japanese right-wing groups started to take a stance of Ajia-shugi,(could be translated as ‘Asianism’) to combat Western imperialism. It is25

crucially important to note that this kind of nationalism was quite alien to
the traditional Kokutai-Ron, as it emerged quickly after the First World War
as a reaction to the new international political situation.
This international political shift caused the Taishō democracy movement(Kaizō Undō among others) to split into two groups. The first, represented by
Yoshino and supported by the liberal intelligentsia and politicians, intended
to establish representative party democracy in Japan, emphasizedcooperation with Western countries in international politics, and respected
the new international regime in East Asia fixed by the Washington Naval
Conference. In contrast, the radical groups wanted to remodel Japan as amore directly democratic country, including socialism, and to introduce total
mobilization; they started to believe that Japan had a special destiny tocombat Western and especially Anglo-Saxon countries and expel them from
Asia, to protect Asian peoples from them.
In this sense, the common-sense view held by postwar-democratic
historians that Shōwa militarism was built up by subverting the movementfor democracy in Taishō era has made a fatal misunderstanding. In truth, theso-called ‘Japanese Fascism’ emerged at the periphery of Taishō democracy,26

as Mitani (1995: 27) rightly commented. Mitani (1995: 329-30) also made thecrucially important point that the democracy factor, which justifies theparticipation of people in political power, was not weak within the politicaltradition of modern Japan as seen above, and that democracy need notcontradict nationalism in this sense. In contrast, he argued, the factor of
liberalism, which emphasizes freedom from political power, was far weaker.
Notwithstanding, these two political aspects are often opposed to each other,when democracy approaches to populism, and he argued that thiscontradiction reached its peak in the prewar Shōwa era. xvi
To add to Mitani’s remarks, the traditional Kokutai-Ron, which formed thebasis of democracy without liberalism, was much less harmful tointernational peace as long as it purported to serve only for the independenceof Japan. It was when the Kokutai-Ron was combined with direct democracyor populism and Asia-centered regionalism countering Western imperialismthat militarism in Shōwa Japan expressed its most brutal face.

4 Political Thought Underlying the Emergence of Militarism from late-Taishō
to prewar-Shōwa Japan (1920–1941)
27

This section reconsiders the structure of political thought in relation to thepolitical process that militarism in Pre–Second World War Japan, that is,
1920–1941. Accounts of this are often oversimplified or ideologically biased,
asserting a linear development of militarism right back to the Imperial
Constitution in 1889. In fact, we need forty more years, until the Manchurian
Incident and the intrusion of Japan into China in 1931, and the assassinationof the Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai at the15 May Incidence in 1932, formilitarism to germinate.
It is true that the colonization of Korea, Taiwan, and many Pacific Islands,
and the capture of interests in Northern China, occurred before 1930s. This,
however, is best not regarded as militaristic aggression of the 1930s type but
as a part of the imperialism which prevailed around the world, driven byWestern countries, at that time. The imperialistic behavior of Japan at that
historical stage is certainly blameworthy, especially from the perspective of
the Asian countries colonized by Japan, but this criticism can equally be madeof Western countries which had imperial interests in the region. xvii
Japanese intrusion into China beginning in the late 1920s was acompletely different matter: a unilateral revision of the status quo by means28

of militaristic violence, disrupting the international order made after theFirst World War, which Japan had also committed to protect. Within Japan,
it was mirrored by the destruction of the democracy which had developed
after the establishment of the Imperial Constitution, ended up in dictatorshipby the military until 1945.
To consider the process of development of the militarism in prewar Japan,
it is convenient to divide it into three periods: 1920–1932, 1932–1937, and
1937–1941. The first stage, 1920–1932, which I discuss in subsection 4.1
below, shows the brief achievement of Taishō democracy and its subsequent
sudden decomposition in prewar Shōwa Japan.

4.1 The Close of Democracy in Prewar Japan: 1920–1932
The foundation of Japanese militarism was laid in the structure of theImperial Constitution, which guaranteed the independence of the militaryfrom control by the cabinet. However, it is not true that militarism developed
beginning as early as the establishment of the Constitution; rather, it wasdemocracy that developed steadily from the promulgation of the Constitution
to the end of the 1920s. During the period, the army was under the control of29

an oligarch leader, Aritomo Yamagata, and his group of militants andpoliticians. Though Yamagata was an imperialist who promoted the
expansion of Japanese colonies, his careful choices always avoided militaristic
adventurism, and the army never deviated from political prudence andcivilian political decisions.
The tables were turned when Yamagata passed away in 1922, in the eraof burgeoning pacifism after the First World War. The military underwent
severe budget cuts with the advent of greater democracy, and generals felt aserious sense of crisis and lack of raison d’etre in the new environment.
In the 1920s, the young elite officers who did not belong to Yamagata’s
faction and resisted against its monopoly of power within the army got
together under the leadership of Tetsuzan Nagata and formed the groupcalled the ‘military reformists’ today. The chief purposes of the group werepersonnel reform within the army and the resolution of the Manchurian
conflict to protect the interests of Japan there. Later on, Kanji Ishihara,
Hideki Tōjō, and other soldiers who achieved strong power in the Japanesemilitary dictatorship more or less belonged to or were connected with thisgroup. (See Nakamura (1998: 60-63)).
30

Ideologically, there were few interesting views in the arguments of themilitary reformists. They were militaristic technocrats rather thanideological leaders, and their chief interest lay in the expansion of the(perceived) national interest of Japan particularly in East Asia, and inextending the political influence of the army in Japan. However, they also
believed that the introduction of a general mobilization system into Japan
was a vital need to attain their objective, and hence they were highly
sympathetic to the state socialism and planning economy, even thoughcommunist ideology itself was their direct enemy. This anti-capitalist strain
within them merged with the state socialist ideology I discuss below to spurthe collapse of democracy in prewar Japan. (See Nakamura (1998: 59-60))
Within the same period, civil society in Japan also experienced serious
shocks unrelated to the military. When the Shōwa era started, the Minseitō
party held power and promoted a democratic, pacifist policy. The governmentof Osachi Hamaguchi in particular proposed a social-democratic policy
generous to the working class and a pacifist foreign policy based on theprotection of the Washington Naval Treaty. Hamaguchi’s peaceful anddemocratic policy and his clean and honest image were strongly supported by31

the Japanese people at first. However, Minseitō made major economic
mistakes to Japan’s return to the gold standard, and Japan was in a serious
depression by the early 1930s, alongside the worldwide economic crisis. xviii
Furthermore, Minseitō declined a proposal from the rival party Seiyūkai toform a coalition cabinet, conditional on dropping its depressive economic
policy (Banno (2014: 199-201). This decision by Minseitō had weakened thepolitical basis of the cabinet system.
It was in this period when the Manchurian Incident and the coups,15 May
Incident occurred, and Japanese people looked to the army to step in becauseof their discouragement with economic depression and political dysfunctionof the party politics. They hoped that the army would realize better politics
and find a way out of the depression. In the next subsection, I survey thelandscape of ideological thought in the early 1930s to support the argument
above

4.2 The Structure of the Right-Wing Movement in Prewar Shōwa Japan
When we consider prewar Shōwa history from an ideological perspective,
it is important to focus on the contribution of radicals, both left and right,
32

after the First World War and the Russian Revolution—a new politicalperspective different from either the traditional right-wing ideology datingback before the Meiji Restoration or the constitutional democracy developed
through the Jiyū-Minken Undo and the establishment of the Imperial
Constitution.
Among these radicals, a leftist group represented by the Japan
Communist Party wished to make Japan a communist country under the
influence of the Soviet Union. However, this movement was only supported
within the intelligentsia and university students, and did not penetrate into
the working class as expected, partly because communism was severely
suppressed by the state and partly because textbook Marxism and the ordersof the Comintern neglected the reality of the working class in Japan and wereunworkable in the Japanese context. xix Finally, the Safety Protection Law
promulgated in 1928 completely eliminated the freedom of movement ofmembers of banned left-wing groups, and many Marxists converted (tenkō)
to state socialism. I therefore ignore the Marxists and start my argument by
distinguishing the ‘two right wings’ below. xx[Table 1 about here]33

Surprising enough, however, the influence of the Soviet communism was
not at all innocuous inprewar Japan, but was transformed into the statesocialism which I call Right-A, for many people who were would-be politician
or bureaucrats learned Marxism in their university period and believed thatthe risk of socialist revolution was high enough to subvert the capitalist
system. To cope with this risk of socialist revolution, they believed that
introducing socialist planning economy and general mobilization system wereindispensable to rectify the shortcomings of the free market economy.
In this sense, this radical group is essentially different from the traditionalright wing, which I call Right-B. To clarify the meaning of Right-A, I compare
its ideology with that of Right-B. The latter consisted of the Kokutai-Ron
mentioned above, in which Japanese nationhood is the supreme value, to beprotected from the influence of Western countries, by maintaining theindependence of Japan. In the prewar Shōwa era, representative ideologues
within Right-B included Kiichirō Hiranuma, a member of the House of Lords,
who led the right-wing association, Kokuhonsha, and Mitsuru Tōyama, who
led the most powerful right-wing activist association, Gen’yōsha.
In comparison, the Right-A ideology was developed far later than Right-B.
34

It started no earlier than 1900, and grew quickly after the First World War
and the Russian Revolution as a reaction to the development of Soviet
socialism and international Wilsonianism, symbolized in Japan by the
Washington system. The representative ideologues of Right-A included
Kamejiro Mitsugawa and Shūmei Ōkawa (who gathered the right-wing group
Yūzonsha), but the charismatic leader within them was definitely Ikki Kita.
As Osamu Kuno, an important successor to Masao Maruyama’s theory on theJapanese political thought, clearly states (Kuno and Tsurumi (1956: 139)), it
was Ikki Kita who was the ideological origin of Shōwa Ultra-Nationalism,
strictly separate from the traditional nationalism of the Meiji era.
Table 1 compares difference in ideological position between Right-A andRight-B. Regarding the political regime, traditionalist Right-B naturally
asserted the sovereignty of Ten-nō, as emperor. In contrast, Kita applied
Tatsukichi Minobe’s Ten-nō Kikan-Setsu and argued that sovereignty exists
over the people in Japan as unity. Under this interpretation of the Ten-nō
system, Kita deduced a justification for Japan to become a state-socialistic
country. He argued for the radical redistribution of wealth from the rich tothe poor, from capitalists to working class, and so on. Any kind of35

discriminatory institutions by birth and gender he argued should bedrastically reformed. All these changes should be implemented by the powerof the army, for the interests of all the people in Japan, who were the seat ofits sovereignty.
Compared with Kita’s program for reforming Japan, Right-B’s arguments
for the ideal political regime and economic system were always vague:
Japanese nationhood is most important, but its precise meaning is undefined;socialism and communism are bad because anti-nationalistic, but Right-B
also often criticizes capitalism and praised premodern agrarian society as thebasis of Japanese nationhood. Fundamentally, its conceptions of social
institutions are built on nostalgia toward premodern Japanese society, which
can never be effectively reproduced in modern society.
Let us now compare the foreign policy positions of the two kinds of rightwingers. Kita, who represents Right-A, asserted that Japan should occupy
Asia by depriving the Western states of their colonies and imperialistic
interests. According to Kita, this intrusion is justifiable in the same way as
the domestic redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor to establish
distributive justice and because it can help Asian nations become36independent from colonization by Western countries.
In contrast, from the viewpoint of the Right-B, the superiority of Japanesenationhood within Asia was regarded as self-evident, and this simple belief
was sufficient to permit Japan to intrude into the Asian continent. However,for them, the intrusion itself was not manifest destiny; what was essential
was the protection of Japanese nationhood, and so the independence of Japan
itself was far more important than any expansion, colonies, or interests
outside. This division between types of right-wing thought will help clarify
the complicated situation of political and ideological struggle in theintermediate period, 1932–1937. The next subsection is devoted to this task.

4.3 Political and Ideological Situation in the Intermediate Period: 1932–1937
The period 1932–1937, until the outbreak of the Second Sino-JapaneseWar, was a transition period from democracy to militarism. The postwardemocratic view argued that crazy fascist movements suffused Japan during
the time, threatening and carrying out coups, terrorism, and provoking
suppression of free speech by the military, finally subverting liberal
democracy and established military fascism in Japan.
37

Masao Maruyama’s article Nihon Fashizumu no shisō to Undō xxi is a
representative argument on this line. With his concept Nihon Fashizumu (Ifollow its translation ‘Japanese Fascism’ below) which connected his basic
concept Ultra-Nationalism to the characteristics of the fascist movement
particular to Japan, Maruyama argued that it reflected the historicalbackwardness compared not only with liberal democracy but also theEuropean fascism. Because of its backwardness, it is characterized as
ideology the family-system tendency and agrarianism, and its social support
was founded not by the urban citizens with high education such as salaried
employees, journalists, university students, but the class of people with lowereducation who formed the public opinion at the agrarian area such as small
factory owners, landowners, or elementary school teachers. Maruyama (1969:62) denoted these types of local opinion leaders as ‘Peudo-intelligentia’.
Although the fascist element common to Germany and Italy was recognized,
the social basis of Japanese Fascism which induced military fascism in thenext period (1937-1941) was developed from its near-feudal and agrarian
origin pointed out above. In this sense, Maruyama’s concept of Japanese
Fascism corresponds with Right-B in my term, and he identified the essential
38

nature of fascism in Japan as the movement by the group belonging to RightB.
Unsurprisingly, the basic ideology of soldiers in Japan was based on the
traditional Kokutai-Ron, Right-B in my term and a series of attempted coups
by these young soldiers occurred during the 1930s such as the 15 May
Incident in 1932 and the 26 February Incident in 1936. However, these young
officers who conducted the coups were not supported by their peers, in general,
and were severely punished by the top leaders of the army. Indeed, in thelargest such incident, the 26 February Incident, the involved soldiers weresentenced to death, and the leaders in the army who had expected the plan tosucceed took responsibility and left politics. Note also that the officers who
caused the Manchurian Incident and established the state of Manchukuo in1932 belonged to the senior officer class and hence had no direct relationships
with the young soldiers who sparked coups within Japan. It is therefore
highly doubtful that the coups by the young officers were the core incident(s)that established military fascism in Japan.
To clarify this point further, I will review the political situation after the
15 May Incident, putting special focus on the Ten-nō Kikan-Setsu Jiken (the39

Emperor Organ Theory), in 1935. The basic political situation and shift fromthe 15 May Incident until 1937 were as follows. xxii If the election had been
held after the incident, Seiyūkai would have won, because Minister of Finance
Korekiyo Takahashi’s inflationary fiscal policy was strongly supported by thepeople. However, it was highly likely that Seiyūkai, as a pro-army party,
would have chosen a right-wing army leader as next prime minister. Instead,under the leadership of Kin-mochi Saionji, the last Genrō (elder statesman
who advises Ten-nō in his political decision), first Minoru Saitō and thenKeisuke Okada were chosen as prime minister without election, to bar
Seiyūkai from power.
Both ex-navy leaders, Saitō and Okada belonged to the liberal group who
had contributed to the cooperative international policy in the Taishō period.
In this sense, the Japanese cabinet system was neither democratic nor
military at that point, until the 26 February Incident, when Okada was
attacked and had only a narrow escape from assassination. On the whole,theirs was a non-democratic but civilian politics. Korekiyo Takahashi
continued to hold the position of Minister of Finance, as he was trusted tokeep propelling the economy out of the depression, but he was also40

assassinated in the 26 February Incident, along with now-ex-prime-minister
Saitō. At the same time, the bureaucracy improved its position due to thedecline of the power of the politicians, and for rehabilitating the Japanese
economy with the advent of the ‘New Bureaucrats’ or ‘Reformist Bureaucrats’,
who had strong sympathy toward socialism and antipathy toward the freemarket economy.
Under the Okada cabinet in 1935, Tatsukichi Minobe, the leading theoristof Taishō democracy and at that time a member of the House of Lords, wastargeted for his legal theory of Ten-nō Kikan-Setsu, which it was asserted
disgraced the dignity of the Ten-nō. xxiii The criticism was first voiced by aright-wing member of the House of Lords, and Minobe responded (plausibly,as seen) that this criticism was based on a fundamental misinterpretation of
his theory. However, the misconception became a widespread one, and the
Okada cabinet denied that it followed Ten-nō Kikan-Setsu. The army,
veterans’ associations and private right-wing groups joined the outrage, andMinobe was attacked by a right-wing terrorist and had a narrow escape fromdeath.
Looking back at all this, the postwar-democratic view (see Maruyama
41

(1969: 61-62)) argued that the Kikan-Setsu Jiken symbolized a surge ofJapanese Fascism led by the opinion formed at the local area by the influenceof the ‘quasi-intelligentia’. However, this argument, I believe, blurs the real
picture and the real development of Japanese militarism.
That is, I believe that what really occurred in Japan in this period was nota struggle between democracy and fascism. Democracy itself had been
terminated in 1932, when the Saitō and then the Okada cabinet were formed
without election. By this point, the real struggle instead consisted in the one
between right radicals and right conservatives, whom I have called Right-A
and Right-B. The two cabinets focused on here were both supported byMinseitō as a party-base and by reformist bureaucrats in the concreteadministration of the state. Therefore, the government’s overall position wasclose to the Right-A program. However, it did not have a firm politicalfoundation, for it was not legitimized by a democratic election or empoweredby explicit dictatorship.
Despite its defects, most conscientious pro-democratic politicians andintelligentsia gathered around this group. Minobe himself proposed a ‘RoundTable Top-Level Conference’ where top leaders of the parties, military,42

business, and workers would get together to make final political decisions,instead of the cabinet. (Banno (2014: 208-209) The representative liberalist
ideologue Jozekan Hasegawa also proposed a similar conception, the‘Constitutional Dictatorship’ at this period. (See Mitani (1995: 220-250)).
Surprisingly enough, the dominant ideologues of Taishō democracy had comefar closer to state socialism at that stage, in order to support the Saitō andOkada cabinets, to reform the corruption of party politics and to limit theaccess of the army to civilian politics.
Note that the Kikan-Setsu Jiken occurred in this period. The pro-army
Seiyūkai took the majority of the Diet seats, and so democratic due process
have it power to pursue its pro-army policy. In conclusion, the real struggle
within the Kikan-Setsu Jiken was not between the democracy and the urban
intelligentsia on the one hand and Japanese Fascism and an unenlightened
public led by the ‘peudo-intelligentia’. The real ideological struggle was much
more singular: on one side, the elitist, Right-A intelligentsia connected toliberal politicians close to the Ten-nō, such as Saionji, Saitō, and Okada,
reformist bureaucrats, and in party terms, Minseitō and the still-legalsocialist parties (who had reconciled themselves to the egalitarian state43socialism), versus the more conservative Right-B concept held by the
traditional right-wing army group, right-wingers and its political associations,and in party terms, the Seiyūkai, which exploited the political illegitimacy of
the Right-A group and advocated a prompt return to party democracy so thatit could hold power again, and at the same time, criticized Minobe’s KikanSetsu, with its innate state-socialist nature, as fascist (See Banno (2014: 211216).
Contrary to the logic of Maruyama, the Right-B group failed in the
struggle. The election just after the Kikan-Setsu Jiken was an overwhelming
victory for Minseitō, despite the fact that Seiyūkai was a rural-based politicalparty. Though the 26 February Incident occurred one week after the election,
it led only to a further decrease in the political power of the Right-B group in
the army and of the Seiyūkai, which had lost credibility among the Japanesepeople at large.

4.4 Summary of the Section
In this section, I have followed the development of nationalist ideologies inprewar Shōwa Japan. The postwar-democratic view argued that Japanese44‘fascism’ was based on an ideology (which I have called Right-B) among
uneducated people and ‘quasi-intelligentia’ connected with the rural area as
its social support, in contrast with a liberal and intelligent urban bourgeoisie.
In fact, this genteel intelligentsia had also become discouraged withdemocracy and the free market system in the 1930s, and had come around tosomething more like a state socialism under a command economy led byreformist bureaucrats. The legal socialist parties and labor unions also got
together behind this Right-A program, as did even some young soldiers of an
originally Right-B mentality.
Note that various groups with different levels of political power wereattracted to the idea of state socialism, as per Right-A, for a range of reasons.
Young soldiers perhaps simply dreamed of a Shōwa-Ishin. Liberals wanted toreform the democratic system whose corruption was represented in particular
by Seiyūkai and to limit the intervention of the army in politics. Socialist
parties expected the redistribution of wealth through the socialist
management of the economy. The leaders of the army, the most powerfulpolitical power at this stage, were also interested in the Right-A program
because they saw it as useful for the establishment of a general mobilization
45

system in Japan. An army pamphlet published in 1934 coupled the promotionof the general mobilization system with that of large-scale egalitarian
redistribution of wealth, using social welfare programming to attract
working-class people to the general mobilization policy.
In summary, what occurred was not the oppression of liberal democracy
by Japanese Fascism or on Right-B ideology. Broad groups within Japan,
including in the army, party politics, the bureaucracy, labour unions, andacademia and the intelligentsia, all were attracted to state socialism, RightA—with rather different reasons, but sharing a common antagonistic feelingtoward capitalism and discouragement about party politics.
Finally, the 26 February Incident occurred, in 1936, and the Right-B
leaders within the army who were connected to the young soldiers that hadplanned the incident were expelled by the Right-A leaders. The ‘Shin-Taisei’(‘New Regime’) established under Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe in 1937,
right before the start of the second Sino-Japanese War, incorporated all
players, including the army, under a national framework based on the RightA ideology.
As this new regime was a mixture of various interest groups with many46

contradictory agendas, there was no real power to make responsible politicaldecisions. In particular, no one was really able to control or quash the
intrusion of the army onto the Asian continent, and hence war with China
erupted and compounded the muddle. Just before the Pacific War with theWestern Allies also began, in 1941, Konoe stepped down from power, for his
new regime was unworkable and had degenerated to a support system of the
dictatorship by the army. Hideki Tōjō, who led the army at that time,
succeeded Konoe and oversaw the war effort under the general mobilization
system thus established.

5 Concluding Remarks
Let me now summarize the content of this study. Despite the conventional
belief since the last world war that Japanese nationalism is particular to
Japan—feudal, hierarchical, and anti-liberal-democratic—my study has
clarified that included various types, and that some types of Japanesenationalism are strictly modern, including the dominant type consistent withliberal democracy.
More concretely stated, the prototype of Japanese nationalism was built
47

up in the early modern Edo period, where consciousness of the unity andindependence of Japan as nation-state was established through the KokutaiRon. Then, after the Meiji Restoration, the Kokutai-Ron was harmonized withsocial institutions introduced from the West, such as private property right,
a competitive market economy, and party democracy, by the efforts ofconstitution writers including Yukichi Fukuzawa, Kowashi Inoue, andHirofumi Itō, which culminated in the establishment of the constitutionalmonarchy by the adoption of the Imperial Constitution.
After 1910s, the democratic trend was deepened as the Taishō democracy
movement, and the Japanese political system also came closer torepresentative democracy, as symbolized by the establishment of full malesuffrage in election and the two-party political system in the early 1930s. The
movements of pacifism and international cooperation were also dominantduring the same period.
However, the Taishō era movement also saw the introduction of analternative model of democracy—direct democracy, like anarcho-syndicalism
or Soviet-type socialism. Furthermore, some right-wing groups had a strong
sense of crisis in relation to international movements after the First World
48

War, the exclusion of Japan from the imperialistic interests of Westerncountries, and the threat of communism due to the emergence of the USSR.
Surprisingly enough, these two groups, left and right, amalgamated witheach other in early Shōwa era as the state socialist movement, and gatheredwith military and bureaucratic reformists and became a new rights grouppromoting the establishment of a general mobilization system and Asiacentered regionalism.
In the 1930s, when democracy collapsed in Japan, two groups held powerin the military, the Right-A group and the more traditional right-wing groups
I called Right-B here, which was strictly anti-socialist, struggled to obtain
political power; the consolidation of power by Right-A in the late 1930s led to
the full penetration of Japan into East Asia. It is this nationalism of Right-A
that largely justified and promoted the militarism and foreign aggression in
the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War.
In summary, Japanese nationalism as it emerged from the Kokutai-Ron
had at least three types over the Meiji–1945 period: nationalism consistent
with constitutional monarchy and international cooperation, nationalism
assimilated with state socialism and Asia-centered regionalism, and the49

movement to re-erect the traditional Kokutai in the modern world.
To close, I would suggest a lesson this study provides in relation to recent
political issues. It is sometimes argued that recent rightward trend in Japanand the resurgence of nationalism are signs of the impending remilitarizationof Japan. Despite this fear among some people in other countries, nationalism
in Japan as it exists at present is the descendent of assimilated liberaldemocratic nationalism or the simply nostalgic Kokutai-Ron. I agree thatsome elements of the latter group, who for example repeat hate speech to nonJapanese Asian people, are shameful, but in any case, they have no concrete
political conception of themselves as Right-A did before the last World War,without which they will find it difficult to become the source of any politicalmovement for militarism or otherwise.

50

Mainstream

Right wing (1919–1936)

Militarism

Political

Political regime

Economic

1945)

Position

Right-A

Right-B(1889–1932)(radicals)(traditionalists)

Constitutional

State’s

Emperor’s

Dictatorshipmonarchysovereignty

sovereignty

military

Capitalism

State

N/A

Bureaucratic planningsystemInternational(1928–

socialism
Cooperation

Liberalization

politicalof Asia fromposition toward

Western

Westernimperialism

by

the

economy‘Gaullisme’Expulsion of Westerncountries from Asia

countries
International

Preservation of

Support of theSuperiority

position toward

the status quo

Asian nation

Japanesetoward

Asia

set

and

nation to otherthe pretext of helping

Asian ones

its

at

the

peopleWashington

from Western

Naval

imperialism

of

Aggressive

policyAsia under

liberationfromWestern imperialism

Conference
Table 1: Structure of political ideologies in Japan before and during the Second World
War

51

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i

The author thanks Takeshi Abe, Junji Annen, Ayumu Banzawa and Frances Rosenbluth

for the fruitful discussion and comments on earlier versions of this study. This research is
supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (18H00867) and (S)15H05278.
ii

After the defeat of Japan at the Pacific War, General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japanas head of the Allied Occupation Force. MacArthur’s office was named GHQ, where it

54executed the radical reform for democratizing Japan both politically and economically. As theseries of reforms were so drastic, it is often named as the Occupation Revolution.
iii

See Mruyama (1969), pp.1-24, and pp. pp. 34-65 as typical argument.

iv

In social science, Toshiyoshi Miyazawa (constitutional law), Takeyoshi Kawashima (civillaw), Hisao Ōtsuka (economic history), Chie Nakane (anthropology) are representative. My
study will denote this type of argument represented by Maruyama in the area of politicalthought sometimes as the postwar-democratic view, considering the fact that Maruyama’sview was not particular to his own, but more extensively shared among the group of thescholars above and their followers.
v

For political analysis of the ‘New Nationalism’ in contemporary Japan, see Rosenbluth etal. (2009).
See Norman (1940) which argued the feudal nature of Edo era and its persistent effects invi

modern Japan. Norman’s contribution had strong influence on the liberal intelligentia bothin Japan, Asia and the West.
Sorai Ogyū’s philosophy and its enormous influence as the basis of nationalism in Japanvii

was eloquently explained in Bitō (2014: 167-221).
viii

The nature and significance of the late Mito-Gaku are clearly explained by Bitō (2014:239-266).
See for example, Fukuzawa (2008), pp. 17-20. Note here that the concept of civilizationix

by Fukuzawa exclusively meant Western civilization and evaluated the civilization ofboth Edo Japan and China as less developed ones.
x

See Ramserer and Rseonbluth (1996: 15-40).

xi

Maruyama’s argument here was first made by his monumental article ‘Chō-Kokkashugino Ronri to Shinri’ (‘The Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism’), first published rightafter the war in 1946. This article is incorporated in Maruyama (1969: 1-24). Here, he draws
his concept of the neutrality of the state from the argument of the German public lawyer Carl
Schmidt. He characterized the essential nature of the modern state as ein neutraler Staat
where the basis of national sovereignty is laid in a purely formal legal structure separated
from the personal value of the people.
xii

See Banno (2014: 129-130).

xiii

Minobe’s argument is presented plainly in Minobe (1912). For the doctrine by Jellinek,

see Jellinek (1905).
xiv

See Itō (1978), who proves this fact with careful research.

xv

See Mitani (1995: 79-82).

xvi

As he admitted in Mitani (1995: 330), his argument is built on the classical dichotomy by

Tocqueville (1835/40). More modern treatment is presented in Hayek (1973,1976, 1979).

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For a balanced view on the nature and development of colonial policy in prewar Japan,

xvii

refer to Peattie (1996).
xviii

See Nakamura (1998: 68-73) for analysis of the consequences of the economic policy by

Minseitō at this period.
This situation was not changed after the war, despite the appearance of the strong

xix

influence of Marxism. Its influence was limited to the class of intelligent people, within
academism, journalism and university students. After the high-growth period that started in
1960s, labor union and left-wing political parties more or less discarded the thesis of Marxism.
xx

Itō (1969) pioneered the study of political history in prewar Shōwa Japan and articulated

the crucial importance of the struggle between the two types of right-wingers within the
military, political parties, and privy council. His framework was used for the general surveyof the history in prewar Shōwa Japan by Nakamura (1998: 1-255). Banno (2016: 174-231) isalso a useful survey of the period.
xxiThis article was originally given as lecture in 1947 and translated in Maruyama (1969:25-83) as “The Ideology and Dynamics of Japanese Fascism”.
xxii

See Banno (2016: 204-216).

xxiii

See Nakamura (1998: 98-100) for the broad review of the case.

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