A Visual Grammar of Fascism: Gender, Race, and Biopower in Japanese Overseas Propaganda

Andrea Germer

Jump to Content

Chapter 7 A Visual Grammar of Fascism: Gender, Race, and Biopower in Japanese Overseas Propaganda

In: Gendering Fascism

Author:

Andrea Germer

Andrea Germer
Search for other papers by Andrea Germer in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed

Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 161–190

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004703766_009

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

€42.00€35.00 excl. VAT

Add to Cart

Redeem Access Token

This chapter firstly discusses concepts of fascism for Japan and presents the main contesting scholarly positions regarding whether the term fascism was applicable to Japan at all. Building on the insights of recent cultural conceptualisations of fascism, the chapterthen provides a close visual reading of the overseas propaganda magazine NIPPON (1934–1944), probing its gendered representations, racialised taxonomies, and biopolitical imaginations. What remains after censorship is media propaganda. In NIPPON’s propaganda and its gendered ways of visually and textually subsuming bodies under the modern hygiene regime of the emperor system, a ‘visual grammar’ is discernible that functions to ‘write’ a multifaceted and sometimes contradictory fascist ‘script’. The term visual grammar impliesthatgendered visuals are not random but are part of an ordering system that makes them work and that can be outlined to a fair degree of hermeneutical complexity. Finally, I argue that both concepts of gender and fascism are coreless and unstable, and yet, in their co-constituting qualities serve to stabilise and naturalise each other through repetitive and variable representations, forming one prerequisite for the politics of totalitarian control.

Citation Info

Save
Cite
Email this content

Share link with colleague or librarian

You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:
Email this content
or copy the link directly:

https://brill.edhh.ma/abstract/book/9789004703766/BP000017.xml
The link was not copied. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.

Link copied successfully

Collapse
Expand

Gendering Fascism

Individual Actors, Concepts, and Transnational Connections

Series: Brill's Specials in Modern History, Volume: 9

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004703766

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 21 Feb 2025

Subjects

Front Matter

Back Matter

ProCite

RefWorks

Reference Manager

BibTeX

Zotero

EndNote

Metrics

	All Time	Past 365 days	Past 30 Days
Abstract Views	806	591	105
Full Text Views	13	10	0
PDF Views & Downloads	15	14	0

African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

Subjects

Authors

Open Access

Product Information

Company

Contact

Chapter 7 A Visual Grammar of Fascism: Gender, Race, and Biopower in Japanese Overseas Propaganda

Citation Info

Share link with colleague or librarian

Gendering Fascism

Individual Actors, Concepts, and Transnational Connections

Table of Contents

References

Metrics

Metrics