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Japan's Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order, 1931-1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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One of the most striking aspects of the international history of the 1930s is the revival and official endorsement of a pan-Asian vision of regional world order in Japan. The pan-Asian discourse of East-West civilizational difference and comparison was influential in various intellectual circles in Asia. But during the 1920s, as a political project of Asian solidarity, it was irrelevant for Japan's foreign policy, and it did not have any international momentum or movement. The period after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, however, witnessed a process by which pan-Asianist ideas and projects became part of Japan's official foreign policy rhetoric. After 1933 Japan's pan-Asian internationalism began to overshadow liberal internationalism, gradually becoming the mainstream vision of an alternative world order. This process culminated in the declaration of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere in 1940, a project that relied heavily on the rhetoric of panAsian internationalism. In 1943, seventeen years after the ineffectual 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiatic conference that was ridiculed by official and liberal circles in Japan, the Japanese government itself hosted a Greater East Asia Conference to which it invited the leaders of the Philippines, Burma, the provincial government of India, the Nanking government of China, Manchukuo, and Thailand.
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- Pan-Asianism in Historical Context
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- Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Special Issue S13: Course Reader No. 13. White Peril/Yellow Peril and Japan's Pan-Asian Visions, 1850-1930 , January 2014 , pp. 51 - 93
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References
Notes
1 The Manchurian Incident of 1931 initiated a process that led to the establishment of a Japanese-controlled puppet government in Manchuria and Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations. Japan's Kwantung army guarding the South Manchurian Railways bombed parts of the railway in Mukden to create a pretext to occupy Manchuria with the ostensible purpose of providing security against Chinese nationalists in September 1931. Instead of withdrawing from the occupied territories, the Japanese government created the puppet state Manchukuo in February 1932. Nonrecognition of this state by the League of Nations became the reason for Japanese withdrawal from the league in 1933.
2 Frederick Dickinson, War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 19141919 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
3 Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).
4 Christopher Szpilman, “Conservatism and Its Enemies in Prewar Japan: The Case of Hiranuma Kiichirô and the Kokuhonsha,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 30, no. 2 (December 1998): 101-133.
5 Genzo Yamamoto, “Defending Japan's Civilization and Civilizing Mission in Asia: The Resilience and Triumph of Illiberalism in the House of Peers, 1919-1934” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1999). See also Arima Tatsuo, The Failure of Freedom: A Portrait of Modern Japanese Intellectuals (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). For a previous work on this topic that focuses more on the failure of the liberals to fight the antiliberals, see Toru Takemoto, The Failure of Liberalism in Japan: Shidehara Kijuro's Encounter with Anti-Liberals (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978).
6 Louise Young, Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
7 For Nitobe Inazô's arguments justifying Japan's Manchuria policy, see Thomas W. Burkman, “The Geneva Spirit,” in John F. Howes, ed., Nitobe Inazô: Japan's Bridge Across the Pacific (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 204-209. See also George Oshiro, “The End: 1929-1933,” in Howes, Nitobe Inazô, 255-258.
8 For Zumoto's defense of the Manchurian Incident before international audiences in the United States and Europe, see Zumoto Motosada, The Origin and History of the Anti-Japanese Movement in China (Tokyo: Herald, 1932); and idem, Japan in Manchuria and Mongolia (Tokyo: Herald, 1931). For Nitobe Inazô's opinion on the Manchurian Incident, see Nitobe Inazô, “Japan and the League of Nations,” in The Works of Nitobe Inazô (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1972), 4:234-239; and idem, “The Manchurian Question and Sino-American Relations,” in The Works of Nitobe Inazô, 4:221-233.
9 For a discussion of Shôwa Kenkyûkai, see J. Victor Koschmann, “Asianism's Ambivalent Legacy,” in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 90-94. Shôwa Kenkyûkai (1933-1940) was labeled in the popular press as Konoe Fumimaro's brain trust. Especially during Konoe's tenure as prime minister (1937-1939, 19401941), Shôwa Kenkyûkai was preoccupied with formulating the East Asian Cooperative Body and the New Order Movement. The membership of the association included scholars and journalists from different ideological backgrounds. For the anti-Western ideas of the Kyoto School philosophers, see John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 227.
10 Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Stefan Tanaka, Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Kevin Doak, Dreams of Difference: The Japan Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994). There is an ongoing debate about the relationship of the pro-war nature of the Kyoto School philosophy and its vision of overcoming modernity. See Ueda Shizuteru, “Nishida, Nationalism, and the War in Question,” in James Heisig and John Moraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), 77-106; Yusa Michiko, “Nishida and Totalitarianism: A Philosopher's Resistance,” in Heisig and Moraldo, Rude Awakenings, 107-131; and Andrew Feenberg, “The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishida,” in Heisig and Moraldo, Rude Awakenings, 151-173.
11 Akira Iriye, “The Failure of Economic Expansionism: 1918-1931,” in Bernard S. Silberman and H. D. Harootunian, eds., Japan in Crises: Essays on Taishô Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 265.
12 James B. Crowley, “A New Asian Order: Some Notes on Prewar Japanese Nationalism,” in Silberman and Harootunian, Japan in Crises, 273.
13 This continuity in change was theorized by Andrew Gordon as the transition from imperial democracy to imperial fascism. See Andrew Gordon, Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
14 “Confronted by a formidable cluster of diplomatic, economic, and military problems, the Imperial government [of Japan] resorted to a series of potential solutions: Manchukuo, a Japanese Monroe Doctrine, Hirota's three principles, an advance to the South Seas, a national defense state, and the rejuvenation of China” (James B. Crowley, “Intellectuals as Visionaries of the New Asian Order,” in James W. Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 395). Similarly, Ben-Ami Shillony has demonstrated that, even at the peak of the Pacific War, Japan did not deviate from the normal functioning of the Meiji Constitution. See Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
15 Hayashi Fusao, Daitôa Sensô Kôteiron, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Banchô Shobô, 1964-1965), cited in Crowley, “A New Asian Order,” 297-298.
16 For example, Mark Peattie has argued that Ishiwara Kanji's views “were part of this surging anti-Western nationalism during the interwar period, and his concept of a Final War must be seen as a reinvigoration of a persistent, if long-muted, theme of challenge to the West throughout Japan's modern history to 1945” (Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975], 368).
17 For a good example of the perception of Western retreat from Asia, see No-Yong Park, Retreat of the West: The White Man's Adventure in Eastern Asia (Boston: Hale, Cushman, and Flint, 1937).
18 U. Ottama (1879-1939) was an influential figure in Burmese nationalism. Influenced by both the Indian National Congress and the Japanese model, Ottama denounced British colonial rule. He was imprisoned by the British authorities for a very long time, ultimately dying in prison. For Ôkawa's praise of Ottama, see Ôkawa Shûmei, “Ottama Hôshi o Omou,” in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 7 vols., ed. Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû Kankôkai (Tokyo: Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû Kankôkai, 1961-1974), 2:913-915.
19 Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire,” in Bert Edstrom, ed., The Japanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon, 2000), 112-120; El-Mostafa Rezrazi, “Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Islam: Hatano Uhô. From Espionage to Pan-Islamist Activity,” Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies, no. 12 (1997): 89-112.
20 Tanaka Ippei was a scholar of China and Buddhism. He converted to Islam and performed pilgrimages to Mecca in 1925 and 1933. Wakabayashi describes Tanaka Ippei as a fighter for “Sonnô Yûkoku,” meaning “Revere the Emperor, and be a Patriot,” despite the fact that Tanaka became a Muslim and adopted the name Haji Nur Muhammad in 1918.
21 His brother, Wakabayashi Kyûman, worked for the same cause, operating undercover as a merchant among Chinese Muslims until he died in Changsha in 1924. For Wakabayashi's reflections on the history of the Kokuryûkai circle of Islam policy advocates, see Wakabayashi Han, Kaikyô Sekai to Nihon (Tokyo: Wakabayashi Han, 1937), 1-3.
22 Wakabayashi, Kaikyô Sekai to Nihon, 3-7. Araki Sadao (1877-1966) was a leader in the Imperial Way faction of the army.
23 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Cho Gakuryo Shi o Tazuneru no Ki” (November 1928), in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 4:591.
24 Christopher Szpilman, “The Dream of One Asia: Ôkawa Shûmei and Japanese Pan-Asianism,” in H. Fuess, ed., The Japanese Empire in East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy (Munich: German Institute of Japanese Studies, 1998), 51.
25 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Manmô Mondai no Kôsatsu,” Gekkan Nihon, no. 75 (June 1931), reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 2:649-683.
26 See Awaya Kentaro and Yoshida Yutada, eds., International Prosecution Section (IPS) (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1980), 23:396-398. During the interrogation, Ôkawa conceded that he knew something would happen but noted that many others at that time had the same knowledge and it was not a secret.
27 For instance, as the biography of Ishiwara Kanji, the military brain of the Manchurian Incident, confirms, ideas about a final war and East-West confrontation, which were very important in Ôkawa Shûmei's pan-Asianism, were commonly shared by other European, American, and Japanese thinkers, and Ôkawa was not the main inspiration for Ishiwara's plans. See Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 27-86.
28 William Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 29-30. For the detailed arguments of Rôyama on the issue of Manchuria policy, see also Rôyama Masamichi, Japan's Position in Manchuria (Tokyo: Institute of Pacific RelationsJapan Council, 1929).
29 Even in June 1931, shortly before the Manchurian Incident, when Ôkawa warned that a war could break out between China and Japan at a slight provocation and suggested the necessity of a radical change in policy in Manchuria, his ideas still were not exceptional enough to single him out as an instigator of Kwantung Army officers. See Ôkawa, “Manmô Mondai no Kôsatsu,” 679-682.
30 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nijyû no Nankyoku ni tai suru Kakugo,” Gekkan Nihon, May 1932, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 4:629-631; and idem, “Manshu Shin Kokka no Kensetsu,” Gekkan Nihon, July 1932, in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo, ed. Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo Kankôkai (Tokyo: Fuyô Shohô Shuppan, 1998), 244-248.
31 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Daitô Kyôeiken no Rekishiteki Konkyo,” in Dai Nippon Genron Hôkokukai, ed., Kokka to Bunka (Tokyo: Dômei Tsûshinsha, 1943), 29-43.
32 For Ôkawa Shûmei's main article on the withdrawal from the League of Nations, see “Kokusai Renmei to Nihon,” Tôyô, May 1932, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo, 232.
33 For Ôkawa's advocacy of the withdrawal from the league before the Manchurian Incident, see Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nihon no Kokusai Chii O Kokoromiru,” Daitô Bunka, May 1929, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Kankei Monjo, 234-243.
34 Inukai was assassinated by a group of radical nationalist army cadets and naval officers. Ôkawa Shûmei was indicted, and found guilty, of providing material assistance to this group. It is ironic that he ended up contributing to Inukai Tsuyoshi's assasination, as pan-Asianists usually viewed Inukai positively, and the 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiatic conference honored him as one of the Asian politicians who aided the cause of Asian people's awakening.
35 The fifteen-year prison sentence Ôkawa received on February 3, 1934, was reduced to five years on October 24, 1935. Because of health problems, he was allowed to postpone his prison term until June 16, 1936. He was finally paroled on October 13, 1937. See Ôtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei to Kindai Nihon (Tokyo: Mokutakusha, 1990), 220.
36 In the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, Ôkawa established Jinmukai (Society of Jinmu) as a new nationalist organization in the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, with hopes of reaching a larger audience and creating a broader popular base for his radical nationalist and Asianist movement. Ôkawa Shûmei's trial and imprisonment must have played a role in his decision to disband the group. Moreover, after the coup of February 26, 1936, an event that led to the execution of Kita Ikki as the civilian ideologue of the military conspirators, the authorities began to show less tolerance for radical nationalist organizations.
37 The journal was published by Mantetsu Tôa Keizai Chôsakyoku in Tokyo from August 1939 to February 1944.
38 Ôkawa Shûmei, editorial, Shin Ajia 1, no. 1 (August 1939): 2-3.
39 Tazawa Takuya, Musurimu Nippon (Tokyo: Sho Gakkan, 1998), 145-146.
40 See Grant K. Goodman, ed., Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia During World War 2 (New York: St. Martin's, 1991), 2-5.
41 Gotô Ken’ichi, “ ‘Bright Legacy’ or ‘Abortive Flower’: Indonesian Students in Japan During World War 2,” in Goodman, Japanese Cultural Policies in Southeast Asia During World War 2, 7-35. See also Grant K. Goodman, An Experiment in Wartime Inter-Cultural Relations: Philippine Students in Japan, 1943-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1962).
42 Students of Ôkawa were the leading figures in Ôkawa Shûmei Kenshôkai and organized the publication of his collected works and other related materials. See Harada Kôkichi, Ôkawa Shûmei Hakushi no shôgai (Yamagata-ken Sakata-shi: Ôkawa Shûmei Kenshôkai, 1982).
43 For a personal account of the Ôkawa Juku from the memoirs of students, see Tazawa, Musurimu Nippon, 129-142.
44 For the evaluation of Ôkawa's Islamic studies, see Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Ôkawa Shûmei no Ajia Kenkyû,” in Hashikawa Bunsô, ed., Ôkawa Shûmei Shû; (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô, 1975), 391-394.
45 See Ôkawa Shûmei, “Taisen no Zento to Ajia no Shorai o Kataru Zadankai,” Shin Ajia 2, no. 3 (August 1940): 126. See also Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nanhô Mondai,” in Yoshioka Nagayoshi, ed., Sekai no Dôkô to Tôa Mondai (Tokyo: Zenrin Kyôkai, 1941), 384-385.
46 Ôkawa, editorial, Shin Ajia 1, no. 1 (August 1939): 3.
47 Haruo Iguchi, Unfinished Business: Ayukawa Yoshisuke and U.S.-Japan Relations, 1937-1953 (Cambridge: Harvard East Asia Monographs, 2001).
48 See Ôtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei: Aru Fukkô Kakushin Shugisha no Shisô (Tokyo:, Chûô Kôronsha, 1995), 160-170; Kusunoki Seiichirô, “Ôkawa Shûmei no tai-Bei Seisaku,” Nihon Rekishi, no. 474 (November 1987): 54-70.
49 See Ôtsuka Takehiro, “Shôwa Jyunendai no Ôkawa Shûmei,” in Ôkawa Shûmei to Kindai Nihon, 227-252.
50 Ôkawa Shûmei, A History of Anglo-American Aggression in East Asia, trans. Yoshio Ogawa and P. B. Clarke (Tokyo: Daitôa Shuppan Kabushiki Kaisha, 1944), 1-3
51 For the way the prosecution used this reference, see Awaya and Yoshida, International Prosecution Section (IPS), 23:319.
52 Ibid., 23:303-306.
53 The New Asia, edited by Rash Behari Bose in Tokyo from 1933 to 1937).
54 The content of The New Asia included many of the arguments expounded by Ôkawa Shûmei, unsurprisingly, given the close ties that had existed between Ôkawa and Bose since 1915. For example, the content in The New Asia, nos. 5-6 (September-October 1933): 1, is very similar to the writings of Ôkawa in Fukkô Ajia no Shomondai and Ajia, Yoroppa, Nihon.
55 For news about Muhammad Hatta, see The New Asia, nos. 13-14 (May-June 1934): 4.
56 The New Asia, nos. 17-18 (September-October 1934), contains extensive coverage of Chandra Bose's ideas.
57 The New Asia, nos. 5-6 (September-October 1933): 3. For Tagore's critique of Japan during the late 1930s, see Zeljko Cipris, “Seduced by Nationalism: Yone Noguchi's ‘Terrible Mistake’. Debating the China-Japan War With Tagore” Japan Focus.
58 The New Asia, nos. 7-8 (November-December 1933): 3.
59 News about the visit to Japan of the African American poet Langston Hughes was accompanied by information about the issue of white discrimination against blacks in the United States; see Shin Ajia, no. 4 (August 1933): 2. In another instance, the Pan-Asiatic Cultural Association declared its goal to invite students from Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, India, and East Asian and Southeast Asian regions to Japan. See Shin Ajia, nos. 7-8 (November-December 1933): 4.
60 Shin Ajia, nos. 5-6 (September-October 1933): 2.
61 For a lengthy commentary on the rise of the colored and decline of the white races, see Shin Ajia, no. 17-18 (September-October 1934): 1.
62 The New Asia, nos. 7-8 (November-December 1933): 2. Indicating his color-blind loyalty to universal principles, Bose wrote about his admiration for Abraham Lincoln, describing him as the leader who taught the world the meaning of liberation. See The New Asia, nos. 23-24 (March-April 1935): 2.
63 The New Asia, nos. 13-14 (May-June 1934): 3. See also nos. 17-18 (September-October 1934): 4.
64 Yani Yapon Muhbiri was edited by Qurban Ali in Tokyo from 1933 to 1938. The journal often contained didactic articles about the history, economy, and culture of Japan, as well as carrying news about the Tatar Turkish diaspora living within the boundaries of the Japanese Empire. Since there was a large Tatar Muslim community in Manchuria, the journal included news about Manchukuo, the Manchu dynasty, and developments in China as well.
65 For the background of Abdül Kerim Efendi incident and other Muslim activists who visited Japan after 1933, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900-1945,” American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (October 2004): 1159-1162.
66 AbdurreŸid Ä°brahim looked to Japanese expansion in the north against the Soviet Union with the hope that this would allow the Muslim regions of Central Asia to achieve independence. Initially, this idea had many supporters within the Japanese army as well. However, clashes between Japanese and Soviet forces in Nomonhan, Mongolia, during the summer of 1939 convinced the military authorities of Japan that Soviet military power could not be easily challenged, strengthening the southern advance theory. For the relationship between Kokuryûkai and AbdurreŸid Ä°brahim, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire,” in Edstrom, The Japanese and Europe, 95-124; see also Selçuk Esenbel, Nadir Ozbek, Ä°smail TürkoÄŸlu, François Georgeon, and Ahmet Ucar, “Ozel Dosya: Abdurresid Ibrahim (2),” Toplumsal Tarih 4, no. 20 (August 1995): 6-23.
67 See Storry, The Double Patriots, 149.
68 In fact, General Ishiwara Kanji's Tôa Renmei Kyôkai (East Asia League Association), founded in 1939, was based on ideas also advocated by Dai Ajia Kyôkai. See Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan's Confrontation with the West, 281282.
69 Nakatani Takeyô became a prolific writer in Asianist publications of the 1930s. Nakatani was influenced by Ôkawa Shûmei during his student years at Tokyo University and later became a member of several organizations led by Ôkawa. He took a leading position in both Dai Ajia Kyôkai and its journals. For his memoirs, see Nakatani Takeyô, Shôwa Dôranki no Kaisô—Nakatani Takeyô Kaikoroku, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Tairyûsha, 1989).
70 Koschmann, “Asianism's Ambivalent Legacy,” 89-90.
71 For example see, Okubô Kôji, “Shinkô Toruko No Kokumin Shugi Hyôshiki,” Dai Ajia Shugi 5, no. 5 (May 1937): 5-10. By late 1934, the news section was divided into five parts, devoted to Manchuria, China, India, Southeast Asia, and West Asia.
72 See “Nichi Ei Shôtotsu no Hitsuyôsei,” Dai Ajia Shugi 1, no. 12 (December 1933): 33-38.
73 See “Shin Ajia Kensetsu No Shin ShinNen,” Dai Ajia Shugi 6, no. 1 (January 1938): 2-19. Both Ôkawa and Rash Behari Bose used the same “New Asia” as titles of their journals.
74 In a roundtable discussion on nationalist movements in Asia, four Indians (including Behari Bose), two Annamese, two Indonesians, and one Manchurian nationalist offered contributions. Naitô Chishû, Mitsukawa Kametarô, and Nakatani Takeyô, all three close to Ôkawa Shûmei, were among the ten participants representing the Japanese side of the organization. See “Ajia Minzoku Undo: Zadankai,” Dai Ajia Shugi 3, no. 3 (March 1935): 51-62.
75 It was only during the Pacific War that the same circle of Japanese Asianists began to publish an English-language magazine in Shanghai, Asiatic Asia, in order to reach a larger non-Japanese readership with more participation from non-Japanese Asian intellectuals. Publication began in January 1941 and continued for at least five monthly issues.
76 Gotô Ken’ichi, “The Indonesian Perspective,” in Akira Iriye, ed., Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War (Boston: Bedford and St. Martin's, 1999), 207-219.
77 Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 119-122; Robert S. Schwantes, “Japan's Cultural Foreign Policies,” in James Morley, ed., Japan's Foreign Policy, 1868-1941: A Research Guide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 179-180.
78 Shibasaki Atsushi, Kindai Nihon no Kokusai Bunka Kôryû: Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai no Sôsetsu to Tenkai, 1934-1945 (Tokyo: Yûshindô Kôbunsha, 1999). For example, it was through the support of Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai that two Muslim intellectuals, Amir Lahiri and Mian Abdul Aziz, were able to visit Japan to prepare books advocating Asian solidarity: Mian Abdul Aziz (former president of the All-India Moslem League), The Crescent in the Land of the Rising Sun (London: Blades, 1941); and Amar Lahiri, Japanese Modernism (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1939); idem, Mikado's Mission (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1940).
79 For example, the journal Dai Ajia Shugi printed articles on the Italian-Ethiopian conflict with a pro-Ethiopian character, including those sent by Japanese correspondents from Addis Ababa, in each of the twelve months of 1935. There was also regular news on Ethiopia in the section devoted to West Asia. For example, see the five articles on Ethiopia in Dai Ajia Shugi 3, no. 8 (August 1935): 32-53.
80 J. Calvitt Clarke III, “Japan and Italy Squabble Over Ethiopia: The Sugimura Affair of July 1935,” in Selected Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians 6 (December 1999): 9-20.
81 Takemoto Yuko, “W. E. B. Dubois to Nihon,” Shien 54, no. 2 (March 1994): 79-96. Also see Marc Gallicchio, Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945: The African American Encounter with Japan and China (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 74-75.
82 Naoki Sakai, “Tôyô no Jiritsu to daitô-A kyôeiken,” Jokyo, no. 48 (December 1994): 13.
83 For a good example of a Japanese who combined the liberation vision of panAsian identity, sometimes with highly critical views on the policies of the Japanese state, see Mariko Asano Tamanoi, “Pan-Asianism in the Diary of Morisaku Minato (1924-1945) and the Suicide of Mishima Yukio (1925-1970),” in Mariko Asano Tamanoi, ed., Crossed Histories: Manchuria in the Age of Empire (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005), 184-206.
84 Quoted in Thomas W. Burkman, “Nitobe Inazô: From World Order to Regional Order,” in J. Thomas Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity: Japanese Intellectuals During the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 211.
85 Ibid., 212-213. Burkman discusses an article by Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Asia Rengô ka Kyokutô Renmei ka?” Kokka Gakkai Zasshi 47, no. 7 (July 1933): 90-100.
86 Rôyama Masamichi, Tô-A to Sekai (Tokyo: Kaizôsha, 1941), 141-142, quoted in Miwa Kimitada, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia, 19381940,” in J. White, M. Umegaki, and T. Havens, eds., The Ambivalence of Nationalism: Modern Japan Between East and West (New York: University Press of America, 1990), 149.
87 Rôyama Masamichi, Foreign Policy of Japan, 1914-1939 (Tokyo: Institute of Pacific Relations-Japanese Council, 1941).
88 For an argument that shows the proto-Asianist views of Japanese liberals during the 1920s, see Han Jung-Sun, “Rationalizing the Orient: The ‘East Asia Cooperative Community’ in Prewar Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica 60, no. 4 (Winter 2005), 481514.
89 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Gandhi wo Tô Shite Indojin ni Atau” and “Nehru o Tô Shite Indojin ni Atau” (1942), in Shin Ajia Shôron (Tokyo: Nihon Hyôronsha, 1944), reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 2:925-938.
90 For some examples of the flood of publications on Okakura, see Kiyomi Rokurô, Okakura Tenshin den, (Tokyo: Keizôsha, 1938); Okakura Kakuzô, Okakura Tenshin Zenshû (Tokyo: Rikugeisha, 1939); and Kiyomi Rokurô, Senkakusha Okakura Tenshin (Tokyo: Atoriesha, 1942). See also Okakura Kakuzô, Japan's Innate Virility: Selections from Okakura and Nitobe (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1943).
91 For examples of the publication and republication of the books of Das, Paul Richard, and Ôkawa after the post-1937 Japan-China war, see Taraknath Das, Indo Dokuritsu Ron (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1944); and [Paul] Risharu, Tsugu Nihon Koku, trans. Ôkawa Shûmei (Tokyo: Seinen Shobô, 1941).
92 For a recent assessment of Miki Kiyoshi's Asianist ideas, see Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, 394-399. See also Koschmann, “Asianism's Ambivalent Legacy,” 90-94.
93 Crowley, ““A New Asian Order,” 278-279.
94 Germaine Hoston's study of the writings of post-tenko Sano Manabu shows the importance of her interest in Eastern spirituality and intellectual tradition, as well as her belief in Japanese exceptionalism, in leading her to search for a Japanese context for adopting certain core ideals of Marxism. See Germaine A. Hoston, “Ikkoku Shakai-Shugi: Sano Manabu and the Limits of Marxism as Cultural Criticism,” in Rimer, Culture and Identity, 168-190.
95 George Beckmann, “The Radical Left and the Failure of Communism,” in Morley, Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, 170.
96 From Miwa, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia,” 142.
97 Minamoto Ryôen, “Symposium on ‘Overcoming Modernity,’ ” in Heisig and Moraldo, Rude Awakenings, 197-229.
98 All the books Ôkawa published during the wartime years attempted to define the ideology of the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere and Japan's war aims. See Ôkawa Shûmei, Dai Tôa Chitsujyo Kensetsu (Tokyo: Dai Ichi Shobô, 1943); idem, Shin Ajia Shôron; and idem, Shin Tôyô Seishin (Tokyo: Shinkyô Shuppan Kabushiki Kaisha, 1945).
99 For a description of the ideas of Asian solidarity as they functioned in Japanese collaboration with Indian and Burmese nationalists, see Louis M. Allen, “Fujiwara and Suzuki: Patterns of Asian Liberation,” in William H. Newell, ed., Japan in Asia (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981), 83-103.
100 A similar idealist Asianism can be seen in the Japanese cooperation with the nationalist leadership of Burma. As Louis Allen has shown, a conflict emerged among Japanese officers involved in the Burmese government when Officer Suzuki Keiji from Minami Kikan took the side of Burmese nationalism and asked for immediate independence, while General Ishii objected to this on the grounds of military interest. See Allen, “Fujiwara and Suzuki.”
101 Objection to the leadership of Rash Behari Bose is another indication of the ineffectiveness of Japanese pan-Asianists’ political networks. Although Japan's Asianist circles had always presented Behari Bose as the representative voice of Indian nationalism, it became apparent that he did not have a reputation sufficient to play a role in the project of the Indian National Army. See Tilak Raj Sareen, Japan and the Indian National Army (New Delhi: Mounto, 1996), 35-82. See also Fujiwara Iwaichi, Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in South East Asia During World War II (Singapore: Select, 1983).
102 Sareen, Japan and the Indian National Army, 228-236.
103 Quoted in Joyce Lebra, “Bose's Influence on the Formulation of Japanese Policy toward India and the INA,” in International Netaji Seminar (Calcutta: Netaji Research Bureau, 1975), 361.
104 Ôkawa Shûmei, “Bosu-shi no Raichô,” Shin Ajia 5, no. 7 (1943): 1.
105 Quoted in Lebra, “Bose's Influence on the Formulation of Japanese Policy,” 368.
106 Akira Iriye, “Wartime Japanese Planning for Postwar Asia,” in Ian Nish, ed., Anglo-Japanese Alienation, 1919-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982): 77-91.
107 The best description of Japanese war aims remains Akira Iriye, Power and Culture: The Japanese American War, 1941-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
108 The Greater East Asia conference did not allow for any representation from not-yet-independent regions under Japanese occupation, such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Similar contradictions existed in the Atlantic Charter Alliance, which likewise had not been prepared to envision a fully decolonized Asia. In fact, immediately after the end of the war, the French, British, and Dutch governments rushed to reclaim their colonial possessions in Asia.
109 One report made the following suggestion as a means to win support for the Allied cause: “Play up American and United Nations war aims; play down our association with Great Britain in the East…. Do not refer to British Malaya since many inhabitants of Malaya will not wish to see Malaya revert to its old status under British control” (Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, “Japanese Attempts at Indoctrination of Youth in Occupied Areas,” March 23, 1943, microfilm, 10).
110 Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 157-159.
111 Ibid., 242-243.
112 Ôkawa Shûmei, entry for August 15, 1945, Ôkawa Shûmei Nikki (Tokyo: Iwasaki Gakujitsu Shuppansha, 1986), 391.
113 Sareen, Japan and the Indian National Army, 234-236.
114 Richard Minear, Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); John Dower, Embracing Defeat (New York: Norton, 1999), 443-484.
115 Timothy Brook, “The Tokyo Judgment and the Rape of Nanking,” Journal of Asian Studies 60, no. 3 (August 2001): 693.
116 Radhabinod Pal became the hero of the revisionist right in Japan in the postwar period. He himself revealed his long-lasting sympathies to Japan during his celebrated visit to Japan in 1966 upon the invitation of Japanese right-wing revisionist groups. Justice Pal declared how he had admired Japan since his youth because Japan had “consistently stood up against the West” with “the spirit of independence that can say ‘no.’ ” Then, he urged the Japanese people once again to resist the “flood of Westernization” with inspiration from Eastern civilization. For Pal's speeches during his 1966 visit to Japan, see Radhabinod Pal, Ai Rabu Japan: Paru Hakase Genkôroku, ed. Paru Hakase Kangei Jimukyoju (Tokyo: Tôkyô Saiban Kankôkai, 1966)
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