Reto Hofmann.
The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915-1952.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. 224 pp.
$35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-5341-0.
Reviewed by Klaus Vollmer (Ludwig Maximilian University)
Published on H-Nationalism (December, 2016)
Commissioned by Cristian Cercel
Published on H-Nationalism (December, 2016)
Commissioned by Cristian Cercel
Reto Hofmann has written an illuminating volume which
is an original contribution not only to the study of the reception of
Italian fascism in a non-Western context, but also to global
intellectual history and the history of Japanese thought and culture in
the prewar era. "Fascism needs to be examined through its relations" (p.
2), Hofmann claims in his introduction. While in previous research this
has most often meant looking at fascism's relation to other ideologies (e.g., Marxism, liberalism, etc.), Hofmann intends to examine the relationship between fascisms in different national contexts,
taking Italy and Japan as examples. This approach is significant
because it "expose(s) a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this
ideology" (p. 2), namely the contradiction between particularism
(fascism as an ideology in a specific country, i.e., Italy) and
a universalist claim, as fascism aimed to overcome the crisis brought
about by capitalist modernity and which had global effects in the first
decades of the twentiethth century. Hofmann's study convincingly
demonstrates that the discourse on fascism in Japan "simultaneously
emanated from Italy and emerged domestically" (p. 3) and that Japanese
intellectuals, politicians, and right-wing activists were very much
aware of the problems that emerged from the contradiction mentioned
above. How to strictly insist on the cultural uniqueness of Japan while
at the same time acknowledging the power of fascist ideology to address
and possibly solve the problems of modernity and capitalism that had
affected Japanese society was an issue occupying the minds of many
intellectuals of almost all political orientations. In fact, Hofmann's
detailed narrative drawing on a wide variety of sources--books, academic
and popular journals, newspapers, and visual materials--reminds us to
what extent fascism was at the center of debate in the 1920s and 1930s.
In reevaluating fascism as a global ideology
discussed in Japan during these decades, it is thus more adequate to
conceive fascism as a process rather than a clear-cut model with fixed
elements. In this way it becomes possible to view the assertions of
Japanese uniqueness and its vocabulary ("national polity," kokutai; "imperial way," ôdô)
and even the nominal rejection of (Italian) fascism as "part of the
fascist logic itself, its drive to generate a politics of cultural
authenticity" (p. 3). So when, for example, Japanese intellectuals
questioned the need for a leader like Mussolini or Hitler because
according to their view the emperor system provided the basis for
politics more adequately in Japan, this should not be taken as a
rejection of fascism in general: "they regarded fascism as open-ended,
as a new politics of the right that began with Mussolini but that would
find different, and possibly more sophisticated, expressions in Japan"
(p. 3).
The slim but densely written volume contains five
chapters. After the introduction in which the author explains his
approach and assumptions, some of which were summarized above, the first
chapter introduces the reader to Shimoi Harukichi (1883-1954), today a
little-known Japanese poet and writer. As a long-term resident of Italy,
where he moved in 1915, he later became an admirer of Italian
fascism and an acquaintance of Mussolini. In 1917 he toured the front
and even took part in the occupation of Fiume in 1919, where he worked
as liaison for Gabriele D'Annunzio. In Hofmann's narrative, which
revisits Shimoi’s later activities frequently in other chapters, he acts
as the "mediator of fascism" to Japan. On many occasions, Shimoi
subsequently served as tour guide and interpreter in both countries.
Chapters 2 and 3 ("The Mussolini Boom, 1928-1931" and "The Clash of
Fascisms, 1931-1937"), covering the first decade of the turbulent Shôwa
(1926-89) era, outline in detail the intellectual debates centering on
the interpretation of Italian fascism and the possibilities of adapting
fascism to Japanese society. Chapter 4 ("Imperial Convergence: The
Italo-Ethopian War and Japanese World-Order-Thinking, 1935-1936"), which
is a revised version of an article published by Hofmann recently in the
Journal of Contemporary History, presents a close reading of
the complexities involved in the Italo-Ethopian war, which highlighted
the expansionist ambitions of Italian fascism. In Japan, not only the
camp of right-wing Pan-Asianists but also the general public condemned
the brutal military attack on Ethopia that smacked of old-fashioned
European colonialism and imperialism and temporarily even disrupted
diplomatic relations between the countries. On the other hand, this was a
moment when the debate on fascism became linked more closely to broader
questions of international relations. For some right-wing intellectuals
and bureaucrats, Mussolini's war in Africa dealt a welcome blow to the
world order of international liberalism dominated by Anglo-American
rule and foreshadowed the fascist Axis and its policies that formed
later in the 1930s. This is the topic of chapter 5 ("Fascism in World
History, 1937-1943"), which discusses the Japanese discourse on the
alliance with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, again employing a wide
variety of sources ranging from philosophical debate to propaganda
materials which introduced Italian culture and history to broader
Japanese audiences. The short epilogue ("Fascism after the New World
Order, 1943-1952") traces the fate of the concept during the occupation
era and argues "that the long-standing Japanese association with fascism
became an inconvenient truth for the Allies after the war, when
Americans decided to rehabilitate Japan as their best friend in Asia in
the fight against communism" (p. 7). While the concept of fascism as a
solution to the problems of global capitalist modernity had carried a
sense of open-endedness and the potential to adapt to specific cultural
and historical contexts from the late 1920s to the wartime era, it was
now largely relegated to the politics of interwar Italy. In regard to
Japan the term "ultranationalism" gained universal acceptance although
Marxist and left-wing circles continued to discuss prewar and wartime
Japan as "emperor system fascism."
Hofmann has drawn on a large number of primary
sources from Italian and Japanese archives and secondary sources in
English. Given his multilingual background and his linguistic
competence, it is surprising and at times even disturbing, however, that
Hofmann hardly mentions any German-language scholarship, naturally
abundant when it comes to studies on Axis politics, but also on Japanese
relations to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy or, to give one
more specific example, on Japanese debates regarding the issue of Grossraumpolitik and
the thought of Carl Schmitt that Hofmann discusses in chapter 5 (pp.
133-134). From the perspective of this reviewer, who specializes in
Japanese history, it would have been mandatory to refer to, for example,
the seminal work of Urs Matthias Zachmann on the discourse on
international law and its reappropriation and application in interwar
and early postwar Japan or the volume on Karl Haushofer and the
reception of his ideas of geopolitics in Japan by Christian Spang.[1]
Both monographs were published in 2013 (the bibliography mentions an
English-language paper by Spang published in 2006). It is unfortunate
that the author has not consulted or even mentioned these and other
recent scholarly works in German extensively treating issues
that Hofmann elaborates on in his volume. Besides Max Weber's venerable Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft
(1922) and Wolfgang Schieder's recent book on German visitors to
Mussolini, the bibliography contains only two, rather dated, works in
German, by Bernd Martin and Theo Sommer.[2] These shortcomings
notwithstanding, this book is a timely contribution to the ongoing
reevaluation and contextualization of fascist discourse in the first
half of the twentieth century and also a welcome addition to the study
of the Axis from the point of view of global history.
Notes
[1]. Urs Matthias Zachmann, Völkerrechtsdenken und Außenpolitik in Japan, 1919-1960 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013); Christian W. Spang, Karl Haushofer und Japan. Die Rezeption seiner geopolitischen Theorien in Deutschland und Japan (Munich: Iudicium, 2013).
[2]. Wolfgang Schieder, Mythos Mussolini. Deutsche in Audienz beim Duce (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsberlag, 2013); Bernd Martin, Deutschland und Japan im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Vom Angriff auf Pearl Harbor bis zur deutschen Kapitulation (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1969); Theo Sommer, Deutschland
und Japan zwischen den Mächten, 1935-1940. Vom Antikominternpakt zum
Dreimächtepakt. Eine Studie zur diplomatischen Vorgeschichte des Zweiten
Weltkriegs (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962).
