The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 3 | Article ID 2695 | Mar 03, 2008

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Japan's Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial WorldOrder, 1931-1945

Cemil Aydin

Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacyof Imperial World Order, 1931–1945

Cemil Aydin

One of the most striking aspects of theinternational history of the 1930s is the revivaland official endorsement of a pan-Asian visionof regional world order in Japan. The pan-Asiandiscourse of East-West civilizational differenceand comparison was influential in variousintellectual circles in Asia. But during the1920s, as a political project of Asian solidarity,it was irrelevant for Japan’s foreign policy, andit did not have any international momentum ormovement. The period after the ManchurianIncident in 1931, however, witnessed a processby which pan-Asianist ideas and projectsbecame part of Japan’s official foreign policyrhetoric. [1] After 1933 Japan’s pan-Asianinternationalism began to overshadow liberalinternationalism, gradually becoming themainstream vision of an alternative worldorder. This process culminated in thedeclarat ion of the Greater East AsiaCoprosperity Sphere in 1940, a project thatrelied heavily on the rhetoric of pan-Asianinternationalism. In 1943, seventeen yearsafter the ineffectual 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiaticconference that was ridiculed by official andliberal circles in Japan, the Japanesegovernment itself hosted a Greater East AsiaConference to which it invited the leaders ofthe Philippines, Burma, the provincialgovernment of India, the Nanking governmentof China, Manchukuo, and Thailand.

Given that pan-Asianist activists had regularlyexpressed strong opposition to Japan’s foreign

policy up to the 1930s, and aware of the lack ofpolitical clout of Asianist circles during the1920s, Japan’s apparent endorsement of pan-Asianism in its official “return to Asia” after1933 raises a major question. How can weunderstand the predominance of pan-Asianistdiscourses in Japanese intellectuals circles inthe 1930s? Why would Japan’s political elite,with its proven record of cooperation withWestern powers based on a real ist icassessment of the trends of the time, choose toendorse an anti-Western discourse of Asianismas its official policy during the late 1930s?

Explaining Japan’s Official “Return toAsia”

In the literature, the process of transition froma po l i c y o f p ro -Wes te rn cap i t a l i s tinternationalism in the 1920s to a very differentpolicy aiming to create a regional order in EastAsia has been attributed to a complex set ofinterrelated factors, both contingent andstructural. For the sake of clarity, I categorizethe explanations of the previous historiographyinto two groups, which are distinct but notnecessarily in conflict: those that emphasizedomestic political causes of the change andthose that stress changes in the internationalenvironment.

According to domestic pol icy–drivenexplanations, Asianism was the foreign policyideology espoused by the expansionist,militarist, and conservative segments ofJapanese society. Frederick Dickinson hastraced back to the period of World War I (WWI)the origins of two distinct agendas for Japan’sdiplomacy and national mission, one liberal and

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pro-British and the other characterized by pro-German, anti-liberal, and Asianist tendencies.The Asianist and conservative group, mostlyclustered around Yamagata Aritomo, could notimplement its policy visions during the 1910sbecause the liberal group prevailed in domesticpolitics. By identifying two distinct visions ofJapan’s national identity and two correspondinginternational policies in response to theopportunities presented by WWI, Dickinson’sstudy successfully demonstrates that foreignpolicy decisions should not be regarded asautomatic responses to international trendsand immediate external challenges but ratherbe seen as results of the balance of power indomestic politics among groups that havecompeting visions of their national identity andmission. According to Dickinson, pan-Asianismwas one such grand vision, which aimed toestablish Japan’s leadership in Asia byexcluding Western powers from the region inthe name of racial solidarity and civilizationalharmony.[2]

Other studies on the 1920s have argued thatmembers of the conservative antiliberalpolitical camp, often identified with pan-Asianist inclinations, continued to agitate for anexpansionist policy at a time when their voiceswere overshadowed by the liberalism of theTaishô democracy and the capital istinternationalism of Shidehara diplomacy.According to Richard Storry’s early work,wh ich o f f e r s a h i s to ry o f J apaneseultranationalism based on the materials of theTokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the persistenceand violence displayed by right-wing groupswas able to weaken and eventually to overturnthe prevailing atmosphere of Taishô democracyand liberal diplomacy. For Storry, for example,pan-Asianist thinker Ôkawa Shûmei was one ofthe Asianist “double patriots” who influencedyoung military officers and played a great rolein the transition to the expansionist 1930s.[3]Christopher Szpilman strengthened thisargument in his study of Kokuhonsha, the mainconservative organization of interwar Japan,

noting that anti-Western and antiliberal trendsin Japan had high-ranking supporters andstrong organizational solidarity during the1 9 2 0 s a n d t h u s w e r e a b l e t o e x e r tdisproportionate influence as a result of theirpopularity among the bureaucratic and militaryelite.[4] In his research on the House of Peers,Genzo Yamamoto further demonstrated theappeal and predominance of what he describedas an “illiberal” agenda among Japan’s toppolitical elite from the 1920s to the late 1930s,leading to their final triumph in domesticpolitics paralleling the adoption of anaggressive China policy.[5]

This focus on the domestic political componentsof the transition to the pan-Asianist policies ofthe 1930s has obvious merit. Asianism,however, could not always be uniquelyidentified as the expansionist ideology ofconservative antiliberals, as Japan’s liberalsalso envisioned a special role for Japan in Asia,whether as the disseminator of a highercivilization to backward areas or as the leadingforce in economic development and politicalcooperation in the region. Moreover, anaggressive policy in Manchuria was not themonopoly o f Japanese As ian is ts . Asdemonstrated by Louise Young, there existedwithin Japanese society an overwhelmingconsensus concerning policy in Manchuria,which cut across the lines dividing liberals andconservatives.[6] The majority of Japan’spolitical and intellectual elite, including thepro-Western internationalists, supported thenew orientation in foreign policy symbolized bythe withdrawal from the League of Nations. Forexample, Nitobe Inazô, reputed for his liberalinternationalism, was willing to defend Japan’spolicy in China that led to the ManchurianIncident, even to the point of accepting Japan’swithdrawal in 1932 from the League ofNations, in which he had served for so manyyears.[7] Another liberal internationalist,Zumoto Motosada, went on lecture tours in1931 to Europe and the United States in anattempt to explain Japan’s position on the

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Manchurian Incident. During his speeches,Motosada often referred to the idea of a Japan-led regional order in East Asia separate fromthe European-based league system. Just fiveyears before the Manchurian Incident, Zumotoh a d a f f i r m e d J a p a n ’ s p r o - L e a g u einternationalism in his critique of the Nagasakipan-Asiatic conference of 1926. Japan’s liberalinternationalists apparently turned to pan-Asianism when they saw a tension betweenJapanese national interests and the decisions ofthe League of Nations.[8]

Nitobe Inazô at the League of Nations

The Asianist discourse of Japan’s transnationalidentity had many different versions, rangingfrom a doctrine of regional solidarity to anti-Western visions of civilizational revival, and itwas not limited to conservative circles. Forexample, during the 1930s, many Japaneseintellectuals who had no previous connectionwith conservative radical nationalist groups,such as the members of the Kyoto School ofPhilosophy or the semiofficial think tank ShôwaKenkyûkai, also utilized anti-Western rhetoricand advocated the revival of Japan’s Asianidentity.[9] This indicates an area of overlap inthe worldviews of liberals and antiliberals withrespect to Japan’s Asian identity and itsinternational mission in Asia, as well as theirshared diagnosis of the international systemduring the 1920s. It also shows that thetheories of the clash of civilizations and Japan’smission in Asia were part of a common

vocabulary, which would then have differentpolitical connotations depending on theintellectual climate. For example, thosepromoting U.S.-Japan friendship would frametheir efforts as a dialogue of harmony amongthe different civilizations of East and West, thusconfirming a vision of the world as divided intodifferent race and civilization groups beyondthe nations. In that sense, many leadingJapanese intellectuals who had no ties to theconservative radical nationalist groups endedup contributing to the legitimacy of the pan-Asianist program in some way, either throughtheir theories on overcoming modernity andEurocentrism or through their search for analternative modernity in the Japanese andAsian cultural traditions.[10]

The second major approach to the question ofJapan’s adoption of Asianist rhetoric in foreignpolicy emphasizes that the structuraltransformations in the international system inEast Asia complemented changes in thedomestic power configurations to create asituation that led to the triumph of antiliberaland Asianist projects. Akira Iriye and JamesCrowley have argued that Japanese policiesduring the 1930s were largely a response tochanges in the trends of the times as perceivedby the Japanese elite. A perceived sense of aninternational legitimacy crisis and Japan’sisolation after the Manchurian Incident wasaccelerated by the impact of changed worldconditions. Regionalism became the trend ofthe time, making the creation of a regionalorder in East Asia a more feasible policy, inharmony with the flow of world opinion. AsIriye noted, “by 1931 all indications seem tosuggest that the neo-mercantilist world-view ofMatsuoka was more realistic than Shidehara’srational, laissez-faire image, which hadapparently failed to produce tangibleresults.”[11] The capitalist internationalism ofthe 1920s was not only denied altogether byFascist Germany and Socialist Russia but alsohalf-abandoned in the concept of the pan-American trade bloc and economic nationalism

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of the United States and the idea of the sterlingtrade bloc in England.[12] In short, Japan’spolicy shift from liberal internationalism toAsian regionalism could be considered afunction just as much of other powers’ policiesin the changing international system of the late1930s as of Japan’s own domestic politics.

The end of the party cabinet system in 1932and the increasing power of the military inpolitical decisions created a discontinuity in thehistory of Japan’s domestic political order interms of democratic participation and popularexpress ion. Japan cont inued to be aconstitutional state, however, with normallyfunctioning domestic politics in accordancew i t h t h e i n t r i c a c i e s o f t h e M e i j iConstitution.[13] In his study on the 1930s,Crowley refutes the idea of a conservative orright-wing takeover of the Japanese leadershipby focusing on continuity in the “official mind”and the “decision-making process.” Crowleyshows that all the policy decisions of theJapanese government during the 1930s weremade by responsible political and militaryleaders in the interest of national defense andnational policy.[14]

The historiography that focuses on Japan’sresponse to changes in the internationalenvironment attributes an important role toideology and culture in shaping Japaneseperceptions of world events, without limitingfocus to right-wing or militarist groups. It is inthis context that an Asianist worldview aboutworld cultures and international order becomesrelevant for determining the perceptions anddecisions of Japanese leaders. Iriye hasdiscussed the role of key notions such asisolation and self-sufficiency in the psychologyof Japanese decision makers, showing how theperception that Japan stood uneasily betweenEast and West influenced the policy-makingmood.

In this view, the notions that the elite heldconcerning the threats and opportunities

presented to Japan by the new globaldevelopments should thus be regarded as moresignificant than the impact of antiliberal right-wing movements associated with pan-Asianism.A similar approach attributes Japan’s turn toanti-Westernism not to the influence of pan-Asianist groups in particular but rather to thegeneral characteristics of Japanese nationalism.Hayashi Fusao’s controversial assertion thatthe “Pacific War was one phase of an AsianHundred Years’ War to drive out the Occidentalinvader” presents a generalized formulationthat portrays Asianist ideas as a permanentpart of mainstream Japanese nationalism.[15]This emphasis on the anti-Western historicalmemory of Japanese nationalism depictsAsianism as a widely held conception aboutJapan’s transnational identity rather than anexclusively radical ideology monopolized byultranationalists or conservatives. Mark Peattieand James Crowley concur with Hayashi’sassessment of the importance of anti-Westernhistorical memory embedded in Japanesenationalism as an ideological factor, althoughthey do not share his revisionist agenda.[16]

Since we know, however, that mainstreamnationalism in Japan had changing perceptionsof the West, it would be inaccurate tocharacterize anti-Westernism as a singleconstant position in the history of Japanesenationalism from the Opium War to the GreaterEast Asia War. Moreover, the Japaneseintellectual elite remained closely linked totrends and ideas in Europe and the UnitedStates. During the 1930s, there was no newexpansion of the West in Asia to which thesurge in Japanese nationalism might beattributed; on the contrary, the West wasperceived to be in a phase of global decline andretreat.[17] Thus the very assumption thatthere was a constant association betweenJapanese nationalism and resistance to Westernexpansion reflects the influence of the officialpan-Asianist discourse of wartime Japan ratherthan accurately characterizing how images ofthe West and civilizational identity interacted

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with Japanese foreign policy.

Withdrawal from the League of Nations asa Turning Point

There had been pan-Asianists in Japan since theturn of the twentieth century, and somecontinued to work for the cause they believedin especially from 1905 to the 1930s, especiallyunder the umbrella of patriotic Asianistorganizations such as Kokuryûkai andGenyosha. These patr iot ic Asianistsrepresented a minority, if not a marginalopinion, in shaping Japanese foreign policy.They often complained about the neglect towhich they had been subjected by the Japaneseelite. In the aftermath of the ManchurianIncident of 1931 and Japan’s withdrawal fromthe League of Nations the following year,however, traditional Asianists found a veryreceptive audience for their ideas amongJapanese bureaucrats and army officers.

The story told by Wakabayashi Han, aKokuryûkai Asianist who specialized in theIslamic world, is very telling in this regard.Wakabayashi became interested in the Muslimworld after a visit to India with the BurmeseBuddhist monk and anticolonial nationalist U.Ottama in 1912.[18] His discovery of IndianMuslims led him to undertake further researchabout Islam in Asia.[19] For twenty years, heworked closely with a small circle of Islamexperts within Kokuryûkai led by Tanaka Ippei,arguing that if Japan could develop closer tieswith the colonized Muslims of Asia, its effortsto become the leader of an awakening andindependent Asia could benefit from Muslimsupport.[20] According to Wakabayashi,however, his small group neither achieved anyresult nor received any support from thegovernment, and he became pessimistic aboutits future success.[21] Then in 1932 TôyamaMitsuru and Uchida Ryôhei sent Wakabayashito observe the meeting of the League ofNations in Geneva that addressed the questionof recognizing the state of Manchukuo. There,

Wakabayashi witnessed the decision ofJapanese diplomats to withdraw from theleague upon i ts refusal to recognizeManchukuo. It was only during his trip back toJapan, Wakabayashi notes, that he recognized achange of attitude toward his group’s Asianistideas on the part of Japanese military officers.In the long trip from Europe to Japan, heexplained to Isogai Rensuke, a lieutenantcolonel in the Japanese army the benefits thatattention to the Muslim world could bring toJapan’s East Asian policy. Isogai later contactedWakabayashi and introduced him to ArmyMinister Araki Sadao.[22] Wakabayashi’s storyof what followed is a narrative of triumph, asthe Japanese army began to implement a pan-Asianist Islam policy in China and supportedthe activities of the Kokuryûkai. It is clear fromhis story that Japan’s withdrawal from theLeague of Nations was a turning point in theJapanese government’s attitude to the pan-Asianist ideas of Japan’s cooperation withMuslim nationalities against the Westerncolonial presence. Autobiographical anecdotesof other pan-Asianist activists exhibit a similarpattern. The most influential pan-Asianist,Ôkawa Shûmei, had the similar experience offinding a surprising shift in Japanese officialpolicy and intellectual life toward positionsmore to his liking in the mid-1930s, more thantwo decades after his initial commitment of thecause of Asianism.

Ôkawa Shûmei’s biography during the 1930stook an ironic turn, as he was put on trial andimprisoned for his involvement in a failedmilitary coup to change Japan’s domesticpolitics at the very time his Asianist projectswere receiving the support of the Japanesegovernment. As head of the East Asia EconomicResearch Bureau of the Manchurian RailwayCompany after 1929, Ôkawa naturally wasfamiliar with Japanese interests in Manchuria.Frequently visiting Manchuria and China, hecame to know the leading military figures ofthe Kwantung Army personally. From 1929onward, Ôkawa argued that a solution to the

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Manchurian problem was essential for bothAsian revival and the reconstruction of Japan.In 1928 Ôkawa met with the Manchurianwarlord Chang Hsüeh-liang in an effort toconvince him to form a stronger political unionwith Japan based on “Confucian politicalvalues.”[23] Both a respected scholar ofcolonial studies and a radical nationalist,Ôkawa once gave a lecture on the necessity ofcreating an independent Manchuria-Mongoliato an audience that included top militaryofficers of the 1930s, most notably, ItagakiSeishirô, Nagata Tetsuzan, and TôjôHideki.[24] He went on a lecture tour in Japanbefore and after the Manchurian Incident,expressing his conviction that Manchuria wasnot only a legitimate economic and securitysphere for Japan but actually represented thelifeline of Japan’s national policy.

Like so many other Japanese intellectuals andleaders, Ôkawa was outspoken about theimportance of protecting Japanese interests inManchuria, and he favored radical action tosecure these interests against the claims ofChinese nationalism. For Ôkawa, Japan’s“sacrifice” in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars created the historical legitimacyfor its treaty privileges in Manchuria.Criticizing the anti-Japanese movement inChina, Ôkawa argued that if Japan did not actto protect its rights in Manchuria, it wouldendanger its position in Korea and Taiwan aswell. He condemned the Japanese leaders ofthe late 1920s for not being able to show thecourage and determination necessary to find along-term solution to the Manchurian problembecause of their submissive commitment tointernational cooperation with the Westernpowers. His arguments can clearly beconstrued as offering encouragement for theradical actions orchestrated by the KwantungArmy.[25] Citing these facts, the prosecution atthe Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal argued thatthere was a link between Ôkawa’s pan-Asianistideas and the Manchurian Incident, a key stepin constructing the ideological background of

the tribunal’s thesis about the long-termJapanese conspiracy to invade Asia.[26]

Okawa Shumei (left) and Ishihara Kanji

It is impossible to attribute the ManchurianIncident or post–Manchurian Incident Japanesepolicies specifically to the ideology of the pan-Asianists. The fact that pan-Asianist ÔkawaShûmei had lectured on the issue of Manchuriaand had known some of the military leaders didnot necessarily make him an ideologue of theManchurian Incident, since there were manyothers, including those identified as liberals atthe time, who advocated a similarly radicalpolicy in Manchuria.[27] It is helpful tocompare Ôkawa’s arguments on Manchuriawith the writings of Rôyama Masamichi(1895–1980), a liberal intellectual of the timewho was well respected internationally andinfluential in Japanese policy circles. Rôyama,who presented his analysis of Japan’s relationswith Manchuria to an international audienceaffiliated with the Institute of Pacific Relationstwo years before the Manchurian Incident, heldthat Japan’s established interests in Manchuriadeserved international approval.[28] In a laterpolicy report on Manchuria, Rôyama placedblame for the Manchurian Incident on theexisting international peace structures and therefusal to acknowledge the special relationsbetween China and Japan, not on the actions ofthe Kwantung Army. Ôkawa’s writings aboutthe need to defend Japanese rights in

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Manchuria against Chinese nationalistdemands did not differ substantially fromRôyama’s insistence on the protection ofJapan’s vital interests.[29]

Royama Masamichi

The nature of the pan-Asianist approach to theManchurian Incident became apparent onlyafter the incident, when intellectuals likeÔkawa formulated laudatory characterizationsof the establishment of Manchukuo both as avictory against the corruption of businessconglomerates (zaibatsu) and political partiesat home, and as a brave defense of Japan’scontinental policy against American, British,and Soviet opposition.[30] Ôkawa retroactivelyoffered a moral justification for the ManchurianIncident within the framework of a pan-Asianistcritique of Japan’s foreign policy between 1905and 1931. His interpretation of the incident asa correction of the misguided course of pro-Western diplomacy, especially since the Russo-Japanese War, differed significantly from

Rôyama Masamichi’s justification of theManchurian Incident as a practical response tothe changing conditions of the region. Ôkawawrote:

Our victory over Russia inspiredhope and courage in the countriesexploited under the pressure of theCaucasian colonialists. But, beforelong, Japan gave in to the Franco-Japanese Agreement and therevised Anglo-Japanese Alliance,actions that shattered the hopes ofnoble Vietnamese and Indianpatriots who sought independencefor their countries. . . . However,the mistakes in Japanese policywere later rectified decisively bythe foundation of Manchukuo.Japan abandoned cooperation withthe Anglo-Americans, the chiefinstigators suppressing the Asianpeop le . The foundat ion o fManchukuo was the first step inachieving a great “renascentAsia.”[31]

Ôkawa similarly applauded Japan’s withdrawalfrom the League of Nations.[32] As shown inthe previous chapter, Ôkawa had alwaysregarded the league as an instrument ofWestern colonial powers and often urged theJapanese government to create a League ofAsian Nations as an alternative.[33]AfterJapan’s withdrawal from the league in 1933,Ôkawa’s ideas seemed in harmony with thepolicies of the Japanese government for thefirst time in the history of his Asianist activism,dating back to 1913.

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League of Nations Assembly, 1932

As the foreign policy Ôkawa had envisionedbegan to be implemented, he was put on trialfor his involvement in the May 15, 1932,assassination of Prime Minister InukaiTsuyoshi.[34] After his arrest on June 15, 1932,the court found Ôkawa guilty of providing gunsand money to conspirators during the planningstage of the assassination. In February 1934,he received a fifteen-year prison sentence,however, between appeals and paroles he spentless than two years in prison, between June1936 and October 1937.[35] Between 1931 to1935, the dominant visions of Japanese foreignpolicy and domestic politics changed sodramatically that, by early 1935, Ôkawa nolonger needed to work through secretiveradical organizations to achieve his ideologicalgoals. In February 1935, he marked the end ofhis career as an activist promoting the ShôwaRestoration in domestic politics and pan-Asianism in foreign policy by disbanding thelast organization he established, Jinmukai.[36]Japan itself was approaching the state ofmilitary mobilization while endorsing anAsianist foreign policy agenda, making radicalactivism for the same purpose pointless.

Inukai Tsuyoshi

Although his image had been tarnished by hisinvolvement in the May 15 assassination,shortly after his release from prison, Ôkawawas appointed to head the continental campusof Hôsei University. In May 1938, he wasreinstated to his position as director of the EastAsia Economic Research Bureau in Tokyo. Backin his position of managing one of the largestresearch institutes in Japan, he activelypromoted a pan-Asianist agenda with thejournal he edited, entitled Shin Ajia (New Asia).His position as editor allowed him to observe,comment on, and influence Japan’s Asia policyin the period following the official declarationof the “New Order in East Asia” in November1938.[37] In his first editorial, published just amonth before the German invasion of Poland,Ôkawa predicted that the outbreak of war inEurope would usher in a new era in whichnationalist movements in Asia would find theirchance to achieve independence. He also urgedthe Japanese government to support theseanticolonial movements with the goal of

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accelerating their process of national liberationand simultaneously creating future allies forJapan. Pointing out that Japan’s mission in Asiawas gaining greater urgency, Ôkawa expressedhis hope that the Japanese public, which wasnot knowledgeable even about the recentdevelopments in China, would become betterinformed about the conditions and peoples ofAsia in general.[38]

As the Japanese government began to use theslogan “New Order in East Asia” to describe itsforeign policy, Ôkawa became concerned aboutthe Japanese public’s lack of preparedness, interms of their knowledge about Asian societiesand cultures, for a serious pan-Asian policy. Inorder to educate young Japanese about theculture and politics of Asia and prepare themfor positions in the service of Japan, Ôkawareceived government funds to establish aspecial school offering instruction in Asianstudies. The two-year professional school, themost concrete product of Ôkawa’s Asianistvision, was established in May 1938 as ateaching institute affiliated with the East AsianEconomic Research Bureau in Tokyo, withfunds from the Manchurian Railway Company,the army, and the Foreign Ministry. Allexpenses of the admitted students were paid bythe school, which was widely known as theÔkawa Juku (Ôkawa School), although it wasnamed the Shôwa Gogaku Kenkyûjo (ShôwaLanguage Research Institute). In return forreceiving tuition and a stipend for two years,the students were obligated to work for theJapanese government in overseas regions suchas Southeast Asia for approximately ten years.Each year, the school recruited twenty studentsaround the age of seventeen. In their first year,students had to learn either English or Frenchas their primary foreign language, along withan additional language to be selected fromamong Hindu, Urdu, Thai, and Malay. After thesecond year of the school, Arabic, Persian, andTurkish were added to the elective languagecourse offerings.

The Ôkawa Juku represented a practicalimplementation of Ôkawa Shûmei’s long-heldpan-Asianist vision of merging a colonialcultural policy with anticolonial ideology. Heaimed to educate a body of Japanesebureaucrats who could understand the cultureand language of Asian peoples and take aposition of leadership among them. Accordingto his students, Ôkawa often noted theapparent unreadiness of the Japanese Empirefor a great pan-Asian cause, underlining theurgency he perceived in his teaching mission.He encouraged students to form personalfriendship with Asian peoples and establishbonds of solidarity that would last even if Japanlost the war.[39]

A retrospective assessment of Japan’s wartimecultural policies in newly occupied SoutheastAsia shows that, with a few exceptions, culturalpolicies were in fact developed ad hoc byadministrators faced with the reality of ruling alarge population they knew little about.[40]Ôkawa Juku complemented the other Asianistprogram that brought students from SoutheastAsia to Japan for training. Most of thegraduating students of Ôkawa Juku did findemployment in the military administration ofthe Southeast Asian region during the era ofthe Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere.[41]

The content of pan-Asianist education at ÔkawaJuku reflected a synthesis between thescholarly-idealistic vision of Asian liberationand pragmatic goals of Japan’s wartimemilitary expansion. Ôkawa himself taughtclasses on colonial history, the “Japanesespirit,” Islam, and Oriental history. His lecturenotes for the classes entitled “History ofModern European Colonia l i sm” and“Introduction to Islam” later became the basisfor books with these titles. Students praisedÔkawa as a dedicated educator, citing hisinformative and clear lectures, his hard work,and his close relationship with students.[42]From time to time, high-ranking army generalssuch as Doihara Kenji, Itagaki Seishirô, Matsui

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Iwane, Tôjô Hideki, and Okamura Seiji wouldvisit the Ôkawa Juku and lecture students onJapan’s Asia policy.[43] Indian nationalist RashBehari Bose and Muslim immigrant from RussiaQurban Ali were among the part-time languageand history instructors of the school, givingstudents a firsthand encounter with theanticolonial nationalist thinking of Asian exilesin Japan. It was during this time that Ôkawapioneered Japan’s rapidly growing field ofIslamic studies not only through his ownwritings but also by supporting young scholarsand purchasing library collections on Islamicstudies from Europe in his capacity as directorof the East As ia Economic ResearchInstitute.[44]

Qurban Ali (standing, second left) withInukai Tsuyoshi (seated, second left) andToyama Mitsuru (seated, second right).

It would be mistaken to assume that, beforePearl Harbor, Japan’s Asianists advocated warwith the United States based on their vision ofEast-West conflict. From the time of theManchurian Incident in July 1937 to the PearlHarbor attack in December 1941, for example,Ôkawa Shûmei cautioned against entering intoconfl ict with the United States whileadvocating a southern advance by Japan thatwould target the colonies of Britain, France,and the Netherlands in Southeast Asia. Withthis goal in mind, he urged a quick resolutionto the Sino-Japanese conflict. Particularly aspan-Asianists became aware of an approaching

war in Europe, with all the implications thatsuch a war carried for the colonized areas inAsia, they found renewed faith in Asia’sultimate rise to independence; destiny seemedto have presented Japan with an idealopportunity to lead the liberation of Asia fromWestern colonialism. For pan-Asianists, asouthern advance was as much a practicalopportunity as it was a moral imperative, sinceneither the British nor the Dutch were in aposition to resist Japanese military pressure,particularly if Japan could act in cooperationwith native nationalist movements in SoutheastAsia. It is in this spirit that Ôkawa Shûmeiproposed the creation of a Southeast [Asian]Common Cooperative Region (Tônan Kyôdôken)to secure the political and economic unity ofliberated Southeast Asia with Japan. With thishistorical opportunity, there could emerge anew world order based on three regional blocs,Euro-Africa, America, and East-SoutheastAsia.[45] Meanwhile, realizing the danger thatcooperation between Europe and Americacould present to Japan, Ôkawa Shûmeiadvocated a policy of keeping the United Statesneutral.[46] He refrained from making anti-American statements in his editorials andurged the improvement of economic ties,especially with joint projects in Manchuria andChina, in a bid to secure U.S. neutrality in theevent of a future British-Japanese conflict.

Thus, from 1938 up until the Pearl Harborattack, Ôkawa Shûmei was involved in a projectof developing trade ties between Japan and theUnited States. There had been an economicdiplomacy toward the United States that aimedat cooperation in the industrialization ofManchuria between 1937 and 1940.[47]Endorsing Ishiwara Kanji’s vision of thecreation of a self-sufficient military industry inManchukuo, but recognizing the insufficiencyof the machine tool industry in the region,military and industrial leaders in Manchuriaaimed to attract a higher level of U.S.investment and technology. In fact, Manchuriabecame more heavily dependent on American

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capital and technology than it was on Europeaninvestments. Beyond the goal of industrializingManchuria, Ayukawa Yoshisuke, the presidentof the Manchurian Industrial DevelopmentCorporation and the founder of the Nissanconglomerate, also hoped to avoid war betweenthe United States and Japan by fosteringmutual economic ties.

Ôkawa Shûmei’s personal commitment to theimprovement of economic relations with theUnited States stemmed more from his interestin U.S. neutrality than from considerations ofeconomic rationality. He believed it waspossible for Japan to avoid U.S. intervention inits confrontation with the Chinese Nationalistgovernment and the European colonial powers.It was Ôkawa’s expectation that the strongtrade relationships and joint investments theyshared with Japan in Manchuria would lead theAmericans to withdraw their support from theNationalist government of China. In makingthese policy suggestions, Ôkawa relied on hisassumptions about the American nationalcharacter as being concerned primarily withbusiness interests rather than principledforeign policies. He also considered that theUnited States had less to lose by giving up itssupport for the government of Chiang Kai-shekthan Britain did.[48] With these assessmentsand goals, Ôkawa became personally involvedin an effort by the Pan-Pacific Trading andNavigation Company to barter mineral oresfrom China for gasoline from the United States.His project failed as a result of difficulties withthe intricacies of U.S. trade regulations.Nevertheless, Ôkawa’s desire to insulate theU.S from Japan’s war in China, in addition tohis willingness to make use of U.S. trade in thedevelopment of Manchuria, should be noted asan indication that he was not, at least wherepractical policy matters were concerned, aconsistent advocate of an inevitable warbetween the United States and Japan.[49]

Once the fighting between the United Statesand Japan began, however, Ôkawa Shûmei

immediately took on the task of offering ahistorical justification for the war as Japan’sresponse to a century of Anglo-Americanaggression in East Asia. He preferred the term“Anglo-American aggression” to “Westernaggression,” a contemporary expression thatallowed pan-Asianist thinkers to excludeGermany from their anti-Western rhetoric.Even so, when Ôkawa discussed the historicaland philosophical basis of the Greater East AsiaWar, he again spoke about the confrontation ofEast and West as if China did not belong to theEast or Germany to the West. It was during hisradio lectures on this topic delivered betweenDecember 14 and December 25 of 1941, thatÔkawa credited himself for the prophecy hehad made back in 1924 in his book “Asia,Europe and Japan” of an inevitable warbetween Eastern and Western civilizations,represented by Japan and the United States. Hedescribed the books purposes as follows:

first, to let the pacifists reconsidertheir wrong attitude by clarifyingthe historical significance of war;second, to show that world history,in its true sense of the word, isnoth ing but a chron ic le o fantagon ism, s t rugg le andunification between the Orient andthe Occident; third, to reveal thecultural characteristics of the Eastand the West which had beenblended into the history of theworld; fourth, to give a logicalfoundation to Pan-Asianism; last,but not least, to point out that awar is inevitable between the Eastand the Anglo-American powers forthe establishment of a new world.Moreover, I tried to clarify thesublime mission of Japan in thecoming world war. I concluded thebook as follows: “Now, East andWest have respectively attainedtheir ultimate goals. . . . As history

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fully proves, in creating a newworld, a life-and-death strugglebetween the champion of the Eastand that of the West is inevitable.This logic proved true whenAmerica challenged Japan.” Myprediction proved correct after thepassage of 16 years.[50]

Such self-promoting references to hisprediction of Japan’s war with the UnitedStates led to Ôkawa’s indictment at the TokyoWar Crimes Tribunal.[51] During the trial, hepointed out that his writings in 1924 did notnecessarily constitute a plan for a Japaneseattack, as he was merely commenting on theinevitability of war between civilizations basedon the ideas of the Russian philosopherSoloviev.[52] In fact, he offered a morehistorical reinterpretation of his 1924 clash ofc iv i l i zat ion thes is whi le under U.S.interrogation. Albeit for opportunistic reasons,pan-Asianists opposed war with the UnitedStates before 1941. Moreover, in the aftermathof the Immigration Act of 1924, theories of aclash between the USA and Japan was apopular topic beyond Asianist circles. Yet theeasy transition by the pan-Asianists to clash ofcivilization theories to justify the war with theUnited States in the immediate aftermath ofthe Pearl Harbor attack also signifies theflexible utilization of the ideas of Eastern andWestern civilization, and the historical memoryof Western colonialism, for the ends of Japan’sown imperial expansion.Asianist Journals and Organizations

From the Manchurian Incident in 1931 to theend of WWII, Ôkawa Shûmei was only one ofthe many intellectual voices trying to clarify thecontent and goals of the ambivalent notion ofAsian solidarity and Japan’s Asian mission.Especially after Japan’s withdrawal from theLeague of Nations, activities related to theideals and discourse of pan-Asianism gainedmomentum as support from the government,

the military, and business circles increased.There was a significant gap, however, betweenthe discourse of civilization reducing all globalconflicts to a question of clashes betweendistinct races or major civilizations and thereality of the state of international affairs.Around the time of the Russo-Japanese War, avision of racial solidarity and civilizationala l l iance seemed to be an appea l inginternational strategy for the political projectsof the rising nationalist movements, whichperceived a united policy in the West ofimperialism toward their Asian colonies. Duringthe late 1930s, however, the Western world nolonger seemed such a unified front as a resultof sharp political and ideological divisions inEurope. And Japan’s challenge to theinternational order was not based on racialdivisions, either. Within East Asia, the majorconflict was not between East and West butbetween Japanese imperialism, on the onehand, and Chinese and Korean nationalism, onthe other.

From 1933 onward, there was a dramaticincrease in the number o f As ian i s torganizations, publications, and events. Theyaimed not only at demonstrating the sincerityof Japan’s “return to Asia” but also at guardingagainst a perceived state of internationalisolation for Japan after its withdrawal from theLeague of Nations. Asianist publications andevents also aimed at convincing both theJapanese public and Asian nationalists thatcivilizational and racial distinctions were in factto be regarded as the primary consideration ininternational relations. But the emptyrepetition of slogans about the conflict betweencivilizations and races did not succeed increating any substantial ideology able toaccount for the complex global politics of the1930s. Instead, Asianism became less and lesscredible in the face of Japan’s full-scale waragainst Chinese nationalism. Realizing this,Asianists pursued ideological credibility byattempting to revive and reinvent the legacy ofthe early Asian internationalism dating back to

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the period from 1905 to 1914. At the sametime, liberal and socialist converts to Asianismduring the late 1930s infused new content andvigor into the nearly exhausted concept ofAsian community and solidarity.

The reinvention of pan-Asianist ideologyfollowing the Manchurian Incident can best beseen in the sudden increase in the number ofAsianist journals and organizations supportedby military, political, and business authorities.In 1933, the same year Japan left the League ofNations, Rash Behari Bose and Qurban Ali, twoAsianist exiles who had lived in Japan duringthe 1920s, began to receive funding for thepurpose of publishing journals addressed toIndia and the Muslim World. Rash Behari Bosepublished The New Asia–Shin Ajia, a monthlyperiodical in a dual English- and Japanese-language format.[53] The government of Indiabanned the entry and sale of The New Asiawithin the territories it controlled.[54] Thejournal seemed to have supporters in SoutheastAsia, as evidenced by the contact betweenIndonesian nationalist leader Muhammed Hattaand Rash Behari Bose.[55]

Almost half the journal was devoted tocoverage o f news abou t the Ind ianindependence movement, taking a tonesympathetic to the radical wing led by SubhasChandra Bose.[56] Neither Japanese pan-Asianism nor The New Asia, however, receivedsupport from such prominent leaders of theIndian national movement as Gandhi, Nehru,Tagore, and Subhas Chandra Bose, all of whomwere very critical of Japanese aggression inChina. Despite the absence of interest in aJapan-centered pan-Asianist vision amongIndian nationalists, the journal referred to thepro-Japanese statement by Tagore back in1916, even though Tagore had radicallychanged his views of Japan by the 1930s.[57]Even Taraknath Das, the one Indian nationalistwho bestowed great hopes on Japan’sleadership of Asian nationalism during WWI,wrote to The New Asia that Japan had done

nothing to improve Indo-Japanese relations forabout two decades, expressing skepticism overthe motivations behind Japan’s attempt to“return to Asia” after such a long period ofindifference to nationalist movements.[58]

The New Asia included international news fromthe perspective of the East-West conflict anddomestic news on the activities of variousAsianist associations in Japan, such as the visitsto Tokyo of Asian or African American figuresof repute, or the awarding of scholarships tostudents from Asia.[59] The journal refrainedfrom publishing any news or articles critical ofthe creation of Manchukuo and maintainedsilence on the subject of Chinese nationalism.After discussing the Sino-Japanese conflict in atone of regret, Rash Behari Bose suggestedthat India should mediate between the twonations to reach a peaceful settlement.[60]With regard to the clash of civilizations andraces, articles in The New Asia emphasizedthat what Asians wanted was nationalliberation, with the possibility of a racialconflict thus depending entirely on the attitudethat the Western powers chose to assumetoward the independence movements:[61]

The non-white peoples are now conscious of thedistressing fact that they have hitherto beenmercilessly exploited and inhumanlyhumiliated. The intensity of this consciousnessis the measure of their challenge to the whiteman. One thing is certain, and that is that theEast and the West cannot coalesce, unless theWest fully realizes its immeasurable folly ofrace-superiority consciousness, completelyabandons its mischievous policy of exploitation,and immediately makes ample amends for theuntold wrongs it has inflicted on the non-whitepeoples of the earth.[62]

In The New Asia’s editorials on Japaneseforeign policy, Rash Behari Bose urged theJapanese government to cooperate with theUnited States, China, and the Soviet Union in amove to eliminate British colonial control in

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Asia. For him, Britain was the root of allproblems in the region, including Japan’sisolation in the international community. Asearly as 1934, Behari Bose warned that Japanneeded to maintain good relations with theUnited States, as only Britain would benefitfrom a conflict between that country and Japan:“Britain is not able to fight Japan singly andtherefore waiting for her opportunity, whenJapan may be involved in a war with America. .. . An American-Japanese War will weakenthese two great powers who are serious rivalsof Great Britain. Those Americans and Japanesewho are real patriots should do their best topromote American-Japanese friendship.”[63]

While Rash Behari Bose edited a journaladdressing primarily India, Qurban Ali waspublishing Yani Yapon Muhbiri (New Japanjournal), which aimed its message at theMuslim world.[64] Although the journal was inTurkish, the cover page of the magazineincluded a Japanese subtitle, describing it as“the only journal that introduces Japan to theMuslim world.” Several Japanese companiesprovided support to the small Muslimcommunity in Tokyo for their efforts in thepublication of Yani Yapon Muhbiri, which wasseen as an effective means for the creation ofan information network linking Japan and theMuslim world. In spite of the journal’s limitedcirculation, the very fact that Tokyo washosting a magazine published by Muslims wasexpected to have propaganda value incultivating pro-Japanese sentiments within aMuslim audience.

Around the same time that Yani Yapon Muhbiribegan publication in 1933, several otherattempts at networking with the Muslim worldwere promoted with the support of theJapanese army in Manchuria. These newattempts benefited from the contactsKokuryûkai had established in the Muslimworld and the Turkish Tatar diaspora networkin East Asia. In a daring experiment in 1933, aprince from the abolished Ottoman dynasty,

Abdül Kerim Efendi (1904–1935) was invited toJapan, presumably to consider his potentialcontribution to Japan’s policy toward theMuslims of Central Asia in case of a conflictwith the Soviet Union. Although the plan wassoon abandoned, it exemplified the recklessand unrealistic projects that Asianists werewil l ing to consider at the expense ofjeopardizing Japan’s diplomatic relations withthe Turkish Republic.[65] In the same year,AbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim, the famous pan-Islamist whose travel memoirs more than twodecades earlier had popularized a pro-Japaneseimage in the Muslim world, currently leadingan isolated and uneventful life in Turkey,received an invitation to visit Tokyo. Ä°brahimcollaborated with the Asianist projects reachingout to the Muslim world until his death in 1944in Tokyo.[66]

It was also in 1933 that several high-levelmilitary and civilian leaders established theGreater Asia Association (Dai Ajia Kyôkai).[67]The Greater Asia Association not only promotedregional unity in East Asia but also advocatedsolidarity among West and Southeast Asiansocieties. Konoe Fumimaro, General MatsuiIwane, and General Ishiwara Kanji were amongits prominent members.[68] The Greater AsiaAssociation published a monthly journal titledDai Ajia Shugi (Greater Asianism), whichbecame the most important pan-Asianistjournal during that period, offering a widerange of news and opinion articles covering allof Asia, including Muslim West Asia, SoutheastAsia, and Central Asia. Ôkawa Shûmei,Nakatani Takeyo,[69] Rash Behari Bose andmany Asianist figures in the military frequentlywrote for this journal. The content anddiscourse of Dai Ajia Shugi became aninfluential source in shaping the officiallanguage of pan-Asianism during the late1930s, influencing the “New Order in EastAsia” proclamation of the Konoe Fumimarocabinet in 1938.[70]

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Toyama Mitsuru honors Rash Behari Bose

The discourse of Asian identity represented inDai Ajia Shugi was perfectly in harmony withthe broader Asia view of Ôkawa Shûmei’sideology, as it seemed to regard India and theMuslim world as just as important as East andSoutheast Asia. Taking this continental Asiaperspective, Dai Ajia Kyôkai made an importantcontribution to Asianist thought with itsintroduction of news and information about thepolitical, economic, and social trends of theentire Asian world, from China and India toIran and Turkey.[71] In foreign policy, Dai AjiaShugi was highly anti-British and, strikingly,not anti-American. Discussions of the conflictand clash of interests between England andJapan started as early as 1933,[72] andgradually the journal’s call for a new worldorder turned to a more radical rejection ofEuropean hegemony in Asia. The journal,however, did not carry any vision of conflictwith the United States that could haveindicated the path to war. Beginning in 1938, itactively promoted the concept of “New Asia,”offering enthusiastic intellectual support forthe government’s declaration of the “NewOrder in East Asia.”[73]

Despite the journal’s endorsement ofcooperation among Asian nations, there was nogenuine dialogue with Asian intellectuals andnationalist movements in the pages of Dai AjiaShugi. When it claimed to present an Asian

perspective, the journal always consulted thesame small group of exiled nationalists inJapan.[74] This artificial perspective tended togive the journal a self-congratulatory tone,which became typical of Japanese pan-Asianismduring the late 1930s; Japanese readersreceived the impression that Asian nationalistseagerly looked to Japan for leadership. Inreality, expectation of Japanese leadershipagainst Western colonialism was much weakeramong the nationalist movements of the 1930scompared to the period in the aftermath of1905. Still, the journal tried to convince theJapanese public that pan-Asianism could be aplausible and positive alternative to thedeclining Eurocentric world order in Asia.[75]

In addition to the boom of journals andorganizations, an increasing degree ofnetworking with different Asian countries tookplace, primarily involving students andintellectuals. When one of Indonesia’s mostprominent nationalist leaders, MuhammadHatta, visited Japan in 1933, he was showeredwith media attention and received anenthusiastic welcome from the Greater AsiaAssociation as the “Gandhi of the NetherlandsEast Indies.” Hatta had previously expressedcriticism of Japanese imperialism in Chinafollowing the Manchurian Incident; however,after his trip, he moderated his position on theJapanese “return to Asia” and advocatedIndonesian cooperation with the liberal,progressive, and idealistic segments ofJapanese society, suggesting that Indonesiannationalists should challenge the Japanese tobe sincere in their pan-Asianist rhetoric. Duringhis visit to Japan in the fall of 1935, AhmadSubardjo, another Indonesian nationalistleader, expressed his belief that Japan’swithdrawal from the League of Nations and therevival of the pan-Asianist discourserepresented a very positive turning point inAsian history. It is important to note that,despite their cautious approach to Japan’sofficial Asianism, neither Hatta nor Subardjohad anything positive to say about the League

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of Nations.[76] Meanwhile, various Asianistorganizations tried to increase the number ofIndonesian students attending Japaneseuniversities, with most of these studentsbecoming members o f pan -As ian is torganizations during their stays in Japan.

In 1934 the Japanese government established asemiofficial agency, Kokusai Bunka Shinkôkai(Society for International Cultural Relations),with the purpose of introducing Japaneseculture to other parts of the world andimproving cultural ties with European,American, and Asian societies.[77] Althoughthe initial focus of the organization emphasizedEurope and the United States, Kokusai BunkaShinkôkai gradually expanded the funding itdevoted to cultural interactions with Asiansocieties.[78]

As the number of cultural and politicalassociations, journals, and books focusing onAsia grew dramatically after 1933, theJapanese publ ic ’s interpretat ion ofinternational events began to be shaped moreby their consciousness of racial difference andAsian identity. The best example of the powerthat an internationalist race identity held overthe Japanese imagination was the popularreaction to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia,when strong pro-Ethiopian sentiments causedproblems for Japan’s diplomatic relations withItaly. The mainstream Japanese media was fullof anti-Italian and pro-Ethiopian commentaries,with references to the conflict as anotherinstance of the struggle between the white raceand colored races.[79] Such overwhelmingsympathy for the Ethiopian resistance causeddiplomatic tension between Japan and Italy,despite the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s policyof keeping good relations with Italy.[80]Meanwhile, the highly pro-Ethiopian publicresponse to the Ethiopian crisis attracted theattention of African American intellectuals,prompting a visit to Japan by W. E. B. Du Bois.The warm reception Du Bois met during his1936 visit to Manchuria and Japan, combined

with his perception of a genuine Japanesepublic interest in the struggle of Africans andAfrican Americans, convinced him of thesincerity behind Japan’s claim for leadership ofthe colored races. Du Bois continued to writeabout the legitimacy of Japan’s actions in Asiain the framework of the importance of race ininternational affairs, even in the face ofJapanese atrocities in China. Predictably, pro-Japanese comments by Du Bois received greatcoverage in Japanese papers in a self-righteousaffirmation of Japanese policies.[81]

Du Bois in Japan

Overall, the small group of Japan’s Asiancollaborators, together with the Asian andAfrican American intellectuals who expressedsupport for Japan’s Asianist projects, were veryimportant in allowing Japanese intellectuals toconvince themselves that their ideas of theNew Order in East Asia and the Greater EastAsia Coprosperity Sphere were different fromWestern imperialism. As Naoki Sakai haspointed out, the ideologues of Japan’s officialpan-Asianism manifested a kind of “narcissism”that impelled them repeatedly to quote thoseindividuals who praised the Japanese or whohoped to receive support from Japan againstWestern colonia l ru le . [82] Throughmagnification of these manifestations of pro-Japanese expressions, many of which datedback to the decade after the Russo-Japanese

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War, Japanese leaders depicted the JapaneseEmpire as a Coprosperity Sphere thatpurported to represent the will of all itscolonial subjects.

When Japan first began the process ofcolonizing Taiwan and Korea and receivedrights in Manchuria, its policies could bejustified in international law throughreferences to the ideals of progress anddevelopment favored by other colonial powers.In the starkly different international climate ofthe 1930s, the vocabulary of benevolentcolonialism had to be replaced by the discourseof pan-Asian solidarity to justify Japaneseimperialism. By 1940 there were manyJapanese, especially in the young generation,who believed in their Asian identity and thediscourses of Asian liberation propagated bymultiple sources within Japan.[83]

Asianist Ideology of the 1930s

Pan-Asianism did not have a defined ideologyor a systematic doctrine. Formulating anideology that was both real ist ic andintellectually appealing proved to be thegreatest challenge faced by official Asianism inthe 1930s. Early pan-Asianism derived itsappeal from its opposition to the intellectualfoundations of the Eurocentric internationalorder while claiming to be in harmony withJapan’s national interest through the idea ofregional leadership in the project of an AsianMonroe Doctrine. In the 1930s, when pan-Asianist ideology took on a more assertivechallenge to the Eurocentric world order, anew generation of intellectuals struggled toinject a degree of international legitimacy andrealism into the idea of Asianism by modifyingthe content of the racial conflict thesis withreference to regionalism and geopolitics.Moreover, a strong tide of intellectual critiquesof Western modernity during the 1930s endedup strengthening the anti-Western discourse ofpan-Asianism.

The charter of Dai Ajia Kyôkai, promulgated in1933 after Japan’s withdrawal from the Leagueof Nations, was a far cry from the cautiouslanguage of the early Asian Monroe Doctrinedeveloped during the 1910s:

In culture, politics, economics,geography, and race, Asia is a bodyof common destiny. The truep e a c e , p r o s p e r i t y , a n ddevelopment of Asian peoples arefeasible only on the basis of theirconsciousness of Asia as one entityand an organic union thereof. . . .The heavy responsibility forreconstruction and ordering ofAsia rests upon the shoulders ofImperial Japan. . . . now is the timefor Japan to concentrate all itscultural, political, economic, andorganizational power to take onestep toward the reconstruction andunion in Asia. . . . The formulationof the Greater Asia Federation isthe historical mission facing theJapanese people today.[84]

In the early stages after Japan’s withdrawalfrom the League of Nations, scholars ofinternational relations such as KamikawaHikomatsu and Rôyama Masamichi criticizedthe idea of Great Asianism advocated by DaiAjia Kyôkai, calling it both unrealistic andanachronistic. They suggested that instead ofpursuing an anti-Western vision of Asiansolidarity, Japan should create a Far EasternLeague using the League of Nations as itsmodel. This plan was based on a liberalinternationalist agenda without any emphasison the primacy of race and civilization.[85] Atthat stage, scholars like Rôyama Masamichiwere maintaining their resistance to anincreasingly pervasive Asianist tendency toanalyze and reorder Japan’s relations with therest of the world in terms of racial andcivilizational blocs and conflicts among them.Rôyama noted that he deliberately decided “not

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to give a leading position to the question ofrace and culture” in his writings and policysuggestions.[86] In the end, however, Rôyamacapitulated to this convention, offeringrealpolitik substance to the slogans of officialpan-Asianism. He incorporated the idea of adistinct East Asian culture in his elaboratesupport of the New Order in East Asia,although it is true that the core of hisarguments relied more on the concepts ofregionalism.[87] Japan’s liberal intellectualscould redefine the idea of East Asiancommunity (kyôdôtai) as a form of regionalismthat would bring about a rationalization ofeconomic and social interaction in theregion.[88]

Because of harsh critiques from leading Asiannationalists, such as Gandhi and Nehru, ofJapanese policies in China during the 1930s,official Asianism was based on highly repetitivereferences to the events and ideas of the Asianinternationalism of the 1905–1914 period,when there was an interest in Japaneseleadership in different parts of Asia. One of thebest examples of this attempt to overcome theemptiness of an imposed notion of Asian unitythrough references to early Asianism can beseen in the response Ôkawa Shûmei offered tothe condemnation of Japanese Asianism byleaders of the Indian National Congress. Evenat the time when Japan was sponsoring theIndian National Army’s fight against Britishrule, both Gandhi and Nehru denouncedJapanese colonialism. In an open letter to them,Ôkawa recounted his experiences during WWIin joining Indian nationalists to campaign forthe liberation of India, regardless of Japan’spro-Western policy at the time of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. For Ôkawa, this historicalbackground of Indian-Japanese collaborationshowed that the ideals of official pan-Asianismduring the Greater East Asia War had altruistichistorical roots, reflecting a genuine interest inaiding the decolonization of Asia.[89] It wasduring such a search for the historical roots ofAsianism that Okakura Tenshin was made an

icon of pan-Asian thought. All of Okakura’sworks, including a previously unpublishedmanuscript from his 1901 trip to India calledAwakening of the East, were published in bothEnglish and Japanese editions between 1938and 1945.[90] In the same quest to reinventearly Asian internationalism, books by ÔkawaShûmei, Paul Richard, and Taraknath Das fromthe period of WWI were reprinted after morethan twenty years.[91]

Okakura Tenshin

It was the presence of new converts from thesocialist and liberal intellectual traditions,however, that injected new energy and vitalityto Asianism. In the writings of Miki Kiyoshi, aleading member of the Shôwa Kenkyûkai, wecan see the Asianist discourse of civilization inits most sophisticated formulation, polished

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with the German tradition of the philosophy ofhistory.[92] According to Miki, the over-Westernization of world cultures and theEurocentric character of the social sciencesposed a global political problem. Borrowing theself-critique of European thought during theinterwar period, Miki expressed the convictionthat Western civilization was in the process ofself-destruction and could no longer dominatethe fate of Asia. From this observation, heproceeded to the conclusion that Japan shoulduphold its civilizational mission to facilitateAsian unity and cooperation and eliminateWestern colonialism. For Miki, Asiancooperation under Japanese leadership wouldserve the interests of peace and harmony, aswell as liberation and racial equality.[93]

Miki Kiyoshi (second left) at a meeting ofthe Shôwa Kenkyûkai

Miki’s arguments drew on reflections onmodernity and Eurocentrism in the writings ofthe interwar era in both Europe and Japan.Ultimately, however, they resembled the ideasof Okakura Tenshin and Ôkawa Shûmei in theirbasic tenet, namely, belief in the collapse of theEurocentric world order and the correspondingnecessity to offer an alternative order based onAsian values and political solidarity. Otherconverts to Asianism, such as the famoussocialists Sano Manabu, Nabeyama Sadachika,and Akamatsu Katsumaro, offered their owninterpretations of the content of pan-Asianistthought.[94] These former socialists describedtheir perception of the world in terms of adivision into a proletarian East and a bourgeois

West. It was their belief that the fusionbetween the West, “reorganized by theproletariat,” and the East, “awakened throughthe influence of Pan-Asianism,” would create anew world order that would finally establishworld peace and unity.[95] Their retreat fromComintern socialism was accompanied by ashift in allegiance to Asian internationalism.

What united the ideology of such diversegroups and figures as the Greater AsiaAssociation, Ôkawa Shûmei, and the newconverts to Asianism such as Miki Kiyoshi, wasthe discourse of civilization central to all theirarguments. Victor Koschmann have accountedfor the differences among these pan-Asianistvisions by making a distinction betweenesoteric and exoteric versions of Asianism.A c c o r d i n g t o K o s c h m a n n , p o p u l a rorganizations such as the Greater AsiaAssociation presented the exoteric Asianismthat had the power to appeal to Japanese publicopinion, while Shôwa Research Instituteintellectuals such as Miki Kiyoshi produced anesoteric version of Asianism that was morerelevant to rational policy making andlegitimization in the eyes of the presumedworld public opinion. East-West civilizationdiscourse, however, united both the moresophisticated scholarly elaborations ofAsianism and those that appealed to thebroader domestic public opinion. This explainsthe striking similarities between the pan-Asianist ideas of Ôkawa Shûmei and MikiKiyoshi, despite their dramatically differentintellectual and political backgrounds. Verymuch like Ôkawa Shûmei, Miki Kiyoshi basedhis argument on the convict ion thatEurocentrism or Western civilization had to beovercome, while the civilizational legacy of Asiacould become the basis for an alternative.Gradually, these ideas turned into well-knownslogans, frequently repeated if not alwaysclearly defined. The following ambiguousformulation by the Greater Asia Associationsummed up the slogans that were common toall versions of Asianism: “It goes without saying

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that the cultures of Europe are incapable ofrescuing themselves any more, much less theworld at large. The new potential power lieswith the third civilization. It makes bothEastern and Western civilizations come alivethrough ‘musubi’ or harmonious combination.This is what can produce a new order in China,and Japan may rightfully serve as a catalyst forthis combination.”[96]

The central tension in world politics, accordingto this Asianist discourse of civilization, wasbetween East and West, and thus Asianismhelped serve to reduce all world conflicts tothis reductionist framework. Once the warbetween Japan and the United States started,such rhetoric served a very useful politicalpurpose by placing the focus on the conflictwith the Western powers and covering up thesense of guilt some Japanese may otherwisehave felt about their country’s aggression inChina. Thus a great number of Japaneseintellectuals may have felt relieved after theoutbreak of war with the USA. They couldmobilize their ideas for the glorification andjustification of the Pacific War in the name ofovercoming modernity and East-Westconfrontation. For example, the participants inthe famous wartime conference “OvercomingModerni ty” ut i l i zed a wide array o fphilosophies and theories to link Japan’smilitary conflict with the intellectual attemptsto overcome the problems of Eurocentricmodernity.[97] It was thus the intellectuallegacy of early Asianism in the form of adiscourse of Asian civilization that createdsimilarities between the ideology of old-timeAsianists such as Ôkawa Shûmei and that of thenew converts to Asianism during the 1930s,whose disparate beliefs converged in theirobsessive and constant blaming of the imaginedWest for the problems of the internationalorder.

Wartime Asian Internationalism and ItsPostwar Legacy

Throughout the Pacific War, pan-Asianists likeÔkawa Shûmei devoted all their energies to theservice of the Japanese state and the project ofthe Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere. Inaddition to publishing books and journalsadvocating the ideals of Asianism, Ôkawacontinued to head the administration of theEast Asian Economic Research Institute and torun his professional school.[98] Among theseefforts, he saw it as particularly important toclarify Japan’s war aims and explain the originsand goals of the Greater East Asia War. Themain Asianist project Ôkawa closely followedduring the war was the establishment of theIndian National Army, an event that gave asense of final achievement to Ôkawa after threedecades of advocating Japanese support forIndian independence.The creation of the Indian National Army (INA)in 1942, with its ranks composed of Indiansoldiers from the surrendered British troops inSingapore, became the most memorable projectto embody pan-Asianist slogans. The INA wasintended to fight alongside the Japanese armyagainst the British forces at the Burmese-Indian border. It is now clear that the initialsuccess of the Japanese plans for the creationof an Indian army can be attributed more to thecontributions of idealistic Japanese figures onthe ground than to any planning in Tokyo.[99]Major Fujiwara Iwaichi (1908–1986) gained thetrust of Indian officers mainly through his ownsincere commitment to the project of Indianindependence. In fact, upon Fujiwara’sdeparture, INA commander Mohan Singh soonclashed with the new liaison officer andattempted to disband the 40,000-man army hehad created.[100] The objection of MohanSingh and other Indian officers to theappointment of Rash Behari Bose to the topposition in the newly created army markedanother point of crisis, one that shows theagency of Indian collaborators in the wholeproject.[101]

Subhas Chandra Bose’s willingness tocooperate with Japan, followed by his secret

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submarine trip from Germany to Japan in 1942,saved the Indian National Army project, when itfaced a crisis provoked by disagreementbetween the Japanese and Indian sides.Chandra Bose was a well-respected leader ofthe Indian nationalist movement who couldboth gain the loyalty of the Indian officers andassert authority over the Japanese liaisonofficers. For a long time, he had advocatedcooperation with anti-British powers in order towin independence for India, in contrast to thepolicy of passive resistance advocated byGandhi. He saw a great opportunity in Germanand Japanese support for the liberation of Indiaand willingly collaborated with both powers.Soon after his arrival in Singapore, ChandraBose took over the leadership of the INA andformed the Provisional Government of FreeIndia. Although the actual engagementbetween the Indian National Army and theirBritish enemies at Imphal resulted in defeat forthe Indian side, the mere existence of aprovisional government and an army had apositive psychological impact on the Indiannationalist movement as a whole.[102]

From his arrival at Singapore until his death ina plane crash at the end of the Pacific War,Subhas Chandra Bose visited Tokyo severaltimes during the war. The speech he made asthe leader of the Provisional Government ofFree India at the Greater East Asia Conferencein 1943 to the heads of state of six nations ofthe Coprosperity Sphere (Japan, China,Manchuria, the Philippines, Burma, andThailand, all recognized as independent byJapan) demonstrated the links between thefailure of the League of Nations system and theNew Order in East Asia that Japan haddeclared its intention to establish in the contextof its war aims. Bose began his speech byrecalling his frustration with the League ofNations: ”My thoughts also went back to theAssembly of the League of Nations, that Leagueof Nations along whose corridors and lobbies Ispent many a day, knocking at one door afteranother, in the vain attempt to obtain a hearing

for the cause of Indian freedom.” [103]According to Bose, the Greater East AsiaConference organized by the Japanesegovernment as an alternative to the League ofNations was receptive to nationalist voices inAsia in a way none of the European-centeredinternational organizations had ever been.Meanwhile, he gave several radio speeches andlectured to the Japanese public, helping toenhance the popular Japanese confidence in theliberation mission of the Pacific War.

Subhas Chandra Bose in a Tokyo speech in1945

What pan-Asianists like Ôkawa Shûmei neverrealized was that, for nationalist leaders likeSubhas Chandra Bose, pan-Asianism wasmerely one of the means to reach nationalindependence, not a goal in itself.[104] In oneof his conversations with Ôkawa Shûmei aboutthe future of the Indian national movement,Subhas Chandra Bose talked about thepossibility of receiving Soviet support againstthe British Empire if Germany was defeated onthe European front. Ôkawa was surprised thatBose could think of cooperating with theSoviets and asked him why he wouldcollaborate with the Soviet Union if he wasagainst Communism. In response, Bose pointedout that he was prepared “to shake hands evenwith Satan himself to drive out the British fromIndia.”[105] It did not occur to Ôkawa thatJapan might well be one Satan with whom

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Chandra Bose had to cooperate. In fact,Chandra Bose saw Japan as a different allyfrom Russia or Germany because of the Asianidentity common to both India and Japan. In theend, however, Bose’s nationalist agenda wasthe main motive for collaboration, rather than avision of Asian regionalism under Japaneseleadership. In a sense, the legitimacy ofwartime pan-Asianism intimately depended onthe idea of national self-determination.

For Ôkawa Shûmei, on the other hand, Asiandecolonization was unthinkable in the absenceof Japan’s unique mission to lead the free Asia.He refrained, however, from stating specificallywhat kind Asian federation would replace theold order. Unsurprisingly, Ôkawa’s vision of thefuture Asia was ambiguous, and his wartimewritings focused more on the history andideology o f As ian ism. The Japanesegovernment, on the other hand, had to clarifyits war aims and postwar visions much moreclearly than Ôkawa did, especially in responseto the appeal of the Atlantic Charter. Initially,Japanese leaders defined the first stage of thenew world order they envis ioned forAsia—namely, the expulsion of Westernhegemony and the elimination of Westerninterests—without specifying clearly whatwould happen after the Western powers weregone. They assumed that, once Westernexploitation was over and trade between Asiannations was established, Asia would developvery fast. They also hoped that the new Asiawould cooperate with a German-dominatedEurope to create a world order based onregional economic blocs.[106] As Japaneseleaders soughtthe further cooperation of localnationalist movements during the later stagesof the war, they eventually clarified their ownwar aims as an alternative to the AtlanticCharter.[107]

As the declarations of the 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiatic conference had looked similar to theprinciples of the League of Nations, so theGreater East Asia Conference declaration also

looked like a modification of the AtlanticCharter, with slight alterations affordingsensitivity to the cultural traditions of non-Western societies. For example, the principlesdeclared on November 7, 1943, in Tokyoaffirmed the national self-determination ofAsian societies, with the only major differencefrom the Atlantic Charter being a call for the“abolition of racial discrimination” and thecultivation of Asian cultural heritages.[108]During the Greater East Asia War, the fiercecompetition between the Allied Powers andJapan in propaganda battles and psychologicalwarfare had accelerated the pace ofdecolonization. Not only did Japan feel the needto respond to the Atlantic Charter, but theAllied Powers also had to respond to the pan-Asianist challenge to the interwar colonialorder. For instance, U.S. Office of StrategicServices (OSS) reports on psychologicalwarfare in Southeast Asia held that Japan’sAsianist propaganda was generally verysuccessful. In response, the OSS suggested thatthe vision of a United Nations organization anda new world order should be emphasized,taking care not to make any reference to thecontinuation of the British, French, and Dutchempires.[109] More important, there was agrowing awareness among U.S. wartimeleaders, including President Roosevelt, thatthey had to counter the widespread pan-Asiannotions of solidarity spread by Japan byoffering a new vision of a postwar order that atleast recognized the national demands of Indiaand China. There was also a second concernbeyond the competition with Japan: how toassure the support of China and later India inthe postwar international order. Theseconcerns led to recognition that the pre-WWIIcolonial discourses of racial inferiority and thereality of the colonial subjugation of India andChina should not continue, even if Japan werepunished by a national-racial isolation.[110] Itis against the background of this concern withpan-Asianism that Roosevelt recommended thatChurchill give India more self-government inorder to improve the war efforts against

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Japan.[111]

As a matter of fact, after the end of the GreaterEast Asia War, the prewar imperial order wouldnot be reestablished. When Ôkawa Shûmeilistened to the emperor’s radio announcementof Japan’s surrender, on August 15, 1945, hethought that four decades of his work “towardthe revival of Asia [had] disappeared like a soapbubble.”[112] Yet, although it was true thatJapanese pan-Asianism as a political movementwould disappear, the decolonization of Asiawould be completed by the 1950s. Moreimportant, the Asianist discourse of an East-West civilizational conflict would likewisesurvive the post-WWII period.

The period immediately after WWII witnessednationalist revolutions from Indonesia toVietnam fighting against the returning Dutchand French colonialism. Even in India, despiteChandra Bose’s death in a plane crash and thedissolution of his army at the end of WWII, theIndian national movement rushed to the moraland legal defense of the officers of theJapanese-sponsored Indian National Army, whowere indicted for treason against the BritishEmpire. As Tilak Raj Sareen wrote, the trial ofthe INA officers revitalized the nationalistmovement in India, actually creating a newturning point in the Indian national movement,demoralized after WWII.[113] Meanwhile, atthe Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the legacy ofthe prewar Asian discourse of civilization wouldbe played out in full in the conflict of opinionbetween the Indian Radhabinod Pal and theother judges.

Ôkawa Shûmei was indicted as a Class A warcriminal by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunalbased on his role as an ideologue of right-wingpan-Asianism. Both the prosecution and thefinal verdict used Ôkawa’s writings extensivelyin the construction of their case charging theaccused Japanese leaders with conspiracy tocommit aggression, even though chargesagainst Ôkawa himself were dropped when he

was diagnosed with brain syphilis in the earlystages of the tribunal. While the majority ofjudges found the accused Japanese leadersguilty of the charges, Judge Radhabinod Palwrote a long dissenting opinion asserting thatJapanese decision making leading up to thePacific War did not constitute a crime ininternational law. It is a testimony toRadhabinod Pal’s expertise in international lawand his sharp political and legal acumen thathis long dissenting opinion is now as wellremembered as the Tokyo Tribunal itself. Thesubstance of Pal’s dissenting judgment derivedfrom his ideas of international law and hiscommitment to a just trial untainted by thepolitics of “victor’s justice.” It is also evidentthat Pal’s background in colonial Bengal andhis sympathies for the Indian National Armyunder the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bosehad an impact on the content of his dissentingjudgment. This background may have alsoinfluenced his failure to speak out against theuse of his dissenting judgment by Japaneseright-wing revisionists.

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Monument to Radhabinod Pal in Japan

Richard Minear and John Dower have agreedwith many of Pal’s legal arguments in theirdiscussion of the neocolonial context of theTokyo Tribunal and their critique of thenegative impact of the Tokyo trial on bothinternational justice and Japan’s acceptance ofresponsibility for the Pacific War.[114] AsTimothy Brook has demonstrated, however,Justice Pal’s anticolonial sensibilities led him torefrain from making any meaningful judgmenton Japan’s responsibility for the NankingMassacre.[115] Pal’s anticolonial stance ledhim to withhold comment on Japan’s warcrimes against Chinese civilians in Nanking andelsewhere. The majority of the judges, on theother hand, condemned Japanese imperialismin the name of international justice at the sametime that Western powers were trying toreestablish their colonial hegemony.[116] Thus,in a sense, the color lines that pan-Asianismemphasized were acted out on the benches ofthe Tokyo Tribunal, indicating one of the many

ways the legacies of the pan-Asianist discourseof civilization and race survived in the postwarperiod, shaping the perception of both the coldwar and decolonization in contemporaryhistory.

Conclusion

Japanese pan-Asianism gained unprecedentedofficial support among the elites of theJapanese Empire in the aftermath of theManchurian Incident and Japan’s decision towithdraw from the League of Nations. TheJapanese government declared its “return toAsia” by appropriating an already existing pan-Asianist alternative to the Eurocentric worldorder only when its empire was challengedinternally by nationalist movements andexternally by the other great powers. The veryfact that Japan’s elites saw something practicaland useful in the pan-Asian slogans andnetworks to help justify the multiethnic Asianempire of Japan indicates both the continuingintellectual vitality of Asianist critiques of theinterwar-era world order and the potentialappeal of the Asianist slogans of East-Westrelations and racial identity to broaderJapanese public opinion. Pan-Asianism allowedthe Japanese Empire to implement morerigorous and inclusive assimilation policies andexhibit a high level of international confidenceand self-righteousness in an era whenimperialism was globally delegitimized. Yet itwas partly a nostalgic and narcissistic ideology,making frequent references to the post-1905Asian nationalist admiration of Japan withoutrecognizing the fact that both the nature ofnationalism and the image of Japan hadchanged dramatically from 1905 to the late1930s.

Japanese pan-Asianists saw a great opportunityin the unexpected patronage of their ideas bythe Japanese government and militaryauthorities after 1933. Throughout the 1930s,the radical anti-Western tradition withinAsianism was focused on the end of European

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empires in Asia, especially on the weakness ofBritish Empire, without advocating orrecommending any Japanese challenge to theUnited States. Pearl Harbor was thus anundesirable development for pan-Asianists inJapan, even though they rushed to glorify andjustify it via a discourse of East-Westcivilizational or yellow-white racial conflicts.Meanwhile, new converts to Asianism fromdifferent segments of Japanese intellectual lifeadded practical and policy-oriented content tothe ambivalent slogans of Asian solidarity viasocial science theories of regional cooperationand multiethnic communities. Despite itsinternal paradoxes and its tensions with thelogic of Japanese imperialism, pan-Asianismnevertheless allowed Japan to conduct arelatively successful propaganda campaignagainst Western imperialism in Southeast Asiawhile motivating numerous idealist Japaneseactivists and their collaborators. Pan-Asianistpropaganda, accompanied by Japan’s ownimperial expansion during WWII, did contributeto the end of Western empires, partly byforcing the Allied powers to formulate andpromise a more inclusive and nonimperialisticworld order at the end of WWII, and partly bystimulating anti-colonial thought andconfidence in the possibility of defeatingEuropean colonizers among colonized Asiannations.

This article is developed from Cemil Aydin, ThePolitics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions ofWorld Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-AsianThought (New York: Columbia University Press2007) pp: 161-189. For more information aboutthe book, please see. Posted at Japan Focus onMarch 12, 2008.

Cemil Aydin is assistant professor of history,University of North Carolina, Charlotte and apost-doctoral Fellow at Princeton University,Near Eastern Studies Department in 2007-08.Recent publications include "BeyondEurocentrism? Japan's Islamic Studies during

the Era of the Greater East Asia War(1937-1945)," in Renee Worringer, ed.,Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal ofMiddle Eastern Studies, Volume XIV: TheIslamic Middle East and Japan: Perceptions,Aspirations, and the Birth of Intra-AsianModernity, January 2007.

Notes

[1]. The Manchurian Incident of 1931 initiateda process that led to the establishment of aJapanese-controlled puppet government inManchuria and Japan’s withdrawal from theLeague of Nations. Japan’s Kwantung armyguarding the South Manchurian Railwaysbombed parts of the railway in Mukden tocreate a pretext to occupy Manchuria with theostensible purpose of providing securityagainst Chinese nationalists in September1931. Instead of withdrawing from theoccupied territories, the Japanese governmentcreated the puppet state Manchukuo inFebruary 1932. Nonrecognition of this state bythe League of Nations became the reason forJapanese withdrawal from the league in 1933.[2]. Frederick Dickinson, War and NationalReinvention: Japan in the Great War,1914–1919 (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 2001).[3]. Richard Storry, The Double Patriots: AStudy of Japanese Nationalism (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1957).[4]. Christopher Szpilman, “Conservatism andIts Enemies in Prewar Japan: The Case ofHiranuma Kiichirô and the Kokuhonsha,”Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 30, no. 2(December 1998): 101–133.[5]. Genzo Yamamoto, “Defending Japan’sCivilization and Civilizing Mission in Asia: TheResilience and Triumph of Illiberalism in theHouse of Peers, 1919–1934” (Ph.D. diss., YaleUniversity, 1999). See also Arima Tatsuo, TheFailure of Freedom: A Portrait of ModernJapanese Intellectuals (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1969). For a previous work onthis topic that focuses more on the failure of

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the liberals to fight the antiliberals, see ToruTakemoto, The Failure of Liberalism in Japan:Shidehara Kijuro’s Encounter with Anti-Liberals (Washington, D.C.: University Press ofAmerica, 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 justifyingJapan’s Manchuria policy, see Thomas W.Burkman, “The Geneva Spirit,” in John F.Howes, ed., Nitobe Inazô: Japan’s BridgeAcross the Pacific (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,1995), 204–209. See also George Oshiro, “TheEnd: 1929–1933,” in Howes, Nitobe Inazô,255–258.[8]. For Zumoto’s defense of the ManchurianIncident before international audiences in theUnited States and Europe, see ZumotoMotosada, The Origin and History of the Anti-Japanese Movement in China (Tokyo: Herald,1932); and idem, Japan in Manchuria andMongolia (Tokyo: Herald, 1931). For NitobeInazô’s opinion on the Manchurian Incident,see Nitobe Inazô, “Japan and the League ofNations,” 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 NitobeInazô, 4:221–233.[9]. For a discussion of Shôwa Kenkyûkai, see J.Victor Koschmann, “Asianism’s AmbivalentLegacy,” in Peter J. Katzenstein and TakashiShiraishi, eds., Network Power: Japan and Asia(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 90–94.Shôwa Kenkyûkai (1933–1940) was labeled inthe popular press as Konoe Fumimaro’s braintrust. Especially during Konoe’s tenure asprime minister (1937–1939, 1940–1941), ShôwaKenkyûkai was preoccupied with formulatingthe East Asian Cooperative Body and the NewOrder Movement. The membership of theassociation included scholars and journalistsfrom different ideological backgrounds. For theanti-Western ideas of the Kyoto Schoolphilosophers, see John Dower, War WithoutMercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

(New York: Pantheon, 1986), 227.[10]. Harry Harootunian, Overcome byModernity: History, Culture, and Community inInterwar Japan (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 2000); Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient:Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1993); KevinDoak, Dreams of Difference: The JapanRomantic School and the Crisis of Modernity(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994).There is an ongoing debate about therelationship of the pro-war nature of the KyotoSchool philosophy and its vision of overcomingmodernity. See Ueda Shizuteru, “Nishida,Nationalism, and the War in Question,” inJames Heisig and John Moraldo, eds., RudeAwakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and theQuestion of Nationalism (Honolulu: Universityof Hawai’i Press, 1995), 77–106; Yusa Michiko,“Nishida and Totalitarianism: A Philosopher’sResistance,” in Heisig and Moraldo, RudeAwakenings, 107–131; and Andrew Feenberg,“The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy ofNishida,” in Heisig and Moraldo, RudeAwakenings, 151–173.[11]. Akira Iriye, “The Failure of EconomicExpansionism: 1918–1931,” in Bernard S.Silberman and H. D. Harootunian, eds., Japanin 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 theorizedby Andrew Gordon as the transition fromimperial democracy to imperial fascism. SeeAndrew Gordon, Labor and Imperia lDemocracy in Prewar Japan (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1991).[14]. “Confronted by a formidable cluster ofdiplomatic, economic, and military problems,the Imperial government [of Japan] resorted toa series of potential solutions: Manchukuo, aJapanese Monroe Doctrine, Hirota’s threeprinciples, an advance to the South Seas, a

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national defense state, and the rejuvenation ofChina” (James B. Crowley, “Intellectuals asVisionaries of the New Asian Order,” in JamesW. Morley, ed., Dilemmas of Growth in PrewarJapan (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1971), 395). Similarly, Ben-Ami Shillony hasdemonstrated that, even at the peak of thePacific War, Japan did not deviate from thenormal functioning of the Meiji Constitution.See Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture inWartime Japan (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1981).[15]. Hayashi Fusao, Daitôa Sensô Kôteiron, 2vols. (Tokyo: Banchô Shobô, 1964–1965), citedin Crowley, “A New Asian Order,” 297–298.[16] For example, Mark Peattie has argued thatIshiwara Kanji’s views “were part of thissurging anti-Western nationalism during theinterwar period, and his concept of a Final Warmust be seen as a reinvigoration of apersistent, if long-muted, theme of challenge tothe West throughout Japan’s modern history to1945” (Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji andJapan’s Confrontation with the West [Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1975], 368).[17]. For a good example of the perception ofWestern retreat from Asia, see No-Yong Park,Retreat of the West: The White Man’sAdventure in Eastern Asia (Boston: Hale,Cushman, and Flint, 1937).[18]. U. Ottama (1879–1939) was an influentialfigure in Burmese nationalism. Influenced byboth the Indian National Congress and theJapanese model, Ottama denounced Britishcolonial rule. He was imprisoned by the Britishauthorities for a very long time, ultimatelydying in prison. For Ôkawa’s praise of Ottama,see Ôkawa Shûmei, “Ottama Hôshi o Omou,” inÔkawa Shûmei Zenshû, 7 vols., ed. ÔkawaShûmei Zenshû Kankôkai (Tokyo: ÔkawaShûmei Zenshû Kankôkai, 1961–1974),2:913–915.[19] Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in theOttoman Empire,” in Bert Edstrom, ed., TheJapanese and Europe: Images and Perceptions(Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon, 2000),112–120; El-Mostafa Rezrazi, “Pan-Asianism

and the Japanese Islam: Hatano Uhô. FromEspionage to Pan-Islamist Activity,” Annals ofthe Japan Association for Middle East Studies,no. 12 (1997): 89–112.[20]. Tanaka Ippei was a scholar of China andBuddhism. He converted to Islam andperformed pilgrimages to Mecca in 1925 and1933. Wakabayashi describes Tanaka Ippei as afighter for “Sonnô Yûkoku,” meaning “Reverethe Emperor, and be a Patriot,” despite the factthat Tanaka became a Muslim and adopted thename Haji Nur Muhammad in 1918.[21]. His brother, Wakabayashi Kyûman,worked for the same cause, operatingundercover as a merchant among ChineseMuslims until he died in Changsha in 1924. ForWakabayashi’s reflections on the history of theKokuryûkai circle of Islam policy advocates, seeWakabayashi 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 theImperial Way faction of the army.[23]. Ôkawa Shûmei, “Cho Gakuryo Shi oTazuneru no Ki” (November 1928), in ÔkawaShûmei Zenshû, 4:591.[24]. Christopher Szpilman, “The Dream of OneAsia: Ôkawa Shûmei and Japanese Pan-Asianism,” in H. Fuess, ed., The JapaneseEmpire in East Asia and Its Postwar Legacy(Munich: German Institute of Japanese Studies,1998), 51.[25]. Ôkawa Shûmei, “Manmô Mondai noKôsatsu,” 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, Ôkawaconceded that he knew something wouldhappen but noted that many others at that timehad the same knowledge and it was not asecret.[27]. For instance, as the biography of IshiwaraKanji, the military brain of the ManchurianIncident, confirms, ideas about a final war andEast-West confrontation, which were very

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important in Ôkawa Shûmei’s pan-Asianism,were commonly shared by other European,American, and Japanese thinkers, and Ôkawawas not the main inspiration for Ishiwara’splans. See Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 27–86.[28]. William Miles Fletcher, The Search for aNew Order: Intellectuals and Fascism inPrewar Japan (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1982), 29–30. For the detailedarguments of Rôyama on the issue ofManchuria policy, see also Rôyama Masamichi,Japan’s Position in Manchuria (Tokyo: Instituteof Pacific Relations–Japan Council, 1929).[29]. Even in June 1931, shortly before theManchurian Incident, when Ôkawa warned thata war could break out between China and Japanat a slight provocation and suggested thenecessity of a radical change in policy inManchuria, his ideas still were not exceptionalenough to single him out as an instigator ofKwantung Army officers. See Ôkawa, “ManmôMondai no Kôsatsu,” 679–682.[30]. Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nijyû no Nankyoku ni taisuru 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 ShûmeiKankei Monjo, ed. Ôkawa Shûmei KankeiMonjo Kankôkai (Tokyo: Fuyô Shohô Shuppan,1998), 244–248.[31]. Ôkawa Shûmei, “Daitô Kyôeiken noRekishiteki Konkyo,” in Dai Nippon GenronHôkokukai, ed., Kokka to Bunka (Tokyo: DômeiTsûshinsha, 1943), 29–43.[32]. For Ôkawa Shûmei’s main article on thewithdrawal 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 withdrawalfrom the league before the ManchurianIncident, see Ôkawa Shûmei, “Nihon noKokusai Chii O Kokoromiru,” Daitô Bunka, May1929, reprinted in Ôkawa Shûmei KankeiMonjo, 234–243.[34]. Inukai was assassinated by a group ofradical nationalist army cadets and navalofficers. Ôkawa Shûmei was indicted, and

found guilty, of providing material assistance tothis group. It is ironic that he ended upcontributing to Inukai Tsuyoshi’s assasination,as pan-Asianists usually viewed Inukaipositively, and the 1926 Nagasaki pan-Asiaticconference honored him as one of the Asianpoliticians who aided the cause of Asianpeople’s awakening.[35]. The fifteen-year prison sentence Ôkawareceived on February 3, 1934, was reduced tofive years on October 24, 1935. Because ofhealth problems, he was allowed to postponehis prison term until June 16, 1936. He wasfinally paroled on October 13, 1937. SeeÔtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei to KindaiNihon (Tokyo: Mokutakusha, 1990), 220.[36]. In the aftermath of the ManchurianIncident, Ôkawa established Jinmukai (Societyof Jinmu) as a new nationalist organization inthe aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, withhopes of reaching a larger audience andcreating a broader popular base for his radicalnationalist and Asianist movement. ÔkawaShûmei’s trial and imprisonment must haveplayed a role in his decision to disband thegroup. Moreover, after the coup of February26, 1936, an event that led to the execution ofKita Ikki as the civilian ideologue of the militaryconspirators, the authorities began to show lesstolerance for radical nationalist organizations.[37]. The journal was published by MantetsuTôa Keizai Chôsakyoku in Tokyo from August1939 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., JapaneseCultural Policies in Southeast Asia DuringWorld War 2 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991),2–5.[41]. Gotô Ken’ichi, “ ‘Bright Legacy’ or‘Abortive Flower’: Indonesian Students in JapanDuring World War 2,” in Goodman, JapaneseCultural Policies in Southeast Asia DuringWorld War 2, 7–35. See also Grant K. Goodman,An Experiment in Wartime Inter-Cultural

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Relations: Philippine Students in Japan,1943–1945 (Ithaca: Cornell UniversitySoutheast Asia Program, 1962).[42]. Students of Ôkawa were the leadingfigures in Ôkawa Shûmei Kenshôkai andorganized the publication of his collected worksand other related materials. See HaradaKôkichi, Ôkawa Shûmei Hakushi no shôgai(Yamagata-ken Sakata-shi: Ôkawa ShûmeiKenshôkai, 1982).[43]. For a personal account of the Ôkawa Jukufrom the memoirs of students, see Tazawa,Musurimu Nippon, 129–142.[44]. For the evaluation of Ôkawa’s Islamicstudies, see Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Ôkawa Shûmeino Ajia Kenkyû,” in Hashikawa Bunsô, ed.,Ôkawa Shûmei Shû; (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobô,1975), 391–394.[45]. See Ôkawa Shûmei, “Taisen no Zento toAjia no Shorai o Kataru Zadankai,” Shin Ajia 2,no. 3 (August 1940): 126. See also ÔkawaShûmei, “Nanhô Mondai,” in YoshiokaNagayoshi, 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 AsiaMonographs, 2001).[48]. See Ôtsuka Takehiro, Ôkawa Shûmei: AruFukkô Kakushin Shugisha no Shisô (Tokyo:,Chûô Kôronsha, 1995), 160–170; KusunokiSeiichirô, “Ôkawa Shûmei no tai-Bei Seisaku,”Nihon Rekishi, no. 474 (November 1987):54–70.[49]. See Ôtsuka Takehiro, “Shôwa Jyunendaino Ôkawa Shûmei,” in Ôkawa Shûmei to KindaiNihon, 227–252.[50]. Ôkawa Shûmei, A History of Anglo-American Aggression in East Asia, trans. YoshioOgawa and P. B. Clarke (Tokyo: DaitôaShuppan Kabushiki Kaisha, 1944), 1–3.[51] For the way the prosecution used thisre ference , see Awaya and Yosh ida ,International Prosecution Section (IPS), 23:319.[52]. Ibid., 23:303–306.

[53]. The New Asia, edited by Rash Behari Bosein Tokyo from 1933 to 1937).[54]. The content of The New Asia includedmany of the arguments expounded by ÔkawaShûmei, unsurprisingly, given the close tiesthat had existed between Ôkawa and Bosesince 1915. For example, the content in TheNew Asia, nos. 5–6 (September–October 1933):1, is very similar to the writings of Ôkawa inFukkô Ajia no Shomondai and Ajia, Yoroppa,Nihon.[55]. For news about Muhammad Hatta, seeThe New Asia, nos. 13–14 (May–June 1934): 4.[ 5 6 ] . T h e N e w A s i a , n o s . 1 7 – 1 8(September–October 1934), contains extensivecoverage of Chandra Bose’s ideas.[ 5 7 ] . T h e N e w A s i a , n o s . 5 – 6(September–October 1933): 3. For Tagore’scritique of Japan during the late 1930s, seeZeljko Cipris, “Seduced by Nationalism: YoneNoguchi’s ‘Terrible Mistake’. Debating theChina-Japan War With Tagore” Japan Focus.[ 5 8 ] . T h e N e w A s i a , n o s . 7 – 8(November–December 1933): 3.[59]. News about the visit to Japan of theAfrican American poet Langston Hughes wasaccompanied by information about the issue ofwhite discrimination against blacks in theUnited States; see Shin Ajia, no. 4 (August1933): 2. In another instance, the Pan-AsiaticCultural Association declared its goal to invitestudents from Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia,India, and East Asian and Southeast Asianregions to Japan. See Shin Ajia, nos. 7–8(November–December 1933): 4.[60]. Shin Ajia, nos. 5–6 (September–October1933): 2.[61]. For a lengthy commentary on the rise ofthe colored and decline of the white races, seeShin Ajia, no. 17–18 (September-October 1934):1.[ 6 2 ] . T h e N e w A s i a , n o s . 7 – 8(November–December 1933): 2. Indicating hiscolor-blind loyalty to universal principles, Bosewrote about his admiration for AbrahamLincoln, describing him as the leader whotaught the world the meaning of liberation. See

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The New Asia, nos. 23–24 (March–April 1935):2.[63]. The New Asia, nos. 13–14 (May–June1 9 3 4 ) : 3 . S e e a l s o n o s . 1 7 – 1 8(September–October 1934): 4.[64]. Yani Yapon Muhbiri was edited by QurbanAli in Tokyo from 1933 to 1938. The journaloften contained didactic articles about thehistory, economy, and culture of Japan, as wellas carrying news about the Tatar Turkishdiaspora living within the boundaries of theJapanese Empire. Since there was a large TatarMuslim community in Manchuria, the journalincluded news about Manchukuo, the Manchudynasty, and developments in China as well.[65]. For the background of Abdül Kerim Efendiincident and other Muslim activists who visitedJapan after 1933, see Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’sGlobal 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]. AbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim looked to Japaneseexpansion in the north against the Soviet Unionwith the hope that this would allow the Muslimreg ions o f Cen t ra l As i a t o ach ieveindependence. Initially, this idea had manysupporters within the Japanese army as well.However, clashes between Japanese and Sovietforces in Nomonhan, Mongolia, during thesummer of 1939 convinced the militaryauthorities of Japan that Soviet military powercould not be easily challenged, strengtheningthe southern advance theory. For therelationship between Kokuryûkai andAbdurreÅŸid Ä°brahim, see Selçuk Esenbel,“Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire,” inEdstrom, The Japanese and Europe, 95–124;see also Selçuk Esenbel, Nadir Ozbek, Ä°smailTürkoÄŸlu, François Georgeon, and AhmetUcar, “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 TôaRenmei Kyôkai (East Asia League Association),founded in 1939, was based on ideas alsoadvocated by Dai Ajia Kyôkai. See Peattie,

Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation withthe West, 281–282.[69]. Nakatani Takeyô became a prolific writerin Asianist publications of the 1930s. Nakataniwas influenced by Ôkawa Shûmei during hisstudent years at Tokyo University and laterbecame a member of several organizations ledby Ôkawa. He took a leading position in bothDai Ajia Kyôkai and its journals. For hismemoirs, see Nakatani Takeyô, Shôwa Dôrankino Kaisô—Nakatani Takeyô Kaikoroku, 2 vols.(Tokyo: Tairyûsha, 1989).[70]. Koschmann, “Asianism’s AmbivalentLegacy,” 89–90.[71]. For example see, Okubô Kôji, “ShinkôToruko No Kokumin Shugi Hyôshiki,” Dai AjiaShugi 5, no. 5 (May 1937): 5–10. By late 1934,the news section was divided into five parts,devoted to Manchuria, China, India, SoutheastAsia, and West Asia.[72]. See “Nichi Ei Shôtotsu no Hitsuyôsei,” DaiAjia Shugi 1, no. 12 (December 1933): 33–38.[73]. See “Shin Ajia Kensetsu No ShinShinNen,” Dai Ajia Shugi 6, no. 1 (January1938): 2–19. Both Ôkawa and Rash Behari Boseused the same “New Asia” as titles of theirjournals.[74]. In a roundtable discussion on nationalistmovements in Asia, four Indians (includingBehari Bose), two Annamese, two Indonesians,and one Manchurian nationalist offeredcontributions. Naitô Chishû, MitsukawaKametarô, and Nakatani Takeyô, all three closeto Ôkawa Shûmei, were among the tenparticipants representing the Japanese side ofthe organization. See “Ajia Minzoku Undo:Zadankai,” Dai Ajia Shugi 3, no. 3 (March1935): 51–62.[75]. It was only during the Pacific War that thesame circle of Japanese Asianists began topublish an English-language magazine inShanghai, Asiatic Asia, in order to reach alarger non-Japanese readership with moreparticipation from non-Japanese Asianintellectuals. Publication began in January 1941and continued for at least five monthly issues.[76]. Gotô Ken’ichi , “The Indonesian

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Perspective,” in Akira Iriye, ed., Pearl Harborand the Coming of the Pacific War (Boston:Bedford and St. Martin’s, 1999), 207–219.[77]. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism andWorld Order (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity 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 noKokusai Bunka Kôryû: Kokusai BunkaShinkôkai no Sôsetsu to Tenkai, 1934–1945(Tokyo: Yûshindô Kôbunsha, 1999). Forexample, it was through the support of KokusaiBunka Shinkôkai that two Muslim intellectuals,Amir Lahiri and Mian Abdul Aziz, were able tovisit Japan to prepare books advocating Asiansolidarity: Mian Abdul Aziz (former president ofthe All-India Moslem League), The Crescent inthe Land of the Rising Sun (London: Blades,1941); and Amar Lahiri, Japanese Modernism(Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1939); idem, Mikado’sMission (Tokyo: Japan Times, 1940).[79]. For example, the journal Dai Ajia Shugiprinted articles on the Italian-Ethiopian conflictwith a pro-Ethiopian character, including thosesent by Japanese correspondents from AddisAbaba, in each of the twelve months of 1935.There was also regular news on Ethiopia in thesection devoted to West Asia. For example, seethe five articles on Ethiopia in Dai Ajia Shugi 3,no. 8 (August 1935): 32–53.[80]. J. Calvitt Clarke III, “Japan and ItalySquabble Over Ethiopia: The Sugimura Affair ofJuly 1935,” in Selected Annual Proceedings ofthe Florida Conference of Historians 6(December 1999): 9–20.[81]. Takemoto Yuko, “W. E. B. Dubois toNihon,” Shien 54, no. 2 (March 1994): 79–96.A l s o s e e M a r c G a l l i c c h i o , B l a c kInternationalism in Asia, 1895–1945: TheAfrican American Encounter with Japan andChina (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2000), 74–75.[82]. Naoki Sakai, “Tôyô no Jiritsu to daitô-Akyôeiken,” Jokyo, no. 48 (December 1994): 13.

[83]. For a good example of a Japanese whocombined the liberation vision of pan-Asianidentity, sometimes with highly critical viewson the policies of the Japanese state, seeMariko Asano Tamanoi, “Pan-Asianism in theDiary of Morisaku Minato (1924–1945) and theSuicide of Mishima Yukio (1925–1970),” inMariko 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, “NitobeInazô: From World Order to Regional Order,” inJ. Thomas Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity:Japanese Intellectuals During the InterwarYears (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1990), 211.[85]. Ibid., 212–213. Burkman discusses anarticle by Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Asia Rengôka Kyokutô Renmei ka?” Kokka Gakkai Zasshi47, no. 7 (July 1933): 90–100.[86]. Rôyama Masamichi, Tô-A to Sekai (Tokyo:Kaizôsha, 1941), 141–142, quoted in MiwaKimitada, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for aRegional Order in Asia, 1938–1940,” in J.White, M. Umegaki, and T. Havens, eds., TheAmbivalence of Nationalism: Modern JapanBetween East and West (New York: UniversityPress of America, 1990), 149.[87]. Rôyama Masamichi, Foreign Policy ofJapan, 1914–1939 (Tokyo: Institute of PacificRelations–Japanese Council, 1941).[88]. For an argument that shows the proto-Asianist views of Japanese liberals during the1920s, see Han Jung-Sun, “Rationalizing theOrient: The ‘East Asia Cooperative Community’in Prewar Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica 60,no. 4 (Winter 2005), 481–514.[89]. Ôkawa Shûmei, “Gandhi wo Tô ShiteIndojin ni Atau” and “Nehru o Tô Shite Indojinni Atau” (1942), in Shin Ajia Shôron (Tokyo:Nihon Hyôronsha, 1944), reprinted in ÔkawaShûmei Zenshû, 2:925–938.[90]. For some examples of the flood ofpublications on Okakura, see Kiyomi Rokurô,Okakura Tenshin den, (Tokyo: Keizôsha, 1938);Okakura Kakuzô, Okakura Tenshin Zenshû(Tokyo: Rikugeisha, 1939); and Kiyomi Rokurô,

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Senkakusha Okakura Tenshin (Tokyo:Atoriesha, 1942). See also Okakura Kakuzô,Japan’s Innate Virility: Selections from Okakuraand Nitobe (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1943).[91]. For examples of the publication andrepublication of the books of Das, Paul Richard,and Ôkawa after the post-1937 Japan-Chinawar, see Taraknath Das, Indo Dokuritsu Ron(Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1944); and [Paul]Risharu, Tsugu Nihon Koku, trans. ÔkawaShûmei (Tokyo: Seinen Shobô, 1941).[92]. For a recent assessment of Miki Kiyoshi’sAsianist ideas, see Harootunian, Overcome byModernity, 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 writingsof post-tenko Sano Manabu shows theimportance of her interest in Easternspirituality and intellectual tradition, as well asher belief in Japanese exceptionalism, inleading her to search for a Japanese context foradopting certain core ideals of Marxism. SeeGermaine A. Hoston, “Ikkoku Shakai-Shugi:Sano Manabu and the Limits of Marxism asCultural Criticism,” in Rimer, Culture andIdentity, 168–190.[95]. George Beckmann, “The Radical Left andthe Failure of Communism,” in Morley,Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, 170.[96]. From Miwa, “Japanese Policies andConcepts for a Regional Order in Asia,” 142.[97]. Minamoto Ryôen, “Symposium on‘Overcoming Modernity,’ ” in Heisig andMoraldo, Rude Awakenings, 197–229.[98]. All the books Ôkawa published during thewartime years attempted to define the ideologyof the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphereand Japan’s war aims. See Ôkawa Shûmei, DaiTôa Chitsujyo Kensetsu (Tokyo: Dai Ichi Shobô,1943); idem, Shin Ajia Shôron; and idem, ShinTôyô Seishin (Tokyo: Shinkyô ShuppanKabushiki Kaisha, 1945).[99]. For a description of the ideas of Asiansolidarity as they functioned in Japanesecollaboration with Indian and Burmesenationalists, see Louis M. Allen, “Fujiwara and

Suzuki: Patterns of Asian Liberation,” inWil l iam H. Newell , ed. , Japan in Asia(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981),83–103.[100]. A similar idealist Asianism can be seen inthe Japanese cooperation with the nationalistleadership of Burma. As Louis Allen has shown,a conflict emerged among Japanese officersinvolved in the Burmese government whenOfficer Suzuki Keiji from Minami Kikan tookthe side of Burmese nationalism and asked forimmediate independence, while General Ishiiobjected to this on the grounds of militaryinterest. See Allen, “Fujiwara and Suzuki.”[101]. Objection to the leadership of RashBehari Bose is another indication of theineffectiveness of Japanese pan-Asianists’political networks. Although Japan’s Asianistcircles had always presented Behari Bose asthe representative voice of Indian nationalism,it became apparent that he did not have areputation sufficient to play a role in theproject of the Indian National Army. See TilakRaj Sareen, Japan and the Indian NationalArmy (New Delhi: Mounto, 1996), 35–82. Seealso Fujiwara Iwaichi, Japanese ArmyIntelligence Operations in South East AsiaDuring World War II (Singapore: Select, 1983).[102]. Sareen, Japan and the Indian NationalArmy, 228–236.[103]. Quoted in Joyce Lebra, “Bose’s Influenceon the Formulation of Japanese Policy towardIndia and the INA,” in International NetajiSeminar (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 onthe Formulation of Japanese Policy,” 368.[106]. Akira Iriye, “Wartime Japanese Planningfor Postwar Asia,” in Ian Nish, ed., Anglo-Japanese Alienation, 1919–1952 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1982): 77–91.[107]. The best description of Japanese waraims remains Akira Iriye, Power and Culture:The Japanese American War, 1941–1945(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).

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[108]. The Greater East Asia conference did notallow for any representation from not-yet-independent regions under Japaneseoccupation, such as Indonesia and Vietnam.Similar contradictions existed in the AtlanticCharter Alliance, which likewise had not beenprepared to envision a fully decolonized Asia.In fact, immediately after the end of the war,the French, British, and Dutch governmentsrushed to reclaim their colonial possessions inAsia.[109]. One report made the fol lowingsuggestion as a means to win support for theAllied cause: “Play up American and UnitedNations war aims; play down our associationwith Great Britain in the East. . . . Do not referto British Malaya since many inhabitants ofMalaya will not wish to see Malaya revert to itsold status under British control” (Office ofStrategic Services, Research and AnalysisBranch, “Japanese Attempts at Indoctrinationof Youth in Occupied Areas,” March 23, 1943,microfilm, 10).[110]. Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind: TheUnited States, Britain and the War AgainstJapan, 1941–1945 (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1978), 157–159.[111]. Ibid., 242–243.[112]. Ôkawa Shûmei, entry for August 15,

1945, Ôkawa Shûmei Nikki (Tokyo: IwasakiGakujitsu Shuppansha, 1986), 391.[113]. Sareen, Japan and the Indian NationalArmy, 234–236.[114]. Richard Minear, Victor’s Justice: TheTokyo War Crimes Tribunal (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1971); John Dower,Embracing Defeat (New York: Norton, 1999),443–484.[115]. Timothy Brook, “The Tokyo Judgmentand the Rape of Nanking,” Journal of AsianStudies 60, no. 3 (August 2001): 693.[116]. Radhabinod Pal became the hero of therevisionist right in Japan in the postwar period.He himself revealed his long-lasting sympathiesto Japan during his celebrated visit to Japan in1966 upon the invitation of Japanese right-wingrevisionist groups. Justice Pal declared how hehad admired Japan since his youth becauseJapan had “consistently stood up against theWest” with “the spirit of independence that cansay ‘no.’ ” Then, he urged the Japanese peopleo n c e a g a i n t o r e s i s t t h e “ f l o o d o fWesternization” with inspiration from Easterncivilization. For Pal’s speeches during his 1966visit to Japan, see Radhabinod Pal, Ai RabuJapan: Paru Hakase Genkôroku, ed. ParuHakase Kangei Jimukyoju (Tokyo: Tôkyô SaibanKankôkai, 1966)