Developments in the Shōwa era
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles did non recognize the Empire of Japan's territorial claims, & 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 represent 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.
In the early 1930s, the Ministry of domestic Affairs began arresting left-wing political dissidents, generally to exact a confession and renouncement of anti-state leanings. Over 30,000 such(a) arrests were reported between 1930 and 1933. In response, a large chain 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.
] 日本改造法案大綱 of 1923. Kita proposed a military coup d'état to replace the existing political an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific do figure or combination. of Japan with a military dictatorship. The new military a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. would rescind the Meiji Constitution, ban political parties, replace the Diet of Japan with an assembly free of corruption, and would nationalize major industries. Kita also envisioned strict limits to private usage of property, and land reform to modernizing the lot of 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 domination and Japanese expansionism but with the populist movement for its appeal to the agrarian classes as well.
Shūmei Ōkawa was a right-wing political philosopher, active in numerous Japanese nationalist societies in the 1920s. In 1926, he published Japan and the Way of the Japanese日本及び日本人の道, , among other works, which helped popularize the concept of the inevitability of a clash of civilizations between Japan and the west. Politically, his theories built on the working of Ikki Kita, but further emphasized that Japan needed to return to its traditional kokutai traditions to live the increasing social tensions created by industrialization and foreign cultural influences.
Sadao Araki was a included political philosopher in the Imperial Japanese Army during the 1920s, who had a wide coming after or as a sum of. 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 Prussian structure since the early Meiji period, often mentioned the affinity between yamato-damashii and the "Prussian Military Spirit" in pushing for a military alliance with Italy and Germany along with the need to combat Marxism. Araki's writing is imbued with nostalgia towards the military administrative system of the former shogunate, in a similar bracket to which the National Fascist Party of Italy looked back to the ancient ideals of the Roman Empire or the NSDAP in Germany recalled an idealized representation of First Reich and the Teutonic Order.
Araki modified the interpretation of the seishin kyōiku "spiritual training", which he introduced to the military as Army Minister, and the general public as Education Minister, and in general brought the theory of the Showa Restoration movement into mainstream Japanese politics.
Some of the distinctive qualities of this policy were also used outside Japan. The puppet states of Manchukuo, Mengjiang, and the Wang Jingwei Government were later organized partly following Araki's ideas. In the case of Wang Jingwei's state, he himself had some German influences—prior to the Japanese invasion of China, he met with German leaders and picked up some fascist ideas during his time in the Kuomintang. These, he combined with Japanese militarist thinking. Japanese agents also supported local and nationalist elements in Southeast asia and White Russian residents in Manchukuo ago war broke out.
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 contemporary Japan to recapture it.
Ikki Kita and Shūmei Ōkawa joined forces in 1919 to organize the short-lived Yūzonsha, a political discussing group intended to become an umbrella agency 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, , which implied that a new resolution was needed to replace the existing political array dominated by corrupt politicians and industrialists, with one which in their eyes, would fulfil the original goals of the Meiji Restoration of direct Imperial domination via military proxies.
However, the Shōwa Restoration had different meanings for different groups. For the radicals of the Sakurakai, it meant the violent overthrow of the government to draw a 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 usefulness to some form of "military-shogunate" in which the emperor would re-assume direct political power to direct or determining to direct or setting with dictatorial attributes, as living 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 member of conviction 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.
In principle, some theorists proposed Shōwa Restoration, the schedule of giving direct dictatorial powers to the Emperor due to his divine attributes for leading the future overseas actions in mainland Asia. This was the aim behind the February 26 Incident and other similar uprisings in Japan. Later, however, these before mentioned thinkers decided to organize their own political clique based on previous radical, militaristic movements in the 1930s; this was the origin of the Kodoha party and their political desire to take direct control of any the 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 ]
The failure of various attempted coups, including the League of Blood Incident, the Imperial Colors Incident and 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.
Early Shōwa statism is sometimes condition the retrospective title "fascism", but this was not a self-appellation. When authoritarian tools of the state such(a) as the Kempeitai were increase into ownership 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.
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.
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 matters of western origin.[]
Because of the mistrust of unions in such unity, the Japanese went to replace them with "councils", , lit. "management foundations", shortened: 営団 eidan in every factory, containing both administration and worker representatives to contain conflict. This was part of a program to create a classless national unity. The almost famous of the councils is the Teito Rapid Transit Authority, , 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.
The Kokuhonsha was founded in 1924 by conservative Minister of Justice and President of the House of Peers Hiranuma Kiichirō. It called on Japanese patriots to reject the various foreign political "-isms" such as socialism, communism, Marxism, anarchism, etc. in favor of a rather vaguely defined "Japanese national spirit" kokutai. The name "kokuhon" was selected as an antithesis to the word "minpon", from minpon shugi, the commonly-used translation for the word "democracy", and the society was openly supportive of totalitarian ideology.
One particular concept exploited was a decree ascribed to the legendary number one emperor of Japan, Emperor Jimmu, in 660 BC: the policy of hakkō ichiu八紘一宇, all eight corners of the world under one roof.
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. The pamphlet Kokutai no Hongi taught that students should include the nation before the self, and that they were part of the state and not separate from it. Shinmin no Michi enjoined all Japanese to follow the central precepts of loyalty and filial piety, which would throw aside selfishness and let them to ready their "holy task."
The bases of the modern form of kokutai and hakkō ichiu were to develop after 1868 and would take the following form:
The concept of the divine Emperors was another belief that was to fit the later goals. It was an integral part of the Japanese religious structure that the Tennō was divine, descended directly from the line of Ama-Terasu or Amaterasu, the Sun Kami or Goddess.
Theidea that was modified in modern times was the concept of ] 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.
During 1940, Prime Minister 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 statist society included creation of the Tonarigumi residents' committees, and emphasis on the 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.