Fascist Samurais: the Japanese race in the Italian imaginary during the Second World War and beyond

Between 1938 and 1943, Fascist intellectuals debated the problem of how to create a racial policy that would encompass the Japanese within the Aryan doctrine. This article demonstrates how internal divisions in the Fascist party over racial issues generated alternative versions of pro-Japanese propaganda, which influenced the racial thinking of the Italian far-right even long after the Second World War. I show how Italian racial theories developed to underpin the alliance with Japan were transnational in scope, as they involved both German and Italian scholars in a common effort to lobby state racial policies. Specifically, I consider George Montandon and Julius Evola as two transnational actors engaged in building a case for the inclusion of the Japanese in the family of Aryan races, speaking either from a ‘biological’ or ‘spiritual’ perspective. While by the end of the Second World War the ‘biological’ thesis for the inclusion of the Japanese race had evaporated, the ‘spiritual’ thesis would continue to influence a generation of Italian far-right militants, especially during the ‘Years of Lead’. To make sense of this legacy, I suggest that the foundational myth of Italian Fascism, based on the spiritual heritage of the multiethnic Roman empire, responded to the neofascist quest for transnational affiliations against Western materialism.