Richard Sims looks at Japanese fascism in the 1930s.

The 1930s were the most eventful and turbulent decade in Japanese history since the 1860s, Its early years witnessed the assassination or fatal wounding of two prime ministers, the murder of two other prominent public figures, the plotting of two abortive military coups, and the ending of governments headed by party politicians. In foreign policy there was a decisive rejection of international co-operation as the Japanese army engineered the seizure of Manchuria and Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. In 1936 radical discontent among young army officers burst forth dramatically in the February 26th Incident, an attempted coup in which more establishment leaders were killed. This marked the peak of violence, but when Japan stumbled into war with China in 1937, the trend towards totalitarianism quickened pace. Trade unions were suppressed, with an Industrial Association for Service to Country taking their place, while in 1940 the political parties were dissolved to make way for the Imperial Rule Assistance Association. As Japan entered into alliance with Germany and Italy in 1940 and then slid towards war with America and Britain, there were, unsurprisingly, no open voices of dissent.

Until recently very few Japanese historians hesitated to describe the Japanese experience in the 1930s as fascist. Most interpreted it in Marxist terms as a last-ditch defence by monopoly capital- ism, while also stressing that fascism had special characteristics in Japan. As Abe Hirozumi puts it, 'it goes without saying that fascism is the special form of preventive counter-revolution in the general crisis of capitalism,' adding, however, the significant gloss that 'the role of fascism is not just the negative role of suppressing the revolutionary movement and shutting off the growth of anti-establishment: forces, but also that of positively drawing off the nation's energy and turning it towards foreign aggression. In Japan, because party cabinets had already carried out the negative role in part, the role of fascism was mainly oriented towards the latter.' In support of such assertions, Japanese historians have pointed to features, such as terrorist violence, fierce opposition to communism, authoritarian government, totalitarian ambitions, and virulent nationalism, which Japan shared with Germany and Italy in the 1930s.

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