edited by Alan Tansman series edited by Rey Chow, Harry Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi contributions by Marilyn Ivy
Duke University Press, 2009 eISBN: 978-0-8223-9070-1 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-4452-0 | Paper: 978-0-8223-4468-1 Library of Congress Classification DS822.4.C85 2009 Dewey Decimal Classification 335.6095209043
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This bold collection of essays demonstrates the necessity of understanding fascism in cultural terms rather than only or even primarily in terms of political structures and events. Contributors from history, literature, film, art history, and anthropology describe a culture of fascism in Japan in the decades preceding the end of the Asia-Pacific War. In so doing, they challenge past scholarship, which has generally rejected descriptions of pre-1945 Japan as fascist. The contributors explain how a fascist ideology was diffused throughout Japanese culture via literature, popular culture, film, design, and everyday discourse. Alan Tansman’s introduction places the essays in historical context and situates them in relation to previous scholarly inquiries into the existence of fascism in Japan.
Several contributors examine how fascism was understood in the 1930s by, for example, influential theorists, an antifascist literary group, and leading intellectuals responding to capitalist modernization. Others explore the idea that fascism’s solution to alienation and exploitation lay in efforts to beautify work, the workplace, and everyday life. Still others analyze the realization of and limits to fascist aesthetics in film, memorial design, architecture, animal imagery, a military museum, and a national exposition. Contributors also assess both manifestations of and resistance to fascist ideology in the work of renowned authors including the Nobel-prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Kawabata Yasunari and the mystery writers Edogawa Ranpo and Hamao Shirō. In the work of these final two, the tropes of sexual perversity and paranoia open a new perspective on fascist culture. This volume makes Japanese fascism available as a critical point of comparison for scholars of fascism worldwide. The concluding essay models such work by comparing Spanish and Japanese fascisms.
Contributors. Noriko Aso, Michael Baskett, Kim Brandt, Nina Cornyetz, Kevin M. Doak, James Dorsey, Aaron Gerow, Harry Harootunian, Marilyn Ivy, Angus Lockyer, Jim Reichert, Jonathan Reynolds, Ellen Schattschneider, Aaron Skabelund, Akiko Takenaka, Alan Tansman, Richard Torrance, Keith Vincent, Alejandro Yarza
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
“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 CONTENTS
Foreword: 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
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
edited by Alan Tansman series edited by Rey Chow, Harry Harootunian and Masao Miyoshi contributions by Marilyn Ivy
Duke University Press, 2009 eISBN: 978-0-8223-9070-1 Cloth: 978-0-8223-4452-0 Paper: 978-0-8223-4468-1
This bold collection of essays demonstrates the necessity of understanding fascism in cultural terms rather than only or even primarily in terms of political structures and events. Contributors from history, literature, film, art history, and anthropology describe a culture of fascism in Japan in the decades preceding the end of the Asia-Pacific War. In so doing, they challenge past scholarship, which has generally rejected descriptions of pre-1945 Japan as fascist. The contributors explain how a fascist ideology was diffused throughout Japanese culture via literature, popular culture, film, design, and everyday discourse. Alan Tansman’s introduction places the essays in historical context and situates them in relation to previous scholarly inquiries into the existence of fascism in Japan.
Several contributors examine how fascism was understood in the 1930s by, for example, influential theorists, an antifascist literary group, and leading intellectuals responding to capitalist modernization. Others explore the idea that fascism’s solution to alienation and exploitation lay in efforts to beautify work, the workplace, and everyday life. Still others analyze the realization of and limits to fascist aesthetics in film, memorial design, architecture, animal imagery, a military museum, and a national exposition. Contributors also assess both manifestations of and resistance to fascist ideology in the work of renowned authors including the Nobel-prize-winning novelist and short-story writer Kawabata Yasunari and the mystery writers Edogawa Ranpo and Hamao Shirō. In the work of these final two, the tropes of sexual perversity and paranoia open a new perspective on fascist culture. This volume makes Japanese fascism available as a critical point of comparison for scholars of fascism worldwide. The concluding essay models such work by comparing Spanish and Japanese fascisms.
Contributors. Noriko Aso, Michael Baskett, Kim Brandt, Nina Cornyetz, Kevin M. Doak, James Dorsey, Aaron Gerow, Harry Harootunian, Marilyn Ivy, Angus Lockyer, Jim Reichert, Jonathan Reynolds, Ellen Schattschneider, Aaron Skabelund, Akiko Takenaka, Alan Tansman, Richard Torrance, Keith Vincent, Alejandro Yarza
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
“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 CONTENTS
Foreword: 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
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE