was a statist political ideology that emerged in Japan during the late Meiji period and became one of the foundations of the political order of the Empire of Japan during the early decades of the Shōwa era.Doak K. M. A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan. Brill, 2007.Maruyama M. Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. Oxford University Press, 1963. In historiography, kokkashugi is generally regarded not as a form of ordinary patriotism but as a coherent political doctrine that defined itself in opposition to liberal democracy, popular sovereignty, political pluralism, and the concept of natural individual rights.Gluck C. Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton University Press, 1985. Unlike the liberal tradition, which derived political legitimacy from the will of citizens, kokkashugi located the source of sovereignty in the state, embodied in the figure of the Emperor of Japan (tennō) and the historical community of the Japanese nation.Najita T., Harootunian H. D. Japanese Revolt Against the West. Princeton University Press, 1988. The ideology combined elements of conservative traditionalism, ultranationalism, Japanese militarism, imperialism, Pan-Asianism, State Shinto, and a dirigiste economy, presenting itself as a distinctively Japanese alternative to Western liberalism, socialism, and parliamentary democracy.Stegewerns D. Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan. Routledge, 2005.Tansman A. (ed.). The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Duke University Press, 2009.
The conceptual core of kokkashugi was the idea of kokutai (, "national essence" or "national polity"), which defined Japan as a unique political community united by an unbroken imperial dynasty that, according to official doctrine, traced its origins to the goddess Amaterasu.Brownlee J. S. Japanese Historians and the National Myths. University of British Columbia Press, 1997.Gluck C. Japan's Modern Myths. Princeton University Press, 1985. Through the concept of kokutai, advocates of kokkashugi rejected the distinction between state and society, politics and morality, and public and private life characteristic of liberal democracy. The state was understood not as a legal mechanism created by citizens through a social contract but as an organic and sacred unity of the people, territory, dynasty, and historical tradition.Maruyama M. Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. Oxford University Press, 1963. For analytical precision, scholars usually distinguish kokkashugi from several related ideological currents, including Minzokushugi (, ethnic nationalism), Kokusuishugi (, national–cultural traditionalism), and Chōkokkashugi (, ultra–statism or radical ultranationalism).Skya W. A. Japan's Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto Ultranationalism. Duke University Press, 2009. In this sense, kokkashugi functioned as the broadest category of Japanese statist nationalism, encompassing both moderate conservative and radical militarist tendencies.Doak K. M. A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan. Brill, 2007.
As a political alternative to liberal democracy, kokkashugi developed through direct polemics with the institutions and ideas of Taishō democracy, a period during which parliamentary parties gained influence, suffrage was expanded, and the concept of Minponshugi ("people–oriented government"), developed by the political thinker Sakuzō Yoshino, achieved prominence.Pyle K. B. The New Generation in Meiji Japan. Stanford University Press, 1969.Storry R. The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism. Chatto & Windus, 1957. Advocates of kokkashugi argued that the party system, parliamentary competition, and liberal individualism undermined national unity, subordinated state policy to the interests of political parties and financial-industrial groups, particularly the major zaibatsu, and weakened the country's ability to confront external threats.Gordon A. A Modern History of Japan. Oxford University Press, 2014. As an alternative, they proposed a model of national unity based on a direct relationship between the emperor and the people, the subordination of private interests to state objectives, state regulation of the economy, and the mobilization of society in pursuit of national goals.Sims R. Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Restoration. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. The legal expression of this anti-liberal turn was the Peace Preservation Law of 1925, which criminalized activities deemed threatening to the kokutai and became a major instrument for suppressing socialist, communist, and liberal–democratic movements.Mitchell R. H. Thought Control in Prewar Japan. Cornell University Press, 1976.
The intellectual and political development of kokkashugi was closely associated with a number of influential thinkers, publicists, organizations, and military circles. One of the most prominent ideologues of radical statism was Kita Ikki, who in works such as The Theory of Kokutai and Pure Socialism and An Outline Plan for the Reorganization of Japan advocated a military coup, the abolition of the party system, the nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, and the creation of a centralized state of national unity.Wilson G. M. Radical Nationalist in Japan: Kita Ikki, 1883–1937. Harvard University Press, 1969. Another influential theorist was Shūmei Ōkawa, who developed ideas of Pan-Asianism, the spiritual revival of Asia, and Japan's special mission in opposition to the Western powers.Skya W. A., Japan's Holy War. Duke University Press, 2009. During the interwar period, the ideas of kokkashugi were disseminated through organizations such as the Kokuhonsha, the Cherry Blossom Society, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and networks of military and bureaucratic institutions associated with the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy.Large S. S. Organized Workers and Socialist Politics in Interwar Japan. Cambridge University Press, 1981. These ideas exerted a significant influence on the movement of the "young officers", the attempted coups of the 1930s, including the May 15 Incident and the February 26 Incident, as well as on the development of expansionist concepts such as hakkō ichiu and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.Shillony B.-A. Revolt in Japan. Princeton University Press, 1973.
Kokkashugi reached the height of its influence during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Mukden Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the gradual dismantling of the party system.Bix H. P. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. HarperCollins, 2000.Sims R. Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Restoration. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. In the interpretation of Masao Maruyama, kokkashugi constituted a form of "emperor–system fascism" (tennōsei fascism) in which the state combined political, moral, and spiritual authority and recognized no external limitations on its own power.Maruyama M. Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. Oxford University Press, 1963. Other scholars, including Kevin M. Doak and Reto Hofmann, have emphasized the differences between Japanese statism and European forms of fascism, linking it primarily to the distinctive characteristics of Japanese statehood, the imperial tradition, and the concept of kokutai.Doak K. M. A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan. Brill, 2007.Hofmann R. The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952. Cornell University Press, 2015. Following Japan's defeat in World War II and the beginning of the American occupation, the institutions and ideological foundations of kokkashugi were dismantled, while the Constitution of Japan of 1947 established the principles of popular sovereignty, parliamentary democracy, and guaranteed civil rights.Dower J. W. Embracing Defeat. W. W. Norton, 1999. Nevertheless, in contemporary comparative political science, kokkashugi continues to be studied as one of the most fully developed non-Western illiberal alternatives to the liberal-democratic order, grounded in the primacy of the state, historical tradition, and collective unity over individual autonomy.Stegewerns D. Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan. Routledge, 2005.Schneider J. C. (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of Nationalism in East and Southeast Asia. Routledge, 2023.
Origins With a more aggressive foreign policy, and victory over China in the First Sino-Japanese War and over Imperial Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan joined the Western imperialist powers. The need for a strong military to secure Japan's new overseas empire was strengthened by a sense that only through a strong military would Japan earn the respect of Western nations, and thus revision of the "unequal treaties" imposed in the 19th century.
The Japanese military viewed itself as "politically clean" in terms of corruption, and criticized political parties under a liberal democracy as self-serving and a threat to national security by their failure to provide adequate military spending or to address pressing social and economic issues. The complicity of the politicians with the zaibatsu corporate monopolies also came under criticism. The military tended to favor dirigisme and other forms of direct state control over industry, rather than free-market capitalism, as well as greater state-sponsored social welfare, to reduce the attraction of socialism and communism in Japan.
The special relation of militarists and the central civil government with the Imperial Family supported the important position of the Emperor as Head of State with political powers and the relationship with the nationalist right-wing movements. However, Japanese political thought had relatively little contact with European political thinking until the 20th century.
Under this ascendancy of the military, the country developed a very hierarchical, aristocratic economic system with significant state involvement. During the Meiji Restoration, there had been a surge in the creation of monopolies. This was in part due to state intervention, as the monopolies served to allow Japan to become a world economic power. The state itself owned some of the monopolies, and others were owned by the zaibatsu. The monopolies managed the central core of the economy, with other aspects being controlled by the government ministry appropriate to the activity, including the National Central Bank and the Imperial family. This economic arrangement was in many ways similar to the later corporatist models of European fascists.
During the same period, certain thinkers with ideals similar to those from shogunate times developed the early basis of Japanese expansionism and pan-Asian theories such as the Hakkō ichiu, Yen Block, and Amau doctrines,Akihiko Takagi, mentions "Nippon Chiseigaku Sengen ("A manifesto of Japanese Geopolitics") written in 1940 by Saneshige Komaki, a professor of Kyoto Imperial University and one of the representatives of the Kyoto school, [as] an example of the merging of geopolitics into Japanese traditional ultranationalism." which eventually served as the basis for policies such as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History p 470
Developments in the Shōwa era
International policy The 1919 Treaty of Versailles did not recognize the Empire of Japan's territorial claims, and international naval treaties between Western powers and the Empire of Japan (Washington Naval Treaty and London Naval Treaty) imposed limitations on naval shipbuilding which limited the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy at a 10:10:6 ratio. These measures were considered by many in Japan as the refusal by the Occidental powers to consider Japan an equal partner. The latter brought about the May 15 incident.