The 105th WIAPS Seminar (Jun. 8th)

Date & Time

Jun. 8, 2026 (Monday) 12:25-13:00

Venue

ZOOM Webinar

Intended Audience

WIAPS Full-time Faculty/Research Associates, WIAPS Exchange Researchers/Visiting Scholars/Visiting Researchers, GSAPS MA/Ph.D. Students

Presentation

Presenter

HOFMANN, Reto Thomas (Professor, GSAPS)

Presentation Theme

The Conservative Imaginary: The Yabe Circle and the Origins of Japanese Conservatism, 1920-1970.

(Conducted in English)

Abstract

This paper examines the intellectual and political origins of modern Japanese conservatism through the activities of the “Yabe Circle,” a loose network of thinkers, bureaucrats, journalists, and political actors surrounding the political scientist Yabe Teiji from the interwar period to the high Cold War. Spanning the decades from the crisis of parliamentary politics in the 1920s to the consolidation of conservative rule under the Liberal Democratic Party in the 1950s and 1960s, the paper argues that Japanese conservatism emerged not simply as a postwar reaction against socialism or liberalism, but as the reformulation of imperial and wartime political ideas under the conditions of defeat, decolonization, and Cold War realignment—what I call the conservative imaginary.