Yabe Teiji and the Transwar Origins of Japanese Conservatism

After 1945, the dismemberment of the prewar Japanese state and the purges enacted by the American Occupation released a great number of elites from official positions. This condition enabled unofficial experts and intellectuals, who had served the prewar regime as minor functionaries, to play an enhanced role as information brokers, advisors, and go-betweens to the Japanese ruling classes at a crucial moment of their rebuilding. This presentation focuses on Yabe Teiji(1902-1967), a political scientist and ex-member of the Shōwa Kenkyūkai, the research association that assisted with the formulation of a New Order in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It shows how after 1945 Yabe, in collaboration with other transwar rightists, participated in an array of policy-driven issues, setting up think tanks, journals, and networks through which herebuilt his careers and recast ideas. He worked for the Constitutional Revision Research Association, the Ministry of Education, and various police forces, appointments for which he travelled to Southeast Asia, the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Understanding the degree to which right-wing experts such as Yabeinfluenced the political culture of the postwar establishment will generate new knowledge about the principles, goals, and tactics that have sustained Japanese conservatism from the 1950s up to the present. It also sheds light on the transnational nature of postwar conservative ideology in Japan as elsewhere.