Chapter Nineteen Race and International Law in Japan’s New Order in East Asia, 1938–1945

Abstract

This chapter seeks to clarify the relation between race, culture and ethnicity in these constructions from one particularly important point of view, namely that of the Japanese international lawyers who were commissioned to devise the legal framework for the New Order in East Asia. Although the Japanese international lawyers were capable of situating their arguments in favor of law and against the limitations of race within a well-established orthodoxy of Japanese foreign politics since Meiji times, the development of the war soon created a tension which, had the war continued for much longer, might have led to a racialization of law and, ultimately, to its self-annihilation. Japanese international lawyers actively supported the government's project of a New Order in East Asia, but also believed that they had to defend themselves and the object of their profession, international law against ultranationalist criticism and public indifference alike. Keywords:Japan's new order; Japanese international lawyers; racism