Forget Weimar, it’s Japan’s Taisho period we need to talk about

People always talk knowingly about Weimar, a period of extremes: artistic and social-sexual decadence, democratic liberalism and the radicalisation of the left and the right, before Germany’s descent into Hitlerian hell. The city as a symbol, close to the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, is back in the news, well, at least the op-ed pages of the Western press.That’s rarely a good sign. “The new crisis [in Germany] seems uncomfortably familiar because, in some respects, it resembles the one that engulfed the Weimar Republic a century ago,” Katja Hoyer, author of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, wrote in Bloomberg.I leave it to erudite commentators to fret about the return of Weimar as a political metaphor and its implications for the future of Germany and Europe.Those of us from Asia ought to reflect more on something similar but usually ignored: the Taisho period in Japan. This liberal but unstable period partially coincided with Weimar and was essentially the Japanese version of it. And, of course, it was followed by the Early Showa period, which was characterised by fanatical militarism that eventually turned most of Asia into a living hell.Today, after a long period of pacifism, hardline Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her right-wing cabinet openly embrace rearmament and remilitarisation. Going nuclear could again be on the political agenda. All this risks a regional arms race, all cheered on by the United States and the European Union.But it looks eerily like a repeat of the Taisho period before all hell broke loose. No wonder Japan’s neighbours are unnerved.A view of Tokyo Station, circa 1920. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesThe Taisho emperor inherited the social, political and technological advances from the Meiji reforms and Westernisation process, but also the powerful oligarchs who got rich during the Meiji period. During his reign, universal male suffrage was established for men over 25, and labour rights and unionisation expanded quickly, that is, until the military crackdown on socialists and unions in the 1930s. Japanese feminism emerged from this period, and the Japanese Communist Party, which is still active today, was established.But class warfare intensified, along with the rise of the extreme left and right. Like Weimar Germany, Taisho Japan was destabilised by political violence, murders, riots and assassinations. In 1921, the country’s prime minister, Takaishi Hara, was assassinated. Shinzo Abe’s murder a century later was the latest in a long history of political violence.Even the beating to death of famous anarchist Sakae Osugi and his lover, the radical feminist Noe Ito, by military police in Tokyo – part of a looming crackdown on dissent – mirrored the murders of Marxist revolutionaries Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin by the Freikorps, a government-controlled right-wing paramilitary group.But also like Weimar, Taisho was a period of Westernised sexual liberation and artistic flowering, summarised by the Japanese phrase ero guro nansensu – erotic, grotesque nonsense. It wasn’t just the emergence of modern Japanese art forms; Bauhaus, coming out of post-war Germany, made its way into Taisho Japan.Japan Ground Self-Defence Force soldiers seen in front of a Type 88 surface-to-ship missile launcher, during the annual Balikatan joint military exercises between the US and the Philippines, at Culili Point Sand Dunes, Paoay, Ilocos Norte province, in the Philippines, on May 6. Photo: ReutersDemocratic liberalism, licentiousness, decadence and political radicalisation – these were exciting and dangerous in Berlin and Tokyo. But in a tragic historical twist, they all ended up in their opposites, spelling catastrophe not only for their countries, but for the world.Further ReadingToday, Western leaders and pundits are extracting a sensationalist lesson from Weimar, just as they do even with “Munich” as a political metaphor. And they duly ignore Taisho. That is all part and parcel of the West’s post-war distortion and selective memory about Germany and Japan.That’s even more obvious now with the West’s warmongering in Ukraine and its containment strategy against China by remilitarising Japan.The collapse of “Weimar” is a useful liberal propaganda tool against the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the hard-left Left Party. Interestingly, both parties advocate a quick end to the war in Ukraine. The mainstream coalition parties, including the traditionally anti-war Greens, have been the most enthusiastic about arming Ukraine, defeating Russia and expanding Nato.06:06Place of controversy: Japan’s Yasukuni ShrineIn Japan, it’s the opposite. As the mainstream ruling Liberal Democratic Party becomes increasingly militant under Takaichi, alarming even the party’s old guard, the West doesn’t just approve but actively encourages Japan’s erosion of its post-war pacifist constitution and return to great power status in Asia.That’s why it’s convenient to forget the tragedy of the Taisho period, lest it remind everyone of Japan’s fleeting experiment with liberal democracy before its slide into militarism. But the people of Asia remember the horrors.