Series | Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies
Edited book | Itineraries of an Anthropologist
Chapter | The Quest for Japanese Fascism: A Historiographical Overview
The Quest for Japanese Fascism: A Historiographical Overview
Abstract
‘Japanese fascism’ is a historiographical construct rather than a historical reality. Whether Japan’s sociopolitical developments in the 1930s and early 1940s can be legitimately and authoritatively defined as ‘fascist’ depends on the triangulation of three axes of analysis: historical reconstructions of institutional, political, social, and ideological processes; historiographical surveys of the palimpsest of interpretations historians have given to this period of Japanese history; and metahistorical analyses of the cognitive legitimacy of the category of ‘fascism’. This essay focuses on the second axis, offering a historical survey of the historiographical debate on ‘Japanese fascism’ worldwide.
Submitted: Jan. 14, 2021 | Accepted: Feb. 23, 2021 | Published Oct. 18, 2021 | Language: en
Keywords Second World War • Historiography • Japanese Fascism • Fascism • Japanese Imperialism
Copyright © 2021 Federico Marcon. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-527-8/004
