ABSTRACT
By the twentieth century the Emperor had become a sacred, omnipotent figurehead. As emperor he was expected to define the uniqueness and superiority of the ‘Japanese race’ – to this end he was deified. The result was the Emperor Cult. This essay is devoted to a discussion of the ideological indoctrination into a Japanese Fascist militaristic manhood which sacrificed itself willingly for the Emperor, to the successful introduction of associated military training into the education system from the pre-Fascist period of the mid-1920s onwards and to an analysis of the recruitment and training of the Youth Volunteer Army for Pioneering Manchuria in the latter half of the 1930s – a case-study of Fascist socialization.
