The first twenty years of prewar Showa were not happy years, but as I already quoted, "there was no dictator and the system was not the product of a well-defined, popular movement, but more a vague change of mood, a shift in the balance of power between the elite groups in Japanese society (Reischauer, The Japanese.)" The army and the navy were two of them or two pressure groups. "The army and navy officers, for their part, constituted no Junker class holding itself aloof from the common people. The samurai coloring of the officers of early Meiji days had been largely lost...The army and the navy were among Japan's most modernized institutions, but in their ideas, many officers were closer to the peasants than were other leaders...There was thus a genuine resonance in emotional attitudes between the military and rural Japan. The militaristic and ultranationalistic reaction that swept Japan in the thirties was atavistic in that it looked back to a simpler, more harmonious, more agrarian, and more authoritarian past, rather than to the rational solution of the new problems of an industrialized society (Reischauer, Japan,)"

The middle class, the big or middle-sized landed class, big businesses, and intellectuals usually did not support the radicalism. Supporters were generally found in rural peasants and small independent farming class. But it was the movement of those who were left behind in modernization and were particularly hit hard by the 1929 Depression. It was not an anti-American or anti-Western political movement; it was resentment toward urban life-style. Americanization in the Japanese life still went on in rural areas.

To be continued.

I learned a lot about fascism, particularly Nazism, and about modern industrialized society from The State of the Masses: The Threat of the Classless Society by Emile Lederer, New York, Howard Fertig, 1967. Lederer says as follows on Japanese radicalism of the 1930s.

"What we now have in Japan is the organization of society for the war in China, the mobilization of its resources and of its spirit. The parliament still plays a role. Public opinions is not manufactured, as there are still still independent sources influencing it. Censorship is strict, as is to be expected during a war, but magazines, even those for the wider public, are not yet deprived of their freedom of expression. The soldiers returning from China are not a passive material to be absorbed by a fascist ideology - at least not at the present time. They are disillusioned, but of just those ideals which form the ideological basis of fascism. Inasmuch as fascism breeds on the illusions of those disillusioned with democracy, the time is ripe for a Japanese movement of the Italian or German type.
These remarks serve to show states are very complex phenomena which must be analyzed carefully; abstract concepts can do great harms (p. 67.)"

"the atomization of the nation and its reduction to masses" did not happen in Japan. The ultra-nationalists, the army and the navy did not claim that they stood above the ultimate authority of the emperor or above the people.

"...a regime like the present one in Japan...is fundamentally different from fascism. For fascism is the dictatorship by masses over the masses themselves and cannot be molded or transformed except by a revolution, which is not likely to break out unless there is a defeat on the battlefield (ibid. p. 68,)"
Revolution was least likely to happen in defeated Japan. That was a very good thing. The Japanese people knew Hirohito played a very important role to persuade the leaders to bear the unbearable and tolerate the intolerable, thus leading Japan to surrender.

To be continued

"...one may discover that the wartime regime of Japan, repressive as it was, was very different from the totalitarian states of that time in other places. When one realizes how tenuous and frail democracy is elsewhere in the world, and how strong the tendency towards arbitrary rule, one may conclude by wondering not why democracy failed in Japan, but rather how, despite the undemocratic tradition and the pressures of war, a totalitarian dictatorship did not evolve there (Ben=Amy Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, Preface, p. vii.)"

People did not disappear in Japan of the 1930s. Communists were jailed but released when they recanted their belief. Japan did not have a police like Gestapo, GPU. Politicians did not assassinate their rivals. Liberals were generally quiet but not silent. They were not arrested because of their liberalism. There was no book burning. No Westerners were assassinated.

Canem,
masa (正）in masashige means just/justice/justify/justified, right/righteous/righten/righened, or correct/rectitude/rectify/rect(angle), etc.
Parents give names to their babies, hoping they will grow happy and right.

Yes Michi- I knew it was wrong as soon as I posted it- yes I remember someone saying their name meant 'correct' not 'truth' stupid me

Canum,

Masa has often been used together with words that mean truth, sincerity, honesty, etc.
But the tendency is that young people use them less; they like to use different words for their babies. I think it is reflective of cultural change.

I've seen a change in Japanese over time through the generations- but I find them less corrupted than our generations in a sense. I greatly admire what is called in the west the "pre-war babies" that lived through the Great Depression as they avoid waste and appreciate the little things. The Japanese perhaps have this character too.

Some Japanese I've known said that their parents said to them "You are not Japanese!" A western translation of a Japanese concept. I guess they called them "gaijin". I'm sure parents of a certain generation said that to all the children. Perhaps the bitter sweet tough love of a great community.