How far does the fascist label explain wartime Japan?

Clarke rejects a simple fascist classification for wartime Japan and favors a distinctly Japanese form of authoritarian government. His analogy is an aristocracy trying to recreate something like the shogunate, with authority exercised through groups and claims to interpret the emperor's will. The emperor could confer legitimacy while reigning without routinely directing government. The comparison with Europe then turns to limits on individual leaders: Mussolini and Japanese ministers had monarchs above them, while Hitler had no equivalent superior. Italian senators' criticism of Mussolini and Japanese factional struggles are offered as further complications to a single model of dictatorship. Other panelists stress that fascism can take local forms and that Italian and German policies differed, especially before the war. The disagreement concerns how much variation the label can accommodate, as well as how Japan's institutions actually worked.