Beauty in Violence
Alan Tansman unravels the subtle signs of a culture ready to embrace a violent future in pre-war Japan

fas·cism n. A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

In the early 1930s, Japanese writer Kobayashi Hideo traveled to Manchuria to write about the new state being established there under Japanese rule. Kobayahsi's writings from Manchuria described the colony in beautiful, glowing terms, glorifying expansionism and overlooking the violence of colonialism. His superficial glimpse of the Chinese glossed over their subjection; they simply became bit parts in Japan's unfolding destiny.

Young cadets return from Manchuria in 1932

"You think of him as a liberal man of culture," says Berkeley professor of East Asian languages and culture Alan Tansman. Despite his training in both Western and Japanese art, literature, and philosophy, Kobayashi's Manchurian writings gave subtle support to the violence that would define Japan in the coming years by enshrining it in "beautifying" language.

He wasn't the only artist to do so.

Tansman has spent the past several years studying writers like Kobayashi, as well as artists, filmmakers, and other culture creators during the 1920s and '30s in Japan. For Tansman, these figures provide a critical lens into a period during which Japan began its transformation from nation to empire.

"There were certain writers and other creators of culture who were trying to create moments in which violence was beautified," Tansman says. "There are moments in the writing that lend themselves to an atmosphere."

Tansman sought to bring together many manifestations of that proto-fascist atmosphere in his forthcoming book, The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism. Basically, his subject matter is a phenomenon he describes as a "conservative reaction to modernity and modernization." Through close readings of literary, cinematic, musical, and other texts, he traced threads that connected such artistic output to the changing political sphere.

A still from Mizoguchi Kenji's 1936 film, Osaka Elegy

In response to their misgivings about European cultural colonization as well as fears of creeping modernity itself, artists, writers, and the government sought ways to resist change, or to make certain kinds of change -- like expansionist desires -- seem grounded in Japan's past, and its future. The new aesthetics that embraced emerging fascism were an attempt to point out "the dead end of modernity," Tansman argues.

Despite parallels with its European counterpart, fascism as it developed in Japan saw itself as a reaction to Western influence, and as such, it sought to embed itself in Japanese culture and history.

In his cultural analyses, Tansman inserts himself in a number of debates. First of all, it's difficult to prove that these writers and thinkers actually led Japan towards its acceptance of fascism.

While government propaganda later borrowed aesthetic elements and themes from artists and writers whose work had "beatified" fascism, it's unclear how much impact literature or film had on people's acceptance of these ideas. It really comes down to the immeasurability of ideas and their effect on a society.

A poster shows Japan offering China a helping hand

"Context is really everything," Tansman says. "Trying to figure out how people respond to propaganda or what they read is very difficult."

While social arguments often rest more on well-substantiated theories rather than empirical facts, part of the challenge of such scholarship is both the multiplicity of possibilities and the complexity of making the argument.

"Sure, a political scientist might say, 'This is mushy'," Tansman admits of his work. "I do have a little bit of fact envy. But part of the joy of it is, it's complex." Then, there's also the issue of whether pre-WWII Japan was a politically fascist state -- something many academics have squabbled over.

The nation lacked a charismatic leader like Italy, Germany, or Spain as well as a single-party power apparatus. It also held on to some forms of social pluralism. Even so, Japan, in Tansman's view, still had a number of fascistic tendencies. Censorship, aggressive propaganda, social restriction in diet, dress, and politics, nationalism, imperialism, racism, and other emerging elements can all be seen as hallmarks of fascism.

"The definition of fascism is something that's been written about a lot," Tansman says. "There's now enough writing to suggest that there is no ideal form of fascism."

In his next book, Tansman will once again insert himself into the realm of debate, and ambiguity. The project grows out of a class he teaches on comparing Japanese and Jewish responses to World War II's catastrophes.

In class, Tansman and his students compare the Holocaust to the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, looking at cultural responses to those events in literature and elsewhere. In turn, they also register their own reactions to studying the subject, confronting the ethics of exploring tragedy and suffering as an academic exercise.

"The question of how you compare anything to the Holocaust comes up a lot," Tansman says. And at Berkeley, the class also attracts a large number of Asian Americans, some of whose family histories include horror stories of Japanese imperialism in China, Korea, or elsewhere. That complicates discussions of the Japanese as victims.

All those personal reactions will fuel Tansman's book, but he aims to ground the work in real-world texts as well: books, films, and essays from the post-war years. It's an ambitious project, but like Tansman's other cultural studies, one that's bound to be engaging. -- Todd Dayton