The Culture of Japanese Fascism

The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Edited by alan tansman. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009. 496 pp. $99.95 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).

The Culture of Japanese Fascism is a multidisciplinary collection of essays dealing with the relation between aesthetics-as a critique of experience and "the true situation of the present"-and political action. The common thread among the diverse collection of essays is the starting point of analysis: Japan's fascist turn was a product of efforts to come to terms with "modernity." Japanese intellectuals experienced the shock of rapid change as a fundamental homesickness for a past when the world was fully accessible, and the transparency in human relations safeguarded Japanese civilization from outside corruption. In an effort to overturn the forces of modernity responsible for the present-day corruption and degenerate forms of life, Japanese thinkers, rural leaders, and social reformers turned to culture and community as a solution. Culture and tradition were conceptualized as the storehouses of an unchanging, transhistorical Japanese essence. In terms of aesthetics, culture and tradition were the elixir to prevent Japan turning into an inferior copy of the West. Politically, culture and the tradition held the key for Japan's quest to liberate Asia from Western colonial hegemony.

More or less, each essay...