Ultranationalism (Japan)

See also: Ultranationalism

State ultranationalism^[1] or simply ultranationalism (超國家主義 or 超国家主義, Chōkokkashugi; lit. "ultra-statism"),^[2] refers mainly to the radical statist movement of the Shōwa period, but it can also refer to extreme Japanese nationalism before and after the Shōwa period.

State ultranationalists use the authority of the state/nation (国家) through Tennō as the focus of public loyalty.^[1] Other Ikki Kita's "state socialism" or "national socialism" (国家社会主義) is a representative idea referred to as 超国家主義 in Japan.

History

Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan's political practice had been dominated by statism/nationalism, and in the early 20th century, the middle and lower classes, led by Ikki Kita, who were dissatisfied with the control of national resources by the elder, important ministers, old and new Kazoku, warlords, zaibatsu, and political parties heads since the Meiji Restoration, sought radical reforms and advocated that the representatives of the traditional statism/nationalism be indiscriminately categorized as the culprits of the evils, and that they should be killed one by one to show a break with the traditional statism since the Meiji Restoration. This was a break with the traditional statism/nationalism of the Meiji period. This rupture was most fully manifested when the Tennō began to be viewed not as a symbol of tradition, but as a symbol of change, and the failed mutiny by ultra-nationalist junior officers in 1936 ultimately led to Japan's full-scale entry into the era of Japanese nationalist military government four years later.

Connection to fascism

Main articles: Fascism in Asia § Japan, and Emperor-system fascism

Japanese liberal scholars, including Masao Maruyama, saw Japanese state ultranationalism as fascism and referred to it as "Emperor-system fascism" (天皇制ファシズム, Tennōsei fashizumu).^[3][4]

American historian Robert O. Paxton argues that with the absence of a mass revolutionary party and a rupture from the incumbent regime, Imperial Japan was merely "an expansionist military dictatorship with a high degree of state-sponsored mobilization [rather] than as a fascist regime".^[5] British historian Roger Griffin, called Putin's Russia and World War II-era Japan "emulated fascism in many ways, but was not fascist".^[6]

Analysis by Masao Maruyama

Masao Maruyama, assessed that the Japanese statist/nationalist (国家主義) government model was similar to [European] fascism, but not directly related to state/national-socialism (国家社会主義). However, he claimed that ultra-nationalism (超国家主義) as Japanese statism was clearly influenced by national-socialism. According to him, the proposal of [Japanese] ultra-nationalism is based on ideal socialism and combines the ideologies of some national-socialism.^[7]

According to the methodology of political practice, state/national-socialism is the socialism that the government promotes from top to bottom. Ultra-nationalists, on the one hand, wants the Tennō to accept their radical national-socialist ideology, but on the other hand, it causes problems at a low level and puts pressure on the government to reform. Eventually, Japan entered Japanese nationalism, which is similar to fascism, not a national-socialist state, but 40 years of ultra-nationalism have been a great success.^[7]

Japan has been in a state of statism/nationalism (国家主義) and militarism (軍国主義) since the Meiji Restoration, but it was this "ultra-" (超) that led Japan to the military path of Japanese nationalism. And this "ultra-" is the Japanese practice of national-socialist ideology.^[7]

Ultranationalist organizations and political parties

Post-war

• Greater Japan Patriotic Party (1951–present)
• Tatenokai (1968–1970)
• National Socialist Japanese Workers' Party (1982–present)
• Nippon Kaigi (1997–present)^[8]
• Zaitokukai (2007–present)
• Japan First Party (2016–present)^[9]
• Conservative Party of Japan (2023–present)^[10]

The Liberal Democratic Party (1955–present), Japanese largest right-wing party, has an ultranationalist faction.^{[11][12][13][14][15]}

Pre-war

• Black Dragon Society (founded in 1901)
• Kokumin Dōmei (1932–1940)
• Tōhōkai (1936–1945)
• Imperial Rule Assistance Association (1940–1945)

Ultranationalist figures

See also: Category:Japanese fascists

• Shinzo Abe^[16]
• Bin Akao
• Naoki Hyakuta^[17]
• Yoshio Kodama^[18]
• Hideaki Kase^[19]
• Nobusuke Kishi^[20]
• Ikki Kita
• Fumimaro Konoe
• Yukio Mishima^[21]
• Shūmei Ōkawa^[22]
• Makoto Sakurai
• Ryōichi Sasakawa^[23]
• Hideki Tojo
• Ryōhei Uchida
• Otoya Yamaguchi

Events

• October incident (1930–1931)
• March incident (1931)
• League of Blood Incident (1932)
• May 15 incident (1932)
• Military Academy incident (1934–1935)
• February 26 incident (1936)
• New Political Order [ja] (1940)
• Kyūjō incident (1945)
• Assassination of Inejirō Asanuma (1960)
• Sanmu incident (1961)
• Mishima incident (1970)

See also

• Japan portal
• Politics portal

• Japanese militarism
• Kokutai
• Kokutairon and Pure Socialism
• National essentialism
• Political extremism in Japan
• Uyoku dantai

External links

• (in Japanese) Statism (国家主義)
• (in Japanese) Emperor-system fascism (天皇制ファシズム)
• (in Japanese) Ultranationalism (超国家主義)

References

1. Thomas R.H. Havens (March 8, 2015). Farm and Nation in Modern Japan: Agrarian Nationalism, 1870-1940. Princeton University Press. p. 319.
2. "超国家主義（読み）チョウコッカシュギ（英語表記）ultranationalism". kotobank.jp (in Japanese).
3. Kasza, Gregory (2006). Blamires, Cyprian; Jackson, Paul (eds.). World Fascism: A-K. ABC-CLIO. p. 353. ISBN 9781576079409.
4. Tansman, Alan (2009). The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Duke University Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780822390701.
5. Robert O. Paxton, ed. (2011). The Anatomy of Fascism. Penguin Books Limited. p. 198–200.
6. "Nasty, Repressive, Aggressive -- Yes. But Is Russia Fascist? Experts Say 'No.'". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 9 April 2022.
7. Masao Maruyama. 《丸山真男集》(Volume 3). p. 19.
8. Mark, Craig (6 September 2021). "Who will replace Yoshihide Suga as Japan's prime minister? Here's a rundown of the candidates". The Conversation. Retrieved 12 August 2022. She is a member of the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi organisation, which aims to restore the emperor to divine status, keep women at home, prioritise public order over civil liberties and rebuild Japan's armed forces.
9. Patrick Heinrich, Yumiko Ohara, ed. (2019). Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics. Routledge. ISBN 9781351818391. Makoto Sakurai of the ultranationalist Japan First Party has been involved in numerous anti-Korean demonstrations, and he also ran for the Tokyo mayor election in 2016.
10. "Defeated in the polls, Ishiba seeks path to minority government". AsiaNews. 2024-10-28. Retrieved 2024-11-08. for the first time the Conservative Party of Japan, an ultranationalist force that is openly xenophobic and prone to revisionist rhetoric on the country's history, will enter the Japanese parliament with three seats.
11. "Beautiful Harmony: Political Project Behind Japan's New Era Name – Analysis". eurasia review. 16 July 2019. The shifting dynamics around the new era name (gengō 元号) offers an opportunity to understand how the domestic politics of the LDP's project of ultranationalism is shaping a new Japan and a new form of nationalism.
12. Lunning, Frenchy, ed. (2013). Mechademia 4: War/Time. U of Minnesota Press. p. 291. ISBN 9781452942650. The overturning of the cab driver's 1998 sentiment in Akamatsu's 2007 piece had its political correlative in the victory of the ultranationalist wing of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) when Abe Shinzō became Japan's prime minister in ...
13. "Why Steve Bannon Admires Japan". The Diplomat. 22 June 2018. In Japan, populist and extreme right-wing nationalism has found a home within the political establishment.
14. Maki Kimura, ed. (2016). Unfolding the 'Comfort Women' Debates: Modernity, Violence, Women's Voices. Springer. ISBN 9781137392510. ... a gradual drift towards more nationalistic attitudes to education and politics in general in contemporary Japanese society may party be explained by the effect of ultranationalist politicians in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
15. Masanori Nakamura, ed. (2016). The Japanese Monarchy: Ambassador Joseph Grew and the Making of the "Symbol Emperor System," 1931-1991. M.E. Sharpe. p. 1992. ISBN 9781563241093. On July 31, a group of ultranationalist LDP Diet men, alarmed by Nakasone's diplomacy of "submission to foreign pressure" on issues like textbook revision and the Yasukuni Shrine problem, formed the "Association of Those Concerned ...
16. "Yoon visits Japan, seeking to restore ties amid N Korea threat". Al Jazeera. 16 March 2023. Archived from the original on 21 March 2023. But many in South Korea did not consider Japan's remorse as sufficiently sincere, especially as the ultranationalist former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated last year, and his allies sought to whitewash Japan's colonial abuses, even suggesting there was no evidence to indicate Japanese authorities coerced Korean women into sexual slavery.
17. Michael Lewis, ed. (2016). 'History Wars' and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea: The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 172. ... Hyakuta Naoki, writer, and Hasegawa Michiko, a professor of sociology, both ultranationalists, were appointed to the NHK board.
18. Kenneth Szymkowiak, ed. (2015). A History of Modern Manga. Taylor & Francis. p. 183. This was due to the negative reaction of government and political leaders to the move by the ultranationalist Yoshio Kodama to unite far right-wing political groups with mainstream gangster organizations under a single political entity in support of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
19. Kowner, Rotem. "Hideaki Kase, the Ultranationalist Figure Who wanted to Make Japan Great Again", Haaretz, 25 Nov. 2022.
20. Insight Editions, ed. (2023). A History of Modern Manga. Insight Editions. p. 28. Kishi was an ultranationalist determined to undermine the democratic and westernized aspects of the 1946 constitution
21. Michael Harris, ed. (2017). A History of Modern Manga. Princeton University Press. p. 143. Japanese novelist and ultranationalist Yukio Mishima
22. "Ōkawa Shūmei". Britannica. Retrieved 18 September 2024. Ōkawa Shūmei (born Dec. 6, 1886, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan—died Dec. 24, 1957, Tokyo) was an ultranationalistic Japanese political theorist whose writings inspired many of the right-wing extremist groups that dominated Japanese politics during the 1930s.
23. Roland Robertson; Kathleen E. White, eds. (2003). Globalization: Culture and identity. Routledge. p. 254. ... Sasakawa Foundation , which is headed by Ryoichi Sasakawa , a prewar ultranationalist and a Class - A war criminal who has made most of his money building one of the world's largest gambling empires.