Contesting the ‘New Japan’: Rethinking Japanese Interwar Politics (1919-1941)

The histories of Japan in the interwar period must be framed not by the tragedy and destruction of the World War, which ended it but by the contemporary attitudes and larger picture which emerged from the Great War that began it. Let us continue to write about the voices of dissent and opposition to the changes of the Taishō era without assuming their inevitable and effortless triumph in the Shōwa. In lieu of privileging the narratives of people and policies that would lead Imperial Japan to war in the 1930s, let us shed light on the stories of those who constructed a “New Japan” in the peace of the 1920s.