The politics of cultural conservatism: The National Foundation Society in the struggle against foreign ideas in prewar Japan, 1918-193

This dissertation, examines the thought and behavior of the National Foundation Society (Kokuhonsha), founded by Baron Hiranuma Kiichiro. Although the Kokuhonsha's importance as a political organization is beyond any dispute, historians have hitherto failed to study it in any detail. By focusing on the Kokuhonsha, a quintessentially conservative organization, this dissertation attempts to redress this neglect.;Chapter 1 provides the historical setting for the formation of the Kokuhonsha by describing the situation in Japan around the end of WWI, when a reaction to social change and demands for liberalization brought about a proliferation of rightist societies, supported by leading government officials.;Chapter 2 focuses on one of these societies, Tokyo Imperial University's Kokoku Doshikai, a student precursor of the National Foundation Society.;Chapter 3 deals with the establishment of the Kokuhonsha and also examines a more secretive society linked to Hiranuma, the Shin'yukai, whose membership consisted of high ranking bureaucrats and military officers.;Chapter 4 describes the expansion of the Kokuhonsha into a nation-wide organization by absorbing the Shin'yukai and establishing a network of branches throughout Japan. The chapter furthermore explores the organization's ideology, its relation with Japan's extreme right wing, as well as its fascination with ideas and methods of Italian fascism.;Chapter 5 recounts the Kokuhonsha's numerous campaigns against the Kenseikai/Minseito party cabinets as a contributory factor to the final collapse of party cabinets in 1932.;Chapter 6 traces the Kokuhonsha's attacks on Prince Saionji Kinmochi and his liberal followers, which paved the way for Baron Hiranuma's appointment to the Presidency of the Privy Council (March 1936). The chapter also discusses the motives for the dissolution of the Kokuhonsha in June 1936.;The Kokuhonsha's ideological opposition played a major role in contesting the democratic movement throughout the 1920's, just as it promoted the authoritarianism, militarism, and aggression of the 1930's. The Kokuhonsha represented a coalition of prominent members of Japan's bureaucracy, armed services, and academia against liberal ideas and values, within which the distinction between the restorationist (fukko) and radical (kakushin) rightists is blurred. If the inadequacies of the political parties contributed to the reaction of the 1930's, it is no less evident that the conservative thought and behavior embodied in the Kokuhonsha had also consistently and effectively opposed the Minseito and Prince Saionji. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).