Teaching Fascism from a Global Perspective: Lessons from Interwar Japan

This essay draws upon the history of fascism and its critique in interwar Japan to propose three interrelated points concerning how we teach fascism: that it is important for students to understand fascism as a global phenomenon, that some of the most insightful analyses of fascism were written by those who confronted its first manifestations in the interwar period, and that when read together, these early analyses reveal the limits of liberalism to adequately address the conditions that produce fascism or to counter the threat it poses. To consider these three points, the essay focuses on Tosaka Jun (1900–45) and how he can be assigned and read alongside his European contemporaries such as Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).