Kenkoku University and the Experience of Pan-Asianism: Education in the Japanese Empire

Abstract

Yuka Hiruma Kishida has written a thoroughly researched and informative book, which persuasively achieves her central objective of interrogating the theory and practice of Pan-Asianism. Specifically, the book examines the efforts to conceptualize and implement the ideal of ‘ethnic harmony’ in Japan’s puppet state of Manchukuo through a tightly focused analysis of Kenkoku University or Nation-Building University. The university served as Manchukuo’s elite seat of higher education from 1938 to 1945 and was the idealistic brainchild of Ishiwara Kanji, the maverick commander who spearheaded the invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931. Kenkoku University, or Kendai for short, was conceived ostensibly for the purpose of cultivating a new generation of morally upright Pan-Asianist leaders and staffing the bureaucracy of the Manchukuo state. Its stated founding principles were inspired by Ishiwara’s vision of the ‘Kingly Way’ of Confucian benevolent government and ‘ethnic harmony’, and the institution was seen as central to...