The Japanese Ideology: A Marxist Critique of Liberalism and Fascism

A major Marxist thinker and critic in 1930s Japan, Tosaka Jun was among the world's most incisive--yet underrecognized--theorists of capitalism, fascism, and ideology during the years before World War II. The Japanese Ideology is his masterpiece, first published in 1935, as Japan and the world plummeted into an age of reaction. Tosaka offers a ruthless philosophical critique of contemporary ideology that exposes liberalism's deep complicity with fascism. The Japanese Ideology provides a materialist analysis of the reactionary ideology then overtaking Japan, with profound significance for anywhere fascism has taken root. Modeled after Marx and Engels's The German Ideology, it critiques idealism as the common ground for liberalism and fascism, against which only historical materialism can suffice. Tosaka demonstrates how liberal and fascist ideas at once justified and concealed Japan's colonization of East Asia, and he investigates the many traces of fascism in Japanese thought and society. The Japanese Ideology makes an important intervention in Marxist theory by criticizing reliance on the East/West binary and the notion of the "Asiatic mode of production." Robert Stolz's translation introduces Anglophone readers to a classic of twentieth-century Marxist thought by an unsung peer of Gramsci and Benjamin with striking relevance today.

About the Author :
Tosaka Jun (1900-45) was a Marxist philosopher of science and cultural critic. He was cofounder and editor of the journal Materialism Studies. Arrested several times in the 1930s, he died in prison on August 9, 1945. Robert Stolz is associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is coeditor of Tosaka Jun: A Critical Reader (2014) and author of Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870-1950 (2014).

Review :
Robert Stolz deserves much praise for providing a complete English translation of The Japanese Ideology, replete with extensive footnotes that clarify Tosaka's thought, as well as a Translator's Introduction and Afterword, which make a compelling case for why it is imperative for us to read Tosaka today.-- "Journal of Development Studies" Robert Stolz's exceptional translation and brilliant editorial framing of the legendary Tosaka Jun's most famous text is an event for thought and criticism, for contemporary politics, and for the history of global critical theory. Insofar as fascism--and especially fascism's complementary relationship to liberalism--remains a question for our time, Tosaka's formulations retain a contemporary and trenchant critical force. His acerbic, razor-sharp insights provide a remarkable theoretical and political grasp of how the hypocrisy, spinelessness, and compliance of the dominant order paved the way for fascist solutions to the intractable problems of global modernity. Tosaka's original text was among the most devastating and incisive critiques of the social drift of Japan into the fascist direction, aided by the 'neutrality' of liberalism's fantasies of the market and culturalist mystifications; Stolz's translation resurrects and places in our hands a decisive weapon for all who would seek to understand the political dynamics of our moment. An extraordinary achievement.--Gavin Walker, Cornell University As someone who believes that translated books are key building blocks to understanding the world around us, I applaud Stolz for translating Tosaka's book...The translation of The Japanese Ideology, a work by a major figure in modern Japan's intellectual history, adds to the world's understanding of Japan in that era.-- "Asian Review of Books" In a moment of danger, Robert Stolz has performed a true act of historical materialist service by recovering this lost classic of antifascist theory. With a conceptual rigor largely unmatched by his European contemporaries, Tosaka Jun provides a philosophical cartography of fascism that illuminates both its disavowed affinities with liberalism and its global scope as a politics of capitalist crisis whose archaic appearances are a product of imperialism's all-too-modern contradictions. Reckoning with The Japanese Ideology will be essential for all those persuaded that deprovincializing the debate on fascism is an urgent intellectual and political task.--Alberto Toscano, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University Permanently silenced by Japan's pre-war state, the philosopher Tosaka Jun's The Japanese Ideology remains the most powerful critique of Japan's descent into fascist oppression. A homage to Marx and Engels, it perceptively illuminated how Japan's embrace of fascism evolved from its own modern history linked to the 1930s world conjuncture. Robert Stolz's masterfully translucent translation of The Japanese Ideology constitutes an event in itself that speaks directly to our collectively shared present.--Harry Harootunian, University of Chicago