Co-Prosperity Sphere Research Articles

RASH BEHARI BOSE AND HIS JAPANESE SUPPORTERS

The life of the ‘Other Bose’ involves an intriguing story, which complicates many of the general dichotomies of colonial history. Rash Behari Bose (1886–1945) was born in north-eastern Bengal in 1886. From his youth, he engaged in anti-British activities, on account of which he was forced to flee India in 1915. The Bengali independence fighter then escaped to pre-war Japan, befriended a group of influential Japanese Pan-Asianists, married into one of Tokyo's most progressive families, and continued his life as an activist into wartime. The case of Rash Behari Bose and his Japanese supporters constitutes a remarkable chapter in the developmental history of international cooperation among Asian peoples that preceded Japan's wartime Pan-Asianist rhetoric of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. The present article argues that such evidence of cross-border cooperation in the modern history of Asia, as embraced by Rash Behari Bose and his supporters in Japan, sheds light on the analysis of an anti-Western transnationalism in its embryonic form. Thus, the aim of this article is two-fold. First, it attempts to introduce the little-known figure of Rash Behari Bose. Second, by considering the function of Pan-Asianism in Bose's story, I will attempt to demonstrate the complexity of Pan-Asianism not usually addressed in the conventional reading of its role simply as a propagandistic tool of Japan's imperial expansion.

New Zealand through a Japanese glass 1869–1944

This article surveys travel and other literature to trace the Japanese discovery of New Zealand. The literature is viewed as a kind of contact-zone literature, in which New Zealand is a place where, at least psychologically, Japanese expansionist ambitions encounter British expansionism. Themes taken up in the article include, in order of appearance, British colonial enterprise as an object lesson; views of new-world social structures; the anxiety of empire; increasingly critical views of ignorance about Japan; and the place of the white South Pacific in a Japan-led Co-Prosperity Sphere. The article concludes with a special focus on representations of the Maori and how these reflect developing Japanese views of Japan's place in the Pacific.

Не по своей воле… История и география принудительных миграций в СССР по Павел Полян by Alex Marshall (review)

426 Рецензии/Reviews Alex MARSHALL Павел Полян. Не по своей воле... История и география при- нудительных миграций в СССР. Москва: “ОГИ”, “Мемориал”, 2001. 326 с. ISBN: 5-94282-007-4. The historiography of forced migration within the former USSR continues to grow apace. Pavel Polian ’s latest work marks a significant advance in a field first ploughed by the likes of former Soviet dissident Aleksandr Nekrich1 and the infamous Cold Warrior Robert Conquest.2 In part this has been a product of new archival access, and in part a consequence of a more broad-based and holistic approach to the study of the subject, itself inspired to some degree by the end of the Soviet Union and the consequent need to place the USSR in its overall twentieth century context. Perhaps the most admirable aspect of this fine work is its refusal to see forced migration as a symbol of Soviet “exceptionalism,” as so many others have, but to place it instead within its global context. Forced migration has both a long historical tradition behind it (one need think only of the fate of the Scottish Highlanders in the eighteenth century or of the Muslims of Andalusia after 1492) and a particular place in the history of twentieth-century authoritarian modernization. Polian makes effective use of the work of Peter Holquist to point out both the strong imperial as well as pan-European roots of forced migration before 1917 (both Tsarist Russia and Imperial Germany before 1914 first tinkered with forced migration in their various colonies, and then employed it on a massive scale in eastern Europe during the First World War).3 The American scholar Eric Lohr in particular has recently significantly advanced general studies on this point, pointing to the considerable parallels and areas of continuity between the later Soviet government and the actions and thinking of both the imperial and provisional governments of Russia in 1914–1918.4 Polian himself also makes effective comparisons between the forced migrations carried out within the Soviet Union after 1917 and those conducted by contemporaneous authoritarian regimes in the 1920s, 1 A. Nekrich. The Punished Peoples. The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War. New York, 1979. 2 R. Conquest. Soviet Deportations of Nationalities. London, 1960. 3 P. Holquist. Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of Crisis, 19141921 . Cambridge, MÀ, 2002. 4 E. Lohr. Nationalizing the Russian Empire. The Campaigns Against Enemy Aliens During World War I. Cambridge, MA, 2003. 427 Ab Imperio, 2/2006 event nonetheless remains a major blank spot in most existing Western historiography of the Second World War, which appears uncomfortable and even vaguely embarrassed by European and American complicity in forced migration, such an uncivilized and barbaric practice in Western eyes. Polian is to be congratulated for not shrinking from analysis of it here. The great majority of this work, however, focuses solidly on the particular characteristics of forced migration within the Soviet Union between 1919 and the rehabilitation processes that began in the 1950s and which continue even today. Polian follows Terry Martin in identifying clearly distinct periods within this general policy, in which diverse motivations were at play at various times in different regions.5 The deportation of the Terek Cossack Host in 1920, for example, was an intrinsic part of the Soviet state-building process, designed to facilitate the creation of viable mountaineer administrative districts in the North Caucasus in general and to defuse the land question that had created ethnic conflict in the Terek oblast’ in particular ever since the 1860s. Tsarist ethnic policies in the region, which had entailed the 30s, and 40s – with Imperial Japan for example, which both pressed some four million Koreans, including children, into slave labour during the SecondWorldWar on the Korean peninsula itself, and engaged in the widespread forced migration of Koreans to Japan and other parts of the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Some 444,000 were ultimately compulsorily moved from Korea to other regions in 1939-1944 (P. 39). Perhaps one of the largest forced migrations to occur in this period happened, of course, under international mandate and with the full consent of the international community after the Second World War, in the grand geopolitical reordering of post-war eastern Europe. This began as...

Japan and the 'Flying Geese' Pattern of East Asian Integration

In this paper uses Kaname Akamatsu's 'Flying Geese' model to analyse Japan's role in East Asian integration. Japan made the first attempt to lead Asian countries before the Second World War. At that time, the Japanese Government embarked on a brutally expansionist policy the result of which was creation of the first gaggle of 'flying geese' under the name of the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.' During the 'flight' Japan was forcefully imposing its own ideals and values on the rest of the 'gaggle.' At the same time, the Japanese Government assumed hostile attitude toward Western countries. Japan's defeat in the Second World War signified the end of flight for the first 'flying geese' gaggle. After the war, Japan made another attempt at regional integration. This time it was done through establishing a production network in East Asia. Thus the second gaggle of 'flying geese' came into existence. During the flight of the 'second gaggle' of geese, Japan was fostering good ties with Western countries as well, especially the United States. However, some leaders of the 'second gaggle's' member-countries emboldened by their countries' economic success proclaimed that future belongs to Asia and put forward the 'Asian values' argument. The Asian economic crisis of 1997 interrupted the flight of the 'second gaggle' and effectively put an end to the 'Asian values' debate. It is interesting to note that some elements of the 'Asian values' argument resembled ultranationalist discourse that had been dominant in Japan before and during the Second World War. This paper compares historical patterns of East Asian regional integration and highlights future challenges for Japan's Asia policy.

Vers un nouvel ordre politique international : le traité de paix et d’amitié sino-japonais du 12 août 1978

On August 12th 1978 the People's Republic of China and Japan signed a treaty of peace and friendship that solemnly recognized the reconciliation between Peking and Tokyo. The original character and political, economic and geo-strategic meaning of this signal document can only be understood by placing it within Us true context. In fact, this context has two facets. The Sino-Japanese treaty can first be seen in an historical context that must be kept in mind since the « Far Eastern Question » has, from the end of the 19th century, been at the heart of Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese relations as well as constituting an ongoing concern for the major European powers. Prior to 1939, Japanese imperialism had succeeded in imposing its law in China and in East Asia establishing what Tokyo called a « co-prosperity sphere ». During the Second World War, the United States, Great Britain and the USSR - allies against the common enemy - had to take important decisions with regard to Japan to prepare the terms of occupation. The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 established the new American-Japanese relationship. Normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations began with the signing of the joint declaration of 1956. The August 12th 1978 Peace Treaty between Peking and Tokyo can be further seen as part of specific diplomatic context comprising the Sino-Soviet conflict, East-West détente and the Sino-American rapprochement that opened the way - immediately after President Nixon's trip to China in February 1972 - for the Sino-Japanese rapprochement. Legally, the Treaty contains only five short sections, the most original of which being the « anti-hegemony » clause provided for in section 2. Diplomatically, it is not exaggerated to recognize in this Sino-Japanese agreement an element of a New International Political Order presently taking form and that has to necessarily accompany the implantation of the « New International Economic Order » that the countries of the Third World have been demanding since 1974.

In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-Hsin Yeh. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii +392 pp. £50.00. ISBN 0-521-82221-1.

Henriot and Yeh have produced a rich and highly readable volume on Shanghai during the 1937–1945 Japanese occupation period. Many of the path-breaking essays are based on primary sources from newly accessible Shanghai archives.The volume is divided into three sections, broadly on economic, political and cultural history. In the first section, Christian Henriot and Parks Coble both demonstrate that the Shanghai capitalists left in the city were caught in a tight situation: they had little choice but to co-operate with the Japanese, who wanted to make Shanghai into another economic powerhouse in their Co-Prosperity Sphere but who were also exploitative and driven by military rather than commercial needs. On the other hand, the exiled Nationalists considered Chinese businessmen who co-operated with Japan to be collaborators, rendering them vulnerable to assassination during the war and condemnation after it. Frederic Wakeman explores the way in which smuggling became part of the economic and cultural landscape in supplying wartime Shanghai, and Sherman Cochran looks at a “fixer,” Xu Guanqun, who played for high stakes selling medicines across enemy lines, demonstrating that the neutral “island” of the foreign concessions in Shanghai from 1937 to 1941 was hardly an impermeable one. Allison Rottmann completes this section by rethinking the rural narrative of Communist Revolution, showing that Shanghai helped to supply and shape the politics of the central China base area.

Shame to Vengeance: The Grand Cliché of the Japanese Superstate

In a nation where watching the gross national product is a gross national pastime, trade representatives come close to being culture heroes. Departing from Tokyo's Haneda Airport for their three-to six-year assignments in the field, they are usually seen off by delegations of colleagues waving banners and shouting banzai! Their exploits are publicized like battlefield heroics, and a truly dedicated shosha-in [company man] can get national recognition. --Newsweek, 1970 Across Asia, Japan is doing with money what it did with guns 50 years ago. --U.S. National Public Radio, 1999 The attempt to demystify Japan's postwar metamorphosis has often invited a free fall into the grand cliche of the economic superstate: Japan lost the war but won the peace. Shame, defeat, and leftover wartime fervor were channeled into economic success without changing the national modus operandi, the creation of a Japan-led Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. This cliche alerted the world that Japanese economism was not politically innocent. The intention in this article is neither to deny such a general truth nor to travel down its well-worn path of explication: instead, I am concerned with the cliche's effect of denying the internal complexity of Japan's social response to defeat and reconstruction. The continuity of a merciless wartime imagery was projected via the gaze of-the people of the United States and others who were reluctant to let go of Japan--and, by implication, all Japanese--as a monolithic public enemy. The cohesion of a new mercantile nation via wartime's banzai incantation was not nearly as direct as imagined in the first of the two epigraphs to this article. Public discourse during the Bubble years of Japan's economy (I am concerned with roughly the period from the 1960s through the early 1990s) suggests that shame from war was converted to economic energy not by exploiting a still-warm soil of popular nationalism, where a new state myth simply took the emperor's place, but by smoothly rationalizing a mentality of recovery that concentrated on the individuation of households to build national strength through action, rather than scripted ideology. In the disjuncture between wartime nationalism and postwar consumerism. Japanese elites promoted economism as a national goal by linking it to the U.S.-Japan security alliance of the Cold War; by situating economics in a state polity of low politics; by depicting economic fervor as a temporary stage that would eventually be overcome by a new age of culture; and by using seemingly apolitical cultural arguments to solidify national cohesion. The above list, though not exhaustive, questions the grand cliche's assumption that the economic miracle was publicly propelled by an ideology of vengeance for war's defeat. If shame motivated reconstruction on a personal level, it fueled reconstruction at the state level by cultivating activity as depoliticized ideology, repressing and deferring public sentiments, and keeping people colonized by continuous work and obligations to help forget the past and rebuild the future. This article's reading of nationalism's discontinuity--in contrast to the continuity implied in the grand cliche--should not be taken as an attempt to minimize any of the well-known attempts of Japanese leaders, and many ordinary citizens, to impose new and old forms of ethnocentrism. On the contrary, I hope to establish a richer knowledge of bureaucratic appeasement precisely to understand why many indications of neonationalism should be taken seriously in a broader, sociopolitical context. Furthermore, I am mostly concerned with the indications of so-called economic nationalism as it was recognized in the United States and elsewhere. The statement They lost the war but won the peace belongs to an era that assumes nation and state--they--are one. Yet if we fast-forward from the era of Japan paranoia to the present, we find that many of the indications of corporatism inverted to the household/consumer level are what we now recognize as the excesses of economic globalization, rather than any single nation-state's sovereign, mercantilist ambitions. …

The Opium War and the cinema wars: a Hollywood in the greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere

(2003). The Opium War and the cinema wars: a Hollywood in the greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 63-76.

Beyond The Bridge on the River Kwai: Labor Mobilization in the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere

Japan's war in Asia and the Pacific would have ground to a halt long before 1945 without the labor of millions of foreign workers, most of them mobilized against their will. For example, production of coal (then Japan's primary energy source) depended in large part on coerced labor from Korea, a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. Throughout Japan's wartime empire, at least fifteen million Asians were put to work, often under brutally exploitative conditions, constructing roads, bridges, and air fields; digging minerals; and building boats, among many other projects. Untold thousands died because of harsh treatment, inadequate food and medical care, and poor planning. Many surviving workers, some of whom were left permanently disabled, are still waiting today for the wages they were promised. Such a large, destructive enterprise naturally had consequences that outlived the war. Coercive labor mobilization tore families and communities apart and sharpened class resentments, contributing to revolutionary upheavals after August 1945 in Korea and Indonesia, for example. In Japan itself, where mobilization took place on a relatively small scale and with comparatively little coercion, it left a complex, contradictory legacy, invigorating the labor movement in some ways and strengthening the hand of capital in others. Unlike the situation in Germany, where corporations have recently agreed to compensate wartime forced workers, both the state and corporations in Japan have refused to consider compensation for the foreign workers who kept Japan's war machine running from 1939 to 1945.

SUBJECT AND SUBSTRATUM : ON JAPANESE IMPERIAL NATIONALISM

This paper addresses the theoretical and philosophical questions concerning how an individual identified him/herself as a member of an ethnic, racial, or national community in the context of Japanese Imperialist discourse during the 1930's. The central focus is Tanabe Hajime. Together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe established the so-called Kyoto School of Philosophy in the 1920's. With his background in the philosophy of sciences and mathematics, and modern European metaphysics, Tanabe created a philosophical argument for the multi-ethnic nation-state, and proposed the universalistic concept of Japanese national identity which positively evaluates and integrates individuals of different ethnic backgrounds into one. He constructed the Logic of Species (Shu no Ronri) according to which a member of the Japanese Empire could identify with Japan precisely because she or he can participate in the Japanese State which represents the whole, inclusive of all the ethnic groups. Relying upon the Hegelian concept of negativity, he explained the two different levels of belonging: particularistic belonging to the specific identity (shu) such as ethnicity, and universalistic belonging to the generic identity (rui). And he further demonstrated that ethnic identity is far from fixed, and is brought into the subject's self-awareness only insofar as the subject negates it and is free from it. In other words, the subject becomes aware of her/his ethnic origin only when s/he negates it thereby participating in a higher order of social formation, the State, under which ethnic multiplicity is subsumed. Thus the species of ethnicity is constituted only insofar as it is negatively mediated by the genus, that is, the State. Tanabe saw the essential form of human freedom in this negative relation of the subject to his ethnicity, and understood a subject's belonging to a nation as a dialectic and negative process of mediation between the species and the genus. While postwar Japan was built upon the premises of ethnic nationalism, Japanese imperial nationalism of the pre-war period was afraid of ethnic nationalisms which could challenge the Empire's rhetoric of multiethnicity and pluralism. Tanabe's Logic of Species was a response to such needs of Japanese Imperialism and it represented a philosophical attempt to undermine ethnic nationalism. Not surprisingly, it served as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.

The Sōtō Sect and Japanese Military Imperialism in Korea

The Sōtō sect was actively engaged in Buddhist propagation in colonial Korea after having succeeded in establishing its first missionary temple in Pusan in 1905. By the time it withdrew from Korea in 1945, the Sōtō sect had secured an extensive propagation network connecting more than one hundred temples. Despite its successful Buddhist polemics, Sōtō's Buddhist teachings in Korea were basically political propaganda viable only within the framework of Japanese colonial imperialism. The Sōtō sect in colonial Korea was deeply involved in the cause of Japanese imperialism by carrying out three major tasks: Buddhist services for the Japanese military, promotion of the kōminka (transforming [the colonial peoples] into imperial subjects) policy, and the pacification of colonial subjects. Not surprisingly, none of these goals-which were promoted in the name of Buddhist compassion and non-selfhood in the tradition of Zen Buddhism-could survive the collapse of Imperial Japan's claim to universal benevolence that had been premised on the Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere.

The Education of <i>Kokumin Gakkô</i> (Sekolah Rakjat) in Java under the Japanese Occupation

Japan occupied Indonesia-the Netherlands East Indies from March 1942 through August 1945. In Java the Japanese Military Administration re-opened the elementary schools in April 1942 which were called Kokumin Gakko (Sekolah Rakjat, six years, there was another three-years system called Shoto Kokumin Gakko, in this paper call them together as Kokumin Gakko). The curriculums and educational system under the Dutch rule were replaced by the Japanese-style based on the ideology of “Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”This paper analyzes the education in Kokumin Gakko through 38 volumes of textbooks published by the Japanese authority. All the first edition of these textbooks were published by the end of 1943, except one book which was published in May 1944.Only one textbook which was faithful to the Japanese educational ideology was Yoi-Kodomo (Good Children) vol. 1 which was published in May 1944. The contents of other textbooks published by the end of 1943 under the Japanese rule did not differ very much from those used during the Dutch colonial rule. There was a clear gap between the formal educational policy and the contents of the school textbooks under the Japanese rule. The Japanese made up for this shortcoming by extra-curriculum activities which strongly reflected the Japanese war-time ideology. As far as the contents of textbooks are concerned, we can easily find out continuity from the Dutch rule to the Japanese occupation, and even to the independent Indonesia after World War II.

The Economic Motivations behind Japanese Aggression in the late 1930s: Perspectives of Freda Utley and Nawa Toichi

This article discusses how economic motivations behind the Japanese decision to invade North China in the late 1930s were understood by two contemporaries, Freda Utley and Nawa Toichi. During the interwar period, East Asian economies, including those of Japan and China, considerably strengthened mutual economic ties through trade, investment, migration, and the transfer of technological and managerial skills. Although Japan was technologically ahead of other countries, her economic superiority was by no means overwhelming. For example, the development of a modern Chinese cotton industry centred around Shanghai reduced Japanese exports of cotton textiles to China, which resulted in Japanese cotton mills both diversifying into higher-value goods and artificial fibres and investing in China. This also explains Japanese textiles being suddenly sent to South-east Asia and India in large quantities in the 1930s. The development of Manchuria played an important role in the expansion of Japanese heavy industry in terms of market, investment opportunities, and the securing of resources. It also attracted largescale migration from China. Indeed, against a background of world depression and collapse of trade in the 1930s, East Asia stood as a notable exception where the dynamics of regional integration continued to work well. The region's economy and trade was outperforming the rest of the world by a significant margin (see Table 1).1 There is thus no doubt that the Japanese idea of an East Asian co-prosperity sphere could have had good economic grounds if an equal political footing had been assumed. That this was not the case is well-known; Japan con-

HIKITA Yasuyuki(ed.), Nampo-Kyoeiken (The Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere:The Economic Control of Southeast Asia by Japan during the Pacific War), Tokyo, 1995

HIKITA Yasuyuki(ed.), Nampo-Kyoeiken (The Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere:The Economic Control of Southeast Asia by Japan during the Pacific War), Tokyo, 1995

初等教育地理教科書類にみる第三世界 (途上国地域) 記述の変化

The United Nations has declared 1996-2005 as the decade to root out problems of poverty all over the world. Recently in Japan, education for international understanding has became very popular. However most students are only interested in developed countries, such as those in Europe and North America. Although Japan is located in Asia, Japanese people look down on developing countries; the Third World, like Asia, Africa and Latin America.It's not good for us to add to the North-South Problem. So we need to promote and spread the idea of Development Education. Through this type of education we can learn equal aspects about people of the Third World, and they have an equal right to development.I believe that Japan's negative image of the Third World started at the begining of the Meiji era, in the late 19th century. Until the end of the Edo era, almost all Japanese had been respectful of other Asian nations, like China and Korea.FUKUZAWA Yukichi (1835-1901) one of Japan's most prominent educators and propagator of Western knowledge, wrote SEKAIKUNIZUKUSHI in 1869 (World Geography for children and women). In this book he insisted that westernization was the most important factor for Japanese development. Also the first contemptuous expressions against the Third world can be found. Since that time, percentage of Europe and North America has increased in World Geography texts, compared with Third World areas.The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 was the big turning point for Japanese geographical education. From the outset of this war, Japan started other invasions overseas and aquired new territories, like Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria and other areas in Asia. So in Japan's World Geography textbooks the contents regarding Asia and Oceania gradually increased until the end of World War II. Subsequently the percentage of information devoted to Europe and North America decreased.The Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere (Dai Toa Kyoeiken) was a slogan used by the Japanese government during World War II to express the idea of a politically and economically integrated Asia, free from western domination.This idea had great influence on geographical education throughout the period of World War II. At that time geography teachings and textbooks also supported ultra-nationalism. So geographers and geographical educators shoud reflect on this in earnest.Today internationalization regarding the Third World is very important, especially in geographical education. We need to study and truly understand the harsh realities of the Third World, in order to eradicate the problem of poverty.In spite of these situations, the contents of World Geography have decreased in recent Social Studies textbooks. It is regrettable that elementary students have no chance to study World Geography; especially about Third World countries.In effect, the students' right to study has been taken away. I therefore hope for the comeback of World Geography in elementary school textbooks, including a Development Education point of view.

Japan's Intentions for Its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as Indicated in Its Policy Plans for Thailand

The article examines the intent of the Japanese for their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It relies on documents that the Japanese government prepared in September 1942 which set forth prospective policy towards Thailand as a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The proposals in these documents specified the political and diplomatic relations Japan expected to have with Thailand, and they were very specific regarding Japan's control over Thailand's economy as a part of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. The documents indicate that the Japanese were aiming at establishing a well-organized, well-regulated sphere as a unity under the direction of Japan. The organic nature that the Japanese envisioned for the Co-Prosperity Sphere was patterned on the same organic unity that they had applied to building and controlling their empire between 1895 and 1940.

Japanese minority policy; The Eurasians on Java and the dilemma of ethnic loyalty

Shortly after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese professor Komaki Tsunekichi of the Kyoto Imperial University made far-reaching proposals for revising the Eurocentric cartography of the West by placing Japan and Asia at the centre of the map. Both Europe and Africa were designated part of the Asian continent, while America was renamed the Eastern Asia continent and Australia the Southern Asia continent. All the great oceans were seen as one and given the single name the Great Sea of Japan (Dower 1986:273). These proposals to refashion the cartography of the West reveal that in the new Great East Asian Order the Japanese saw themselves as the centre of the world and as the nucleus of all other races. They would be the leading race of the future and would dominate all other races and peoples in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.1 This aim was made quite clear in the Japanese plan for the leadership of nationalities in Greater East Asia drawn up in August 1942. In this plan the Japanese people were the pivot of all the Great East Asia Peoples' Cooperative Body.2 It stated that they had the duty to give leadership to other people. Besides them, they included the Korean, the Manchurian, the Mongolian, and the Han people as members of this body. In what was designated the Southern Area, the so-called Nanpo, containing the present-day states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, various national minorities were distinguished from the indigenous peoples. First to be mentioned were the Overseas Chinese followed by the Indians and the Europeans and Americans. The Overseas Chinese and Indians were seen as Asian peoples who were entitled to

Japanese Film Propaganda in Java 1942-1945

During World War II Japan occupied most part of Southeast Asia, advocating for “liberation of Asia” from western colonialism. Her hidden aim was, however, to exploit natural resources as well as human power of those areas, which were to be mobilized for her continuous and ambitious fighting. In order to achieve those purposes, Japan had to acquire cooperation of the population in the occupied areas. Therefore, propaganda activities were one of the most important tasks of Japanese military administration in Southeast Asia. Among various propaganda media movies were particularly promoted, since they were effective in the society where illiteracy rate was high and written media had limited effects. This paper will analyse Japanese film propaganda during World War II, taking the case in Java.As soon as Japanese seized power in Java, they confiscated all Dutch facilities and materials for film making and ordered a Japanese movie production company, Nippon Eigasha, to engage in production of news, culture, and feature films in Jakarta. Many distinguished staff were sent from Japan for this purpose. The theme of those films were closely connected with policies of military government. Among the films were those designed to impress people with Japanese military power, to inspire people's consciousness in defense of fatherland, and to encourage production and other labor activities. There were also many “educational” films to teach certain practical technique, scientific knowledge, Japanese songs, and Japanese value concepts. Writer had chance to see some of those films and her impression was that the artistic quality of those films was not bad and the contents were quite attractive.Under the Japanese rule kind of films shown in Java entirely changed owing to the prohibition of western movies, which by then had occupied about 85% of the total number of movies shown in Indonesia. Consequently those vacancy was filled by Japanese films, both locally made ones and those imported from Japan. Japanese encouraged movie watching among Indonesian people by reducing fare. But since the number of movie theaters were very small and they were mostly located only in cities, Japanese propaganda bureau organized moving theater teams and frequently carried out outdoor projection in villages. Those movies were free and open to everybody, and usually enjoyed a big audience. Big audience, however, does not necessarily mean positive acceptance of Japanese ideas. People, in many cases, simply came because there was scarcely any other amusement in those days. For most of the audience it was their first experience of movie watching, and impacts of the films were quite strong. Although Japanese propaganda was not successful in making Indonesian people accept Japanese idea for Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere and moulding them into Japanese way of thinking, at least it had certain effects in alleviating people's unsatisfaction and anger towards Japanese and in preventing them from going into large-scale anti-Japanese resistance even in the highest tension brought by harsh economic policies. In that sense Japanese propaganda policies can be considered effective.

Malaysia-Japan Relations in the 1980s

Among older people in Malaysia, the memory of Japan is one of brutality and atrocities. To the postwar generation, Japan is the source for many of their needs-cars, radios, televisions, videos, and all kinds of electronic and electrical gadgets. The two images, of course, are the product of different historical experiences. The first was created by the activities of the Japanese troops that occupied the country during World War II, and the latter by the success of Japanese economic penetration, if not domination. Today, it looks as if Japan has been able to establish its Co-prosperity Sphere without the force of arms. Japan is the single most dominant economic power in Malaysia. Its success is even more astounding given the fact that Malaysia had traditionally looked West and thus the Japanese had to work against the tide. This article will explore Malaysia's economic and political relations with Japan.

Research on the Japanese Cultural Policy on the Eve of Japan's Southward Invasion

The cultural policy discussed in this article is confined to the policy imposed on colonial subjects.Cultural policy has played an important role in the history of world colonialism. It is used to justify colonial rule by one race to another, to control and convert the colonial subjects, their culture, traditions and ideologies to that of the colonizing country. Through which thus to eliminate any possible challenge or resistance to the colonial control.On the eve of Japan's southward invasion, the Japanese colonial enthusiasts began to urge the importance of a cultural policy for Southeast Asia. They emphasized that only by controlling the ideologies of the colonial subjects, could the supreme objectives of Japan's southward invasion (i.e. the obtaining of the natural resources) be accomplished. The explanation being, the colonial subjects were the manpower to excavate and transport the natural resources. The control of the people would mean the guarantee of the supply of the natural resources.These cultural policy enthusiasts included many of the politicians, officials and scholars who had been involved in the Japanese colonial policy in Taiwan and Korea, Asianists like Okawa Shumei, various research organizations in Japanese imperialist policies, emigration and colonization organizations, and even extended to some social movement activists, theorists and anarchists.Their opinions and ideas for the cultural policy can be summarized as follows:1. Ways of enforcing Cultural PolicyMost of the enthusiasts suggested that a two-fold policy be adopted, that is: (a) a cultural propaganda policy to carry out strong propaganda and coercive measures immediately after the Japanese occupation. The purpose of this policy was said to arouse the feeling of respect for the Japanese colonial masters and encourage collaboration with colonialist policy.(b) a cultural education policy to indoctrinate gradually in the colonial subjects the Japanese culture, to change the language, social systems and traditions of the colonial subjects to those of the colonial masters.Apparently these two policies formed the two pillars of the cultural policy. Cultural propaganda policy was used as a herald, first to break through the indigenous culture and to establish the greatness and righteousness of the Japanese culture. It then coupled with the cultural education policy to accomplish their objective of the assimilation of the colonial subjects.2. The Theoretical Basis of Cultural PolicyThe enthusiasts claimed that emphasis should be placed on the establishment of the orthodoxy of the theory of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”. It proclaimed Japan as the great leader because of her “superior status” in terms of race and culture as well as her political and military powers, in relation to the other people in the “Co-prosperity Sphere”. At the same time, it also stressed the elimination of Anglo-American influence. Accordingly, the enthusiasts put it bluntly that as the Japanese were the leaders of the Asians, they should be the planners and instructors for the creation of a new culture in the “Co-prosperity Sphere”. They also urged that the greater substance of the new culture was the adoption of the “superior” Japanese culture.3. The Role of the Japanese Language in the Cultural PolicyThe Japanese language had always been utilized as an instrument of assimilation of colonial subjects. It was the consensus view of the enthusiasts to make the Japanese language the Iingua franca of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere”.Although the enthusiasts held different views as to the methods of diffusing the Japanese language, a “stick and carrot” tactic was agreed to be the solution.4. The Ideal Policy-makers and AdministratorsVarious enthusiasts, particularly the Asianists proposed that military officer