Planning for Empire

The origins and evolution of technocratic fascism in wartime Japan.

Janis Mimura is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Anyone interested in the role of reform bureaucrats in Japan and the perpetual debate over fascism will want to read this well-researched, informative, and stimulating monograph.

'Fascism' is a term of abuse today, but once it was an idea with a future, as Mimura shows in Planning for Empire.

Roles played by the Japanese civilian bureaucracy in the course of Japan's militarization before WW II have attracted little attention in academia, in contrast with scholars' heavy focus on the Japanese military. Mimura fills this void with this first in-depth English-language analysis of the Japanese "reform bureaucrats" who, as prominent advocates of "techno-fascism," endeavored to realize their vision of a "managerial state" and "controlled economy" in prewar Japan.... Highly recommended.

Martin Dusinberre:

Mimura's detailed examination of the administration of Manchuria/Manchukuo offers a useful counterweight to Driscoll's portrayal of Kishi and Ayukawa as little more than misogynisticexploitative brutes... Mimura’s dissection of Japanese techno-fascism—of its appeal across traditional political dividesof its incremental ideological genesis and of its ultimate failure—makes Planning for Empire a welcome addition to a new body of scholarship that has sought to resurrect fascism as an analytical tool for our understanding of mid-twentieth-century Japan.

Frederick Dickinson:

Mimura writes, moreover, with great economy, pinpoint clarity, and without embellishment or hint of hyperbole. If Planning for Empire does not, thus, aspire to 'best in show' honors for recent analyses of the Japanese empire, it deserves accolades as likely the most influential of the lot for its measured yet powerful confirmation of several critical trends in the study of early twentieth-century Japanese empire and war... it is a must read for all serious students of modern Japanese history.

Christopher W.A. Szpilman:

Drawing on a wealth of largely untapped primary materials and journals, the work focuses specifically on a group of elite bureaucrats, predominantly graduates of Tokyo Imperial University, and army staff officers who were the driving force behind the reorganization of the Japanese economy in the late 1930s and 1940s... Mimura's is the first English-language synthesis that traces the history of central planning in Japan from its inception in the corridors of power in Tokyo, through the experimentation period in Manchuria, to its final implementation in Japan. Mimura’s contribution is particularly valuable precisely because it deals with men who were in a position to put their ideas into practice.

Sheldon Garon, Princeton University:

Scholars have long debated whether wartime Japan experienced fascism. Janis Mimura persuades us that elite bureaucrats were at the center of the widespread Japanese embrace of European-style fascist policies. Although we often talk of 'technocracy,' this is the first account to analyze also the role of scientific and technological knowledge among the bureaucrats who developed authoritarian governance. Their innovations went beyond economic policy to shape a rather fantastic wartime mentality. This is the story of how Japanese experts convinced themselves that mobilization of the nation would by itself overcome resource constraints and defeat the mighty United States and its allies.

Richard Smethurst, UCIS Research Professor, University of Pittsburgh:

Janis Mimura has written a substantial and path-breaking piece of scholarship. She has gone into new territory both in research goals and source materials, and come up with fascinating ideas about, and a cogent analysis of, Japan's wartime fascist industrial planners. Mimura demonstrates that wartime Japan was not simply dominated by the military. Civilians and in particular modern bureaucrats with a new set of ideas rehearsed in Manchuria in the 1930s played a major role in the road to war, and they must share blame with the army and navy for the military and economic disaster.

Andrew Gordon, Harvard University, author of A Modern History of Japan :

Planning for Empire offers a powerful new understanding of the core ideas and policies of the wartime Japanese state. Janis Mimura argues that a wartime ideology of technocracy, of a fascist character, drew support from a wide range of elite actors and propelled Japan to war. She offers a finely drawn portrait of the ideas and the political strivings of reform bureaucrats who carried the torch of technocracy first in Manchuria and then back in Tokyo, making clear both the extent and the limits of their achievements. This book should draw wide attention, spark some controversy, and shift the terms of debate of a critical episode in the twentieth-century history of Japan and the world.