KŌDŌHA - THE IMPERIAL WAY

For anyone interested here is some context: The Kōdōha (Imperial Way Faction) was one of two main factions in interwar Japan. Their nemesis was the so called Tōseiha (Control Faction) which put weight on modernizing Japan and working with the Zaibatsu (Capitalist conglomerates). The Kōdōha instead wanted to turn back the westernization and get rid of the Zaibatsu. Both were nationalist, expansionist and reactionary. In very simple terms one was conservative and compromising, the other radical and uncompromising. The Kōdōha’s leader Gen. Araki Sadao put the weight on ’’spiritual mobilization’’ emphasizing morale and determination before machines. They also wanted to redefine (or rather return to the true form of the Kokutai) the Kokutai, giving more power to the Emperor and revising the shackles (as they saw destroyed the notion of the Emperor as divine ruler) put on during the Taishō (Hirohitos father) Emperors reign. In the early 1930s the Kōd&