Yamatology of the Axis. Japan as a Nazi-Fascist Utopia of Political Renewal

Project Information

YTOPIA

Grant agreement ID: 101019008

DOI

10.3030/101019008

Project closed

EC signature date 22 April 2021

Start date 1 May 2022

End date 30 April 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 258 498,24

EU contribution

€ 258 498,24

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - YTOPIA (Yamatology of the Axis. Japan as a Nazi-Fascist Utopia of Political Renewal)

Reporting period: 2024-05-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Japan still occupies a special place in the European far-right imagination, often being described as an ethnically and culturally homogenous land that has successfully harmonized tradition and modernity, representing a possible alternative to the liberal development pattern of Euro-American societies. The myth of Japan in the far-right milieu is usually focused on the alleged existence of an unchanged and authentic “Japanese spirit” (Yamato-damashii), supposedly distinct from the materialist and individualist mindset of the European paradigm of modernity, and it is populated by masculine models of soldierly virtues and strong nationalist commitment that range from the samurais of the past to the suicide pilots of the Second World War and prominent right-wing intellectuals of the postwar period. The far-right fascination with Japan is not a by-product of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. On the contrary, it began to emerge at the very beginning of the 20th century as an intellectual means to criticize the liberal view of society and was cultivated by many early supporters of the Fascist and National Socialist movements, setting the cultural ground for the political rapprochement during the 1930s. From this perspective, the far-right representation of Japan – something that can be called “yamatology,” i.e. the “discourse on the alleged authentic spirit of Japan” – is a peculiar political phenomenon that covers more than a century and deserves closer attention, in order to better understand both the ideological underpinning of the military alliance that unleashed the Second World War and the contemporary imagination of several extreme right-wing movements.
The research project YTOPIA explores the origin and the transformations of the right-wing image of Japan with a focus on the historical moment at which it reached its wider dissemination and became an integral part of far-right ideologies, namely the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. By adopting a global and long-term perspective that includes the emergence of right-wing sympathies for Japan in the early 20th century, the relations with the representation of Japan in other European countries, and their reciprocal interactions with the Japanese self-representation, YTOPIA analyzes the construction of the image of Japan in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as it was expressed in books, newspapers, illustrated press, and other mass media. Through a comparative approach, YTOPIA identifies similarities and differences in the ways Japan has been imagined by Italian and German intellectuals and political actors in order to determine whether a specific Nazi-Fascist image of Japan ever existed and, if so, how it was dialectically related to common ideological features shared by both ideologies, such as the cult of violence and masculinity, the sacralization of power, the hero worship, and the view of the three countries as “latecomer powers” that were committed to the creation of a new world order. In doing so, the project highlights the utopian dimension of yamatological narratives, as well as the tensions emerging between the admiration for a non-European country and the ultra-nationalist and racist character of Nazi-Fascist ideologies – two elements that continue to shape the far-right representation of Japan even today.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

YTOPIA has been structured in three main research activities – review of the secondary literature, collection of published sources, and collection of archive materials:

- The researcher reviewed the secondary literature on orientalism; the Tripartite Pact and the political relations between Germany, Italy, and Japan during the 1930s and the early 1940s; the history of the European image of Japan from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century; the Japanese self-representations; the concept of “Yamato-damashii”; and the political culture of Japanese militarism.

- The researcher collected and analyzed published sources (books, periodicals, conference proceedings, etc.) on the origin of the term “yamatology,” the German and Italian academic Japanology, the popular representation of Japan in Germany and Italy, and the geopolitical dimension of the Tripartite Pact. The researcher also collected visual materials (illustrated press, satirical journals, photographic documentation) related to the representation of Japan in Germany and Italy.

- The researcher gathered archive materials on the cultural-political institutions that participated in the construction of the image of Japan in Germany and Italy. The researcher also gathered archive materials on the press and propaganda collaboration between Germany, Italy, and Japan during the Second World War.

The collection of published sources and secondary literature was carried out at the State Library of Berlin, the Central National Library of Florence, the Kansai-kan of the Japanese National Diet Library, the Library of the University of Konstanz, the Library of the Kyoto Sangyo University, the Library of the Kyoto University, and the Kyoto Prefectural Library. The archive research was carried out at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome, the Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri in Rome, the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, and the Politisches Archiv of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin. The research results have been disseminated through journal articles, articles in edited volumes, and book reviews issued in English, Italian, and German, as well as through conference presentations held in Italy, Germany, and Japan, including an international conference organized in October 2023.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

YTOPIA represents the first systematically comparative study on the image of Japan in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and its role in the formation and development of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. By defining the intellectual boundaries and contents of the Nazi-Fascist narratives on Japan, YTOPIA also establishes the concept of “yamatology” as a heuristic tool for analyzing the right-wing representation of the East Asian country that can be applied to other national contexts and/or contemporary phenomena of far-right fascination with Japan, including right-wing extremists that saw the myth of Japan and its masculine models as sources of inspiration for committing acts of political violence. Moreover, from the very beginning of the research activities, YTOPIA has been closely linked to the most updated trend in the Axis studies that, in the last few years, has brought about a significant paradigm change in the historiographical understanding of the Tripartite Pact and challenged the previous interpretation of the Axis as a “hollow,” dysfunctional “alliance without allies” by shifting the focus from the diplomatic relations to the ideological and cultural underpinnings of the trilateral collaboration. Through the investigation of the political role of the image of Japan in Italy and Germany, YTOPIA offers a substantial contribution to the global understanding of the cultural aspects and the representational politics of the Axis in line with the latest research. The link between YTOPIA and the recent development of the Axis studies has also been strengthened by the two-day international conference titled “The Axis Reconsidered: Global Fascism, Mutual Representations, and Cultural-Political Relations,” organized at the Kyoto Sangyo University in October 2023 with the participation of leading scholars from Italy, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA.

Oskar Theodor Garvens, “Ein gebieterisches Halt”, Kladderadatsch, 89, 1936, p. 825 (source: Universi