The Spectacle of Global Fascism - The Italian Blackshirt Mission To Japan's Asian Empire

Modern Asian Studies 51, 6 (2017) pp. 1999–2034.

C Cambridge University Press 2018
doi:10.1017/S0026749X17000026
FORUM ARTICLE
The Spectacle of Global Fascism: The Italian
Blackshirt mission to Japan’s Asian empire∗
DANIEL HEDINGER
Historisches Seminar der LMU, München, Germany

Email: hedinger.daniel@googlemail.com
Abstract
In the spring of 1938 a mission of the Italian Fascist Party journeyed to the
Japanese empire, visiting China, Korea, Manchukuo, and Japan itself. Those
were happy days for the Axis and, as such, characterized by a flood of shuttle
visits and requests for cooperation between Italy, Japan, and Germany. As we
explore the choreography of the visit and accompany the Italian Blackshirts on
their two-month-long trip, two processes become clear. On the one hand, the
presence of the Blackshirts in Japan helped place the nation’s regional war with
China in the broader context of worldwide conflicts. On the other hand, this trip
assisted in firmly placing the new Axis alliance in the context of a pan-Asianist
empire under Japanese control. This article suggests that both processes were
linked and mutually enhancing of one another. At the same time they were part
of a much more far-reaching phenomenon, namely the globalization of the Axis
alliance. This, I will argue, was acted out on the stages provided by what is best
described as the ‘spectacle of global fascism’. Of course, this spectacle proved to
have its tensions and oddities. But as the focus on the performative aspects of the
Italian-Japanese encounters shows, this novel form of fascist diplomacy was a way
of handling contradictions within the alliance. At the same time, the spectacle
served to strengthen it. In other words, seen through the lens of the Blackshirts’
mission, the Axis appears significantly stronger, diverse, and also more global
than conventional diplomatic history has perceived it to be.
∗
My research for this article was generously supported by the Center for Advanced
Studies, LMU, Munich. For reading, commenting on, and correcting earlier versions
of this article, I would like to thank especially Mark Frost, Daniel Schumacher and
the two anonymous reviewers of Modern Asian Studies.
1999
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2000 DANIEL HEDINGER
Introduction
On a sunny day in the spring of 1938, a unit of Italian marines marched

through Zhengyangmen, the famous gate of Beijing’s historic city wall.
However, the march did not take place in China, but on Japanese soil,
in the vicinity of Osaka, and the gate the Italians passed through was a
mere replica. Behind the gate lay not the Forbidden City but a baseball
stadium, featuring a gigantic war panorama. Ahead, the marines did
not see Peking’s maze of narrow streets, but the ‘Gate of the Nanking
Government’, half-destroyed as a symbol of the fallen and raped city.
In truth, the Italians did not come as warriors or conquerors, but as
mere visitors to a carefully staged exhibition. Nonetheless, the image
of these Italian marines attending the ‘Exhibition on Holy War and
the China Incident’ was all over the Japanese news (see Figure 1).
Such a spectacle was the result of an alliance that was formed
in November 1937 through Italy’s accession to the German-
Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact. In an era marked by the heightened
aestheticization of politics in a Benjaminian sense,1 the appearance
of Italian marines in Osaka was but one episode among many. The
first half of 1938, in particular, was inundated with a flood of highly
visible shuttle visits and requests for cooperation between Italy, Japan,
and Germany. During these ‘heydays of the Axis’,2 the new alliance
was transnationally celebrated. In Europe, Hitler’s visit to Rome in
May 1938 was a highlight, yet the phenomenon also manifested itself
beyond Europe. The march of the Italian marines through Japan’s
recreated Zhengyangmen took place within the context of a larger
spectacle, the ‘Missione del Partito Nazionale Fascista (National
Fascist Party, PNF)’, upon which this article will focus.3
As we accompany the PNF’s mission on its two-month-long trip
through East Asia, two processes become clear. On the one hand,
the presence of the Italian Blackshirts in Japan helped place the
nation’s regional war with China within the broader context of
worldwide conflicts. On the other hand, this trip palpably assisted in
1
For Walter Benjamin, the aestheticization of politics was a key feature of every
fascist regime. See W. Benjamin, ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit’, in Gesammelte Schriften I, 2 (Werkausgabe Band 2), W. Benjamin
(ed.), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1991 (1936), pp. 431–469, here pp. 467–469.
2
E. Weizsäcker, Erinnerungen, Paul List Verlag, München, 1950, p. 160.
3
This mission has been neglected by the literature, with one notable exception:
R. Hofmann, The fascist effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, 2015, pp. 113–115.
THE SPECTACLE OF GLOBAL FASCISM 2001
Figure 1. (Colour online) Italian marines visiting the ‘Exhibition on Holy War and
the China Incident’.
Source: Asahi Shinbunsha (ed.), Shina jihen seisen hakurankai gahō (
), Tokyo, 1938, front. Courtesy of Nomura Co., Ltd.
the incorporation of the new Axis alliance into an East Asian context,
as the Italian visit was drawn on to support Japanese mobilization
efforts on the home front. In the remainder of this article, we will
see the degree to which these two processes were linked and mutually
enhancing of one another. This article will also suggest that both
developments were part of a much more far-reaching phenomenon,

namely the globalization of the Axis alliance.4 This process, it will
be argued, was acted out on the stages provided by what is best
described as the spectacle of global fascism.5 The following will not
only describe the choreography of the spectacle but also focus on
international and popular reactions to the visit of the Italian fascists in
spring 1938.
The year 1938 was one that enables us to better understand the
global interrelations which marked the path towards the Second World
War. In Europe, 1938 was—with the exception of Spain—the last
year of peace; in Asia it was the first full year of war. Nonetheless, in
spite of this divergence of experience, it was possible for Japan, Italy,
and Germany to jubilantly celebrate 1938 as a year of newly minted
friendships. A series of important decisions made over the course of the
year mapped out the future path onto which Japan, Italy, and Germany
were now embarking. Early in the year in Japan, the government of
Konoe Fumimaro decided to fight the war in China until complete
victory was achieved.6 In Italy, the fascist regime took a radical turn
by introducing race laws. In Germany, Hitler finally departed from
any form of moderate foreign policy, a turning point that occurred
in the spring of 1938,7 right at the moment when the PNF mission
arrived in Japan. From this point onwards, all signs pointed towards
global expansion. As such, the Axis constellation, as represented by
the fascist spectacles of 1938, pre-empted the alliance system of the
Second World War. But in the spring of 1938, a new world war was still
a thing of the future. Thus, in retrospect these days were the happy
days of the Axis, with shared moments full of successes.
4
Concerning the globalization of the Axis in 1937, see also K. Ishida, ‘The German-
Japanese-Italian Axis as seen from fascist Italy’, in Japan and Germany: two latecomers to
the world stage, 1890–1945. Volume II, N. Tajima, A. Kudo and E. Pauer (eds), Global
Oriental, Folkestone, 2009, pp. 262–301, here especially p. 266.
5
For a more detailed discussion of why and how Japan should be considered part of
a global history of fascism in the interwar years, see D. Hedinger, ‘Universal fascism
and its global legacy: Italy’s and Japan’s entangled history in the early 1930s’. Fascism,
vol. 2, no. 2, 2013, pp. 141–160.
6
The notorious aite to sezu declaration, which ended all negotiations with the
Guomindang, was issued on 16 January 1938. See P. Mauch, ‘Asia-Pacific: The failure
of diplomacy, 1931–1941’, in The Cambridge history of the Second World War. Volume II,
R. J. B. Bosworth and J. A. Maiolo (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2015, pp. 253–275, here p. 267.
7
I. Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis, Allen Lane, London, 2000, p. 92.
As part of a comprehensive series of global fascist spectacles, the
Blackshirt mission of 1938 illuminates two things: the ideological
nature of Axis diplomacy at a global level, and the local adoption and
use of this alliance in the mobilization of the home front, especially in
Japan. In exploring these themes, this article joins together strands
of research that have individually proven highly productive in recent
years yet remained thoroughly distinct from one another, very much
rooted in national historical narratives.
The first of these is the study of fascist spectacle, a term we
borrow from research on Italian fascism. Starting with Emilio Gentile’s
concept of fascism as a political religion, and ultimately taking up
Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on the aestheticization of politics, the
study of Italian fascism over the last two decades has undergone its
own cultural turn, as more scholars focus on the language, liturgy,
art, architecture, and ritual it produced rather than economic and
overtly political issues.8 Scholars in this field have shown how the
symbolic presentations of the Italian nation’s acclaimed rebirth were
rooted in the violent struggles immediately following the First World
War, and how such presentations were institutionalized during the
two decades of fascist rule.9 However, how successful the regime in
Italy was in getting the masses to go along with its spectacles remains
a contentious issue, as the totalitarianization of Italian society as a
whole remains debatable. The year 1938 may be seen as a high-water
mark in this so-called ‘totalitarian thrust’ because of Hitler’s visit to
Rome and the passing of new race laws in Italy. However, critics of
the ‘culturalist school’ have argued that by 1938 fascism in Italy had
‘exhausted its energies’ and diminished to the level of superficialities
and platitudes.10 They interpret the enhanced political pageantry of
this year as more of a sign of crisis for the regime and its ideology.
As fruitful as these discussions might be, they nevertheless focus on
developments within Italy. As this article suggests, the dynamics of
8
E. Gentile, ‘Fascism as political religion’. Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 25, no.
2/3, 1990, pp. 229–251. See also S. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist spectacle: The aesthetics of
power in Mussolini’s Italy, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997, and R. Griffin,
‘The primacy of culture: The current growth (or manufacture) of consensus within
fascist studies’. Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 37, no. 1, 2002, pp. 21–43.
9
See for example D. Roberts, ‘Myth, style, substance and the totalitarian dynamic
in Fascist Italy’. Contemporary European History, vol. 16, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1–36.
10
P. Corner, ‘Fascist Italy in the 1930s: Popular opinion in the provinces’, in
Popular opinion in totalitarian regimes. Fascism, Nazism, Communism, P. Corner (ed.), Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2009, pp. 122–146, here p. 135.
the fascist spectacle need to rather be discussed from a transnational

perspective.
This brings us to a second strand of research this article connects
to: home front mobilization and the total war phenomenon in early
Shōwa-Japan (1926–1945), a topic which produced an extensive range
of studies, constituting a whole strand of historical research in its
own right.11 However, this literature also strongly focuses on the
domestic context.12 In contrast, it is one of this article’s contentions
that bringing together discussion of both fascist spectacle and home
front mobilization as transnational phenomena of the late 1930s can
be mutually beneficial for both areas of research.13
The third strand of research this article seeks to interweave with
the others focuses on the history and significance of the Tokyo–
11
See A. Kurasawa et al. (eds), Nichijō seikatsu no naka no sōryokusen (
), Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 2006; A. Kurasawa et al. (ed.), Dōin, teikō, yokusan
( · · ), Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 2006. The focus of earlier research on
mobilization and the home front was more on state control, administration, military,
and economic mobilization and less on interaction, participation, daily life or popular
opinion. See G. M. Berger, ‘Politics and mobilization in Japan, 1931–1945’, in The
Cambridge history of Japan. Volume 6, The twentieth century, P. Duus (ed.), Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 97–153. G. J. Kasza, The conscription society:
administered mass organizations, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995; R. Rice,
‘Economic mobilization in wartime Japan: Business, bureaucracy, and military in
conflict’. Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 4, 1979, pp. 689–706; M. A. Barnhart,
Japan prepares for total war: The search for economic security, 1919–1941, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, 1987. For total war and Japan, see Y. Yamanouchi, R. Narita and V.
Koschmann (eds), Sōryokusen to gendaika (), Kashiwa Shobo, Tokyo,
1995; M. Miyake (ed.), Kenshō. Taiheiyō sensō to sono senryaku. 1. Sōryoku no jidai (
. 1. ), Chuo Koron Shinsha, Tokyo, 2013. On the
media and total war efforts in Japan, see T. Aruyama, ‘Sōryokusen to gunbu media
seisaku’ (), in Sensō to guntai (Kindai nihon bunkaron 10) (
(10.), T. Aoki (ed.), Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1999. And
G. J. Kasza, The state and the mass media in Japan, 1918–1945, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1988. On total war more generally, see R. Chickering, S. Förster
and B. Greiner (eds), A world at total war: Global conflict and the politics of destruction,
1937–1947, Publications of the German Historical Institute, Washington, 2005; R.
Chickering and S. Förster (eds), The shadows of total war: Europe, East Asia, and the United
States, 1919–1939, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003.
12
Studies have also emphasized the colonial nature of the war in East Asia and
thus the empire’s significance for mobilization on the home front: see H. Kobayashi,
Teikoku nihon to sōryokusen taisei. Senzen sengo no renzoku to ajia (.
· ), Yushisha, Tokyo, 2004.
13
For instance, Louise Young’s notion of ‘mobilizing culture’, which she applies to
a specifically Japanese context, might serve as an equally useful tool when discussing
the birth of a new kind of fascist spectacle in Europe. See L. Young, ‘Japan’s wartime
empire in China’, in Chickering, Förster and Greiner (eds), The shadows of total war,
pp. 327–345.
Rome–Berlin Axis. For decades, historical studies of this alliance
have considered it a weak, illusive, and hollow failure.14 Once again,
however, the transnational exchanges and encounters it produced,
which we shall shortly explore in detail, have seldom been discussed
or accorded much importance. Research on the relationship between
Italy and Japan has been particularly scarce.15 Yet the recognition
that diplomacy is also a form of theatre, the performative aspects of
which should be a focus, would certainly add to our understanding of
the dynamics of the Axis alliance.16
Lastly, it should be noted that combining these three existing
strands of research—fascist spectacle, the Japanese home front, and
Axis history—enables us to overcome that much debated dichotomy
between fascist style and fascist substance.17 In a sense, the remainder
of this article argues that style (the spectacle) was an integral part of
diplomacy (the substance). It suggests that a Japanese home front
mobilization during the war in East Asia which drew on fascist
spectacles provides evidence of the success of a new kind of Axis
diplomacy. It also suggests that the interplay of diplomacy and
14
A recent example is R. L. DiNardo, ‘Axis coalition building’, in A companion to World
War II, T. W. Zeiler and D. M. DuBois (eds), Blackwell Publishing, Chichester, 2013,
pp. 405–414. Problems, tension, and frictions in the German-Japanese relationship
during the war years are also emphasized in N. Tajima, A. Kudo and E. Pauer (eds),
Japan and Germany: Two latecomers to the world stage, 1890–1945 (in three volumes), Global
Oriental, Folkestone, 2009, see especially Volume 1, pp. xiv–xv. Among the typical
examples of such a view are T. Sommer, Deutschland und Japan zwischen den Mächten
1935–1940, Mohr (Siebeck), Tübingen, 1962; J. M. Meskill, Nazi Germany and imperial
Japan: The hollow diplomatic alliance, Aldine Transaction, New Brunswick, 2012 (1966);
B. Martin, ‘Der Schein des Bündnisses—Deutschland und Japan im Krieg (1940–
1945)’, in Formierung und Fall der Achse Berlin-Tōkyō. (Monographien aus dem Deutschen
Institut für Japanstudien der Philipp-Franz-von-Siebold-Stiftung; Band 8), G. Krebs (ed.),
Iudicium, Munich, 1994, pp. 27–53.
15
Exceptions are R. Hofmann, The fascist effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952, Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, 2015; K. Ishida, ‘The German-Japanese-Italian Axis as seen
from fascist Italy’, in Meskill, Japan and Germany. Volume II, pp. 262–301; K. Ishida,
Nichi-doku-i sangoku dōmei no kigen. Itaria nihon kara mita sūjiku gaikō (
.
· ), Kodansha, Tokyo, 2013. A diplomatic
history can be found in V. Ferretti, Il Giappone e la politica estera italiana, 1935–41,
Giuffrè, Milano, 1995, and P. W. Frey, Faschistische Fernostpolitik: Italien, China und die
Entstehung des weltpolitischen Dreieckes Rom-Berlin-Tokio, Peter Lang, Bern, 1997.
16
For cultural diplomacy and the notion of diplomacy as theatre, see A. Iriye,
‘Culture and international history’, in Explaining the history of American foreign relations,
M. J. Hogan and T. G. Paterson (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991,
pp. 214–225, and N. Shimazu, ‘Diplomacy as theatre: recasting the Bandung
Conference of 1955 as cultural history’, in Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series
No. 164, Asia Research Institute, Singapore, 2011.
17
For this discussion, see especially Roberts, ‘Myth, style, substance’, here p. 2.
spectacle that can be located in Japan in 1938 produced a new dynamic

in the global relationship between Axis powers.
The first part of this article will describe the nature of the Italian
PNF mission and its journey to Japan. The second part will examine
how the war in China was put into a global context in Japan through
the spectacle of the exhibition mentioned above. The third part then
focuses on the reverse process—the localization of the Axis alliance
within East Asia—by discussing the mission’s travels throughout
the Japanese empire and its colonies, and the significance that was
attached to it within the context of pan-Asianism.
The Blackshirt mission on its way to Asia
The planning for an Italian friendship mission to Japan started

immediately after the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact in late
1937.18 The intention was to send 18 delegates to East Asia for a
period of two months.19 Forty days were to be spent in Japan and the
remainder in its colonies on the Asian mainland.20 The mission was
to take place at Mussolini’s personal request and its programme was
drafted by the foreign ministry and the party, and thus by Galeazzo
Ciano and Achille Starace.21 The mission was to be something ‘entirely
18
On the Japanese side, the main sources for the following can be found in the
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records [henceforth cited as JACAR]: Ikoku seifu
haken hōnichi shinzen shisetsu-dan ni kansuru ken (
) [1938], No. C01006957000 and Ikoku seifu haken () [1938], No.
A10113263900. See also S. Akamatsu, Shōwa jūsannen no kokusai jōsei (
), Nihon Kokusai Kyokai, Tokyo, 1939, pp. 373–374. For the Italian side, see
Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri [henceforth cited as ASMAE], Affari
politici [AP], Giappone Busta 21 [1938], ‘Missione del partito nazionale fascista’ and
Archivio Centrale dello Stato [henceforth cited as ACS], Presidenza del Consiglio dei
Ministri [1937–1939], Fasc. 3 / 2-4, N. 4119 ‘Missione del Partito nazionale Fascista
in Giappone’.
19
A detailed description of the Italian mission members from the Japanese point
of view can be found in JACAR, Ikoku seifu haken, pp. 4–23.
20
For the programme, see JACAR, Ikoku seifu haken hōnichi shinzen shisetsu-dan ni
kansuru ken and Akamatsu, Shōwa jūsannen no kokusai jōsei, p. 373.
21
Galeazzo Ciano was Italy’s foreign minister from 1936 until 1943 and thus one of
the main architects of the Axis. He was also Mussolini’s son-in-law, a fact that did not
save him from execution in early 1944 after voting for the Duce’s dismissal from the
Fascist Grand Council on 24/25 July of the previous year. Achille Starace was a fascist
of the first hour and a long-time party secretary of the PNF (1931–1939). During
his reign the cult of the Duce and the formalization of the fascist spectacle—or in
new, quite without precedent’.22 For once, this fascist rhetoric was
not pure exaggeration or mere fantasy: the Missione del Partito
Nazionale Fascista was in fact the very first international political
mission undertaken by the PNF.23 It was not designed as a state
mission, nor was it an apolitical cultural exchange. It was designed
and received as a ‘friendship mission’ and thereby emphasized the
emotional linkage between the two regimes. It was also to be a
mission of fascist Blackshirts. The Japanese certainly understood this
message, since the press unanimously spoke of the visit as the kuro
shatsu no shinzen shisetsudan [Blackshirt friendship mission].24 In Italy,
the Blackshirts were a product of the violent days of the paramilitary
fascist squadrismo of 1918–24.25 In Japan’s fascist circles, such sartorial
symbolism quickly became popular and some movements used similar
uniforms for their organizations. Yet even in Italy, the formal adoption
of the Blackshirt uniform, especially in international contexts, did not
take place until the second half of the 1930s under the patronage of
Starace, whose tenure as party secretary was widely associated with
an obsession with style.26
A key feature of the Missione was that the Italian fascist party
was at the heart of it rather than the Italian state. This was a
notable démarche since the state and the monarch—the traditional
representatives of foreign policy—were conspicuously absent. At the
moment that a global alliance was taking shape, the regime evidently
wished to spotlight the significance of the fascist revolution on an
international stage. To some extent, this contradicted the doctrines of
the stato totalitario and the supremacy of the state over the party which
Mussolini had propagated since the 1920s.27 Even more notable is
the words of Emilio Gentile ‘fascist religion’—reached its highest point. See Gentile,
‘Fascism as political religion’, p. 238.
22
See Paulucci’s ‘memoriale’ of the mission, June 1938, p. 2, in ASMAE, AP,
Giappone B. 21.
23
Ibid.
24
Asahi Gurafu, 6 April 1938, pp. 4–5, here p. 5. See also, for example, in Yomiuri
Shinbun, ‘Kuro shatsu kōkan’ (), 20 March 1938 [Evening Edition],
p. 1, or Asahi Shinbun, ‘Musorini shushō no zō’ (), 9 May 1938
[Tokyo Edition/Morning Edition], p. 11.
25
Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist spectacle, p. 101.
26
Ibid., p. 102, and Roberts, ‘Myth, style, substance’, p. 4.
27
Mussolini’s famous quote of the late 1920s read ‘all within the state, nothing
outside the state, nothing against the state’. Concerning the subordination of the
party to the state, see also R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the dictatorship,
1915–1945, Penguin, London, 2005, especially p. 203.
that the Japanese government acquiesced to this, as shown by the fact

that Emperor Hirohito personally received the PNF mission. On this
occasion, the members of the Missione wore black shirts, as reported
by the media in both countries.28 The use of these symbols of the fascist
party, instead of a more conventional gala uniform, went against
established diplomatic protocol in Japan—a protocol that the Japanese
government had meticulously pursued and maintained since the late
nineteenth century. As the only non-Western great power, Japan had
joined the international diplomacy party late; thus, until well after the
First World War, it had been especially important to the government
not to go against established protocol. Nevertheless, the Japanese
government treated the mission as an official state visit. Thus, by
the spring of 1938, the expression of Italian-Japanese friendship
had clearly moved beyond traditional forms of diplomacy to embrace
new fascist ones. This is even more remarkable when we consider
that, on the Japanese side, the mission was organized chiefly by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was considered by many as rather
traditional and conservative, and not by the military or one of the many
ultranationalist organizations.29 Thus, the invitation to Blackshirts to
visit East Asia may be interpreted as a major concession to the new
alliance partner; at the same time it implied Japan’s commitment
to participating in a new fascist style of diplomacy that was globally
visible.
On Ciano’s proposal, Mussolini appointed Giacomo Paulucci di
Calboli as head of the mission. He was experienced Japan hand who
he had served in the early 1920s as Italy’s representative in Tokyo
and was therefore considered an East Asia expert in fascist circles.30
Paulucci belonged to the Duce’s staff—initially, as cabinet chief of
the foreign ministry, then from 1927 as secretary to the League of
Nations, and, finally, from 1933, as president of the state-run film
institute Luce.31 In this capacity, he had also encouraged the exchange
of media content with Japan by organizing a collaboration with the
28
See Asahi Shinbun, ‘Ishisetsu-dan shinninjō o hōtei’ ( ), 23
March 1938 [Tokyo Edition/Evening Edition], p. 1, and Il Messaggero, 23 March 1938,
to be found in ACS, SPD CO [Secreteria Particolare del Duce, Carteggio Ordinario],
B 477, 184.057.
29
Concerning the planning on the Japanese side, see JACAR, Ikoku seifu haken.
30
G. Bottai, Diario 1935–1944: A cura di Giordano Bruno Guerri, Rizzoli, Milano, 2001,
p. 295.
31
For more information about his career, see G. Tassani, Diplomatico tra due guerre:
Vita di Giacomo Paulucci di Calboli Barone, La Lettere, Florence, 2012.
Asahi media conglomerate: regular dispatches of Italian newsreels—
first overland via Russia, later by sea via Shanghai—started during
the Italo-Abyssinian war of late 1935 to early 1936.32 He had been an
early and resolute proponent of Italian-Japanese rapprochement and
was an outspoken Anglophobe.33 At the same time, Paulucci did not
belong to the ranks of the leadership with serious ambitions for power,
so that competing figures in the party could not fault his appointment.
All in all, this choice underlined the fact that this diplomatic mission
served first and foremost representational purposes and lacked any
immediate political goals.
The Missione should nonetheless be seen in the context of the two
sides’ desire to strengthen their alliance. This wish for ever-closer
collaboration had much to do with the attractiveness of Italy’s anti-
British position in the Mediterranean,34 since Japan’s relationship
with the United Kingdom had rapidly deteriorated as a result of
the outbreak of war in China in mid-1937. Fortified by its victory
in Abyssinia in May 1936, Mussolini’s Italy appeared stronger than
ever. Indeed, as the mission unfolded, the Italian army made plans for
the conquest of Egypt, to sate Mussolini’s desire for an empire with
scope for expansion in both Africa and Asia.35 In view of these plans
for expansion, it is hardly surprising that Mussolini intended to make
Japan an ally in the fight against the United Kingdom, too.36
However, the long shadow cast by the United Kingdom would prove
ubiquitous, not only in the minds of the Missione’s protagonists, but
also, very palpably, along the mission’s route to Asia. The Missione set
32
Paulucci wrote several letters concerning a cooperation between the publisher
Asahi and Luce. See Paulucci to the Ministry of Press and Propaganda [later the
Ministry of Popular Culture], 23 September 1935 and 28 May 1936, in ACS, MICP
[Ministerio Cultura Populare], Reports, Busta 12.
33
G. Ciano, Diario 1937–1943: A Cura di Renzo de Felice: Edizione integrale, Rizzoli,
Milano, 1998, p. 83.
34
See, for example, S. Itakura, ‘Doku-i no sekkin to chichūkai no haran’ (
). Tōtairiku, vol. 15, no. 11, November 1937, pp. 110–116. In late
1937 and early 1938 not only right-wing journals published such views but also the
Gaikō Jihō, the leading magazine for foreign policy issues with strong connections to
the foreign ministry. See also Maida Minoru, ‘Chichūkai mondai to itarı̄’ (

). Gaikō Jihō, vol. 84, no. 790, November 1937, pp. 1–15 or Nishizawa
Eiichi, ‘Berin rōma sūjiku to chichūkai seikyoku’ ( ).
Gaikō Jihō, vol. 84, no. 788, October 1937, pp. 57–74.
35
Since the early 1930s the Duce’s articulated aim was to create a fascist empire
stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean: R. Mallett, The Italian Navy
and fascist expansionism, 1935–40, Routledge, London, 1998, p. 111.
36
Ciano, Diario, p. 82.
off from Naples in mid-February on the Conte Biancamano, a modern

Italian passenger steamer that, ironically, had been manufactured in
the United Kingdom. Designed for scheduled service between Genoa
and New York, this steamer had transported Italian troops to Africa
during the Ethiopia war. Later on, in a further irony, the ship was
confiscated by the Allies and served during the Second World War in
both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Try as the Italians might, in 1938
there was no escaping Albion’s far-flung presence. The ship had to pass
through all of the zones of British dominance, via Port Said and Aden,
Bombay, Singapore, and Hong Kong to Shanghai. While the travellers
met Italian and Japanese missions and communities at each of these
stops, the sheer global reach of the British empire could scarcely
be ignored. In Shanghai, the Missione at last reached a Japanese
sphere of influence; here the delegation transferred to a Japanese
ship which finally docked at Nagasaki on 17 March.37 Two days later
they arrived in Tokyo, where an audience with the emperor marked the
first highlight of their programme. During his first few days in Tokyo,
Paulucci also met with Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro and Foreign
Minister Hirota Kōki. On 27 March, a ceremony took place at the
newly opened Kōrakuen Stadium before 120,000 spectators, including
Konoe and Hirota.38 Thus, not only were the prime minister and the
foreign minister, as well as Japan’s emperor, personally involved in the
organization of the mission, their involvement was also made visible
to a large audience.
Following its triumphant reception in Tokyo, the mission continued
to the Kansai region and its key cities of Osaka and Kyoto. The latter
initially offered a breathless schedule of sightseeing, featuring the
standard fare of temples and shrines. Osaka served as a deliberate
contrast. Here, the past was left behind and the mission turned its
attention to the present and the future. This city offered a large
audience: according to Paulucci, around a million people welcomed the
delegation upon its arrival, probably with encouragement from local,
regional, and national authorities.39 Here in the Kansai region, the
37
JACAR, Ikoku seifu haken hōnichi shinzen shisetsu-dan ni kansuru ken, p. 4.
38
For pictures of the event, see Archivio Luce, Giornale Luce B1299, ‘La missione
italiana del partito fascista’, 4 May 1938, http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/,
[accessed 11 September 2017] and Asahi Shinbun, ‘‘Bōkyō gaika’ ni tenchi yurugu’
(‘’), 28 March 1938 [Tokyo Edition/Evening Edition], p. 2.
39
See the transcript of Paulucci’s radio speech after his return in June 1938, in
ASMAE, AP, Giappone B. 21. The masses of spectators are also shown in Luce’s official
documentary of the mission: see Archivio Luce, ‘Missione PNF in Giappone, 1938’,
heartland of ‘Japanese civilization’, the mission visited the ‘Exhibition
on Holy War and the China Incident’.
Putting the East Asian war into a global context: Blackshirts at

the ‘Exhibition on Holy War and the China Incident’
The exhibition near Osaka was one in a series of events of the

early Shōwa period that were entirely dedicated to war. Between
1936 and 1940 over a dozen exhibitions that were put on across
Japan focused expressly on the ‘China Incident’. However, with one-
and-a-half million visitors, the ‘Exhibition on Holy War’ was one of
the biggest.40 It offered the full range of modern media such as
panoramas and films (see Figure 2). These mechanized panoramas,
along with walk-in bunkers and functioning military equipment,
provided the visitors with an experience of war that was as realistic
as possible. The main attraction was an enormous panorama that
had been erected in a baseball stadium and that visualized the
Chinese war theatre over some 20,000 square metres. The Blackshirts
received a warm welcome in this converted stadium, which had
previously been used for what was perhaps the most American of
all sports.41 Subsequently, in a more traditional context Paulucci and
his men also paid their respects to a branch of the Yasukuni shrine
where they honoured the Japanese dead with the fascist salute (see
Figure 3).
The mission visited the exhibition at what was a highly critical
moment for Japan. Despite fast and far-reaching successes in the
autumn and winter of 1937, an end to the war in China was now
a distant prospect. Some days earlier, the battle of Taierzhuang
http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/, [accessed 11 September 2017.] For Ōsaka,

see also Asahi Shinbun, ‘Ishisetsu, Ōsaka de kantai’ ( ), 9 April
1938 [Tokyo Edition/Morning Edition], p. 11.
40
For this exhibition, see D. Hedinger, ‘Kulturen der Mobilisierung:
Repräsentationen von Krieg und Gewalt im japanischen Imperium 1937/38’. Yōroppa
kenkyū/European Studies (Universität Tokio), vol. 11, 2012, pp. 107–127, here pp.
114–118. For exhibitions in early Shōwa-Japan more generally, see D. Hedinger,
Im Wettstreit mit dem Westen, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011, especially
pp. 307–317.
41
See Asahi Shinbunsha (ed.), Shina jihen seisen hakurankai gahō (
), Tokyo, 1938 or Asahi Shinbun, ‘Zessan ni kagayaku seisenhaku: Yonai kaishō
to itarı̄ shisetsu’ (!.
), 11 April 1938
[Tokyo Edition/Morning Edition], p. 11.
Figure 2. (Colour online) General plan of the ‘Exhibition on Holy War and the China Incident’, graphic from 1938.
Source: Courtesy of Nomura Co., Ltd.
Figure 3. (Colour online) The PNF mission at the exhibition. Above left: Saluting at
the branch of the Yasukuni shrine.
Source: Asahi Shinbunsha (ed), Shina jihen seisen hakurankai gahō (
), Tokyo, 1938, pp. 8–9. Courtesy of Nomura Co., Ltd.
(24 March–7 April 1938) had ended in the first defeat that the
Japanese had suffered at the hands of Chinese troops. The myth of
the imperial army’s invincibility threatened to collapse. And while
the Japanese population may not have realized the full extent of
the difficulties, due to the censorship measures in place, overall
the war euphoria of the previous year had vanished amid increasing
uncertainty and fear. In this context, the visit of the fascist mission
played an important role for the Japanese audience at this site: Japan’s
European allies could be witnessed in person as an integral part of its
mobilization and war effort in China. This effect was reinforced by the
fact that other Italian representatives also attended the exhibition.
Just a few days after Paulucci’s mission was there, the Italian marines
(as described above) visited the site. This occasion was marked, once
again, by the Asahi newspaper, which produced a special edition of its
photographic magazine (see Figure 1).
Even when Italians (and sometimes Germans) were not visiting the
exhibition site in person, the symbols of the allies were omnipresent:
they included, besides the obligatory flag decoration, flowerbeds in the
colours of the Axis partners. A short while later, pavilions appeared at
similar exhibitions that were entirely devoted to these Axis partners.
Although none yet existed in Osaka in 1938, an ‘Anti-Comintern
Road’ beckoned immediately after the entrance and, with its Axis
flowerbeds, served as the focal point of the exhibition, leading visitors
on to the war panorama (see Figure 4). The symbolic message which
Paulucci’s mission also enacted in visiting the exhibition site was plain
to see. The path of anti-communism led directly to the war in China.
In other words, the war in China was merely one aspect of a global
struggle against communism. Significantly, this was exactly a line of
argument that Japan’s European allies had initially sought to avoid—
mainly out of fear of becoming involved in a war in the Far East that
might spread over the entire world.
In reality, however, during the first months of 1938, the Chinese-
Japanese war had already become more internationalized, and in
this context, the Japanese government used the mission for its own
purposes. Using its influence over Japan’s media, it popularized its
message that the war in China was an anti-communist one that
ought to be understood in the context of a global struggle against
communism which the Germans and Italians had been fighting in
Spain since 1936. On the occasion of the mission’s reception at Tokyo’s
Kōrakuen Stadium before 120,000 spectators, the Asahi newspaper
ran an article on the event with the headline ‘The whole world is
trembling in view of the Anti-Comintern’s victory procession’.42 The
message for its readership was clear: through Italy’s presence at the
42
Asahi Shinbun, ‘‘Bōkyō gaika’ ni tenchi yurugu’ (‘’), 28 March
1938 [Tokyo Edition/Evening Edition], p. 2.
Figure 4. (Colour online) Photograph of the ‘Exhibition on Holy War and the China
Incident’ showing the ‘Anti-Comintern road’.
Source: Postcard, 1938.
exhibition, the Japanese public were able to see the role Japan played
in a worldwide fascist (counter-)revolution.
In Japan, the civil war in Spain had been closely watched from the
beginning. In the wake of the Anti-Comintern Pact, the Japanese
press became highly pro-nationalistic.43 Anti-communism played a
major role in the Japanese media’s coverage of the Spanish civil war,
and descriptions of the war as a passionate and emotionally laden
43
Asahi Gurafu, 25 November 1936, pp. 10–11. Pertaining to the bombings of
Madrid and Barcelona, see, for example, Asahi Shinbun, 1 November 1936 [Tokyo
Edition/Morning Edition], S. 3.
ideological conflict abounded. 44 In particular, Japanese media interest

in the conflict in Spain was sparked by the fact that, at first, this new
global trouble spot shifted international attention back to Europe,
thus giving the Japanese army in China more leeway to act. However,
the outbreak of war in China saw that advantage lost and so Japan’s
imperial designs on China now had to be legitimized as part of a global
civil war of epic dimensions. The observation that the Spanish Civil
War and the conflict in China were related and even fuelled each other
could hardly be denied by 1938. This interdependency between the
Mediterranean and the Far East conflicts was a theme also taken up
in the Italian media.45
Against this background, the Anti-Comintern Pact was widely
celebrated. During the mission’s journey, the flags of National
Socialist Germany, the other member of the Anti-Comintern Pact,
were frequently displayed, as were the flags of regimes that would
soon become pact members, such as Manchukuo and Spain.46
Representatives of these countries were also invited to attend the
festivities held in the Blackshirts’ honour. In Tokyo, the programme
included a visit to the German embassy.47 At the same time, all of
these manifestations of global Axis solidarity—Japanese newspapers
repeatedly referred to the ‘global anti-Comintern Axis’48 —remained
inscribed with a powerful pan-Asian subtext. Such a subtext perhaps
became most apparent in the autumn of 1938, when Japan’s prime
minister, Konoe Fumimaro, proclaimed the reordering of Asia. It is
no coincidence that it was a key demand of the Japanese government
that further expansion of the Anti-Comintern Pact would have to cover
China as well. Konoe expressed this as follows: ‘Japan [ . . . ] considers it
44
H. Hirano, ‘Supain nairan to fukanshō’ ("#

). Gaikō Jihō,
vol. 82, no. 781, 1937, pp. 189–193, here p. 190. See also Fujisawa Chikao, ‘Nihon
kokusai seiji no genri to sekaikan no mondai’ (
). Gaikō Jihō, vol. 80, no. 769, 1936, pp. 1–37, here p. 1.
45
Grandi to Ciano, ‘Animale reazioni dell’opinione pubblica britannica
all’occupazione giapponese di Hainan: Timore di una politica concertata tra Roma.
Berlino e Tokio’, 13 February 1939, in I documenti diplomatici italiani, Serie 8, Volume 11,
Ministero degli affari esteri (ed.), La liberia dello stato, Rome, 2006, pp. 223–224.
See also Cesare Galimberti, ‘Appunit sul conflitto cino-giapponese’. Gerarchia, vol. 18,
no. 9, 1938, pp. 606–614, here p. 612.
46
See Archivio Luce, Gioranle Luce B1299, ‘La missione italiana del partito
fascista’, 4 May 1938, http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/, [accessed 11 September
2017].
47
Yomiuri Shinbun, ‘Risshoku no kōkan: Ishisetsu-dan doitsu taishikan e’ (
. $
%), 27 March 1938 [Morning Edition], p. 7.
48
See, for example, Yomiuri Shinbun, 7 November 1937, p. 1.
an essential condition of the adjustment of the Sino-Japanese relations
as that there should be concluded an anti-Comintern agreement
between the two countries in consonance with the spirit of the anti-
Comintern agreement between Japan, Germany and Italy.’49
As for our understanding of the actual domestic impact of
government and media attempts to embed the war in China in global
contexts, it is necessary to consider the Japanese media landscape
in the early Shōwa period. The visit of the fascist Missione to the
exhibition near Osaka was staged as a media event, and pictures of the
Italians reached virtually every household through daily newspapers
and magazines. As with many similar events of the period, private
organizers and state authorities worked hand in hand. The main
sponsor of the ‘Exhibition on Holy War’ was the Asahi News media
conglomerate.50 At the same time, the Army, the Navy, the Ministry of
Education and Culture, and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry
officially participated as representatives of the state. The significance
that the state accorded to this exhibition is also illustrated by the fact
that Yonai Mitsumasa, the naval minister and future prime minister
of Japan, opened it.
At this time the Japanese media was dominated by private
sector news conglomerates active in the production of newspapers,
magazines, books, and newsreels. Asahi News, which published the
Asahi newspaper, was the largest. The Tokyo and Osaka editions of
this daily had a circulation of several million; in the 1930s, it was
already one of the world’s most widely read newspapers, a status
which it retains up to the present day.51 Another highly successful
product of this company was the photographic magazine Asahi Gurafu,
which was founded in 1923 and which sold at the highly affordable
price of 10 sen. Other media conglomerates such as Mainichi and
Yomiuri also published their own photo magazines. After 1937 the
subject of the war in China came to dominate all these magazines
almost completely, consistently providing the lead story for Asahi
49
Konoe quoted in J. C. Lebra, Japan’s greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere in World
War II: Selected readings and documents, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975, p. 69.
50
Y. Fukuma, ‘Kokubō kagaku no hakuran to “seisen” no hokorobi: Senji
hakurankai no media ron’ (&'(.
). /Media History, vol. 24, August 2008, pp. 41–60.
51
H. T. Cook and T. F. Cook, Japan at war: An oral history, The New Press, New
York, 1992, p. 208. See also A. Troni, ‘Giornalismo Giapponese’. Yamato, vol. 1, no.
10, 1941, pp. 302–303, here p. 303.
Gurafu over a period of almost two years.52 War meant business, as the
factory worker Kumagaya Tokuichi later remembered: ‘News about
China was everywhere. Even my father subscribed to the Asahi Graph
[ . . . ]. By the end of 1937, everybody in the country was working.
For the first time, I was able to take care of my father. War’s
not bad at all, I thought.’53 Indeed, for Japan’s early Showa media
conglomerates those were good days too, as war’s popularity became
the main root of their business expansion, and publishers built an
entire entertainment empire around the conflict. Asahi News alone
sent hundreds of reporters to China.54 The professionalism of its
war reporting left an impression on Italian fascists, who admired its
propaganda achievements, mentioning the ‘perfect organization’ and,
above all, the dozens of aircraft which Asahi used in China.55
This expansion in the war-reporting activities of Japanese media
conglomerates occurred at the very moment when the state
increasingly sought to influence the media and bring it under
control. In this regard, the government was able to rely on a system
of censorship that had existed since the late nineteenth century.
However, at the time of Paulucci’s visit to Tokyo, which coincided with
the passing of the National Mobilisation Act in the Diet on 24 March
1938, these censorship measures were significantly tightened.56 The
law granted the government instruments of control over not only the
media but also over the economy and the trade unions. In the following
years, particularly from 1941 onwards, this control was gradually
intensified and remained in effect until Japan’s capitulation. At the
same time, the government sought to compete with the private media
companies. In early 1938, for instance, it launched its own photo
magazine Shashin Shūhō, in an attempt to strengthen its coordination
of mobilization propaganda.57
52
D. C. Earhart, Certain victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese media, M. E.
Sharpe, Armonk, 2008, p. 53.
53
Kumagaya quoted in Cook and Cook, Japan at war, p. 49.
54
Ibid., p. 208.
55
Troni, ‘Giornalismo Giapponese’, pp. 302–303.
56
Kokka sōdōin hō.
57
For a discussion of censorship in the early 1930s, see S. Wilson, The Manchurian
crisis and Japanese society, 1931–33, Routledge, London, 2002, especially pp. 30–41. For
Japanese wartime propaganda, see also B. Kushner, The thought war: Japanese imperial
propaganda, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2006, and K. J. Ruoff, Imperial Japan
at its zenith: The wartime celebration of the empire’s 2,600th anniversary, Cornell University
Press, Ithaca, 2010.
Nevertheless, throughout the war, the Japanese state never achieved
anything comparable to the degree of orchestrated control over
the media exercised by its Axis partners in Europe. The 1938
legislation may have passed, but the competition between various
authorities, such as the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of
War, remained.58 Moreover, since the Manchuria crisis of 1931, the
Japanese media had revealed a strong independent initiative. One
can only agree with Louise Young’s judgement that ‘in fact, without
any urging from the government, the news media took the lead in
promoting the war’.59 In our context, it should be added that this is not
only true for the war but also for Japan’s involvement in a global Axis
alliance. Initially, press opinion concerning Italy and Germany was
divided and sometimes critical; after the conflict in China escalated
in 1937, however, Japan’s private media assumed a leading role in
promoting the alliance with Italy and Germany, no doubt for political
as well as commercial reasons: the coverage of the war in China and
Japan’s global alliance turned out to be in tune with the contemporary
public mood and with domestic consumer expectations.
Meanwhile in Italy, the Missione, in its way, turned out to be a
media event as well. In its coverage of war events in East Asia, the
Italian media was already wholeheartedly pro-Japanese, not only in
the regime’s own daily newspapers, such as the Popolo d’Italia, but
also, for example, in La Stampa, with its close relationship with the
Turin business community. Since, by this time, the Italian press
had largely been brought into line with the regime’s views, this is
hardly surprising. In contrast, the day-to-day coverage of the mission
itself was rather minimal, although the reports that did appear were
naturally highly positive, which is likely to reflect the fact that only
a few Italian correspondents were present in Japan, and Italy’s daily
newspapers therefore struggled to provide prompt reporting on the
PNF’s mission. Also, the transcontinental transmission of impressive
visual material presented a technological challenge. Nonetheless, with
a delay of nearly three weeks, some photographs did appear, such as
those of the mission’s arrival in Shanghai or at the ‘Great Popular
Festival’ in Tokyo.60 Eventually, on 20 April, the Giornale Luce showed
58
Y. Koshiro, Imperial eclipse: Japan’s strategic thinking about continental Asia before August
1945, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2013, p. 43.
59
Young, ‘Japan’s wartime empire in China’, p. 333.
60
Il Popolo d’Italia, 7 April 1938, p. 5, and Il Popolo d’Italia, 16 April 1938, p. 3.
film footage of the PNF’s mission to Japan for the first time.61 It took
even longer for an official documentary film to appear in cinemas,
even though Paulucci, as the director of Luce, certainly had the best
equipment available as well as all the necessary connections.62 In many
ways, East Asia was still very far away from Europe in 1938, yet the
delay in transmitting the images of the mission back to Italy hardly
prevented their dissemination. Rather, it was more important for the
party and the state to ensure that the Japanese-Italian friendship was
visually depicted, even if such depictions can hardly be said to have
constituted current news.
In addition, messages of Japanese-Italian fascist amity were
embedded in the broader context of Italian war reporting from China.
News from the East Asian war theatre featured very prominently
in the Italian media, since all of the major daily newspapers had
special correspondents. The well-known journalist Mario Appelius,
a reporter who personified the global civil war between fascism and
communism (having previously served as a war correspondent in Spain
and before that in Ethiopia) was sent by Il popolo d’Italia to Shanghai.
By asking whether ‘Russia would bolshevize China’, Appelius was
following precisely the line of Japanese anti-Comintern propaganda.63
He repeatedly emphasized that Japan’s struggle in China was directed
against a global rather than merely an East Asian enemy. So it was
that in the spring of 1938, Italian news reports about the war in Spain,
which dominated the media, were flanked by news about the war in
China, thereby giving readers the impression that both conflicts were
interlinked. As in the case of Spain, the mood in relation to the war
in China was jubilant. In early May, the Popolo d’Italia referred to
‘another 200,000 [Chinese] dead’ and in the middle of the month,
during Paulucci’s visit to Shanghai, the newspaper reported that the
Japanese had forced half a million Chinese soldiers to flee.64 The
PNF’s mission provided the background against which the Italian press
painted a pro-Japanese picture of the Chinese war.
All this was no accident for it was carefully orchestrated from above.
The party leadership in Italy was highly satisfied with the outcome
61
Archivio Luce, Giornale Luce, 20 April 1938, ‘La Missione del partito fascista’,
http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/, [accessed 11 September 2017].
62
For the official documentary, see Archivio Luce, ‘Missione PNF in Giappone,
1938’, http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/, [accessed 11 September 2017].
63
M. Appelius, ‘Può la Russia bolscevizzare la Cina?’. Il Popolo d’Italia, 3 April 1938,
p. 5.
64
Il Popolo d’Italia, 1 May 1938, p. 5 and 17 May 1938, p. 9.
of the mission and intended to capitalize on it. On the occasion
of a speech Galeazzo Ciano gave in front of a Milan conference of
students of international relations on the subject of ‘Fascist Italy in
the world’, he underlined the mission’s significance while emphasizing
that Japan was firmly part of the global struggle against communism.65
Enthusiasm for the mission was also revealed by the reception it
received on its return to Rome, where Mussolini and Ciano were
personally in attendance to welcome it back. ‘This unprecedented
mission triggered unprecedented enthusiasm in Japan,’ Ciano noted.66
Paulucci in particular was credited with its success and, as a reward,
Mussolini appointed him to an ambassadorship, following which
he held a number of important appointments.67 Paulucci would
afterwards remain a key exponent of the Italian-Japanese Axis and
be sought as an East Asia expert, as is documented by his many
publications and lectures in the years that followed.68
The PNF mission produced no concrete diplomatic or political
results, but that had never been its purpose. Nonetheless, in the wake
of the friendship mission, Italian officials did indeed have a much more
positive view of Japan’s role in its war with China and of the global
significance of this conflict. Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary: ‘The
returned mission confirms the warmth of their feelings towards us and
the singular military potential of Japan. [ . . . ] Contrary to what Judeo-
Masonic propaganda wishes us to believe, Japan has only deployed a
small part of her forces in China.’69 Following the mission’s return,
Mussolini and Ciano became keener than ever to expand their alliance
with Japan, and the Japanese government thought along similar
lines.70 On 31 May, news from Tokyo reached Rome that, in response
to the PNF mission, the Japanese side wished to send its own friendship
mission to Italy that autumn, including high-ranking members of the
65
G. Ciano, ‘L’Italia fascista e il mondo’. La Stampa, 3 June 1938, p. 1.
66
Letter from Ciano to Starace, 21 May 1938, in ASMAE, AP, Giappone B. 21.
67
Tassani, Diplomatico tra due guerre, p. 349 and p. 472.
68
G. Paulucci Di Calboli, ‘Il patto tripartito e il nuovo ordine mondiale nel pensiero
e nell’azione di Mussolini’. Echi e Commenti, no. 22/23, December 1940. He also gave
talks at the ISMEO [Istituto per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente] in 1939. See Frey,
Faschistische Fernostpolitik, p. 137.
69
70
Ibid., p. 144. For more details about Italian initiatives to expand the alliance
in the first half of 1938, see Ferretti, Il Giappone e la politica estera italiana, especially
pp. 212–215.
Army and the Navy.71 Immediately after the PNF’s visit, the Japanese
government also proposed a bilateral secret treaty which stipulated
benevolent neutrality as well as military cooperation.72 Ciano noted
on 31 May: ‘And we are not at all against it. On the historic level
[it is clear] that Italy and Japan have to march together for a long
time.’73 Finally, on 19 July the Five Ministers Conference in Tokyo
decided to strengthen the Anti-Comintern Pact.74 With this in mind,
the processes of putting the war in China into a global context and
the globalization of the Axis do indeed reveal themselves to have gone
hand in hand.
Certainly, mutual friendship missions were not the triggers of an
enhanced rapprochement but rather a symptom. Yet for the entire
period leading up to the outbreak of war in Europe, they also performed
important political functions, such as the display of Axis solidarity
at a global level. Given the absence of any full military alliance
between the partners, such symbolic and informal acts were crucial, as
attempts to strengthen the Axis alliance—be it in the bilateral form
that particularly interested the Japanese Navy,75 or in the form of
a tripartite agreement that included Germany, for which the Army
pushed over several years. Especially in the hectic months prior to the
start of the European war, it proved difficult to come to an agreement
that satisfied all sides and covered all eventualities. The lines of
conflict not only ran between the three countries, but also within
them. Thus, without any formal military alliance in place between the
European and Asian Axis partners before September 1940, the simple
propagandistic message of Italian-Japanese friendship and solidarity,
71
Auriti to Ciano, ‘Schema del progetto per gli accordi politico–militari tra Italia e
Giappone’, 31 May 1938, in I documenti diplomatici italiani, Serie 8, Volume 9, Ministero
degli affari esteri (ed.), La liberia dello stato, Rome, 2001, p. 238.
72
Ibid.
73
74
The Five Ministers Conference was composed of the prime minister, the army
and navy minister as well as the finance and foreign minister; during the early
Shōwa period they met regularly and took important decisions. T. Ōhata, ‘The Anti-
Comintern Pact, 1935–1939’, in Deterrent diplomacy: Japan, Germany, and the USSR,
1935–1940, Selected Translations from Taiheiyo senso e no michi. Kaisen gaiko shi, J. W. Morley
(ed.), Columbia University Press, New York, 1976, p. 55, and Sommer, Deutschland
und Japan zwischen den Mächten, p. 120.
75
K. Aizawa, ‘Nihon to sangoku gunji dōmei’ (), in Kenhō:
Taiheiyō sensō to sono gairyaku 2 ( 2), M. Miyake et al. (eds),
Chuo Koron Shinsha, Tokyo, 2013, pp. 149–166, here p. 160
as had been conveyed by the PNF mission, became all the more
important.
(Re-)localizing the Axis: the mission in the service of

pan-Asianism
Right from the start, it was the Japanese government that had insisted
that the PNF’s mission should visit not only the Japanese mainland
but also China, Korea, and Manchuria. Japan’s motives were obvious.
An official mission by a European country would be construed as
an endorsement of its East Asian empire. In this regard, Japan’s
efforts paid off, for by late January 1938 Ciano had agreed to this
itinerary.76 For Italy, this no longer posed any great diplomatic risk,
as Mussolini had already recognized Manchukuo two months earlier,
immediately after Italy had joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. Sending
the Missione to Japanese colonial territory, only further underlined
Italy’s unequivocal position in the Far East conflict.
In this respect, the Italians were quicker off the mark than the
Germans, which only began to realign their East Asian policy following
Hitler’s Reichstag speech of 20 February 1938 and the related political
upheavals in the German foreign ministry and Army.77 But according
to diplomat Erich Kordt, it was only during Hitler’s visit to Rome
in May 1938 that he decided to ‘definitely opt for Japan in the Far
Eastern conflict’.78 And indeed, a few days after his return to Berlin,
Germany officially recognized Manchukuo. Thus, the Italian influence
on the Germans in this matter seems to have been considerable. But
by this time, the Paulucci mission had already visited Manchuria, and a
second fascist mission—the ‘Missione economica italiana in Giappone’
led by industrialist and businessmen Ettore Conti di Verampio—had
already arrived in Shanghai and was on its way to Manchuria (see
Figure 5). So, in relation to East Asia, the Italians were far ahead of
the Germans in the first half of 1938. To American observers watching
this rising constellation, it clearly appeared that Italy was prompting
76
Telegram to the Embassy in Tokyo, 28 January 1938, in ASMAE, AP, Giappone
B. 21.
77
Concerning the political upheavals, see R. F. Schmidt, Die Aussenpolitik des Dritten
Reiches 1933–1939, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 2002, pp. 225–232.
78
E. Kordt, Wahn und Wirklichkeit: Die Außenpolitik des Dritten Reiches: Versuch einer
Darstellung: Herausgegeben unter Mitwirkung von Karl Heinz Abshagen, Union Deutsche
Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 1948 (1947), p. 110.
Figure 5. (Colour online) Special supplement of the Ōsaka Mainichi and the Tōkyō
Nichinichi newspaper, celebrating the Italian economic mission, June 1938, with the
flag of Manchukuo and a shortened distance between Europe and Asia in the middle.
Source: Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbun/Tōkyō Nichinichi Shinbun, 14 June 1938, front.
Japan: the Italian ambassador to Washington warned Rome that the
‘media’ and the ‘public opinion of the United States’ were accusing
Italy of ‘having incited the Japanese in their operations against China’
and that they even attributed ‘greater responsibility to us than to the
Germans’ for this conflict.79
With regard to East Asia, Germany and Italy were sometimes as
much competitors as they were political partners. In this context,
Renzo De Felice, an influential historian of Italian fascism and author
of a 6,000 page biography of Mussolini, interpreted the Duce’s efforts
to grow closer to Japan as motivated solely by his desire to neutralize
Germany’s dominant position on the global political stage.80 There
is a grain of truth in this. As we have seen, fascist Italy tried to use
the mission to pursue its own, powerful East Asia policy. However,
by doing so—at least in the last few years before the outbreak of
the Second World War in Europe—the Italian government did not
just react to German initiatives. Quite the contrary: Italy was an
independent and active actor in its own right, indeed taking the lead
in East Asian affairs over its European partner in the first half of 1938.
Moreover, Germany’s international position was not the only factor
that prompted the Italian mission to leave for Japan. The evidence
suggests this effort took place on account of its own geopolitical logic.
On the one hand, the anti-British position of the Japanese empire was
attractive for fascist Italy. On the other, Rome hoped to be granted
preferential terms of trade in the territories dominated by Japan, a
hope that did not appear entirely unjustified, for Italy was the first
great power to have granted such clear and unequivocal recognition
to Japan’s conquests on the Asian continent.81 Yet on account of their
anticipated gains, Italy’s leaders all too easily overlooked the fact that,
in agreeing to these extensive travels, they were permitting themselves
to be exploited by Japanese pan-Asianist propaganda.
79
Suvich to Ciano, ‘Sentimenti anti-giapponesi ed anti-italiani dell’opinione
pubblica americana’, 14 January 1938, in I documenti diplomatici italiani, Serie 8, Volume
8, Ministero degli affari esteri (ed.), La liberia dello stato, Rome, 1999, pp. 38–41,
here pp. 39–40.
80
Frey, Faschistische Fernostpolitik.
81
Cortese to Ciano, ‘Compiti della missione economica: conclusione di accordi con
il Giappone e il Manciukuò’, 10 March 1938, in I documenti diplomatici italiani, Serie 8,
Volume 8, pp. 334–335. A contract between Manchuria, Japan, and Italy was finally
signed in early July 1938. For Japanese reactions to this, see Anonymous, ‘Nichi-man-i
bōeki kyōtei no gi’ (). Tōyō Keizai Shinpō, no. 1823, July 1938, pp.
14–15.
Japanese exploitation of the PNF’s mission was already clear when

it stopped at Shanghai for the first time. Here, the Italians entered
delicate territory: even more than the struggles in northern China,
the battle for Shanghai in late 1937 had drawn worldwide attention
precisely because it was where Western colonial interests appeared
to be threatened most directly. Hardly any other Chinese city was
more international, and in hardly any other place in the world did
representatives of the future adversaries in the coming global conflict
live in such close proximity to one another. The PNF mission inevitably
received a great deal of international attention. The American consul
in Shanghai, for instance, reported back to the US secretary of
state that the mission had received an ‘impressive welcome’ by the
Japanese.82
After the brutal fighting of late 1937, which had claimed around
40,000 Japanese and 250,000 Chinese military causalities, it was all
the more important for the Japanese that the mission witnessed the
return of peace and calm to the city.83 A sense of harmony, a kind of
pan-Asian peace, between the Chinese and Japanese was thus evoked.
In the company of local military representatives, the Blackshirts
toured areas of the city that had previously suffered the worst
fighting but by this point had been successfully ‘pacified’. Paulucci
was reported in the Shanghai press as having praised ‘the bravery
of the Japanese troops’ and having had an overall impression that
the city was very peaceful.84 Meanwhile, back in Rome, the mission’s
arrival in Shanghai was considered of sufficient importance to merit a
photograph being published in Popolo d’Italia.85 This focus on Shanghai
served as a means of explaining to the Italian public the uniqueness
of Italy’s position in Asia, and of proving that it had only very
modest colonial interests in East Asia, unlike the other great powers,
82
Gauss to the Secretary of State, 16 March 1938, in Foreign Relations of the United
States Diplomatic Papers, 1938: The Far East. Volume III, United States Department
of State (ed.), United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1954,
p. 125.
83
Such reports from Shanghai can be found in Asahi Shinbun 16 March 1938 [Tokyo
Edition/Morning Edition], p. 3, and The Shanghai Times, 16 March 1938, in ASMAE,
AP, Giappone B. 21. For the figures, see P. Harmsen, Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the
Yangtze, Casemate Publishers, Oxford, 2013, p. 247 and p. 251.
84
The Shanghai Times, 16 March 1938, in ASMAE, AP, Giappone B. 21.
85
Il Popolo d’Italia, 7 April 1938, p. 5.
and thus had comparatively little to fear from a Japanese victory
in China.86
Further Japanese propaganda was generated through the PNF
mission during the rest of its Asian journey, and became especially
conspicuous during the roughly three-week round trip of Japan’s
East Asian empire, which the mission undertook on its way back
from Tokyo. Having visited Korea, the Blackshirts subsequently
embarked upon a visit to northern China and Manchuria, seeing
Hsinking/Shinkyō, Mukden, and Dairen, Peking, Qingdao, and
Tianjin. Their itinerary included an official meeting with the former
Chinese, and now Manchurian, Emperor Puyi, staged by the Japanese
military to emphasize Manchuria’s national independence.87 Overall,
the Japanese military sought to create the illusion of an East Asian
realignment that enjoyed the popular support of local Asians. Yet, for
all their careful planning, it proved impossible to entirely ignore the
ongoing tensions and violence. When the mission visited Tianjin, for
instance, an attack on a Japanese newspaper was taken by the local
Japanese authorities to be an attack on the PNF mission.88 During
the Blackshirts’ progress through Manchuria and China, the huge
security measures put in place indicated the very fragile nature of the
Pax Japonica.89 Naturally, none of this was mentioned in the official
Japanese press coverage. Instead, the mission was used to provide
opportunities for Japanese journalists to paint peaceful images of
harmonious pan-Asian co-existence.
Yet, Japanese press coverage of the PNF mission was by no means
limited to a pan-Asianist whitewash. It also provided insights into
the worlds of Japan’s European allies. Such international insights
had long been used as a means of boosting sales for Japanese print-
media; the novel feature here was the focus on fascist diplomacy.90 The
media attention reached a climax with Mussolini’s visit to Germany in
September 1937 and with Hitler visiting Italy in turn in the spring of
86
For Italy’s presence in Shanghai, see C. Paoletti, La Marina Italiana in Estremo
Oriente 1866–2000, Ufficio storico della marina militare, Rome, 2000, especially
p. 142.
87
Details of the programme in Korea and China can be found in JACAR, Ikoku seifu
haken hōnichi shinzen shisetsu-dan ni kansuru ken, pp. 37–39.
88
Telegram from Paulucci to Ciano, 19 May 1938, p. 1, in ASMAE, AP, Giappone
B. 21.
89
Ibid.
90
See, for example, ‘Fashisuto hōnichi shinzen shisetsu-dan o mukaete: Meihō Itarı̄
sobyō’ ()*"+%,.
). Shashin Shūhō,
No. 7 (30 March 1938), pp. 4–5.
1938.91 Japanese journals such as Asahi Gurafu were awash with images
of these fascist diplomatic spectacles.92 Pictures of Hitler, Mussolini,
and the bombastic pageantry that accompanied their every move
began to circulate more than ever before. Thus, at the very moment
that the PNF mission toured Japan’s East Asian empire, a domestic
Japanese audience became increasingly familiar with the aesthetics of
European fascism. Japan’s media reinforced this awareness by showing
the Italian members of the PNF employing the same visual semantics
which included the use of certain uniforms and salutes across Asia that
were common in fascist Europe. Sometimes, salutes were also slightly
adapted to local settings: when passing Mount Fuji, Paulucci honoured
the natural symbol of Japan with a fascist salute.93 (See Figure 6.)
This (re-)localization of the Axis alliance once again acquired
a global reach, as the pattern of dissemination, reception, and
assimilation that I have hitherto outlined came full circle. As we will
shortly see, Japan’s portrayal of the PNF mission as an endorsement
of its pan-Asian ambitions was one that Italian fascists largely
embraced. This fact is especially striking when we consider the
potential geopolitical risks that Japanese pan-Asianism posed for
Italy (as well as for Germany). Although the leaders of both nations
appreciated that the war in China diverted the world’s attention
from the European crisis, they were keen to have Japan end the
hostilities as soon as possible to be ready to fight the real enemies—
namely, the Soviet Union and/or the United Kingdom. Nonetheless,
in spite of the aforementioned risks, all the evidence indicates that the
91
For more details on these meetings, see Santi Corvaja, Hitler and Mussolini: The
secret meetings, Enigma Books, New York, 2008; as well as P. Baxa, ‘Capturing the fascist
moment: Hitler’s visit to Italy in 1938 and the radicalization of fascist Italy’. Journal
of Contemporary History, vol. 42, no. 2, 2007, pp. 227–242; and D. C. Watt, ‘An earlier
model for the Pact of Steel: the draft treaties exchanged between Germany and Italy
during Hitler’s visit to Rome in May 1938’. International Affairs, vol. 33, no. 2, 1957,
pp. 185–197. For Mussolini’s travel to Germany in 1937, see C. Goeschel, ‘Staging
friendship: Mussolini and Hitler in Germany in 1937’. The Historical Journal, pp. 1–
24. Doi: 10.1017/S0018246X15000540. For details about the different exchange
activities between Italy and Germany in 1938, see J. Petersen, ‘Vorspiel zu “Stahlpakt”
und Kriegsallianz: Das deutsch-italienische Kulturabkommen vom 23. November
1938’. Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 36, no. 1, January 1988, pp. 41–77, here
pp. 48–49. More generally on German-Italian cultural relations, see: B. Martin, The
Nazi-Fascist new order for European culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
2016.
92
Asahi Gurafu, 8 June 1938, pp. 4–5 or Yomiuri Shinbun, 21 May 1938, [Morning
Edition], p. 2.
93
Asahi Gurafu, 6 April 1938, p. 5.
Figure 6. (Colour online) Photograph of Paulucci saluting the Fuji.

Source: Asahi Gurafu, 6 April 1938, detail on p. 5.
Italians officially supported Japan’s pan-Asian ambitions and its efforts

to inscribe the global Axis alliance with a specifically pan-Asianist
meaning. In line with Ciano’s wishes, the PNF mission stressed
that it was, above all, an ‘official’ mission. Whenever possible, its
members donned their black shirts in public (although, interestingly,
they did not do so while on British territory during their return
journey).94 Despite the presence of other Western representatives
in the places they toured, they exchanged diplomatic courtesies only
with the representatives of Japan, Manchukuo, and (Japan-friendly)
China. The PNF mission therefore provided official Italian recognition
and support for Japan’s pan-Asianist ambitions even before Konoe
officially proclaimed the new East Asian order in the autumn
of 1938.
94
See telegram from Paulucci to the Foreign Office from Mukden, 3 May 1938, in
ASMAE, AP, Giappone B. 21.
When we recognize the overtly anti-European aspects of Japan’s pan-

Asianist ambitions, such support becomes all the more fascinating.
After all, Japan’s call for an ‘Asia for the Asians’ was pretty
unequivocal. It might well be suggested that its desire for Asian
supremacy in the region posed a direct challenge to European fascist
ideology and race theory. In addition, Japan’s genesis during this time
of what essentially amounted to a Monroe Doctrine for Asia had the
potential to make the entire PNF mission a patently disconsonant and
contradictory one. Even if these particular Europeans were its allies,
why was Japan celebrating their presence on the very Asian soil it was
so keen to cleanse of corrupting Western influence?
For its part, the PNF mission made a contribution to disseminating
Japanese propaganda not just within Asia but beyond. Back home,
Italian reactions to the mission consisted of more than a passive
acceptance of Japan’s seemingly ineluctable rise in East Asia yet
simultaneously ignored the racial implications of such an advance.
Popolo d’Italia described Manchukuo as a central element and a
‘national force within an oriental axis’ (‘forza nazionale dell’Asse
orientale’).95 In this manner, the puppet regimes in Manchuria
and China became part of an internal Asian axis—a Tokyo-
Hsinking/Shinkyō-Nanjing axis, so to speak. In other words, the global
Anti-Comintern Pact had been given a local face with recognizably
pan-Asian characteristics.
More importantly though, prevailing racial discourses in fascist Italy
underwent a striking shift. In the early 1930s, the country’s press had
still generally been critical of Japanese expansion in China, deploying
the old trope of the ‘yellow peril’. In early 1934, Mussolini himself
had intervened in this discussion in a highly polemical fashion, thus
disgruntling the Japanese.96 However, following the arrival of the PNF
mission in East Asia, all of this was forgotten; henceforth, it became
taboo to raise the spectre of the yellow peril. When news reached
Italy of the kind of Japanese delegations that had received the PNF
mission in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, the official reaction
was highly positive. In Rome, these delegations were interpreted as
providing evidence of the ‘large and expansive race’ which had already
penetrated ‘the entire orient’, a fact to be greatly welcomed.97 Fascist
95
Il Popolo d’Italia, 19 April 1938, p. 3.
96
B. Mussolini, ‘Estremo Oriente’. Il Popolo d’Italia, 17 January 1934.
97
Notes of a conversation with Paulucci, undated, in ASMAE, AP, Giappone B. 21,
p. 2.
party organs such as Gerarchia took up Japanese pan-Asianist discourse
to the extent that they declared that the era of the European mission
in Asia was over, a development that was described as the logical
outcome of history and as something ‘good’.98 In the autumn of 1938,
Gerarchia propagated the message: ‘Overcoming the illusion of Eurasia:
Africa is where the whites still have much to do. The China incident
[L’Incidente di Cina] once again attests to the genius and the work of
the Duce.’99 This article indicated an acceptance of Japan’s historical
task in Asia, thus anticipating the division of the world into blocs which
the Axis powers negotiated a few years later as part of the Tripartite
Pact.
Such a turning away from the discourse of the yellow peril might be
interpreted as a post-racial moment for Italy; analogous developments
have been described for Japan as well as the United States in the
context of total war mobilization during the Second World War.100
However, in Italy’s case, an additional layer of complexity evolved.
Just as the discourse of the yellow peril disappeared, the regime
implemented a key change pertaining to its attitude towards race,
expressed through anti-Semitic laws passed in November 1938. The
close link between these two developments is confirmed by the
excerpt from Ciano’s diary quoted above, in which he accuses ‘Judaeo-
Masonic propaganda’ of describing the Japanese as weak. However,
Italy’s simultaneous and somehow contradictory embrace of the racial
discourses of its two allies—Germany and Japan—remains an open
issue in the current scholarship and one that requires more future
study.
Conclusion
Pan-Asian discourse remained popular in Italy for the next few years.
In 1942, the Italian propaganda magazine Yamato published a special
98
V. Varanini, ‘Le forze armate del “Sol Levante”’. Gerarchia, vol. 17, no. 11,
November 1937, pp. 781–786, here p. 786. See also C. Galimberti, ‘Appunit sul
conflitto cino-giapponese’. Gerarchia, vol. 18, no. 9, September 1938, pp. 606–614,
here especially p. 614, and R. Bellotti, ‘Le Concessioni ed il nuovo ordine asiatico’.
Gerarchia, vol. 19, no. 8, August 1939, pp. 551–557, here p. 557.
99
C. Galimberti, ‘Appunit sul conflitto cino-giapponese’. Gerarchia, vol. 18, no. 9,
September 1938, pp. 606–614, here p. 614.
100
For such developments in Japan and the United States during the Second World
War, see T. Fujitani, Race for empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during
World War Two, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2011.
edition to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of Manchukuo,

with articles penned by the leaders of the two 1938 missions, Ettore
Conti and Giacomo Paulucci.101 In an article entitled ‘New order and
the Manchurian empire’, Paulucci described the ‘collapse of the Anglo-
American position in Asia’, which his mission had already anticipated,
and concluded: ‘The new order, whose prophet is Mussolini and which
has been put into practice in East Asia for the first time in Manchukuo,
thus forcefully advanced in those parts of the world which are watered
by the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in Africa and Europe, too.’102
With this statement, things came full circle. At the height of the
Second World War, the new world order—the utopian focal point of
the Axis powers’ joint project—was being interpreted in Italy as the
product of two events of local origin: Mussolini’s fascist revolution and
Japan’s expansion in the post-1931 period. For Paulucci, the PNF’s
mission had clearly brought together these two events in the spring of
1938 and thus encouraged a global revolution.
Three aspects of Paulucci’s narrative stand out. The first is the fact
that this global revolution had initially been implemented in Asia.
The second (when seen in the context of the Blackshirt mission of
1938) the way in which national and regional processes with obvious
local roots translated into global processes, only to be translated back
into national and regional ones. Paulucci proclaimed Mussolini as the
global prophet of the new fascist order: he viewed the upheavals in East
Asia as a product of the Duce’s genius and will, an idea repeatedly
expressed by Italian intellectuals in these years. Not only was this
a greatly exaggerated, even absurd, idea, it was also a thoroughly
Eurocentric interpretation of the events. A careful examination of the
Blackshirt mission reveals that the figure of the Duce was almost never
present in this fascist spectacle, even though the trip took place during
a period of heightened accentuation of the Duce cult. 103 Therefore, the
fascist spectacle could take on thoroughly different forms depending
on the regional context. In Europe, the Axis celebrations of 1938
were based primarily on extravagantly orchestrated demonstrations
of friendship between the two leaders. In Asia, this was neither possible
nor necessary. But this did no harm to the spectacle itself.
101
‘X annuale della fondazione del Manciukuò: Supplemento al N. 3 di Yamato’.
Yamato, vol. 2, no. 3, March 1942.
102
G. Paulucci Di Calboli, ‘Il ‘I nuovo ordine’ e l’impero mancese’. Yamato, vol. 2,
no. 6, June 1942, pp. 144–145, here p. 145.
103
On the cult of the Duce in the late 1930s, see Roberts, ‘Myth, style, substance’,
pp. 3–4.
The third aspect is the complete (and no doubt intentional)
exclusion of Germany in Paulucci’s account. This made sense, because
for Italy the purpose of a mission such as the PNF’s to Japan was, not
least, to pursue an independent East Asia policy. This was intended
to safeguard Italy’s own place within the Axis alliance, particularly
in relation to a Germany that threatened to become all-powerful.
Thus, on the one hand, this novel form of fascist spectacle was a way
of handling tensions and contradictions within the alliance. On the
other hand, the spectacle of fascist diplomacy served, at the same
time, to strengthen the alliance. In other words, if we look at it from a
cultural historical perspective, the Axis appears significantly stronger,
diverse, and also more global than conventional diplomatic history has
perceived it to be.
For all the contradictions and oddities revealed by the PNF’s mission
to Japan, the undertaking shows how a new form of diplomacy based
on fascist spectacle established itself around 1938. This process was
not limited to the European arena; it was global from the very outset.
To date, this new form of fascist diplomacy has not been taken all that
seriously by scholars. Instead, it has been maintained that nothing
in the way of concrete treaties or agreements was achieved in the
spring of 1938—which is true both in the case of Hitler’s meeting
with Mussolini and Paulucci’s mission to Tokyo. Both visits have
thus been deemed diplomatic failures.104 Hitler’s visit to Rome, for
instance, is said to have been ‘designed as an experiment in ideology,
not diplomacy’.105
However, as this article shows, the separation between style and
substance/ideology becomes highly problematic when we examine
Axis foreign policy in the late 1930s. It is certainly true that both
this mission and Hitler’s meeting with Mussolini occurred within an
international context of heightened shuttle diplomacy. In the interwar
years, this trend is even apparent in Franco-German relations, and
in Anglo-Italian relations.106 In mid-April 1938, for example, the
Easter Accords between Italy and Great Britain were signed, while the
Blackshirt mission was still in Japan. For the Mediterranean region,
these treaties ensured a temporary peace; for the Axis, they meant a
temporary setback.
104
Compare Baxa, ‘Capturing the fascist moment’, pp. 227–228.
105
Ibid., p. 235.
106
Francois-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une Ambassade a‘ Berlin, septembre 1931–octobre 1938,
Flammarion, Paris, 1948, p. 271.
Yet in the spring of 1938, style made all the difference. During the
signing of the Easter Accords, both sides deliberately avoided any form
of pageantry or celebration in connection with these agreements. In
contrast, the diplomacy between the Axis powers included declarations
of friendship, personal journeys by leaders, missions by party delega-
tions, as well as cultural and youth exchanges—all practices that had
a very different level of popular impact.107 In other words, it was the
choreography of the spectacle that made up for the missing treaties.
At a global level, other powers closely observed the diplomatic
phenomenon of fascist spectacle. Precisely because nothing specific
had been learned of the political discussions between the Axis
protagonists or about new treaties, the formal aspects of these
spectacles were studied carefully and taken seriously. In the United
States, for example, the Blackshirt mission was interpreted as
‘indicative of the coherent spiritual union of Italy and Japan’.108
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, in early 1942, the ‘Special Committee
on Un-American Activities’ widely used materials from the Blackshirt
missions in Congressional hearings to prove their point that there had
in fact been a past history of global Axis collaboration.109 From an
American perspective, the PNF mission to Japan and East Asia was a
founding moment for a tripartite alliance that on 7 December 1941
wreaked such destruction. As we have endeavoured to show, such an
analysis has much to support it. The PNF mission of 1938 was part
of a series of Axis exchanges that are best understood as examples of
the new spectacle of global fascism, out of which an internationalized
language of fascist diplomacy developed and from which a new sense
of Axis solidarity arose.
107
On the increased number of exchanges between Germany and Italy after 1936,
see E. Collotti, Fascismo e politica di potenza: politica estera 1922–1939. Con la collaborazione
di Nicola Labanca e Teodoro Sala, La nuova Italia, Milano, 2000, pp. 338–339; as well
as W. Schieder, Der italienische Faschismus: 1919–1945, C.H. Beck, München, 2010,
p. 80.
108
F. M. Tamagna, Italy’s interests and policies in the Far East, Institute for Pacific
Relations, New York, 1941, p. 32.
109
Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the United States. Hearings before a
special committee on un-american activities: house of representatives: seventy-seventh congress, first
session, H. Res. 282: Appendix VI. Report on Japanese activities, United States Government
Printing Office, Washington, 1942, pp. 1927–1934.

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Modern Asian Studies 51, 6 (2017) pp. 1999–2034.

Historisches Seminar der LMU, München, Germany

On a sunny day in the spring of 1938, a unit of Italian marines marched

developments were part of a much more far-reaching phenomenon,

the fascist spectacle need to rather be discussed from a transnational

spectacle that can be located in Japan in 1938 produced a new dynamic

The Blackshirt mission on its way to Asia

The planning for an Italian friendship mission to Japan started

that the Japanese government acquiesced to this, as shown by the fact

off from Naples in mid-February on the Conte Biancamano, a modern

Putting the East Asian war into a global context: Blackshirts at

The exhibition near Osaka was one in a series of events of the

http://www.archivioluce.com/archivio/, [accessed 11 September 2017.] For Ōsaka,

ideological conflict abounded. 44 In particular, Japanese media interest

(Re-)localizing the Axis: the mission in the service of

Japanese exploitation of the PNF’s mission was already clear when

Figure 6. (Colour online) Photograph of Paulucci saluting the Fuji.

Italians officially supported Japan’s pan-Asian ambitions and its efforts

When we recognize the overtly anti-European aspects of Japan’s pan-

edition to mark the tenth anniversary of the founding of Manchukuo,

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