The Path to Power of Japanese Fascism: A Study and Critique of Japanese Fascism

Author: Yang Ningyi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The 20th century was an era of extremely rapid development in civilization and social progress in human history. However, in the first half of the 20th century, brutal and savage fascism emerged. Japan established a dictatorial rule domestically and launched a 15-year war of aggression, bringing profound disasters to Asian people, including the Chinese people. It also pushed Japan towards the abyss of destruction. The rise of Japanese fascism and the establishment of fascist dictatorship were not accidental. The modernization of Japan, which began with the Meiji Restoration, was a latecomer's type of modernization. As industrialization progressed, the economic and social structures underwent drastic changes, and fascist movements emerged from the strata marginalized by modernization. The civilian fascism sought to reverse history and return to a traditional society to save the decline of the old middle class. The military fascism proposed the concept of total war, conspired to establish military dictatorship, and launched overseas aggressive wars. Both factions of fascist forces used the ideology of the imperial system as their theoretical foundation and opposed bourgeois democracy.
In 1929, the global economic crisis broke out, and Japanese fascist forces became extremely active: political assassinations occurred continuously, and Japaned the "Incident of September 18" in China, while a widespread wave of fascistization also emerged domestically. To escape the economic crisis, monopolistic capital abandoned bourgeois democracy and turned to aligning with the military fascism. The military fascism, driven by the need for aggressive wars, also turned to aligning with monopolistic capital. Civilian fascism continued to attack capitalism, attempting to seize power through a coup and establish an imperial rule that threatened monopolistic capital and the entire ruling class, but it was ultimately suppressed. From then on, the military faction seized control of the fascist movement and established a fascist dictatorship that represented the interests of monopolistic capital.
Japanese fascism was a reaction against modernization and also a result of the insufficient development of capitalist modernization in Japan at that time. Today, studying and critiquing Japanese fascism helps to understand the essence of the current Japanese right-wing and also contributes to preventing the repetition of historical tragedies.