Japan fascism during WW2?

[LostDesperado]

I'm a history buff but I am still ignorant on WW2 happenings. I've read a little into the Japanese involvement. The Japanese sided with Italy and Germany, both fascist countries but Japan didn't seem so "right" as a fascist government would be.
What I'm wondering is was Japan really fascist in WW2 or rather did they decide to side with Germany and Italy because they opposed America?

[Bronco]

It was a pretty insane regime. They werent "Fascist" as such but they were definitely authoritatrian, and militaristic, and their Emporer, Hirohito, was basically a demi-God to them. Their entrance into the war was mainly due to their opposition to America I'd say; relations had been strained for years because of the Japanese's policy & exapnsion in Asia with Manchuria, China etc & Roosevelt had banned exports of key recources which had basically crippled their economy.

[caramelpence]

I'm a history buff but I am still ignorant on WW2 happenings. I've read a little into the Japanese involvement. The Japanese sided with Italy and Germany, both fascist countries but Japan just doesn't seem so "right" as a fascist government would be.
What I'm wondering is was Japan really fascist in WW2 or rather did they decide to side with Germany and Italy because they opposed America?

The role of Japan in WW2 was marked by the promotion of pan-Asianism and other syncretic neo-traditionalist ides that preached the organic values of the East as opposed to the utilitarian and rationalist West - an organic concept of society and history is a common feature of Fascist ideology, and in that sense there were obvious ideological similarities between Japan and Germany and Italy, rather than just shared tactical goals, but the fact that these ideas were put forward in Asian or civilizational terms rather than in exclusively Japanese terms means that I think you are right in thinking that Japan was different, even if this doesn't mean that they were "less right-wing", so to speak. It was partly because they operated from this pan-Asian ideological basis that the Japanese military often gave an important boost to independence movements, the most obvious example being Indonesia, where the Japanese improved the radio network in order to allow Sukarno to broadcast his ideas throughout the country, having released Sukarno as soon as they defeated the Dutch, and also set up a number of nationalist formations (e.g. the Poetera) in order to facilitate military training and the spread of nationalist ideas. Indonesia is probably the most radical example of the Japanese supporting nationalism and co-opting nationalist leaders, but it is also significant that they set up a series of puppet governments in northern China as well, and that Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen also displayed some pan-Asianist tendencies.

Incidentally, the complexities of Japan's role in WW2 is one of the themes that arguably underpins much of Haruki Murakami's fiction, so if you're interested in a contemporary Japanese perspective (albeit often through metaphor and passing references) on these issues - or really if you just want to read a fantastic Japanese author - you should check him out.

[red cat]

I'm a history buff but I am still ignorant on WW2 happenings. I've read a little into the Japanese involvement. The Japanese sided with Italy and Germany, both fascist countries but Japan didn't seem so "right" as a fascist government would be.
What I'm wondering is was Japan really fascist in WW2 or rather did they decide to side with Germany and Italy because they opposed America?

Japan militarized its middle class population and displayed extreme anti-Chinese racism during WW2.

[Tommy4ever]

Japan during WWII wasn't quite Fascist, but it was close.

It was Japanese ethnic supremacist.

Ultra Imperialistic.

Ultra Militaristic.

It mixed Japanese and East Asian culture in and had some very cult like aspects to its culture.

I've heard some describe Japan during this time as a blend between the late 19th century European Imperial powers and the 1930s Fascists.

[caramelpence]

It was Japanese ethnic supremacist.

Japan militarized its middle class population and displayed extreme anti-Chinese racism during WW2.

As satisfying as it may be to resort to simple assertions such as these, they do not do justice to just how complex Japanese fascism and the Japanese role in WW2 were. What these accusations of "racism" and "ethnic supremacism" ignore is that the common trend in all of the societies where the Japanese inflicted military defeats on other governments or the Western colonial powers was to support the appointment of indigenous elites and professionals to the government posts that had been vacated - not just in terms of creating puppet governments and selecting individual leaders, as in the case of Wang Jingwei in China, but in the more thorough sense of promoting large numbers of individuals to bureaucratic office, which involved them gaining access to the privileges associated with those offices. In both Indonesia and China, the actual presence of Japanese administrators on the ground was fairly limited, rather, it was Indonesians and Chinese who took up the most important posts, which was one part of a broader strategy whereby the Japanese gave support to nationalist projects and allowed the dissemination of nationalist ideas, at least when nationalism was articulated in a syncretic or neo-traditionalist form, along the same lines as Japanese fascist ideology. The Japanese did not see the promotion of nationalism in countries like Indonesia as conflicting with their own pan-Asian project, rather, they saw nationalism as the most effective way of supporting a joint military struggle against the West and ultimately moving towards their goal of a confident Asia, bound together both politically and economically, and rooted in a common cultural heritage. The influence of pan-Asian ideas in Japan itself was an intellectual trend that had been significant for decades before the start of WW2.

I take particular exception to the straightforward application of "racism" to the role of Japan in China because Japan's role was probably more complex in China than in any other country. The Japanese showed themselves willing to offer substantial numbers of Chinese citizens Japanese citizenship just after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1895 and during WW2 the Japanese government also placed those citizens (known as the Sekimin) under conscription, which was the most important duty associated with Japanese citizenship, and, then, in 1942, put both Taiwan and Korea under the control of the Home Ministry. As the war came to an end, the Japanese government was planning to merge the population registers for naichi and gaichi (i.e. the Japanese of the home islands and Japanese citizens living in locations like Taiwan) in order to give them both the same legal status and the same rights and privileges, which indicates just how far the Japanese government was willing to depart from any alleged "anti-Chinese racism" in order to build support amongst other populations and further their pan-Asian vision.

[agnixie]

That doesn't sound particularly different from the nazis having puppet collaborators (even JuPo in the ghettos).

[caramelpence]

That doesn't sound particularly different from the nazis having puppet collaborators (even JuPo in the ghettos).

It was.

[RedHal]

The Rape of Nanking, grotesque human experimentation on Chinese, and this dandy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword
Japan was as crazy as the Nazis. But since they got nuked, Japan is seen as victims in WWII?

[progressive_lefty]

I'm a history buff but I am still ignorant on WW2 happenings. I've read a little into the Japanese involvement. The Japanese sided with Italy and Germany, both fascist countries but Japan didn't seem so "right" as a fascist government would be.
What I'm wondering is was Japan really fascist in WW2 or rather did they decide to side with Germany and Italy because they opposed America?

I take offense to your post, Japan was a disgusting nation in its imperial days.

The attrocities they committed against the Chinese and Koreans, and a lot of the South-East Asian countries will never ever be forgotten. Hatred of the Japanese has a long history in Australia, some restaurants and bars have attempted to ban Japanese people from entering out of respect for former soldiers. Thousands of Australians perished in prisoner of war camps and died building the Burma railway line. No one could ever ever forget about the prostitute ships they created - full of hundreds of thousands of stolen Korean, Chinese, Australian and Dutch women - some as young as 11 or 12. I've wanted to learn more about the 'comfort women', but I just can't because I think if started watching a documentary about such a thing I would vomit or maybe just kill myself. I think if there's one thing that people will remember about the Japanese is they were animals. I'm not aware of the Nazis raping and pillaging as much as the Japanese did. Can you imagine how the women would have felt being gang raped repeatedly several times daily?

The Chinese and the Koreans will never ever forget the Japanese occupation, where Japanese was instituted as being the only language. Not to mention the disgusting acts that also happened in Singapore and the Philippines against local populations. I guess for me personally growing up, I never knew of how diverse and different Asian people were - and I can see now why their hatred of each other is so deep-seated. It could almost out way some of the hatred that occurs between nations in Europe.

Apart from Japan's historical treatment of non-Japanese asians, their obsession with revisionism is extremely insulting. Most Japanese will never ever learn about the atrocities their ancestors committed. Can you just imagine if Germans were openly taught about their history whilst denying the Holocaust ever happened?

[Marxach-Léinínach]

The way the Japanese treated Chinese/Koreans/basically everybody is horrific beyond belief. They were easily as bad as the Nazis.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Japan actually had quite a few of the hallmarks of fascism:

* It sought a new type of culture, economy, society, along lines that was similar to Euro-fascism and the "activist state";
* Emphasis on national and racial myths;
* Appealed to the "third way";
* Modernist appeals to reform and renovation
* Technocratic thrust combined with appeals to ethnic nationalism;
* Endorsement of a labor "new order", which was actually modeled on what the Nazis were doing in Germany, and was intended to eliminate class conflict and foster class collaboration, including measures that would replace unions with "discussion councils".

There were differences, though, like how Japan didn't really have any equivalent to the SA in Germany or the Falange in Spain. I think it was attempted with Konoe Fumimaro's Imperial Assistance Association, but it never really got off the ground.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

As satisfying as it may be to resort to simple assertions such as these, they do not do justice to just how complex Japanese fascism and the Japanese role in WW2 were. What these accusations of "racism" and "ethnic supremacism" ignore is that the common trend in all of the societies where the Japanese inflicted military defeats on other governments or the Western colonial powers was to support the appointment of indigenous elites and professionals to the government posts that had been vacated - not just in terms of creating puppet governments and selecting individual leaders, as in the case of Wang Jingwei in China, but in the more thorough sense of promoting large numbers of individuals to bureaucratic office, which involved them gaining access to the privileges associated with those offices. In both Indonesia and China, the actual presence of Japanese administrators on the ground was fairly limited, rather, it was Indonesians and Chinese who took up the most important posts, which was one part of a broader strategy whereby the Japanese gave support to nationalist projects and allowed the dissemination of nationalist ideas, at least when nationalism was articulated in a syncretic or neo-traditionalist form, along the same lines as Japanese fascist ideology. The Japanese did not see the promotion of nationalism in countries like Indonesia as conflicting with their own pan-Asian project, rather, they saw nationalism as the most effective way of supporting a joint military struggle against the West and ultimately moving towards their goal of a confident Asia, bound together both politically and economically, and rooted in a common cultural heritage. The influence of pan-Asian ideas in Japan itself was an intellectual trend that had been significant for decades before the start of WW2.

I take particular exception to the straightforward application of "racism" to the role of Japan in China because Japan's role was probably more complex in China than in any other country. The Japanese showed themselves willing to offer substantial numbers of Chinese citizens Japanese citizenship just after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1895 and during WW2 the Japanese government also placed those citizens (known as the Sekimin) under conscription, which was the most important duty associated with Japanese citizenship, and, then, in 1942, put both Taiwan and Korea under the control of the Home Ministry. As the war came to an end, the Japanese government was planning to merge the population registers for naichi and gaichi (i.e. the Japanese of the home islands and Japanese citizens living in locations like Taiwan) in order to give them both the same legal status and the same rights and privileges, which indicates just how far the Japanese government was willing to depart from any alleged "anti-Chinese racism" in order to build support amongst other populations and further their pan-Asian vision.

This is partly true , the Chinese occupation of Taiwan was much "nicer" than mainland China, which was horrific in terms of its brutality.

[caramelpence]

Hatred of the Japanese has a long history in Australia, some restaurants and bars have attempted to ban Japanese people from entering out of respect for former soldiers.

Such a long history, in fact, that anti-Japanese racism preceded WW2 and has always been part of a more general trend of White supremacism that has embodied chauvinism against those of Chinese descent as well - so you can hardly paint the chauvinism of small business owners as some kind of legitimate reaction to atrocities committed during WW2, during which Australian soldiers also committed horrific atrocities. They did so afterwards as well, often whilst firing in the same direction as Japanese soldiers who had not yet been fully demobilized - ever heard of the battle of Surabaya?


I think if there's one thing that people will remember about the Japanese is they were animals. I'm not aware of the Nazis raping and pillaging as much as the Japanese did. Can you imagine how the women would have felt being gang raped repeatedly several times daily?

Again, it may be emotionally satisfying for you to go on a rant like this, but it does not make for good historical analysis. Japanese soldiers did commit atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere, including the use of rape as a method of systematic humiliation and dehumanization. It's important to seek to gauge how widespread these atrocities were and to condemn them, but more importantly it's necessary to seek to understand them, to grasp their immediate and background causes, and you don't do that by just dismissing the Japanese soldiers as "crazy" or "animals". There were reasons behind the events at Nanjing. The Japanese soldiers had been told to expect a rapid victory over the Nationalist forces, and their officers had also told them to expect sexual and material privileges upon their arrival as a way of keeping up morale, whereas they actually encountered strong and sustained resistance in the battles around Shanghai, which led to heavy losses on the Japanese side. Their rapid advances into Nanjing meant that they moved ahead of their supply lines and were told by their officers to find supplies in Nanjing itself in order to avoid food and other shortages on the Japanese side and a further deterioration in morale. The soldiers were informed that Chinese soldiers had changed into civilian clothes in order to escape, which meant that the lines between civilian and military personnel had been blurred, beyond even what we expect in the conditions of modern warfare. In terms of background influence, the bulk of Japanese ground forces were drawn from impoverished rural populations and subject to a process of military training that involved constant humiliation and prolonged ideological indoctrination, both of which produced fanatical obedience to officers and commanders. The point here is not to lessen what happened, or to make it appear justifiable - the point is that there were reasons behind the atrocities and that these reasons were partly to do with immediate factors and partly to do with background factors, some of which were specific to the Japanese army in the 1930s, some of which are more or less common to all modern armies. You need to acknowledge this (and avoid just saying that the Japanese or the Nazis were "crazy" or "animals" - these terms are especially inaccurate in the case of Nanjing because the Japanese forces were actually highly ordered in key respects, both in terms of not sacking or burning key buildings and in the way they carried out the atrocities) in order to recognize that unfortunately, all human beings are, when placed in certain conditions and when subject to certain pressures, capable of doing the kind of acts that were carried out by the Japanese in Nanjing.


The Chinese and the Koreans will never ever forget the Japanese occupation, where Japanese was instituted as being the only language.

There were efforts to encourage the long-term adoption of Japanese as the language of administration and education but you must be stupid if you think it was at all feasible for Japanese to be instantly made the sole language, even within government. In Indonesia, if not elsewhere, the Japanese actually found it necessary to promote Indonesia Bahasa, due to that being the only reasonably common language other than Dutch, which created further opportunities for upwardly mobile nationalists when high administrators and teachers could only speak Dutch or a regional language. Again, this is not to make the Japanese role in Asia anything other than horrific, it is to add some analysis to your childish rant.


I never knew of how diverse and different Asian people were - and I can see now why their hatred of each other is so deep-seated.

This is a lazy and quasi-racist assertion.


their obsession with revisionism is extremely insulting. Most Japanese will never ever learn about the atrocities their ancestors committed

Another sweeping piece of slander on your part - if you were at all educated about this field of history you would know that most of what we know about the role of the Japanese in WW2 and the Rape of Nanjing in particular is the result of work by conscientious Japanese historians, however much the Japanese government may try and avoid an honest educational curriculum that would discuss these events openly. Also, you ignore the role of Japanese socialists in China during the war itself, most of whom were part of the Japanese community in Shanghai before the war began, as these socialists took part in espionage activities directed against the Japanese presence in eastern China, alongside Chinese activists. This, combined with the fact that sizable numbers of Japanese POWs ultimately fought in the armies of the CPC, shows, once again, that the role of Japanese citizens was complex, and that not all of them can be seen as crazy rapists, however much you may accept that simplistic characterization.


Emphasis on national and racial myths;

This is true, of course, but only if we recognize that the concepts of nation and race were articulated in pan-Asian rather than strictly Japanese terms.


It sought a new type of culture, economy, society, along lines that was similar to Euro-fascism and the "activist state";


Modernist appeals to reform and renovation

I'm not so sure about these points, both for fascism in general, and Japanese fascism in particular, because the emphasis on Japanese fascism was on the affirmation of an organic conception of society and what were deemed to be traditional Asian values, against modernity. An interesting manifestation of the anti-modernist neo-traditionalist aspect of Japanese fascist ideology outside of Japan itself was the logistical and financial promotion, in northern China from 1931 onwards, of "redemption societies" - i.e. religious philanthropic organizations which counterpoised the alleged materialism and violence of Western civilization to the alleged spiritual civilization of the East, by articulating a religious universalism that combined Confucianism and other theological and ethical traditions such as Daoism and Islam, which were all said to embody the same universal spirituality, and to all be representative of a common Asian culture.

[Kamos]

Japan was as crazy as the Nazis. But since they got nuked, Japan is seen as victims in WWII?

Yes, they were. They were devastated by an illegal weapon of mass destruction that should never, ever be used against any living creature. Or are you blaming the common people for their leadership's mistakes? Because that's a terribly reactionary viewpoint.

[Wanted Man]

What has always puzzled me is that in school, you rarely ever get much of a focus on Japanese society during the war, on their motivations, on important individuals, etc. You get beaten to death with just about every great German general, with Churchill, there have been massive and bloody debates between historians about what exactly happened to German society, etc.

But Japan was apparently just there, and they did a lot of awful stuff like taking "our" East Indies and sticking our prisoners into camps ("Jap camps" they are usually called here). Hirohito and Tojo get mentioned at times, and that's about it. Maybe it has something to do with the idea of Japan being a de-individualised collection of oriental hordes or some other stereotype. And of course I can't judge what is said about it in the historical departments.

But it seems to me that there is a difference in how the Pacific war gets treated in the west compared to the rest of the war. The OP of this thread is literally the first person I've ever encountered who tried to understand Japanese fascism (and if it can be called that), whereas the nature of Nazism, the place of the Holocaust in history, etc. has been a constant subject of debate.


I take offense to your post, Japan was a disgusting nation in its imperial days.

The attrocities they committed against the Chinese and Koreans, and a lot of the South-East Asian countries will never ever be forgotten. Hatred of the Japanese has a long history in Australia, some restaurants and bars have attempted to ban Japanese people from entering out of respect for former soldiers. Thousands of Australians perished in prisoner of war camps and died building the Burma railway line. No one could ever ever forget about the prostitute ships they created - full of hundreds of thousands of stolen Korean, Chinese, Australian and Dutch women - some as young as 11 or 12. I've wanted to learn more about the 'comfort women', but I just can't because I think if started watching a documentary about such a thing I would vomit or maybe just kill myself. I think if there's one thing that people will remember about the Japanese is they were animals. I'm not aware of the Nazis raping and pillaging as much as the Japanese did. Can you imagine how the women would have felt being gang raped repeatedly several times daily?

The Chinese and the Koreans will never ever forget the Japanese occupation, where Japanese was instituted as being the only language. Not to mention the disgusting acts that also happened in Singapore and the Philippines against local populations. I guess for me personally growing up, I never knew of how diverse and different Asian people were - and I can see now why their hatred of each other is so deep-seated. It could almost out way some of the hatred that occurs between nations in Europe.

Apart from Japan's historical treatment of non-Japanese asians, their obsession with revisionism is extremely insulting. Most Japanese will never ever learn about the atrocities their ancestors committed. Can you just imagine if Germans were openly taught about their history whilst denying the Holocaust ever happened?

I think this is a pretty poor post, with some extreme generalisations about a nation that are not so easy to make. Caramelpence has already said a few things about this. I would add that historical revisionism regarding WWII exists just about everywhere, in many different forms. Not just among Axis nations, but also among "victim" occupied nations.

Just yesterday, I was reading about how after the war, suddenly everyone in France was a resistance fighter, and this continued well after the war, when the reality was that there was also a large amount of enthusiastic collaboration. Same with the Netherlands, where the post-war narrative was that everyone had a Jew hiding in their attic at some point, rather than the less pleasant reality.

In both cases, I'd say that this idea was actively fostered by the respective governments in exile, starting right from the liberation in 1944-1945, with the intent of establishing a post-war national mythology, taking full command of the resistance and unifying the nation behind the royal family that had shamefully fled four years earlier (in the Dutch example). At the same time, there have always been suspicions that this same government sold out communist resistance people to the Nazis.

In the case of the "guilty" Axis nations, it must have been a bit different. The atrocities committed by Nazi Germany were to such an extent that there must have been some sort of anti-nationalism and anti-militarism in education after the war. What seems interesting to me if there were any differences between West and East Germany in this respect.

And about Japan: how did their narrative on the war differ, and how did the atomic bombings and the maintenance of the Emperor as head of state fit into this? I'm afraid I've raised more questions than answers here, but I hope it makes for a bit more interesting discussion than talking about all kinds of slightly offensive generalisations about the Japanese as in the above example.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I actually posted about this exact subject (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1419077&postcount=8) a while back, when I was more of a noob about these kinds of issues. :cool:

[Commissar Rykov]

There were attempts to instate Japanese versions of "fascism" by some Military Cadets but they were violently put down. Japan was a nation that really started spinning the whole National Mythos wheel with pushing ideas like Bushido and reinforcing that the Emperor was a living God.

While Tojo and his cronies did attempt to make it a reality as they usurped the Emperor and gained more power it never reached a level similar to Germany though they did try. There were various Political/Military Police Organizations in Japan similar to the Gestapo that would round up and spy on dissenters. The reality is that Japan was mostly a Military Junta as Tojo and his friends slowly eroded what authority the Emperor had while increasing the brutality committed by the IJA.

[caramelpence]

I should stress before I post this that I am not a member or supporter of the ICL-FI, but I do think many of their articles are superb, particularly the historical ones. This article, Wanted Man, is not about the wartime period as such, but I hope it will still be of interest, as it touches on some issues that might be relevant: The Meiji Restoration: A Bourgeois Non-Democratic Revolution (http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/58/meiji.html). I agree with what you say about Japanese society being understudied in secondary schools although I never had the opportunity to do social history for any other country either.

[Reznov]

They were Imperalist and their occupation of China alone is enough to make me realize these people are pretty god damn fascist. If you don't want to call them that, then whatever you determine them to be, I don't support (insert definition here)

[agnixie]

I should stress before I post this that I am not a member or supporter of the ICL-FI, but I do think many of their articles are superb, particularly the historical ones. This article, Wanted Man, is not about the wartime period as such, but I hope it will still be of interest, as it touches on some issues that might be relevant: The Meiji Restoration: A Bourgeois Non-Democratic Revolution (http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/58/meiji.html). I agree with what you say about Japanese society being understudied in secondary schools although I never had the opportunity to do social history for any other country either.

The Meiji restoration was largely led by the old feudal elites, becoming capitalist elites, similarly to how the Junker class in Prussia was instrumental to its industrialization. I don't think "bourgeois revolution" is correct there.

[caramelpence]

The Meiji restoration was largely led by the old feudal elites, becoming capitalist elites, similarly to how the Junker class in Prussia was instrumental to its industrialization. I don't think "bourgeois revolution" is correct there.

The term "bourgeois revolution" refers to the historical content of a revolution rather than which class leads it - which is why it was possible for Lenin to argue before 1917, in Two Tactics and other texts, that the content of the forthcoming Russian Revolution would be bourgeois-democratic in that it would not go beyond the limits of capitalist property relations, at the same time as being led by the proletariat and peasantry, due to the bourgeoisie being tied to the state and imperialism, and therefore vacillating and liable to support the continuation of Tsarism.

[LostDesperado]

Thanks for the history lessons. My school system never really covered this so I thought I'd go here. I appreciate it and now have a new found idea of the war.

[Rainsborough]

Well they seem bloody fascist to me. But are we saying that any form of Nationalism other than white is okay?

[progressive_lefty]

Such a long history, in fact, that anti-Japanese racism preceded WW2 and has always been part of a more general trend of White supremacism that has embodied chauvinism against those of Chinese descent as well - so you can hardly paint the chauvinism of small business owners as some kind of legitimate reaction to atrocities committed during WW2, during which Australian soldiers also committed horrific atrocities. They did so afterwards as well, often whilst firing in the same direction as Japanese soldiers who had not yet been fully demobilized - ever heard of the battle of Surabaya?
I focused not pre-WW2 but post-WW2, and I find it difficult to respond to your post because I never ever made those assertions that the reactions of business owners were 'legitimate'.


Again, it may be emotionally satisfying for you to go on a rant like this, but it does not make for good historical analysis. Japanese soldiers did commit atrocities in Nanjing and elsewhere, including the use of rape as a method of systematic humiliation and dehumanization. It's important to seek to gauge how widespread these atrocities were and to condemn them, but more importantly it's necessary to seek to understand them, to grasp their immediate and background causes, and you don't do that by just dismissing the Japanese soldiers as "crazy" or "animals". There were reasons behind the events at Nanjing. The Japanese soldiers had been told to expect a rapid victory over the Nationalist forces, and their officers had also told them to expect sexual and material privileges upon their arrival as a way of keeping up morale, whereas they actually encountered strong and sustained resistance in the battles around Shanghai, which led to heavy losses on the Japanese side. Their rapid advances into Nanjing meant that they moved ahead of their supply lines and were told by their officers to find supplies in Nanjing itself in order to avoid food and other shortages on the Japanese side and a further deterioration in morale. The soldiers were informed that Chinese soldiers had changed into civilian clothes in order to escape, which meant that the lines between civilian and military personnel had been blurred, beyond even what we expect in the conditions of modern warfare. In terms of background influence, the bulk of Japanese ground forces were drawn from impoverished rural populations and subject to a process of military training that involved constant humiliation and prolonged ideological indoctrination, both of which produced fanatical obedience to officers and commanders. The point here is not to lessen what happened, or to make it appear justifiable - the point is that there were reasons behind the atrocities and that these reasons were partly to do with immediate factors and partly to do with background factors, some of which were specific to the Japanese army in the 1930s, some of which are more or less common to all modern armies. You need to acknowledge this (and avoid just saying that the Japanese or the Nazis were "crazy" or "animals" - these terms are especially inaccurate in the case of Nanjing because the Japanese forces were actually highly ordered in key respects, both in terms of not sacking or burning key buildings and in the way they carried out the atrocities) in order to recognize that unfortunately, all human beings are, when placed in certain conditions and when subject to certain pressures, capable of doing the kind of acts that were carried out by the Japanese in Nanjing.
Do you want me to apologise for criticising the Japanese Imperial Army? And are you justifiying the atrocities the Japanese committed, because they were 'highly ordered' or should I pity the soldiers for committing the crimes they committed? Your argument is flawed, should we pity the poor capitalists that have been brainwashed into exploitation?

I don't even know if I should bother replying to your post..

[caramelpence]

I focused not pre-WW2 but post-WW2

I know you "focused" on post-WW2, but the point is that you can't explain the anti-Japanese racism of small business owners or Australian society as a whole solely in terms of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against Australian citizens during WW2. By saying that, and regardless of whether you think shutting Japanese individuals out of bars (or any other kind of establishment) is valid or not, you are implicitly arguing that anti-Japanese racism is both a recent phenomenon and a product of the actions of Japanese soldiers and the Japanese people themselves. That line of argument logically locates ultimate responsibility with the Japanese people and absolves Australian racists of some degree of responsibility for their vile racism. My point is that this is a highly problematic characterization of the history of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian racism in Australia, not only because of its historical inaccuracy but also because of its political implcations. Australia has, along with South Africa, always been one of the most racist settler colonies, and its legacy of White supremacism did not begin during WW2, it stretches back to Australia's emergence as a modern nation-state at the end of the 19th century.


Do you want me to apologise for criticising the Japanese Imperial Army?

You don't have to "apologize" for anything, I just object to the rejection of historical analysis in favor of anti-intellectual emotional rants that embody various kinds of prejudice.


And are you justifiying the atrocities the Japanese committed, because they were 'highly ordered' or should I pity the soldiers for committing the crimes they committed?

There was nothing whatsoever in my post that came close to justifying Japanese atrocities. If you think there was, then, that's an argument for you to make. Whether you pity the Japanese soldiers is your business - personally I find it hard to take pity on soldiers who were directly and immediately involved in atrocities, but I still regret the fact that so many young working class men and other individuals from poor backgrounds were forced into an inter-imperialist conflict and that they were often so dehumanized that they were led to act in such terrible ways. In that sense, I do pity them, yes.


Your argument is flawed, should we pity the poor capitalists that have been brainwashed into exploitation?

I don't think capitalists (or anyone else for that matter) are "brainwashed" or that capitalist exploitation is the result of "brainwashing" - it is the result of economic forces that are beyond the control of human beings and have their ultimate roots in the conditions of generalized community production and capital accumulation themselves. It is pretty laughable and impoverished to explain exploitation and crises in such subjectivist and infantile terms.

[Tim Finnegan]

Well they seem bloody fascist to me. But are we saying that any form of Nationalism other than white is okay?
How is saying that something isn't fascism the same as saying that it's okay? :confused:

[Tim Finnegan]

The Meiji restoration was largely led by the old feudal elites, becoming capitalist elites, similarly to how the Junker class in Prussia was instrumental to its industrialization. I don't think "bourgeois revolution" is correct there.
Apart from what Caramelpence said, it should be noted that although the Meiji Restoration although lead by Yamato loyalists of the "samurai" warrior-aristocratic class (or classes, if we distinguish between the land-owning upper crust and the various hangers-on who comprised the majority of the caste), it found a lot of its popular support among the "chonin" merchant class which had grown powerful in the Edo period and was now chaffing under the corrupt and inefficient Tokugawa regime. It's telling that a good number of the original loyalist rebels later turned against the government for its enthusiastic movement towards capitalism (although still claiming to be Yamato loyalists, claiming that the emperor was being mislead by wicked ministers). Most of those to emerge from the period as bourgeois had previously been of that merchant class, rather than aristocracy, who were very often so indebted to the chonin as to require little more than a few political nudges to knock them off the top of the social ladder.

[Rainsborough]

How is saying that something isn't fascism the same as saying that it's okay? :confused:

Is there a difference between Fascism and Nationalism or is it merely a question of skin colour? To advocate nationalism in a white nation is 'Fascist', to advocate it in a non white nation is okay. Its just a question of description.

[caramelpence]

Is there a difference between Fascism and Nationalism or is it merely a question of skin colour?

Yes, there is a difference between fascism and nationalism. This is true above all in historical terms in that nationalism arose in Europe during the 19th century alongside economic processes like the formation of large towns and pressures in favor of eliminating barriers to commerce and accumulation within what would later become national territories. Fascism, on the other hand, emerged as a more or less coherent intellectual project and as a political force only in the 1910s and 20s, after the formation of modern nation-states and political phenomena like stable party systems, whilst also drawing on prior cultural and intellectual trends. It was, in particular, a product of the defeat of the post-1917 revolutionary wave. There is not a single scholar on either fascism or nationalism, be they from the Marxist or some other theoretical tradition, who would treat nationalism and fascism as synonymous, because by doing that you would ignore the ways in which nationalism has always been contested and the specific kinds of meanings that fascist movements have attributed to the nation and nationalism, not to mention the specific political and social conditions in which classical fascism arose as a powerful actor. I'm not even sure why you're asking this question or making it seem as if anyone is making allowances for Japanese fascism because not a single poster has denied that there have been non-white variants of fascism or that there was such a phenomenon as Japanese fascism in the 1930s and 40s - although as I've said in multiple posts, it needs to be understood on its own terms, and with attention to its ideological specificities, rather than being seen as European fascism applied to Asia.

Incidentally, it's conventional to use fascism with a small "f" to refer to fascism as an ideology and as a phenomenon that has appeared in many countries and to use Fascism with a big "f" to refer to Italian Fascism under Mussolini. You inexplicably decided to spell fascism and nationalism with capitalized first letters and this could lead to confusion.

[Rainsborough]

Yes, there is a difference between fascism and nationalism. This is true above all in historical terms in that nationalism arose in Europe during the 19th century alongside economic processes like the formation of large towns and pressures in favor of eliminating barriers to commerce and accumulation within what would later become national territories. Fascism, on the other hand, emerged as a more or less coherent intellectual project and as a political force only in the 1910s and 20s, after the formation of modern nation-states and political phenomena like stable party systems, whilst also drawing on prior cultural and intellectual trends. It was, in particular, a product of the defeat of the post-1917 revolutionary wave. There is not a single scholar on either fascism or nationalism, be they from the Marxist or some other theoretical tradition, who would treat nationalism and fascism as synonymous, because by doing that you would ignore the ways in which nationalism has always been contested and the specific kinds of meanings that fascist movements have attributed to the nation and nationalism, not to mention the specific political and social conditions in which classical fascism arose as a powerful actor. I'm not even sure why you're asking this question or making it seem as if anyone is making allowances for Japanese fascism because not a single poster has denied that there have been non-white variants of fascism or that there was such a phenomenon as Japanese fascism in the 1930s and 40s - although as I've said in multiple posts, it needs to be understood on its own terms, and with attention to its ideological specificities, rather than being seen as European fascism applied to Asia.

Incidentally, it's conventional to use fascism with a small "f" to refer to fascism as an ideology and as a phenomenon that has appeared in many countries and to use Fascism with a big "f" to refer to Italian Fascism under Mussolini. You inexplicably decided to spell fascism and nationalism with capitalized first letters and this could lead to confusion.

Gosh I'm sorry if my confusion annoyed you as well as my uknowing error in applying capitals where they should't be applied.
My confusion arises quite simply from the penchant displayed by anti-facists to refer to any self proclaimed nationalist organisation as "fascist". (you'll note that this time I've paid attention to convention) :huh:

[caramelpence]

Gosh I'm sorry if my confusion annoyed you as well as my uknowing error in applying capitals where they should't be applied.

I wasn't annoyed at all.


My confusion arises quite simply from the penchant displayed by anti-facists to refer to any self proclaimed nationalist organisation as "fascist". (you'll note that this time I've paid attention to convention)

Which "anti-fascists" do this? There are many socialists who would not only distinguish carefully between fascism and nationalism but would also distinguish between different forms of nationalism by arguing that the nationalism of people who are in a situation of colonial oppression (e.g. the Indonesian nationalism that emerged towards the end of the colonial period and erupted at the end of WW2) is qualitatively different from and more progressive than the nationalism of people who identify with a state that exercises national oppression, because of how the former serves as an articulation of legitimate grievances, albeit in an inchoate way. What you make of that line of argument is of course your business but I find it hard to believe that there are any serious socialists who actually equate fascism and nationalism, given that Marxists have otherwise taken a nuanced approach to the origins and role of nationalisms. Apart from what other (unspecified) socialists have allegedly said about the matter, do you yourself think that fascism is synonymous with nationalism, as implied in your earlier post?

[Rainsborough]

I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm simply confused.
What I'm trying to ascertain is, if a group appears promoting a euro-ethnic centered nationalism, are they to be instantly branded fascist?

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm simply confused.
What I'm trying to ascertain is, if a group appears promoting a euro-ethnic centered nationalism, are they to be instantly branded fascist?
Absolutely not.

To put it in a specific way: it is not the national question which determines Fascism, but rather the question of class struggle.

[Rainsborough]

Absolutely not.

To put it in a specific way: it is not the national question which determines Fascism, but rather the question of class struggle.

Hmm, thanks I think.
So what about this group? They advocate class struggle on a national basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAou8-LppcQ&feature=player_embedded

[Thirsty Crow]

Hmm, thanks I think.
So what about this group? They advocate class struggle on a national basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAou8-LppcQ&feature=player_embedded
Yeah, it was late and I was tired so I guess that my reply to your question came off as too laconic.

What I "really" meant to say is the following: Fascism, understood historically, represents a specific bourgeois response to the growing threat of proletarian social revolution. In my opinion, populism is not easily seperable from fascist movements, as they co-opt existing working class organizations and chanell their activities into the imperialist and militaristic project of building a "strong" nation-state based on tight social cohesion resulting from corporatist economic-political practice (this translates, at least nominally, into the centralization of political rule into the figure of the leader of the nation and hierarchically organized unions, tied in to the state apparatuses and even formally in collaboration with bosses' and capitalists' organizations). Fascism grows out of a broken revolutionary workers' movement.

If I would have to relate fascism to nationalism, I'd say that fascism is a form of nationalist political doctrine, sociologically based on the petite bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie "proper". But "nationalism", as an umbrella term, encompasses many more forms of politics and economics as well, and certain of those cannot be reasonably connected to fascism.

Now, as far as that group you linked to, I have to admit they are a strange lot. First, the name of the forum, "Socialist Phalanx", reeks of the historical phalangists - i.e. fascists (for example, I don't think anyone could deny that the Spanish Falange was a fascist organization). But that's just an impression, and their FAQ explicily denies any relationship to Fascism and even mentions corporatism as something they are against. They also denounce ethnic chauvinism and racism, as well as imperialism. It may very well be that this group represents a residue of the worship of national culture(s) as important part of a person's identity and thus upholds, as they put it, "progressive nationalism". They really do not explain what do they mean by that term, other than "anti-capitalist".

Here I could say a bit of a nasty thing about a possible political ancestry of such vague formations...(hint: Stalinism). But that'd be just a speculation.

[chegitz guevara]

What I find problematic in this discussion is almost everyone is talking about the superficial aspects of fascism, but not it's class foundation. Fascism is a mass movement of the middle classes. If you don't have that, it's not fascism. Period.

Which isn't to say this isn't a fascinating discussion of Japanese imperialism and militarism.

[DinodudeEpic]

Japan's government in WWII isn't Fascist...It's reactionary. Note that I use reactionary to refer to far-right movements that aren't fascist, in that they don't have any republican sentiments nor are using a pseudo-revolutionary goal. So, the ideology is best summed up as ultra-reactionary monarchist feudalism.

[MarxSchmarx]

The most useful analogy for Japan in the decades preceding, and during the second world war, is not Germany of Italy, but Britain.

The Japanese government consciously modelled its imperialist expansion policies on the British (and American) model of establishing settler colonies and integrating the conquered peoples, whilst couching the language in vaguely universalistic slogans.

And indeed there is a concrete reason for this - perhaps the biggest reason is that Japan had for decades consciously emulated the most successful empire the world had ever seen in just about everyway it could. Furthermore, the Japanese military elite developed in a climate of the Anglo-Japanese alliance that lasted for several generations, only to be dissolved in the 1930s. Finally, much of the Japanese war effort was concentrated in areas under Chinese or British rule. As such, the Japanese were under considerable pressure, to prevent regional uprisings, to preserve much of the colonial infrastructure the British (or, in the case of Manchuria and Taiwan, the Chinese) had established.

There is also a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of the axis alliance. It was in intent and in word an anti-Soviet alliance, but the understood pretext was that it would serve as a deterrent for American engagement in a European war. The irony is that after the Soviets and Mongolians successfully contained the Japanese in 1938 and the Germans offered no help, the anti-Soviet alliance effectively collapsed and only when Japan sought greener pastures in southeast Asia and the Pacific did the German and Italian government come to see the axis alliance as primarily a deterrent against American involvement in the western Pacific.

As far as the authoritarianism at home, yes it was severe, but it was no more so than in the UK. In the UK you basically had a government of national unity to fight the Germans and put aside disagreements - so too in Japan a government of national unity was formed to fight the allies. Anybody criticizing the war in the UK was harassed and immediately put under enormous social and political pressure and scrutiny - the situation in Japan was very similar.

The only reason communists weren't systematically jailed in the UK was because, well, after all, the USSR was an ally and communists largely supported the British war effort whereas Japanese communists actively opposed it.

What's more the basic bourgeois-democratic infrastructure and private press persisted in Japan much as it did in Britain during the war years. There were still elections, and although the consensus about the war was brutally enforced (as it was in the UK), disagreement about other aspects of national policy were recognized, just not emphasized (as opposed to Nazi Germany or Italy where they were largely suppressed).

As the war became increasingly unwinnable, and as the politicians in Tokyo began to realize this, they came up with a "distinctly Japanese" identity as a propaganda ploy. I wouldn't be surprised if they studied how Churchill's used such rhetoric to keep German invasion of the islands out of sight.

I would go so far as to say that had Britain allied itself with Hitler as the Nazis wanted, it's trajectory in terms of social evolution would have been basically incredibly similar to Imperial Japan's.

Indeed, efforts to attribute a uniquely "East Asian" cultish attitude to Imperial Japan are borne more out of western ignorance and frankly racism. Although there were bona fide fascistic practices - for instance the brutality the Japanese inflicted on the Koreans or the Chinese was very real, and the POWs were treated considerably more poorly - the better analogy for how Japan during the second world war worked is Britain during the initial years of the war, rather than Italy or Germany.

[GallowsBird]

Though it is a good point to point out that Imperial Japan was inspired by the British Empire in some policies... however they were also heavily inspired by Nazi Germany and thus used the same system of "councils" in the work place and had a Lebensraum ("living-room", "space to live") ideology that was partially inspired by Nazi Germany. They also had a heavily Nazi inspired race policy that was largely the same as the Nazi one as can be seen by the Yamato Minzoku o Chūkaku to suru Sekai Seisaku no Kentō document and to a lesser extent (but also combined with other aspects in a similar vein) in the Shinmin no Michi.

So it can be debated whether they are Fascists or Nazis (I think they were Fascist personally) themselves, however, they did have at least some influence from the Fascists and National Socialist movements.

On a side note "Bushido" wasn't a major issue at the time (remember that the Imperial regime wanted to do away with a lot of the "Samurai ideology" of the Shogunate and by the war the main influence on their foreign policy wasn't the cheesy love of all things Samurai (as has been suggested in pop culture) but Eurasian Imperialism just as the European Nations were. Also many of the acts commited by Imperial Japan wouldn't be permissible under Bushido (which is merely the Japanese equivalent to the Frankish Chivalry, such "warrior codes" were common from everywhere from Japan to Arabia to Mesoamerica.

[Tim Finnegan]

Though it is a good point to point out that Imperial Japan was inspired by the British Empire in some policies... however they were also heavily inspired by Nazi Germany and thus used the same system of "councils" in the work place and had a Lebensraum ("living-room", "space to live") ideology that was partially inspired by Nazi Germany.
You'll recall, though, that the entire notion of "living-room" was a British innovation, if not always couched in such explicit terms: beginning with the Plantation of Ulster and extending to the "white colonies" of North America and the Antipodes, the British had always been quite happy to drive out those peoples that they deemed "lesser" in favour of colonists. They had simply completed that particular arc of ideological development by the time the war came around, while Germany and Japan had not.

[chegitz guevara]

No, it can't really be debated that the Japanese were "Fascist" or "Nazi," as if these were two separate things anyway. The ideology of fascism is superfluous. Fascism is a class based mass movement. That did not exist in Japan. There may be those who were (and are) influenced by fascist ideology, such as it was, but no mass movement, no fascism.