While “fascism” is often used as a blanket term for the far-right, actually demarking and defining its structures requires historical nuance and a depth of theoretical and practical understanding. Fascism in Japan has generally been shoehorned into the European mold of Nazi Germany since they signed the Tripartite Pact and a hyperfocus on the military aspect has overshadowed the diverse civilian response. As such, Janis Mimura’s first monograph Planning Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State represents a welcome intervention in the English language historiography of Imperial Japan that provides a more nuanced interpretation of wartime and immediate post-war Japan.

Mimura focuses primarily on the rise of techno-fascism as a “third path” for Japanese leaders in response to the failures of Liberal Capitalism in the aftermath of the Great War and the subsequent global depression on one side and the rejection of totalitarian Communism whose ideology was seen as an antithesis to the Emperor system of Japan. Weaved into this narrative are a variety of threads which range from theoretical debates among Japanese leaders about German Fascism to the more physical “utopian” state planning that technocrats on both the right and left attempted to materialize in Manchukuo. Simultaneously, Mimura recasts wartime debates by arguing that “the main political faultline in wartime Japan was not between militarists and peace-loving civilians, but between advocates of technocratic reform and defenders of the capitalist status quo” (195).

For scholars of colonialism, the chapters on Manchukuo represent a familiar but somewhat unique example of imperialism given the overt fascist nature the project took on. Planning for Empire traces the expansion of state and business through technocratic planning, “freed” from the restrictions of the Meiji institutions and the old Zaibatsu. In their place, business was reimagined with a goal of serving the state rather than profits, and new zaibatsu were created with the long term strategic goals of the imperial state in mind. Many of these goals aligned neatly with the militarist factions, as greater self-sufficiency and material production served to secure Japan’s geopolitical and economic status. Mimura argues that the new zaibatsu, inspired from examples in Nazi Germany, sought to overcome the natural resource deficiencies of “have-not” countries with technology and science in a fascinating exploration of Japanese economic development. 

Beyond the physical, the totalitarian vision of the techno-fascists sought to create a bloc over the next century which would liberate Asia from White exploitation and combat the Liberal-Capitalist bloc of the West. Mimura suggests Japanese technocrats were akin to their German counterparts with such extravagant long term centralized planning, in what Mimura calls the “managerial revolution.” Reality quickly checked these fantasies as Planning for Empire demonstrates; the new zaibatsu were less willing to leave profit behind and required heavy government indemnities which guaranteed margins while the old regime closed ranks to stifle the “New Order” in the Diet. Rather than a picture of harmony entering the Pacific War, Planning for Empire paints a portrait of constant in-fighting, opposing goals, half measures and limitations which were only resolved as the war situation continued to deteriorate. Perhaps most interestingly was the suggestion that the collapse of the war and the subsequent occupation which swept away the old regime, allowed for technocratic takeover in the form of the LDP.

In general, Planning for Empire is an excellent and surprisingly approachable work given its content. Students of fascism will find this work particularly interesting, especially those who study European fascism and its mechanics to see how fascism operated in wartime and post-war Japan. Overall, Mimura’s work is a welcome inclusion to the historiography of imperial Japan and its lasting legacies.