Japan was absolutely not fascist, and at no point did they consider themselves even remotely fascist. The main differentiation is on the fascist obsession with strength, which was absent in Japanese 'statist' philosophy.

Nazi and Italian ideology was very clear in defining a master race defined to dominate or subjugate all others. The hitherto failure to do so was merely historical anomaly, the fault of (1) previously misguided traitors (like Communists), or (2) international conspiracy (like Jews). This was a whole new way of thinking, the world had not yet encountered a polity which believed it's divine mission was to take over the entire world and make it serve a certain smaller master class.

Japanese statism however, was significantly closer to the moralising grand cultural-religious imperialisms of Britain/France/Spain, albeit with an pan-Asian historical background. Democratic Japan had built a colonial mini-empire across Korea, Taiwan and the Pacific Islands, which it administered with an eye to development. We look back at it as a time of oppression, but the locals in Taipei or Seoul were painfully aware that their lives were significantly better compared to the starving peasants of China, or the explicit racist persecution common in Southeast Asia. Japan gloated in this, just as the British did with colonies like Hong Kong and Singapore, and we have many records of the efforts they took to insist that they were the model empire. Elite Japanese society was also very cosmopolitan, with the great scholars of the day educated in the UK, France, or Germany.

Consequently, what emerged was what we today generalise as the Kyoto School, grounded in Heidegger and Kant, but heavily influenced by Buddhism and Neo-Confucian totalitarianism. Thinkers like Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji painstakingly constructed pseudo-histories of Asia which featured a very prominent theme: the moral superiority and ascent of the Chinese state in two peaks of the Han and Tang dynasties, and it's moral collapse thereafter. Well-travelled philosophers were startled by the differences between the average Chinese and Japanese, and struggled to reconcile this with the orthodox teachings of the past millennium, which had elevated China as the land of moral civilisation. By WWII, much of this had crystallised into a cogent line of thinking, best exemplified by Tetsuro Watsuji's <Climate - a Philosophical Study>.

Very simply, China's present weakness and collapse is merely temporary. A society infected by corruption, waste, anarchy, emotionlessness, and savaged by opportunistic Westerners, once cured, China would easily and rapidly assume its place as a great nation again. This extended easily to all Asian countries, particularly India and Malaya. Only Japan had already reached the point of moral strength and total discipline, having taken the mantle of moral leadership from China, and it was her divine mission and responsibility to lead the rest of Asia into its rightful place in the light. Eventually it was envisaged that once all nations had learnt sufficiently from Japan, there would be no divisions between the Asian countries, which would have attained a state of moral harmony. Instead, borders would serve only to delineate the beginning and end of cultures and style of art beautiful in their differences.

The perversion of this philosophical mission by war and the military is hence distinct from the fascist experience. Japanese soldiers did not see the Asians they massacred across the continent as vermin, but rather as savages, who would need to be disciplined and tamed before they could be uplifted. Discipline and totalitarianism were not perceived as the price to pay for an efficient society, but were rather the aim of society itself. Most importantly, Japanese statism was never intended to be popular. It did not feature mass rallies crowned by charismatic speakers, or celebrations of youthful energy. Rather more like Victorian imperialism before it, it called for prudence, civilisation, and adherence to tradition. Contrast the speeches of Mussolini and Hitler, to the droning monotone of Japanese wartime proclamations.