In the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection, a few things have already become clear. In addition to leveraging general frustration with inflation, his campaign captured the emotional zeitgeist of the electorate by welding together calls for total disruption of the status quo with vague references to an earlier era of American greatness. Complementing this message was the campaign’s effort to exploit the affordances of the modern media ecosystem, particularly influential podcasts that constitute the heart of the so-called manosphere.

As people struggle to understand why this strategy met with such electoral success and what it might portend for the future, I offer an example from the first half of the twentieth century in Japan that might be illuminating. In the 1910s, Japan witnessed the emergence of a powerful new narrative form that is the subject of my forthcoming book, Literature for the Masses: Japanese Period Fiction, 1913–1941 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025). These stories, known as period fiction (jidai shōsetsu), offered readers breathless accounts of premodern warrior derring-do. Also referred to as mass literature (taishū bungaku), the tales constituted the first form of written entertainment in Japan that appealed to a mass audience.
It might at first seem like a stretch to draw a line between current conditions in the United States and a popular form of narrative entertainment that took off in Japan over one hundred years ago. But there are, I contend, meaningful parallels.
Composed in simple, but vivid, prose, these popular historical tales captured the imagination of a newly literate population that was the first generation to benefit from the educational reforms instituted by the Japanese state in the late nineteenth century. Able to read, but thoroughly unmoved by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the modern Japanese novel, this audience gravitated to a form that energetically reinvented premodern vendetta tales and quest narratives in ways that elicited an unending cascade of thrills and chills. Focusing on this electrifying newness, advocates of the form promoted it as a cultural revolution, a timely alternative to the bourgeois navel-gazing of the modern realistic novel that had already come to seem stale.[1] The movement thus forged together an ambiance of chaotic disruption and an amorphous evocation of the past to create a new form that catalyzed a powerful emotional response among mass readers. These narratives, I argue, are an early cultural manifestation of the ultra-reactionary political trends that arose starting in the late 1920s in Japan.
Since 2015, when I began conducting the research for this project, I have witnessed the power of the MAGA movement’s political messaging—with its distinctive blend of chaos, nostalgia, and incitement. The circumstances of the past decade or so have, thus, shaped my understanding of early twentieth-century Japanese period fiction in a variety of unexpected ways. They helped me realize, for example, that despite their historical subject matter, narratives in period fiction were conceived as a potent storytelling innovation. Shirai Kyōji, a passionate practitioner and advocate of the form, made this point explicit in his commentary. In contrast to the modern realistic novel, which was written by members of the elite for a small audience that shared their privileged worldview, he declared that mass literature reflected the values and tastes of general readers. Underlining this position is a combative statement by Shirai: “I pay no heed to literary critics; I only consider the masses when I work.”[2] He thus saw mass literature as an entirely new form of art that was unbeholden to cultural elites and spoke directly to—and for—the masses. For Shirai, the closest parallel to this new mode of storytelling in the early 1920s was the recently imported technological novelties of film, radio, and the gramophone.[3] Here it is important to note that he was not just referring to the ease with which period narratives were able to exploit the affordances of these forms of entertainment media; rather, he argued that the narratives themselves were as immersive, ubiquitous, and accessible as the technical media that were transforming Japanese culture. For Shirai and his compatriots, period fiction was anything but a quaint anachronism. It was a mode of expression and narrative outreach that had the potential to change the way that Japanese consumers experienced literature, history, and national identity.
Key to the transformative power of these popular narratives was how they strategically reimagined the Japanese past to optimize powerful emotional responses in their massive audience. Japanese authority on the genre, Ozaki Hotsuki, touches on this aspect of the genre when he declares, “Readers clamored for the romantic dreams unspooled in the picaresque stylings of period fiction. For this reason, they ignored the documentary accuracy of the historical novel (rekishi shōsetsu) and embraced fantastic tales that traded freely in extravagant dreams.”[4] The historical setting of period fiction thus had less to do with any verifiable reality of the Japanese past than with establishing an alternative fantasy space in opposition to the realities of the present. That is, the stimulation of feelings always took precedence over the recitation of historical facts. It is through the process of developing and exploring this emotive time–space, organized around the exploits of lethal swordsmen, that period fiction authors differentiated their work from other forms of entertainment on offer, and cultivated a massive audience of passionate fans.
Kobayashi Hideo, a leading Japanese critic and intellectual of the early twentieth century, proposed that the appeal of period fiction was directly related to a pervasive sense of cultural dislocation engendered by Japanese modernity. He argued that consumers, overwhelmed by the atomization, speed, and abstraction of the modern condition, turned to period fiction because of its ability to spark a constellation of powerful emotions.[5] More than other forms of art and entertainment, period narratives struck a chord with their audience because they “exude real, everyday emotions.”[6] For Kobayashi, the “realness” of these emotions was directly tied to their connection to a shared sense of Japanese cultural heritage. It should be noted, however, that these feeling states were by and large not soothing. On the contrary, with their ruthless protagonists and non-stop violent action, these narratives mirrored, and even intensified, the chaotic atmosphere of modernity. Period fiction thus offered consumers a vehicle for experiencing the modern through a creative, and thoroughly updated, reimagining of the past.
In 1926, writer and cultural critic Hasegawa Nyozekan delved into the ideological overtones of this phenomenon. Using a Marxist approach, he proposed that mass consumers, buffeted by the economic dislocations of Japanese capitalism, turned to period narratives out of a sense of nostalgia for the old feudal order.[7] This interpretation has become the received wisdom for understanding the rise of this genre in early-twentieth-century Japan.
But here is where the conditions of our own moment have clarified for me an alternative, and I think, a more compelling reading of the cultural and ideological work performed by these works. I propose that given their total commitment to the principle of flagrant confabulation, and their construction of Japanese history as a space overflowing with the electrifying feelings catalyzed through displays of violent spectacle, these narratives do not promise consumers a return to any kind of familiar past so much as they treat the past as a flexible dimension through which to disrupt the present and create a new cultural order going forward.
This is made clear not only in their antagonistic attitude to the literary norms epitomized by the modern Japanese novel, but also in the ultra-reactionary political leanings of many of the producers of these popular period narratives. For example, Yoshikawa Eiji, author of Miyamoto Musashi (1935–39)—the most commercially successful piece of Japanese period fiction published in the twentieth century, and one of the works that I consider in my study—voiced support for rebellious factions of the armed forces in the turbulent 1930s. For producers of period fiction like Yoshikawa, the past is not something to be preserved, but rather something to be radically transformed so that it can serve as the foundation of their literary and social insurgency. In short, period fiction’s mix of revolutionary impulses, reliance on new techniques and technologies, prioritization of feelings over facts, hazy invocations of authentic “Japaneseness,” commitment to the cathartic value of violence, and laser-like focus on the so-called masses, conspicuously mirror linchpins of early-twentieth-century ultra-reactionary thought.

Nakazato Kaizan’s anarchic masterpiece, The Great Buddha Pass (Daibosatsu tōge, 1913–41) epitomizes these characteristics. Often considered to be the urtext of the movement, the work began as a conventional vendetta tale. After an initial ho-hum response from readers, it quickly morphed into something entirely new. Kaizan started populating the narrative with an ever-expanding cast of eccentric characters, steering the plot into steadily more extreme territory. At the center of this seething vortex was the anti-hero Tsukue Ryūnosuke. Although he began the story as a standard issue villain, he evolved into an entirely new character type, a relentless killing machine who slaughtered everyone he encountered: men, women, children, the elderly. The spasms of violence perpetrated by Ryūnosuke became the chilling undercurrent that defined the narrative and shaped the increasingly bizarre behavior of the other characters.
The narrative organized this endless cascade of violent spectacle around an ongoing exploration of the relationship of past to present. It pursued this agenda through a variety of repeated motifs, such as the doppelganger, dream, and hallucination. With these devices, the past would shockingly intrude upon the narrative present and catalyze new acts of carnage from Ryūnosuke. This structure is mirrored by the narrative as a whole. Kaizan’s patently fabricated version of the Japanese past functions primarily as a vehicle to deliver a steady stream of violent action designed to trigger an escalating emotional response from its audience.
Readers at the time acknowledged this aspect of the narrative. Here, for example, is a representative statement from a fan of the novel. The letter was submitted by a reader who simply identified herself as “a loving female reader” (aidokujo), a sobriquet that actively frames reading as an affective experience. After she recounts how the dream scenes in the novel shape her own dreams, and expresses disdain for readers who nitpick factual discrepancies in Kaizan’s version of the Edo period, she declares: “There must be tens of thousands of passionate fans in Tokyo who like me don’t have knowledge [of history] but love The Great Buddha Pass and understand it that way.”[8] In short, this reader suggests that her understanding of the Japanese past as presented in Kaizan’s narrative is mediated entirely through feelings. It is precisely this mechanism that charges his version of Japanese history with an emotional potency and thus, creates new avenues for forging a more personal sense of connection to a form of national identity grounded on a deeply held vision of the past.
For me, the ideologically loaded frisson of excitement generated by period fiction such as The Great Buddha Pass, aligns meaningfully with the conditions of our own political moment. Let me first emphasize that I clearly recognize that Japan of the 1920s and 1930s differs from the United States today. Moreover, I am aware of the space separating creative fiction from political propaganda. But I submit that the atmospherics of the two phenomena are comparable. Take for example, the slogan Make America Great Again. In the manner comparable to the Japanese past proffered by period fiction narratives, this evocation of an earlier era in the United States is bereft of any empirical foundation. But this vagueness is precisely what makes it so powerful. Its malleability enables it to function as the basis of a dynamic story-verse that stokes resentment against elite institutions, conveys a sense of shared values, excites powerful emotions, and offers non-stop drama.
Taken to its extreme, we know, this story-verse can incite an event like the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. And this is why it cannot be dismissed, and needs to be understood. Although early twentieth-century Japanese period fiction is not a perfect analogy, it is a concrete historical precedent of a similar type of cultural phenomenon. Both approaches toward storytelling convey a sense of urgency, a blatant disregard for facts, an easy command of new media, and an in-your-face exuberance. In both contexts, an imaginary past becomes a space ripe for cultural insurrection.
It is my hope that a detailed study of Japanese mass literature will offer some insights into the strategies and techniques through which this type of cultural narrative can bewitch its audience. We know how this ended for Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. Examination of popular period fiction shows that the insurrectionary spirit of the genre was symptomatic of the wider political and social transition to a form of ultranationalism that elevated Japanese identity to the apex of a high-stake emotional spectacle. Given the lack of critical distance, it is harder for us to determine at this moment the lasting impact of the MAGA story-verse on the culture and politics of the United States. Only time will tell.
Notes
[1] Shirai Kyōji, “Taishū bungei to genjitsu bakuro no kanki,” Chūō Kōron, Vol. 41, No. 7 (July 1926), p. 203.
[2] Shirai, quoted in Hayashi Fusao, “Taishū bungaku no risō to genjitsu,” Shinchō, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January 1929), p. 46.
[3] Shirai, “Taishū bungei to genjitsu bakuro no kanki,” pp. 204–5.
[4] Ozaki Hotsuki, “Rekishi shōsetsu to jidai shōsetsu no aida,” Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō, Vol. 44, No. 3 (1979), pp. 18–19.
[5] Kobayashi Hideo, “Kokyō o ushinatta bungaku,” Kobayashi Hideo zenshū, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2001), p. 369.
[6] Kobayashi, p. 373.
[7] Hasegawa Nyozekan, “Seijiteki handō to geijutsu no gyakuten,” Chūō Kōron, Vol. 41, No. 8 (August 1926), p. 32.
[8] Nakazato Kaizan, Appendix, Daibosatsu tōge, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1930), pp. 22–24.