Fascism as Resistance

Abstract

Whenever the relationship between religion and politics is being questioned in postwar Japan, the Christian group that called itself “Non-church movement” (henceforth Mukyokai) is almost always mentioned as an example of resistance against wartime “Japanese Fascism.” In sharp contrast with Japanese Christendom, which is said to actively mobilize itself in favor of Japanese fascism, the Mukyokai is rather appraised as a source of resistance to fascist ideas. In particular, Yanaihara Tadao, who is also a well-known colonial policy scholar, is hailed to be “one of the few monuments of resistance against ultra-nationalism.” Yet, why is it that in postwar Japan Mukyokai came to be understood almost entirely as a resistance movement to fascism? This paper is an attempt to probe into that question. First, by re-examining the place of Christianity in the history of postwar Japanese thought, I illustrate a pattern by which Christianity was almost always systematically excluded from the focus of academic analysis. Further, by examining the specific rhetoric that Yanaihara engaged in, I argue also that although he indeed criticized fascism based on his “pure belief, ” at the same time he also endorsed the concept of “sweeping fascism.” Finally, through questioning the discourse of Mukyokai, I also point out the limitations of the discourse of “Japanese Fascism, ” which failed in its treatise of Mukyokai by positing it within the ordinary framework of “fascism versus democracy.”