Culture of Japanese Fascism

Alan Tansman is Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Writings of Kōda Aya: A Japanese Literary Daughter and a co-editor of Studies in Modern Japanese Literature. Marilyn Ivy is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. She is the author of Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Marilyn Ivy is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

• Foreword: Fascism, Yet? / Marilyn Ivy viiIntroduction: The Culture of Japanese Fascism / Alan Tansman 1Part I: Theories of Japanese FascismFascism Seen and Unseen: Fascism as a Problem in Cultural Representation / Kevin M. Doak 31The People's Library: The Spirit of Prose Literature versus Fascism / Richard Torrance 56Constitutive Ambiguities: The Persistence of Modernism and Fascism in Japan's Modern History / Harry Harrotunian 80Part II: Fascism and Daily LifeOn the Beauty of Labor: Imagine Factory Girls in Japan's New World Order / Kim Brandt 115Mediating the Masses: Yanagi Sōetsu and Fascism / Noriko Aso 138Fascism's Furry Friends: Dogs, National Identity, and the Purity of Blood in 1930s Japan / Aaron Skabelund 155Part III: Exhibiting FascismNarrating the Nation-ality of a Cinema: The Case of Japanese Prewar Film / Aaron Gerow 185All Beautiful Fascists?: Axis Film Culture in Imperial Japan / Michael Baskett 212Architecture for Mass-Mobilization: The Chūreitō Memorial Design Competition, 1939-1945 / Akiko Takenaka 235Japan's Imperial Diet Building in the Debate over Construction of a National Identity / Jonathan M. Reynolds 254Expo Fascism?: Ideology, Representation, Economy / Angus Lockyer 276The Work of Sacrifice in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Bride Dolls and the Enigma of Fascist Aesthetics at Yasukuni Shrine / Ellen Schattschneider 296Part IV: Literary FascismFascist Aesthetics and the Politics of Representation in Kawabata Yasunari / Nina Cornyetz 321Disciplining the Erotic-Grotesque in Edogawa Ranpo's Demon of the Lonely Isle / Jim Reichert 355Hamaosociality: Narrative and Fascism in Hamao Shirō's The Devil's Disciple / Keith Vincent 381Literary Tropes, Rhetorical Looping, and the Nine Gods of War: "Fascist Proclivities" Made Real / James Dorsey 409Part V: Concluding EssayThe Spanish Perspective: Romancero MarroquÍ and the Francoist Kitsch Politics of Time / Alejandro Yarza 435Contributors 451

“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)