The New Political Order [ja] movement was influenced by the European fascism and led to the "statist" Imperial Rule Assistance Association.
Kinzō Gorai [ja] toured Italy, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and Russia in 1931 and delivered a lecture entitled "Fascism or Communism?"
[3] After the May 15 Incident in 1932, Emperor Shōwa expressed his request to Gen. Saionji Kinmochi, who was recommending a successor to Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, that "anyone close to the fascist is absolutely impossible.".
[9] The mainstream view among Japanese studies scholars in Western countries also denies the establishment of fascism in Japan.
[9] American historian Robert O. Paxton argues that with the absence of a mass revolutionary party and a rupture from the incumbent regime, Imperial Japan was merely "an expansionist military dictatorship with a high degree of state-sponsored mobilization [rather] than as a fascist regime";[11] British historian Roger Griffin, called Putin's Russia and World War II-era Japan "emulated fascism in many ways, but was not fascist".