Transcript Lecture Slides

Idealising Empire
Japan’s Imperial Mission: The
Idea and Reality of Coprosperity
Empty Slogans?
hakkô ichiû [eight corners of the world
under one roof]
dôbun dôshu [same script, same
race]
kyôei [co-prosperity]
ôdô [Kingly way]
The Meiji Empire
1879 Ryukyus became Okinawa prefecture
1894-95 War with Qing China: Treaty of Shimonoseki.
Taiwan, Liaodong Peninsula and Pescadores.
Triple Intervention by Russia, France and Germany.
1902 Signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
1904-05 Russo-Japanese War: Treaty of Portsmouth. Lease
of the Liaodong Peninsula returned to Japan (renamed the
Kwantung Leased Territories. Acquisition of the southern half
of Sakhalin (renamed Karafuto). Russia recognised Japan’s
rights over Korea and her ‘special interests’ in Manchuria.
Korea became a protectorate
1910 Annexation of Korea
Final Extent of Empire
1918 Acquisition of Germany’s Asian colonial
territories after the Great War: Tsingtao on the
Shantung Peninsula and the German-held islands
in Micronesia, the Marshalls, Carolinas and the
Marianas, called in Japanese the Nan’yô Guntô
1931 The Manchurian Incident leads to the
creation in 1932 of an ‘independent’ state of
Manchukuo
1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident
1938 PM Konoe Fumimaro declares a New Order
in East Asia
1940 The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere
is planned
Yukizumari-ron: The Theory of
Deadlock
1927 (Takahashi Kamekichi) addressed
three factors:
1) Japan’s shortage of raw materials
2) rapidly expanding population
3) previous division of the world into
economic blocs by the great powers
Yanaihara Tadao (1893-1961):
Critic of Empire
Leader of Christian
sect Mukyokai (NoChurch Society)
Occupied of Chair of
Colonial Policy 1923
Forced to resign in
1937 for publicly
condemning the war
President Tokyo
University 1951
Miki Kiyoshi and the Showa
Research Association
Miki was chair of
the Cultural
committee
Tōa renmei East
Asian Federation
Tōa Kyōdōtai [East
Asian Community
or Gemeinschaft]
Konoe and the Declaration of a
New Order in Asia 1938
3 November 1938
proclaimed the New
Order in East Asia.
Pledged to co-operate
with China without
subjugating it.
To carry out the
mission of a united
Asia leading a
regenerated China.
To ensure that the
Chinese people will
share in the great
peaceful undertaking
of the new East Asian
Order.
The Reality: The Nanking Massacre and
the Bombing of Shanghai 1937-8
Japanese Newspaper Column
Two Japanese officers, Toshiaki Mukai and
Tsuyoshi Noda competing to see who could kill
(with a sword) one hundred soldiers first. The bold
headline reads, "'Incredible Record in the contest
to cut down over 100 people. Mukai 106 – 105
Noda. Both 2nd Lieutenants Go Into Extra
Innings"
The Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere 1940
On 1st August 1940 foreign minister
Matsuoka Yôsuke proclaimed the
Greater East Asia Co-prosperity
Sphere
Japan’s empire was to extend to
Borneo, the Netherlands Indies,
Philippines, French Indochina, Timor,
Thailand and Malaya in the
Southward Advance or nanshin giving
Japan formal and informal dominion
over 340-350 million people.
Definition of GEACPS
The general name for areas of Asia which
are to live and prosper together, and
complete the construction of a new moral
order with Japan at its centre. . . . It covers
a broad area liberated from the former
slave-like exploitation of British, American,
French and Dutch control. It has as its
ideal the construction of a new moral order
based on the founding spirit of Japan, in
which each nation will take its proper place.
(Dictionary of the Greater East Asia War
[Dai-tōa sensō Jiten)
Basic Plan for Establishment of Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere (Total War Research Institute 1942)
‘Occidental individualism and materialism’
would be rejected.
‘a moral world view, the basic principle of
whose morality shall be the Imperial Way’
to be established.
The object was not ‘exploitation but coprosperity and mutual help, not competitive
conflict but mutual assistance and mild
peace’.
There was not to be a ‘formal view of
equality’ but ‘a view of order based on
righteous classification, not an idea of
rights but an idea of service’.
On Culture
The stated aim was to develop and
manifest the ‘essence of the traditional
culture of the Orient’
‘negative and conservative characteristics
of the continents’ (particularly those of
India and China were to be cast off)
‘the good points of Western culture’ to be
preserved.
In this way ‘an Oriental culture and morality,
on a grand scale and subtly refined, shall
be created.’
Nishida Kitarō
You call it a “Co-Prosperity Sphere,” but how
can it be co-prosperity if it doesn’t meet the
needs of all the peoples involved? If it means
giving to our side the right to make all the
decisions and tell the other side to “Do this and
don’t do that,” it is a simple coercion sphere,
not a co-prosperity sphere.
Conclusions
Legacies and Misconceptions