The book explores the critical importance of Pan-Asianism in Japanese imperialism. Pan-Asianism was a cultural as well as political ideology that promoted Asian unity and recognition. The focus is on Pan-Asianism as a propeller behind Japan's expansionist policies from the Manchurian Incident until the end of the Pacific War.

This book is a study of how the theories and actual practices of a Pan-Asian empire were produced during Japan’s war, 1931–1945. As Japan invaded China and conducted a full-scale war against the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s, several versions of a Pan-Asian empire were presented by Japanese intellectuals, in order to maximize wartime collaboration and mobilization in China and the colonies. A broad group of social scientists – including Rōyama Masamichi, Kada Tetsuji, Ezawa Jōji, Takata Yasuma, and Shinmei Masamichi – presented highly politicized visions of a new Asia characterized by a newly shared Asian identity. Critically examining how Japanese social scientists contrived the logic of a Japan-led East Asian community, Part I of this book demonstrates the violent nature of imperial knowledge production which buttresses colonial developmentalism. In Part II, the book also explores questions around the (re)making of colonial Korea as part of Japan’s regional empire, generating theoretical and realistic tensions between resistance and collaboration. Japan’s Pan-Asian Empire provides original theoretical perspectives on the construction of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empire. It will appeal to students and scholars of modern Japanese history, colonial and postcolonial studies, as well as Korean studies.

Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The universal West: Europe beyond its Christian and white race identity (1840-1882) -- The great rupture: Ottoman imagination of a European model -- Ottoman westernism and the European international society -- A non-Christian Europe? -- The West in early Japanese reformist thought -- The modern genesis of pan-Islamic and pan-Asian ideas -- Conclusion -- The two faces of the West: imperialism versus enlightenment (1882-1905) -- The Muslim world as an inferior Semitic race: Ernest Renan and his Muslim critics -- Yellow versus white peril? pan-Asian critiques and conceptions of world order -- Crescent versus cross? pan-Islamic reflections on the "clash of civilizations" thesis -- Conclusion -- The global moment of the Russo-Japanese war: the awakening of the East/equality with the West (1905-1912) -- An alternative to the West? Asian observations on the Japanese model -- Defining an anti-Western internationalism: pan-Islamic and pan-Asian visions of solidarity -- Japanese pan-Asianism after the Russo-Japanese war -- Conclusion -- The impact of WWI on pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist visions of world order -- Pan-Islamism and the Ottoman state -- The realist pan-Islamism of Celal Nuri and İsmail Naci Pelister -- Pan-Islamic mobilization during WWI -- The transformation of pan-Asianism during WWI: Ôkawa Shûmei, Indian nationalists, and Asiaphile European romantics -- Asia as a site of national liberation -- Asia as the hope of humanity -- Conclusion -- The triumph of nationalism? the ebbing of pan-Islamic and pan-Asian visions of world order during the 1920s -- The Wilsonian moment and pan-Islamism -- The Wilsonian moment and pan-Asianism -- Pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist perceptions of socialist internationalism -- "Clash of civilizations" in the age of nationalism -- The weakness of pan-Islamic and pan-Asianist political projects during the 1920s -- Conclusion -- The revival of a pan-Asianist vision of world order in Japan (1931-1945) -- Explaining Japan's official "return to Asia"--Withdrawal from the League of Nations as a turning point -- Asianist journals and organizations -- Asianist ideology of the 1930s -- Wartime Asian internationalism and its postwar legacy -- Conclusion -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism makes a fresh contribution to the recent effort to re-examine the Japanese wartime ideology of Pan-Asianism by focusing on the experiences of students at Kenkoku University or “Nation-Building University,” abbreviated as Kendai (1938-1945). Located in the northeastern provinces of China commonly designated Manchuria, the university proclaimed to realize the goal of minzoku kyowa (“ethnic harmony”). It recruited students of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Mongolian and Russian backgrounds and aimed to foster a generation of leaders for the state of Manchukuo. Distinguishing itself from other colonial schools within the Japanese Empire, Kendai promised ethnic equality to its diverse student body, while at the same time imposing Japanese customs and beliefs on all students. In this book, Yuka Hiruma Kishida examines not only the theory and rhetoric of Pan-Asianism as an ideal in the service of the Japanese Empire, but more importantly its implementation in the curriculum and the daily lives of students and faculty whose socioeconomic backgrounds were broadly representative of their respective societies. She draws on archival material which reveals dynamic exchanges of ideas about the meaning of Asian unity among the campus community, and documents convergences as well as clashes of competing articulations of Pan-Asianism. Kishida argues that an idealistic and egalitarian conception of Pan-Asianism exercised considerable appeal late into the Second World War, even as mobilization for total war intensified contradictions between ideal and practice. More than an institutional history, this book makes an important intervention into the historiography on pan-Asianism and Japanese imperialism.

After Japan pragmatized bushido and formed a modernized nation-state in the late nineteenth century, it extended that same methodology to its East Asian neighbors, China and Vietnam. Despite state-sponsored bushido's success at home and cultural similarities with Asian peoples abroad, Japanese nation-state building failed in China and Vietnam. Was Pan-Asianism fully implemented as designed by Japanese architects? What were the repercussions of Pan-Asianism on nationalist movements in East Asia? Previous scholarship addressed these questions unfairly and critiqued Chinese and Vietnamese nationalists, who accepted Japanese aid, as "collaborators" or "traitors." Additionally, historiography abruptly demarked Pan-Asianism's demise at Japan's surrender in 1945. Japanese nationalism and state-building succeeded in Japan but when applied transnationally from 1931-1945 and despite social, linguistic, and cultural similarities, Pan-Asianism failed in China and Vietnam due to differing historical experiences. This is an intellectual history that comparatively analyzes rhetorical, cultural, political, educational, economic, and military exchange between Japan, China, and Vietnam. Furthermore, it is a new interpretation of Pan-Asian exchange during World War Two that utilizes a transnational lens. It relies on primary sources from Japan, China, Vietnam, Great Britain, France, the United States, and numerous other countries involved from 1931-1945. The author does not simply employ sources from various countries but explains scholarly interchange and the formation of national narratives within East Asia. Moreover, the author references secondary sources from previous scholarship to establish a background and contribute a more rounded historical narrative. The author illustrates that despite cultural, linguistic, and social similarities between Japan, China, and Vietnam, Pan-Asianism was not effectively transplanted due to differing historical circumstances. The Japanese nation formed as a military culture and remained isolated from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. Japanese national-formation was juxtaposed to that of China and Vietnam, both of which were subjected to external incursions, consisted of various ethnic groups, and had different dialects. Despite Japan's failure in implementing Pan-Asianism directly, aspects of it survived World War Two into the Cold War in the form of post-colonial, nationalist movements in East Asia. This significantly contributes to historiography as a new, comparative study and intellectual history through a transnational lens.

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