Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Enseignement sur la Shoah à l'Est

H-NET BOOK REVIEWPublished by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (June 2007)
Bernd Martin. _Japan and Germany in the Modern World_. Oxford:Berghahn Books, 1995. xvi + 314 pp. $80.00 (paper), ISBN 1-57181-858-8.
Reviewed for H-German by Anni Baker, Department of History, Wheaton College
Japan and Germany: "Fatal Affinities"
The essays in this volume examine relations between Germany and Japanfrom the 1860s to the end of the Second World War, a subject that,according to the blurb on the back cover, "has been largely neglectedin Western scholarship." It does seem true that scholars, by andlarge, have not investigated late-nineteenth-century German-Japaneseconnections in a systematic way, but in the popular historicalimagination, the two nations were closely linked during the 1930s and1940s in a fascist "axis of evil."
Bernd Martin's collection contradicts this impression in severalways. First, he shows that the influence of Germany on Japan wasquite extensive in the late nineteenth century. Second, he arguesthat, despite superficial similarities in each nation'stwentieth-century "fascist" phase, the aggressive nationalism ofJapan and the racialist expansion of National Socialist Germanydeveloped quite differently. As Martin tells it, the Japanesefollowed German models during the nineteenth-century modernizationperiod, while early-twentieth-century political developments wereinternally driven rather than copied from Europe. Third, Martindemonstrates that the wartime alliance was in fact reluctant andhalf-hearted on both sides. In sum, the relationship between Germanyand Japan, before 1945, is complicated and, in many ways, surprising.
Beginning in the 1860s, Japan pursued a policy of deliberatewesternization. The general contours of this story are well-known,but Japan's careful shopping for models from the European nations maybe less familiar to western historians. Martin shows that Japaneseleaders initially looked to Britain, France, and the United States,but found Prussian authoritarian traditions more congenial thanEnlightenment republicanism or free-market capitalism. By the 1880s,Wilhelmine Germany was the most important European influence inJapan, and shaped its administrative, legal, and educationalstructures. Martin concludes that the "institutional and ideologicalfoundation of the modern Japanese state and society on authoritarianstructures would not have been possible without German influence andsupport" and that "Meiji Japan in 1889 firmly rested upon thecornerstone laid by the Germans" (p. 43).
The era of close Japanese-German ties did not last and around theturn of the century, both states concluded alliances that drove themapart. By the early 1920s, however, the two nations, withauthoritarian social and political structures still in place, wereadopting chauvinistic nationalism as a unifying device. Both nationshad weak, unpopular parliamentary systems and in the 1930s,ideologies of military aggression served to divert attention fromeconomic and political woes. The contours of those woes were,however, different. Japan was still an overwhelmingly agrarian nationwith a history of social tension between the peasants and the rulingoligarchy, while Germany was an industrialized nation with an urbanpopulation and considerably diverse political opinion. Martin pointsout that although both countries entered a fascist phase, "fascism"was different enough in each that it is inaccurate to use the sameterm for both systems. One of Martin's more intriguing observationsis that the Nazis used extensive terror to maintain control and crushdissent precisely because there were so many dissenting ideas andvoices in German society. Japan, by contrast, with its culture ofgroup orientation, did not need to use terror to control thepopulation. The government "re-educated" political dissenters andthrough social and cultural pressure they almost always changed their ways.
The wartime alliance between Germany and Japan was a long time incoming. The Japanese objected to Nazi racism, while Hitler, being theracist that he was, refused to rely on the help of "yellow people" tofight the Soviet Union. On the eve of the German invasion of theSoviet Union, Hitler agreed to the Axis alliance in the hope ofisolating the United States and keeping it confined to its ownhemisphere. In this way, Martin argues, the two theaters of theSecond World War must be seen, not as independent from one another,but closely intertwined.
This book is a collection of essays published between 1977 and 1994.The author decided to publish his essays, rather than write a newmonograph incorporating his accumulated knowledge. A monographprobably would have smoothed over some of the choppiness of theessays. A certain amount of repetition, some overly elementaryintroductions (of Adolf Hitler, for example), and some confusion ofmore advanced material directed at audiences of specific journalscould have been corrected in a monograph. On the other hand, theessays do manage to present a coherent and compelling story, from apoint of view all too often ignored.


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