ABSTRACT
Fascism found the soil of Japan most congenial, and a brief examination of the composition and preparation of that soil will be helpful in understanding this Asian variant of fascism. The roots of modern Japanese militarism go back to the Tokugawa period, when the dominant class was the samurai, the soldier-administrator. The eyes of most Japanese leaders, the overriding problems confronting Japan during the first three-quarters of a century after the Meiji Restoration were problems of foreign policy. The whole experience of economic and political modernization was permeated with the sense of urgency, of the necessity to build up Japan so that it could meet serious threats to its independence and to the very survival of its culture. The "natural" result of the contact of traditional Japan with the problems of the modern world was not democracy, it was fascism. Indeed, Japan was fascist before the word was invented.
