. Filaments of Fascism in Postwar Times

Abstract

This chapter focuses on two 1980s figures—the novelist and essayist Nakagami Kenji, much of whose work can be read as a critique of the centralizing, discriminatory power of the Japanese state and its imperial narrative about one of Japan's historically oppressed minorities, the burakumin; and the singer Misora Hibari, who sang for the working classes in order to heal their suffering after the war—in whom the fascist strain was even more unknowingly held, and, to the reader or audience, barely, if at all, discernible. The hidden quality of the fascist strain in these respective works marks the measure of its durability. Its suitability to both highbrow literature and popular song suggests its easy diffusion throughout culture.