The Spectacle of Global Fascism: The Italian Blackshirt mission to Japan's Asian empire

Abstract

AbstractIn the spring of 1938 a mission of the Italian Fascist Party journeyed to the Japanese empire, visiting China, Korea, Manchukuo, and Japan itself. Those were happy days for the Axis and, as such, characterized by a flood of shuttle visits and requests for cooperation between Italy, Japan, and Germany. As we explore the choreography of the visit and accompany the Italian Blackshirts on their two-month-long trip, two processes become clear. On the one hand, the presence of the Blackshirts in Japan helped place the nation's regional war with China in the broader context of worldwide conflicts. On the other hand, this trip assisted in firmly placing the new Axis alliance in the context of a pan-Asianist empire under Japanese control. This article suggests that both processes were linked and mutually enhancing of one another. At the same time they were part of a much more far-reaching phenomenon, namely the globalization of the Axis alliance. This, I will argue, was acted out on the stages provided by what is best described as the ‘spectacle of global fascism’. Of course, this spectacle proved to have its tensions and oddities. But as the focus on the performative aspects of the Italian-Japanese encounters shows, this novel form of fascist diplomacy was a way of handling contradictions within the alliance. At the same time, the spectacle served to strengthen it. In other words, seen through the lens of the Blackshirts’ mission, the Axis appears significantly stronger, diverse, and also more global than conventional diplomatic history has perceived it to be.