Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the Japanese imperial Right transitioned into the postwar period. In so doing, the paper sheds new light on the extent to which the Right was able to influence the political culture of democratic Japan.

Paper long abstract:

Recent scholarship has given us a substantial understanding of the makers of empire—those right-wing intellectuals, politicians, and bureaucrats who, from the early 1930s, militated for a New Order at home and in Asia. We know little, however, about how this cohort transitioned into the postwar years. This paper examines how the imperial Right found ways to reintegrate itself into the political culture of the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses on Yabe Teiji (1902-1967), a political scientist and government advisor, showing how he reformulated anxieties over democracy, kokutai, and communism that dated from the 1920s for the new age. In showing his enduring belligerent spirit, the paper argues that after World War II, old authoritarian ideals coexisted with progressive emancipatory ones, a tension that remained at the heart of postwar Japanese political history.