Japan implemented extremely racist policies towards other local nationalities like korea and china. Im interested if there was a historic culture of racism towards cultures on the mainland or If this was adopted from the western imperial powers? There was a massive influx of western influence in statescraft and techology at the time and I'm wondering if the pseudo-ethnology regarding racial hierarchies in the west played a part in the ideology? Also how did the ideology see the japanese racially in relation to the europeans and americans? As superiors or equals? There seemed to be alot of ideas from europe implanting themselves in japan in this period especially regarding colonialism and empire building, so I am curious if racial superiority is part of a culture creep.
In Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma don't really go into detail as to the racial ideology itself, but definitely imply it was in significant parts a western import. Specifically, imports from German fascism.
I'll quote the most relevant part I can find in the book, it is in the middle of a discussion on Kamikaze tactics, and the argument that State Shinto was designed explicitly to model European State Religions:
The Japanese were far from being the only non-Western people who tried to face Western imperial power by adopting some extreme Western ideas. Radical Hindus in the 1920s formed an organization called the RSS and grafted European fascist ideas onto a modern interpretation of their own religious practices. Like Communists, they aimed at forging a “new man” by instilling discipline and obedience. Like German National Socialists, they stressed race as the basic component of the modern militarized nation. And from their khaki uniforms to their cult of fresh air and exercise, they took something from the British army too. The main idea was to submerge the individual into the Hindu nation by denying individual desires and the validity of individual autonomy. M. S. Golwalkar, the ideologue of this movement, wrote, “Each cell feels its identity with the entire body and is ever ready to sacrifice itself for the sake of the health and growth of the body. In fact, it is the self-immolation of millions of such cells that releases the energy for every bodily activity.”
A very similar case was made in the 1920s and 1930s by Japanese philosophers, who matched up Hegel with Zen Buddhism. To call Hindu nationalism traditionally Indian would be as absurd as to call kamikaze tactics traditionally Japanese. It borrowed something from the Indian past, to be sure, just as kamikaze tactics did from the Japanese past, but without the influence of European ideas neither the RSS nor the Japanese Tokkotai would ever have taken the shape it did.
I definitely recommend this book if you want a detailed and thoroughly researched analysis/argument on how Western influences and imperialism shaped the nastier sides of the modern Japanese experience. Roughly half the book deals with pre- and wartime Japan, the other half deals with the Middle East and Islamic radicalism (in the same vein).
To piggy back on this, did the Nazis and the Japanese see each other as their respective domains' "master race?" (i.e. a mutually-agreed upon ideology that the Aryans are meant to rule Europeans and Slavs while the Japanese are meant to rule Asians)