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"Hofmann, Reto"
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What's Left of the Right: Nabeyama Sadachika and Anti-communism in Transwar Japan, 1930–1960
This article examines the thought and career of Nabeyama Sadachika (1901–79) from communist militant in 1920s Japan to his conversion to the emperor system in the 1930s and, finally, to his role in shaping the postwar anti-communist movement. Using Nabeyama's recently released private papers, the article shows how he brokered his anti-communist expertise to a range of postwar actors and institutions—the police, the Self-Defense Forces, business circles, politicians—as well as to foreign states, especially the Republic of China (Taiwan). These networks indicate that important sections of Japan's postwar establishment rallied behind anti-communism in the face of reforms that threatened their power at home and their vision for Japan in the world order after 1945. As a transwar history, this article adds to our understanding of Japan's transition from the age of empire to that of liberal democracy by qualifying narratives about the “progressive” nature of postwar Japanese politics. It argues that the vitality of anti-communism is symptomatic of the durability of particular political traditions, and reveals that, despite the significant reforms that Japan underwent after 1945, the Right was able to claim a space in the country's political culture that has been neglected by historians.
Journal Article
The fascist new–old order
Contemporaries and historians alike have explained the imperialism of interwar Japan, Italy, and Germany through the paradigm of a ‘new world order’. This article critically revisits this received assumption by analysing the place of the Axis in the longer history of imperialism from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War. If we cast Axis empires – a blend of fascism and imperialism – in the larger framework constituted by the relationship between the nation and capital, it becomes clear that they were not so much the result of the peculiar national histories of Japan, Italy, and Germany, but products of larger, global forces. Through an examination of recent scholarship, this article offers a new conceptual interpretation of the link between imperialism and fascism. In so doing, it adds to our understanding of the interwar period by breaking down the neat boundaries between liberal and fascist world orders.
Journal Article
The Fascist Effect
In The Fascist Effect , Reto Hofmann uncovers the
ideological links that tied Japan to Italy, drawing on extensive
materials from Japanese and Italian archives to shed light on the
formation of fascist history and practice in Japan and beyond.
Moving between personal experiences, diplomatic and cultural
relations, and geopolitical considerations, Hofmann shows that
interwar Japan found in fascism a resource to develop a new order
at a time of capitalist crisis.
Hofmann demonstrates that fascism in Japan was neither a
European import nor a domestic product; it was, rather, the result
of a complex process of global transmission and reformulation. Far
from being a vague term, as postwar historiography has so often
claimed, for Japanese of all backgrounds who came of age from the
1920s to the 1940s, fascism conjured up a set of concrete
associations, including nationalism, leadership, economics, and a
drive toward empire and a new world order.
eBook
Editorial – Axis empires: towards a global history of fascist imperialism
In exploring the Axis as a transnational history of fascism and a global history of imperialism, the articles here propose a new reading of an alliance that has conventionally been treated within the purview of diplomatic history.1In the historiography of the Second World War, the Axis appears as the almost unwitting consequence of decisions taken in Tokyo, Rome, and Berlin since the early 1930s, which led the three countries into diplomatic isolation by the end of that decade. After the Cold War the interest in world order returned, especially in the United States in the context of the rise of China.3But there has been comparatively little discussion about competing concepts of world order during the 1930s and 1940s.4At the same time, transnational history approaches have focused on non-state actors (or mid ranking officials), writers, ideologues, physicians, and the like, and have examined how they produced knowledge or practices across multiple national contexts. Furthermore, expansionism was often not considered a generic attribute of fascist ideology and practice.5Yet, in our reading, fascist imperialism not only concerned power politics, world order, and territorial expansion, but also had an ideological dimension that was at the core of the doctrine.6By approaching the history of fascism from a trans-imperial perspective, the following articles alter our understanding of the nature of fascism in the interwar years. [...]they are a contribution to a global history of fascism, and answer recent calls for just such an approach.7 The third historiographical strand we address is the new imperial history. A...
Journal Article
Imperial Links: The Italian-Ethiopian War and Japanese New Order Thinking, 1935-6
This article investigates Japanese New Order thinking in terms of the political and cultural debates sparked by the Italian aggression of Ethiopia (1935-6). Interpreting the war in light of Japan's earlier conquest of Manchuria (1931), Japanese ideologues, policymakers, and journalists expressed a mixture of rage and relief. On one side, they regarded Fascist Italy's war as old-fashioned Western imperialism – from which Japan claimed to be liberating Asia. On the other side, they concluded that the Italian-Ethiopian war accelerated the collapse of the international order established after the First World War. In this way the Japanese recognized a commonality of interest with Mussolini's attempt to contrast the League of Nations and the Great Powers by means of empire-building. This article argues that, in the attempt to overcome the international order centered on the League of Nations, Imperial Japan's fascist tendencies overlapped with Fascist Italy's imperial policies – and that Japanese observers were conscious of (albeit often ambivalent about) this unexpected ideological common ground. Ultimately, the article attempts to shed new light on the relationship between imperialism and fascism in the interwar period.
Journal Article
FASCISM IN WORLD HISTORY, 1937–1943
On July 30, 1940, Japan, Italy, and Germany entered into a formal political alliance by signing the Tripartite Pact. In this document, the three countries demanded that “all nations of the world be given each its own proper place” and stipulated that Japan, Italy, and Germany would “stand by and co-operate with one another in regard to their efforts in Greater East Asia and the regions of Europe respectively wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things.”¹ These somewhat vague terms exhibited a certain distrust for the European fascist powers in the higher
Book Chapter