The Author: Jacob Kovalio is Professor of Japanese and Asian History/Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in Japanese history and an M.A. in Chinese history, both from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the former president of the Japan Studies Association of Canada [JSAC], three-time holder of Japan Foundation research fellowships, and the winner of three Excellence in Teaching awards. Among his publications are Japan in Focus (ed.) and numerous book chapters and journal articles.
«Most Japanese have never met a Jew, or they do not know it if they
have. That has not prevented the rise of vigorous, indeed fanatical
antisemitism, based on European documents of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The most important is The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, a fraudulent, fantastic work from the end of the
nineteenth century about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to rule the
world. The Protocols arrived in Japan in 1919 and were immediately
influential across a wide spectrum of society, including military
officers, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. … We all know the
disastrous results of unchecked virulent antisemitism. Japanese
antisemitism will never amount to anything but local discomfort and
discrimination, but Jacob Kovalio is wise to study the phenomenon.»
(John S. Brownlee, Professor Emeritus of Japanese History,
University of Toronto)
«Sharply focused and highly readable, Jacob Kovalio’s study
illustrates the appearance of antisemitism in Japan, a society
without Jews. The author’s trenchant analysis demonstrates how the
PROTOCOLS of the ELDERS of ZION, a document fabricated at the turn
of the twentieth century in tsarist Russia by antisemitic regime
loyalists, inflamed Judeophobia throughout Christendom, and even
within Japan sparked an anxious concern that a two-millennia-long
conspiracy by Jews to seize control of the world was on the verge
of realization. Kovalio’s carefully crafted account shows that
significant segments of Japan’s intellectual, political and
military elites took the ‘Jewish Peril’ portended by the PROTOCOLS
very seriously, despite overwhelming evidence that the document was
spurious. The author notes insightfully that Japan today still
reflects the impact of the PROTOCOLS legacy, in mass-market
antisemitic diatribes against the evils and dangers of Jewish
‘control’ of the world’s financial institutions, as well,
paradoxically, as in ostensibly benign and complimentary
over-estimations of Jewish intelligence, competence and courage.
This work provides compelling reading for those with
world-historical interests in the globalization of ideas, and
offers fascinating cross-cultural perspectives on what Leon Pinsker
once termed mankind’s apparently inescapable forays in to
‘demonopathy’, the most significant manifestation of which in
recent centuries has been Judeophobia.» (Gordon Berger, Professor
Emeritus of Japanese History, UCLA)
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