We are pleased to publish the below article, which has been contributed by Alexis Stanimiroudis, an anti-imperialist scholar based in Germany, and which analyses the political standpoint of Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and its ideological roots, thereby uncovering the source of her hardline anti-China stance, which has plunged Sino-Japanese relations into a dangerous crisis, less than a month into her premiership.
Alexis draws on the work of Jun Tosaka (1900-1945), a creative Japanese Marxist theorist whose major work, The Japanese Ideology argues that both liberalism and fascism rest on the same idealistic foundation: they prioritise abstract notions of culture, nation, and spirit over the material realities of class struggle and production.
The Japanese Ideology was published in a new English translation by Robert Stolz by Columbia University Press in 2024. According to the publishers:
“Tosaka Jun was among the world’s most incisive – yet underrecognised – theorists of capitalism, fascism, and ideology during the years before World War II. The Japanese Ideology is his masterpiece, first published in 1935, as Japan and the world plummeted into an age of reaction. Tosaka offers a ruthless philosophical critique of contemporary ideology that exposes liberalism’s deep complicity with fascism.
“The Japanese Ideology provides a materialist analysis of the reactionary ideology then overtaking Japan, with profound significance for anywhere fascism has taken root. Modeled after Marx and Engels’s The German Ideology, it critiques idealism as the common ground for liberalism and fascism, against which only historical materialism can suffice. Tosaka demonstrates how liberal and fascist ideas at once justified and concealed Japan’s colonisation of East Asia, and he investigates the many traces of fascism in Japanese thought and society. The Japanese Ideology makes an important intervention in Marxist theory by criticising reliance on the East/West binary and the notion of the ‘Asiatic mode of production.’ Robert Stolz’s translation introduces Anglophone readers to a classic of twentieth-century Marxist thought by an unsung peer of [Antonio] Gramsci… with striking relevance today.”
Contrary to the revival of Japanese militarism, Alexis insists that: “Remembering the immense sacrifices of the Chinese people is essential – not as a gesture of nostalgia, but as a reaffirmation of the historical truth that socialism, not imperialism, was and remains the decisive force against fascism and war.”
The election of Sanae Takaichi as Japan’s new prime minister on October 21, 2025, marks a decisive shift to the right in the country’s political landscape. At 64, Takaichi represents the nationalist-conservative wing of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and is a long-time protégé of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Her agenda continues Abe’s model of Abenomics – a form of state capitalism based on massive public spending and export-led growth – but also extends his project of remilitarisation and ideological realignment.
Takaichi presents herself as a modern, “feminist” leader, yet her programme represents a return to Japan’s pre-war imperial mindset. Her vision of making Japan “strong and independent again” echoes the chauvinistic nationalism of the early twentieth century. Symbolic of this is her stance toward the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals.
Although she abstained from a personal visit in 2025, she made a financial offering instead – an act of calculated diplomacy aimed at appeasing her nationalist base. Japan’s continued refusal to fully acknowledge or apologise for its wartime atrocities, particularly against the Chinese people, remains a central obstacle to genuine reconciliation in East Asia.
Behind Takaichi’s gestures lies the revival of an old imperialist narrative: Japan as a “victim” surrounded by hostile powers. The rhetoric of “defending against China and North Korea [DPRK],” much like Germany’s militarisation under the pretext of fearing Russia, reproduces Cold War logic – mobilising public opinion around the illusion of a perpetual external threat.
When China commemorated the 80th anniversary of victory over Japanese fascism on September 3, 2025, with a major military parade in Beijing, Western media derided it as “sabre-rattling.” Yet historical evidence tells a different story. Between 1931 and 1945, China endured 35 million casualties, including over three million soldiers. Chinese resistance tied down 60 percent of Japan’s land forces, preventing an assault on the Soviet Union – an essential contribution to global victory over fascism.
Despite this, China received a mere US$8.6 per capita in US Lend-Lease aid during the war, while white settler states like Australia received over US$470 per capita. This stark inequality exposes the racial and imperial hierarchy embedded within the so-called “Allied victory.”
In total, over 60 percent of the war’s global casualties were borne by the Soviet Union and China, the former a socialist state and the latter then one where the Communist Party played the decisive role in the nationwide resistance, not least by initiating, guiding and sustaining the national united front. The United States and Britain, by contrast, accounted for barely one percent of the deaths. Western narratives that centre their own role in the defeat of fascism serve to obscure the decisive sacrifices of socialist-led forces.
Imperial aggression did not end in 1945. The Korean War (1950–1953) and then the Vietnam War continued the slaughter, claiming millions of lives in Asia. The same powers that claimed to have “defeated fascism” soon unleashed new wars under the banner of anti-communism.
Takaichi’s foreign policy revives this logic. Her calls for increased military spending, tighter cooperation with the United States, and participation in the Quad alliance (Japan, the US, Australia, and India) position Japan as a forward base for the Western campaign to contain China.
Domestically, Takaichi fuses militarism with authoritarian social policy. She has created a new Ministry for Migration and Population Policy, which focuses on control and deportation rather than integration. Migration is framed as a threat to Japan’s “social harmony” and “national body” – language reminiscent of fascist ideology.
Under slogans such as “Japan First” and appeals to “cultural purity,” Takaichi promotes a patriarchal nationalism that casts diversity as weakness. Her right-wing “feminism” is thus not emancipatory but instrumental – a façade through which capitalist and nationalist structures reproduce themselves. In this sense, she mirrors similar trends in Western liberalism, where the language of inclusion is used to legitimise exclusionary, imperialist projects.
The Japanese Marxist philosopher Tosaka Jun, writing in 1935 in The Japanese Ideology, offered a powerful analysis of the intellectual roots of fascism. Tosaka argued that both liberalism and fascism rest on the same idealistic foundation: they prioritise abstract notions of culture, nation, and spirit over the material realities of class struggle and production.
For Tosaka, “Japanism” – the ideology of cultural exceptionalism and mystical nationalism -was not truly traditional but a modern response to capitalist crisis. It diverted attention from the contradictions of class society toward myths of unity, family, and destiny. In this framework, fascism is not an aberration but a specific response of capitalism in crisis, using ideology to mask exploitation and imperial aggression.
This analysis remains highly relevant today. Contemporary liberalism, no less than conservatism, shields the capitalist order from scrutiny. Both defend imperialism in the name of “democracy” or “freedom,” and both seek to suppress the rise of a multipolar world in which socialist and anti-imperialist movements gain strength.
Sanae Takaichi’s premiership symbolises a dangerous convergence of neoliberalism, nationalism, and militarism. Her so-called feminism is merely the soft face of an imperial project directed against China and the broader anti-imperialist movement in Asia.
Tosaka Jun’s Marxist critique reminds us that ideology cannot be separated from material conditions. The resurgence of militarism in Japan and across the “collective West” is a symptom of capitalism’s deepening crisis.
By contrast, China’s commemoration of its anti-fascist legacy represents a living commitment to peace and sovereignty. Remembering the immense sacrifices of the Chinese people is essential – not as a gesture of nostalgia, but as a reaffirmation of the historical truth that socialism, not imperialism, was and remains the decisive force against fascism and war.
China stands today as a beacon of that struggle: for multipolarity, for dignity, and for a world beyond exploitation and imperialist violence.
Perhaps not too much of a coincidence, but I just read another response to poor Ms Takaichi’s exuberant foolishness. Timofey Bordachev: “China Reminds that Power Belongs to the Victors” makes the argument that rising Japanese militarism not only violates the spirit of the UN Charter but the letter as well. In the Charter, Japan and Germany are specifically enjoined to refrain from any kind of military aggression, and making war on China to defend Taiwan is just that.
https://karlof1.substack.com/p/timofey-bordachev-china-reminds-that