Crisis ideology and the articulation of fascism in interwar Japan: the 1938 Thought-War Symposium

In early 1938, the newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) held a closed-door Thought-War Symposium (Shisōsen kōshūkai) in Tokyo with over 100 bureaucrats, military officers, media executives and academics in attendance. While the ostensible purpose of the symposium was to discuss propaganda following Japan's full-scale invasion of China in July of 1937, the presentations had very little to do with the practical coordination of information. Rather, the symposium participants brought their specific areas of expertise to bear on elaborating the curious term ‘thought war’ (shisōsen), a term that had only recently been used with any regularity but which had become invested with critical urgency following the invasion of China.

In the conventional literature, the term ‘thought war’ is understood as marking a new modality of state propaganda as Japan moved towards a total war system. However, this reading overlooks the ideological investments in thought war discourse, as well as how ‘thought war’ inherited a multivalent sense of crisis that had crystallized around thought and culture earlier in the 1930s. In this article, I explore how the 1938 symposium reveals a combined sense of historical crisis and an urgent call for the total overhaul of Japanese state and society, a combination which, I argue, underwrote the development of fascism in Japan. I trace how three earlier discourses of crisis – the ‘Manchurian Problem’, the ‘thought problem’ and the ‘movement to clarify the kokutai’ – converged within thought war discourse, thus investing it with fascist urgency.     

Research Note: Hassan al-Turabi,Osama bin Laden,and Al Qaeda in Sudan

This research note explores the events and circumstances surrounding Osama bin Laden's stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1996. In particular, it discusses the role that the Sudanese politician, Hassan al-Turabi may have played in the development of bin Laden and al Qaeda. It draws particular attention to the role of the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress (PAIC) in the emergence of a distinctive form of Radical Islam and offers a preliminary discussion of the emergence of particular qualities of al Qaeda ideology.     

Displaying the Worldview of Japanese Fascism: The Tokyo Thought War Exhibition of 1938

ABSTRACT:

This essay explores an imperial state exhibition held in Tokyo in 1938 and explains how the exhibition displayed a fascist worldview of historical crisis and national regeneration that was taking shape in Japan in the late 1930s. The exhibition – entitled the Thought War Exhibition (Shisōsen tenrankai) – was curated by the Japanese state's newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) and held in Takashimaya Department Store in downtown Tokyo. Comprised of materials related to the Communist International, the Spanish Civil War, the national liberation struggle in China, and the communist and anticolonial movements inside the Japanese Empire, the Exhibition portrayed Japan's invasion of the Chinese mainland in 1937 as an extension of a global thought war against communism, requiring all imperial subjects to purify themselves of foreign influences and mobilize for national thought defense. While on the surface this Exhibition was an example of prewar state propaganda, it also expressed a fascist worldview that was coalescing in the Japanese state in the late 1930s. This essay investigates how this fascist worldview was exhibited in a sequence of displays, including dioramas, panoramas, illuminated maps, and display cases, and how these displays revealed constitutive contradictions that underwrote the formation of fascism in Japan.     

Thought suppression,memory, and interrogative suggestibility

Abstract

Ethnomethodologists in the field of offender-based research have recently criticised the earlier use of prison-based samples in research on residential burglary. They claim that interviewing burglars in their natural environment has produced findings of greater validity and reliability. By describing further analysis of data from earlier experimental research on burglars in prison, and drawing on findings from other work on residential burglary, this article sets out to highlight the striking similarity between findings from interview, experimental and ethnographic studies in this area. Far from discounting earlier experimental and interview studies, the recent ethnographic works have served to build on and complement earlier work. The value of using a variety of methods in offender-based research is then discussed.     

Correlation of microscopic and mitochondrial DNA hair comparisons

Expert opinions regarding the microscopic comparison of human hairs have been accepted routinely in courts for decades. However, with the advent of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing, an assessment can be made of the association by microscopic hair comparisons in casework between a questioned hair and reference hairs from an individual. While each method can be used separately, the two analytical methods can be complementary and together can provide additional information regarding source association. Human hairs submitted to the FBI Laboratory for analysis between 1996 and 2000 were reviewed. Of 170 hair examinations, there were 80 microscopic associations; of these, only nine were excluded by mtDNA. Importantly, 66 hairs that were considered either unsuitable for microscopic examinations or yielded inconclusive microscopic associations provided mtDNA results. Only six hairs did not provide sufficient mtDNA, and only three yielded inconclusive results. Consistency was observed in exculpatory results with the two procedures. This study demonstrates the utility of microscopic hair examinations and the strength of combining microscopic analysis with mtDNA sequencing.     

At-risk factors for the adolescent mother and her infant

This article describes some at-risk features for the adolescent mother and her infant. The inadequacies of the adolescent mother may be manifest in her inability to provide for herself or her infant, and in difficulties in relating to a mate in a suitable fashion since she is still dependent on and, to some extent, symbiotic with her own mother. Complications, such as the increased possibility of having crises in pregnancy, a premature birth, giving up the baby for adoption, malnutrition, decreased stimulation, and divided mothering, are detailed. Compared to infants of adult mothers, offspring of adolescent mothers have a greater risk later on of conduct disorders, absence of both parents, and placement in foster homes or institutions. The adolescent mother's dynamics seem related to oedipal conflicts, wishes to mother and be mothered, and a predominance of symbiotic or other preoedipal conflicts. Becoming a mother in adolescence may be based on efforts to separate from infantile objects, an attempt to make up for the loss thereof, or substitution and avoidance of separation-individuation conflicts; or it might be an accident to avoid regression. At-risk factors are listed for the psychiatrist and pediatrician to observe in the adolescent mother and her infant in order to be alert to the possibilities of increased complications.Past President of American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry. Received his M.D. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine in 1948. Trained in psychiatry and child psychiatry in New Orleans. Main interests include group and family therapy, separation and attachment processes, and early child development, particularly in prematures.