From another excellent article by Daniel Hedinger:

Besides Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, the preferred destinations for fascist propaganda were in East Asia, especially Shanghai and Tōkyō. The reason for this expansion of efforts was growing Italian interest in this region due to recent geopolitical changes.

In September 1931, [the Imperialists] occupied Manchuria, and the first battle for Shanghai took place early the following year. In February 1933, [the Empire of] Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, breaking with the post-war order for all the world to see. The man who led the [Imperial] delegation out of Geneva’s Palais des Nations was Matsuoka Yōsuke — a notorious [Imperial] fascist.⁴⁴

After his return to [the Empire of] Japan, Matsuoka called for the abolition of all political parties and a fascist revolution, referring to the March on Rome in Italy and the seizure of power (Machtergreifung) in Germany as his model; furthermore, he believed in the supremacy and the global mission of the so-called Yamato race.⁴⁵

This and his bold move in Switzerland made him the most popular man in [the Empire of] Japan, as the Italian ambassador emphasised in a report detailing Matsuoka’s arrival in Tōkyō, where 50,000 people gave him an enthusiastic reception.⁴⁶ The right-wing organisation Matsuoka founded soon had several million members. Rumours were that a ‘March on Tōkyō’ was imminent.⁴⁷

During his stay in Europe, Matsuoka had met with Mussolini and Hitler; eight years later, after the signing of the Tripartite Pact (1940), he would meet them (now as the foreign minister of [the Empire of] Japan) once again.⁴⁸

Many contemporaries read [the Empire of] Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations within the context of the global wave of fascism and the crisis of the liberal-democratic order, and indeed, [the Empire of] Japan’s actions triggered a chain of other withdrawals from Geneva and paved the way for an ‘ultranationalist reformulation’ of the League.⁴⁹

Events taking place in East Asia are therefore essential to any understanding of the history of the internationalisation of fascism during the ideology’s first global moment in the early 1930s.

At home too, [the Empire of] Japan was experiencing its own fascism boom at home.⁵⁰ ‘No topic is more popularly and more heatedly discussed in Japanese periodicals today than is fascism’, one political commentator observed in early 1932.⁵¹ Intellectuals, now in heated debate on the topic, interpreted this phenomenon in the light of a ‘fascist storm that has now seized the entire world’.⁵²

But they also admitted that ultraright ideologies had found particularly fertile ground in [the Empire of] Japan due to the circumstances surrounding the occupation of Manchuria. Some even went a step further, claiming that what was labelled a ‘Manchurian Incident’ was itself a product of an authentically Japanese form of fascism.⁵³

And indeed, the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo in early 1932 provided an environment for fascism to become fashionable at home. The question that then preoccupied intellectuals, politicians and police alike was whether [the Empire of] Japan would turn fascist.

[…]

For Nakatani, the foundation of [the Imperialists’] new Manchurian empire was the initial step towards a ‘federation of the whole of Asia’,⁷¹ and indeed, with Manchukuo, [the Imperialists] had gained an enormous colonial testing ground for fascist industrial, social and labour policies.

Obviously, when it came to imperial expansion, [the Empire of] Japan was far ahead of its future partners. For the rest of the decade, therefore, the Germans and Italians studied the settlement and industrial policy in Manchuria with great interest.⁷²

As early as the 1930s, Italian fascists were very interested in the (geo)political changes taking place in East Asia. One indication is that Mussolini was studying the reports from East Asia, especially those concerning pan-Asianism, very carefully and in person.⁷³

Another indication is that in 1930, the Duce sent Galeazzo Ciano, his son-in-law and the future foreign minister, to Shanghai as consul general. Mussolini’s daughter Edda, who accompanied her husband, not only experienced first-hand the first battle of Shanghai in early 1932, but also went on a propaganda trip to Tōkyō in time for the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome.⁷⁴

Consequently, around 1933, it seemed that two competing internationals, one in Europe and one in Asia, both aiming for a regional-national rebirth, would come into existence.

(Emphasis added.)

Chalk up another argument for setting World War II’s starting date to September 1931.