Muruyama Masao has identified Kita Ikki as “the ideological father of Japanese fascism.”1 The ideology that Kita fathered is an utterly bizarre cocktail of contradictory principles, some of which go directly against the tenets of classical Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. Kita fused imperial autocracy with democracy, militant nationalism with cosmopolitan internationalism, technocratic elitism with radical egalitarianism, and market incentives with strict socialism. This blog post will determine the place of Kita’s eccentric ideology within the wider philosophical continuum of fascism.
According to Roger Griffin, the “mythic core” of all fascist ideologies is “palingenetic ultranationalism.”2 What does is palingenetic ultranationalism and where does Kita’s ideology stand in relation to it? To properly understand Griffin’s definition of fascism and its relation to Kita, it must be broken down into its constituent parts.
Palingenesis is the complete rebirth of a community against the forces of decadence and decay. Rebirth in the fascist context refers not to the restoration of an old social order (as is the case of traditional reactionaries), but the creation of a completely new order that while preserving “essential” social institutions and values is perfectly in line with the inexorable march of modernity.3 There is no doubt that Kita’s vision of Japan’s future is palingenetic in nature. Kita saw Japan as a decaying nation that had to be renewed through the complete destruction of the existing socio-political order and its replacement by a new one: the present ruling classes were to be purged from positions of power, “excess” private capital confiscated en masse by the state, a highly extensive system of state welfare established, and strict social controls enforced, all with the intention of building a new society. But despite all of this radical change, the emperor would remain at the undisputed center of the new order. This was because while the feudal nobility were an archaic relic of the past and the capitalist zaibatsu an unwelcome outgrowth of modernity, the emperor was seen as a timeless and essential pillar of Japanese communal identity; to Kita, without the emperor there could be no Japan.4
While palingenesis is common to all revolutionary movements, ultranationalism is a distinctive trait of fascism. Ultranationalism is to be distinguished from regular nationalism by its overtly anti-liberal and supremacist nature. As such, fascism is an inherently racist and bigoted ideology.5 By contrast, Kita quite explicitly calls for the equal treatment of ethnic minorities and for brotherhood among nations. Yet such sentiments cannot be considered to be truly anti-racist or internationalist. While in principle Kita supported the theoretical equality of nations, in practice he was supremely chauvinistic. Kita believed that many of Japan’s neighboring nations, especially Korea, were so utterly incapable of self-determination as to require foreign domination in order to be “civilized.” Needless to say, Kita believed that Japan was in a superior state of development compared to rest of Asia, and thus had a duty to spread “civilization” throughout the east.6 Unlike the Nazis and other fascists, who saw the natural hierarchy of nations as unchanging, Kita saw it as fluid but nonetheless historically essential. Kita thus did not truly believe that all nations should be seen as equal, but that all nations could be made equal if molded in the image of Japan. In this way, Kita’s racism was neither of the exterminationist brand of the Nazis nor the segregationist brand of many modern fascists, but of a distinctly assimilationist brand.
Being fundamentally anti-liberal, fascism in its purest form rejects notions of universal rights, equality, pluralism, and individualism.7 This would seem to be a stark contrast with Kita, who believed in the inalienability of certain human rights, including universal male suffrage, and called for radical social and economic equality. At the same time, Kita outright rejected the sanctity of popular will and of the social contract fundamental to liberal democracies. The protection of basic political rights was by no means an endorsement of pluralism; not every voice was deserving of consideration and some voices in fact ought to be suppressed especially in the initial period of transformation. Ultimately, Kita insisted on human rights and equality not for their own sake, but for the specific goal of establishing a cohesive national community. The act of political participation was seen not an exercise of individual sovereignty; rather it was an affirmation of membership in, and loyalty to, the Japanese Nation in much the same vein as military service. The equality of citizens served only to further reinforce and clarify the supreme sovereignty of the emperor.6
Despite his rhetoric of human rights, equality, and anti-racism, Kita Ikki’s ideology can rightly be placed within the continuum of Japanese Fascism. For all its superficial dissimilarity to more familiar European fascisms, Ikki’s fascism is built on the same mythos of palingenetic ultranationalism.
- Masao Maruyama and Ivan Morris, “The Ideology and Dynamics of Japanese Fascism,” essay, in Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics (London etc.: Oxford University Press, 1969), 28. [↩]
- Roger Griffin, “The Palingenetic Core of Fascist Ideology,” essay, in Che Cos’è Il Fascismo? Interpretazioni e Prospecttive Di Richerche (Rome: Ideazione Editrice, 2003), 97–122. [↩]
- Griffin, “The Palingenetic Core of Fascist Ideology”; Roger Griffin, “1. Staging the Nation’s Rebirth,” Fascism and Theatre, December 31, 2022, 13–7, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785330476-002. [↩]
- Ikki Kita, General Outline of Measures for the Reorganization of Japan (Shanghai, 1919). [↩]
- Roger Griffin, “Nationalism,” in World Fascism: A Historical Encyclopedia. Volume 1 A-K, ed. Cyprian P. Blamires and Paul Jackson (Santa Barbara , CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006). [↩]
- Ikki Kita, General Outline of Measures for the Reorganization of Japan [↩] [↩]
- Griffin, “Staging the Nation’s Rebirth,” 7 [↩]