Fascist Samurais: the Japanese race in the Italian imaginary during the Second World War and beyond

Abstract

Between 1938 and 1943, Fascist intellectuals debated the problem of how to create a racial policy that would encompass the Japanese within the Aryan doctrine. This article demonstrates how internal divisions in the Fascist party over racial issues generated alternative versions of pro-Japanese propaganda, which influenced the racial thinking of the Italian far-right even long after the Second World War. I show how Italian racial theories developed to underpin the alliance with Japan were transnational in scope, as they involved both German and Italian scholars in a common effort to lobby state racial policies. Specifically, I consider George Montandon and Julius Evola as two transnational actors engaged in building a case for the inclusion of the Japanese in the family of Aryan races, speaking either from a ‘biological’ or ‘spiritual’ perspective. While by the end of the Second World War the ‘biological’ thesis for the inclusion of the Japanese race had evaporated, the ‘spiritual’ thesis would continue to influence a generation of Italian far-right militants, especially during the ‘Years of Lead’. To make sense of this legacy, I suggest that the foundational myth of Italian Fascism, based on the spiritual heritage of the multiethnic Roman empire, responded to the neofascist quest for transnational affiliations against Western materialism.

Unsheathing the Katana. The Long Fortune of the First Two Japanese Embassies in Italy: Rediscovery and Rereading between Continuity and Discontinuity (1873–1905)

“…This fascination would grow in the 1930s, culminating at the time of the drafting of the Tripartite Pact. Fascist intellectuals also discussed the problem of how to create a racial policy that would include the Japanese within the Aryan doctrine (Monserrati 2020). Julius Evola (1898Evola ( -1974 was one of many who wrote about the peculiar intertwining of spirituality and the Japanese imperial idea in Asiatica, the journal of the Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente edited by Giuseppe Tucci (Evola 1940;Iacovella 2001).…”