Nakano has received very little attention in works in English on the relevant period, as his approaches to effective power were limited while his career also lacks the violent drama associated with movements resorting to terrorism. Even in Japan he has not been made the subject of much academic enquiry. Though remaining a fairly well-known figure he is more generally consigned to the class of ‘ultra-nationalists’ who are blamed for the disaster of Japan’s defeat. This book uses material from the few biographies available in conjunction with some short sketches of Nakano by others, biographies of associates and official publications covering his and related political activities. Primary sources include a representative range of Nakano’s own writings, as well as speeches in the Diet. Interviews with Nakano’s two surviving sons and other close associates also feature.
Nakano has received very little attention in works in English on the relevant period, as his approaches to effective power were limited while his career also lacks the violent drama associated with movements resorting to terrorism. Even in Japan he has not been made the subject of much academic enquiry. Though remaining a fairly well-known figure he is more generally consigned to the class of ‘ultra-nationalists’ who are blamed for the disaster of Japan’s defeat. This book uses material from the few biographies available in conjunction with some short sketches of Nakano by others, biographies of associates and official publications covering his and related political activities. Primary sources include a representative range of Nakano’s own writings, as well as speeches in the Diet. Interviews with Nakano’s two surviving sons and other close associates also feature.
The authors argue that with the election of the Abe Government in December 2012, Japanese politics has entered a radically new phase they describe as the “2012 Political System.” The system began with the return to power of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), after three years in opposition, but in a much stronger electoral position than previous LDP-based administrations in earlier decades. Moreover, with the decline of previously endemic intra-party factionalism, the LDP has united around an essentially nationalist agenda never absent from the party’s ranks, but in the past was generally blocked, or modified, by factions of more liberal persuasion. Opposition weakness following the severe defeat of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration in 2012 has also enabled the Abe Government to establish a political stability largely lacking since the 1990s. The first four chapters deal with Japanese political development since 1945 and factors leading to the emergence of Abe Shinzō as Prime Minister in 2012. Chapter 5 examines the Abe Government’s flagship economic policy, dubbed “Abenomics.” The authors then analyse four highly controversial objectives promoted by the Abe Government: revision of the 1947 ‘Peace Constitution’; the introduction of a Secrecy Law; historical revision, national identity and issues of war apology; and revised constitutional interpretation permitting collective defence. In the final three chapters they turn to foreign policy, first examining relations with China, Russia and the two Koreas, second Japan and the wider world, including public diplomacy, economic relations and overseas development aid, and finally, the vexed question of how far Japanese policies are as reactive to foreign pressure. In the Conclusion, the authors ask how far right wing trends in Japan exhibit common causality with shifts to the right in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. They argue that although in Japan immigration has been a relatively minor factor, economic stagnation, demographic decline, a sense of regional insecurity in the face of challenges from China and North Korea, and widening gaps in life chances, bear comparison with trends elsewhere. Nevertheless, they maintain that “[a] more sane regional future may be possible in East Asia.”
"This book offers the first significant examination of the rise of neo-nationalism and its impact on the missions, activities, behaviors, and productivity of leading national universities. This book also presents the first major comparative exploration of the role of national politics and norms in shaping the role of universities in nation-states, and vice versa, and discusses when universities are societal leaders or followers-in promoting a civil society, facilitating talent mobility, in researching challenging social problems, or in reinforcing and supporting an existing social and political order"--
In contrast to Euro-centric works on comparative fascism that set Japan apart from Germany and Italy, this book emphasizes parallels between Japan and its Axis Allies. Romantic nationalist ideologies attracted a strong following in all three nations as they emerged as modern states in the late 1800s. In both Germany and Japan these were, from the beginning, strongly racial in nature. Spurred by grievances against the 'status quo' powers, all three took up aggressive policies in the 1930s, producing a short-lived 'fascist era'. Japan's prominent role demands a broader perspective and consideration of 'fascism' as more than a purely European phenomenon.
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.
Memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over Japan's culture and society. In The Japanese and the War, Michael Lucken details how World War II manifested in the literature, art, film, funerary practices, and education reform of the time. Concentrating on the years immediately before and after (1937 to 1952), Lucken explores the creation of an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates in everything from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Lucken defines three distinct layers of Japan's memory of World War II: the population's expectations at the beginning, the trauma caused by conflict and defeat, and the politics of memory that arose after Japan lost to the Allied powers. Emphasizing Japanese-language sources, Lucken writes a narrative of the making of Japanese cultural memory that moves away from Western historical modes and perspectives. His approach also paints a new portrait of the U.S. occupation, while still maintaining a cultural focus. Lucken sets out to capture the many ways people engage with war, but particularly the full range of Japan's experiences, which, he argues, the Japanese state has yet to fully confront, leading to a range of tensions at home and abroad.
In the late nineteenth century, Japan was the only non-Western country to have successfully faced the challenges of Westernization. At the end of the Meiji Era, just three decades after the end of the country’s feudal age, it became Great Britain’s ally, while its soldiers were deployed in Beijing, operating alongside the great European powers. Meanwhile, in Japan, the perception of a scientifically and technologically advanced West came to be imbued by negative connotations, generated by the threatening Western presence in Asia. In order to avoid succumbing to the European imperialist yoke, Japan has itself gradually converted its international status by embracing an imperialistic identity. The new image of the world responding to the current historical situation could only result from a philosophy immersed in historicity, far from its metaphysical dimension. In a philosophy mediated by history, self-awareness would have coincided with the “historical manifestations of history”. Based on these premises, the Chūōkōron group seemed to have presented Japan’s hegemonic aspirations as an expression of its “real historical manifestation”. This sounded like an explicit declaration of ideologically supporting the country’s involvement in the war. But what is the meaning that the participants in the debates attributed to the idea of Japan’s “real historical manifestation”? The answer lies in a moral obligation that the country saw as “the duty” of world history: overcoming modern civilization while promoting a new culture.
Casting new light on majority-minority relations and the struggle for Buraku liberation, this book focuses on Matsumoto Jiichiro, arguably the most important Buraku leader of the twentieth century, locating his experience within the broader developments in Japan's social, political and economic history.
Informed Western understanding of Imperial Japan still often conjures up images of militarism, blind devotion to leaders, and fanatical pride in the country. But, as Imperial Japan and Defeat in the Second World War reveals, Western imagination is often reductive in its explanation of the Japanese Empire and its collapse. In his analysis of the Emperor, Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during the Second World War, Peter Wetzler examines the disconnect between nation and state during wartime Japan and in doing so offers a much-needed nuanced and sensitive corrective to existing Western scholarship. Rooted in the perspective of the Japanese, Wetzler makes available to readers vital primary and secondary Japanese archival sources; most notably, this book provides the first English assessment of the recently-released Actual Record of the Showa Emperor. This book is an important advance in English-language studies of the Second World War in Asia, and is thus essential reading for all those wishing to understand this crucial period in Japanese history.
