Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on Japan, scholars of history, literature, film, art history, and anthropology demonstrate the necessity of understanding fascisms cultural manifestations.
Trade Review“So can a volume focused on the cultural aspects of a primarily political concept succeed? Yes, indeed. This book offers a wealth of fresh information on the era of fascism in Japan, ranging from the ‘high road’ of intellectual history and literary studies to more accessible insights on the role of dogs and propaganda lies about Pearl Harbour. . . . [An] excellent study of fascist Japan.” - Lawrence Fouraker,
Itinerario“[T]he essays in this collection provide informative perspectives on topics such as literature, film, architectural design, exhibitions and popular culture. . . .” - Roger Brown,
Social Science Japan Journal“Alan Tansman deserves tremendous credit for bringing together this multidisciplinary group of scholars to deal with an issue conspicuously neglected by the majority of scholars in Japan studies. . . . The publication of this insightful set of essays in this volume is without question an important contribution to our understanding of a culture of Japanese fascism as a local manifestation of a truly international political and cultural phenomenon.” - Walter Skya,
Journal of Japanese Studies“An extremely provocative and stimulating collection of essays,
The Culture of Japanese Fascism canvasses a wide array of cultural forms—movies, novels, religious rites, material culture, monuments, and architecture—to show the ways that fascist aesthetics saturated a dispersed cultural field. By focusing on thought and culture, it helps us rethink the turn from modernism to fascism, to understand fascism’s effects on everyday life, and to reconsider the reigning conceptions of fascist ideology.”—
Louise Young, author of
Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism“These rich and varied essays provide a fascinating, if unsettling, depiction of the seductive appeal of fascist culture. They also show how much Japan shared with Europe in its aesthetic responses to the crisis of modernity in the interwar years. An important contribution in every respect.”—
Carol Gluck, Columbia University
“[T]he essays in this collection provide informative perspectives on topics such as literature, film, architectural design, exhibitions and popular culture. . . .” -- Roger Brown * Social Science Japan Journal *
“Alan Tansman deserves tremendous credit for bringing together this multidisciplinary group of scholars to deal with an issue conspicuously neglected by the majority of scholars in Japan studies. . . . The publication of this insightful set of essays in this volume is without question an important contribution to our understanding of a culture of Japanese fascism as a local manifestation of a truly international political and cultural phenomenon.” -- Walter Skya * Journal of Japanese Studies *
“So can a volume focused on the cultural aspects of a primarily political concept succeed? Yes, indeed. This book offers a wealth of fresh information on the era of fascism in Japan, ranging from the ‘high road’ of intellectual history and literary studies to more accessible insights on the role of dogs and propaganda lies about Pearl Harbour. . . [An] excellent study of fascist Japan.” -- Lawrence Fouraker * Itinerario *
Table of ContentsForeword: Fascism, Yet? / Marilyn Ivy vii
Introduction: The Culture of Japanese Fascism / Alan Tansman 1
Part I: Theories of Japanese Fascism
Fascism Seen and Unseen: Fascism as a Problem in Cultural Representation / Kevin M. Doak 31
The People's Library: The Spirit of Prose Literature versus Fascism / Richard Torrance 56
Constitutive Ambiguities: The Persistence of Modernism and Fascism in Japan's Modern History / Harry Harrotunian 80
Part II: Fascism and Daily Life
On the Beauty of Labor: Imagine Factory Girls in Japan's New World Order / Kim Brandt 115
Mediating the Masses: Yanagi Sōetsu and Fascism / Noriko Aso 138
Fascism's Furry Friends: Dogs, National Identity, and the Purity of Blood in 1930s Japan / Aaron Skabelund 155
Part III: Exhibiting Fascism
Narrating the Nation-ality of a Cinema: The Case of Japanese Prewar Film / Aaron Gerow 185
All Beautiful Fascists?: Axis Film Culture in Imperial Japan / Michael Baskett 212
Architecture for Mass-Mobilization: The Chūreitō Memorial Design Competition, 1939-1945 / Akiko Takenaka 235
Japan's Imperial Diet Building in the Debate over Construction of a National Identity / Jonathan M. Reynolds 254
Expo Fascism?: Ideology, Representation, Economy / Angus Lockyer 276
The Work of Sacrifice in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Bride Dolls and the Enigma of Fascist Aesthetics at Yasukuni Shrine / Ellen Schattschneider 296
Part IV: Literary Fascism
Fascist Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation in Kawabata Yasunari / Nina Cornyetz 321
Disciplining the Erotic-Grotesque in Edogawa Ranpo's
Demon of the Lonely Isle / Jim Reichert 355
Hamaosociality: Narrative and Fascism in Hamao Shirō's
The Devil's Disciple / Keith Vincent 381
Literary Tropes, Rhetorical Looping, and the Nine Gods of War: "Fascist Proclivities" Made Real / James Dorsey 409
Part V: Concluding Essay
The Spanish Perspective:
Romancero Marroquí and the Francoist Kitsch Politics of Time / Alejandro Yarza 435
Contributors 451
