ABSTRACT
The few years following Nakano’s breach with the Minseitō represent a transitional phase between his previous acceptance of party liberalism, along with the international status quo, and his later all-out advocacy of a mass-based ‘totalitarianism’ combined with military expansionism. His development represents a series of alert responses to the problems and opportunities presented by the period, during which the acute atmosphere of crisis engendered by the depression and the Manchurian Incident gave way to a phase of relative stability. Nakano meanwhile took a rather complex stand which on the one hand emphasised the continuing elements of crisis as an argument for national reorganisation, while on the other hand he denied that Japan faced any immediate external threat-this with a view to encouraging a confident diplomatic line. Thus, when the Saitō cabinet’s foreign minister Uchida made his well-known ‘scorched-earth’ speech defying the League of Nations, Nakano remarked in the Diet that such rhetoric was out of proportion to the Powers’ actual impotence to intervene.65
