ABSTRACT
It is quite common, for both Japanese and Western historians, to view Japan during the years 1940–45 as a fascist, militarist and totalitarian state. The reasons for such an approach are easy to discern. By the late 1930s, Japan's pre-war democracy, which had reached its peak in the previous decade, had all but disappeared. Japan joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in a military pact, attacked the US and Britain in East Asia and waged a long and bloody war against them.
