Description:
In late 1945 local Japanese turned their energies toward creating new behaviors and institutions that would give young people better skills to combat repression at home and coercion abroad. They rapidly transformed their political culture-policies, institutions, and public opinion-to create a more equitable, democratic and peaceful society.
Post-Fascist Japan explores this phenomenon, focusing on a group of highly educated Japanese based in the city of Kamakura, where the new political culture was particularly visible. The book argues that these leftist elites, many of whom had been seen as 'the enemy' during the war, saw the problem as one of fascism, an ideology that had succeeded because it had addressed real problems. They turned their efforts to overtly political-legal systems but also to ostensibly non-political and community institutions such as universities, art museums, local tourism, and environmental policies, aiming not only for reconciliation over the past but also to reduce the anxieties that had drawn so many towards fascism. By focusing on people who had an outsized influence on Japan's political culture, Hein's study is local, national, and transnational. She grounds her discussion using specific personalities, showing their ideas about 'post-fascism', how they implemented them and how they interacted with the American occupiers.Brief description: Laura Hein is Professor of History at Northwestern University, USA. She is the author of Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in 20th Century Japan (2004) and co-editor of Imagination Without Borders: Visual Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility (2010).
Review Quotes:
"What Hein provides for us is a nuanced intellectual history of a part of Japan that had and still has a clear sense of its own identity. By presenting national-level trends in the context of local politics, she makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of recent history outside the Tokyo "bubble," even if only down the road and easily within commuting distance. We need to hear more about Japan at the local level." - Journal of Japanese Studies
"In this elegantly written study, Hein (Northwestern Univ.) looks at how, after the defeat of Japan in August 1945, Japanese intellectuals and political leaders in the city of Kamakura focused their energies on creating political, cultural, and educational institutions and behavior pathways that would counter the appeal that Fascism had in pre-war Japan and lead to a more democratic, egalitarian, and peaceful society ... The lead-off chapter, "Kamakura: The Place," is a model of urban history and deserves a wide audience ... Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." - CHOICE