Warfare and Welfare as Competing Modernities: The Social Masses Party in 1930s Japan

Seigo Kubota, Keio University

Drawing on New Fiscal Sociology and archival research of the minutes of the Imperial Diet and the party’s internal journals, this paper examines Japan’s fiscal transformation in the 1930s by focusing on the political project of the Social Masses Party (SMP), the largest moderate proletarian party of the period. The paper argues that the transition to a managed currency system created a fiscal shock that opened a new arena for competing visions of modern statehood. During this moment of fiscal expansion, Japan’s major parties largely directed new resources toward military buildup. In contrast, the SMP advanced an alternative project centered on social redistribution. Through progressive taxation on capital and expanded welfare spending, the party sought to redefine the state’s “common needs” and establish a redistributive fiscal contract between capital and the broader population. In this sense, the mid-1930s became a critical site of contestation between two competing projects of modernity: a warfare state oriented toward military mobilization and a nascent welfare state grounded in social protection. However, the paper highlights an internal tension within the SMP’s vision. Its program relied on a separation of benefits and burdens: capital would be taxed, while the masses were largely exempted from fiscal responsibility. This framing unintentionally transformed the masses from political agents into passive “objects of protection,” portraying the state as a benevolent provider rather than a target of democratic restructuring. This theoretical vulnerability made it easier for the emerging warfare state to appropriate the language of welfare. Under the banner of “Broad National Defense,” redistributive claims were translated into administrative routines and mobilization policies. By examining this process, the paper argues that Japan’s wartime fiscal order was not an inevitable product of culture or ideology but the contingent outcome of political struggles over how fiscal resources should define the state’s common needs.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 55. Warfare, Welfare States, and State-Corporation Relations