Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History

Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders

Sven Saaler, J. Victor Koschmann, Sven Saaler, J. Victor Koschmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134193790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Regionalism has played an increasingly important role in the changing international relations of East Asia in recent decades, with early signs of integration and growing regional cooperation. This in-depth volume analyzes various historical approaches to the construction of a regional order and a regional identity in East Asia. It explores the ideology of Pan-Asianism as a predecessor of contemporary Asian regionalism, which served as the basis for efforts at regional integration in East Asia, but also as a tool for legitimizing Japanese colonial rule. This mobilization of the Asian peoples occurred through a collective regional identity established from cohesive cultural factors such as language, religion, geography and race. In discussing Asian identity, the book succeeds in bringing historical perspective to bear on approaches to regional cooperation and integration, as well as analyzing various utilizations and manifestations of the pan-Asian ideology.

Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History provides an illuminating and extensive account of the historical backgrounds of current debates surrounding Asian identity and essential information and analyses for anyone with an interest in history as well as Asian and Japanese studies.

1 Pan-Asianism in modern Japanese history

Overcoming the nation, creating a region, forging an empire

Sven Saaler¹

Pan-Asianism between nationalism and regionalism

In studies of international relations in East Asia, the phenomenon of regionalism – i.e. regional cooperation and integration based on a shared perception of the region’s present, past, and future – is receiving growing attention. Regional approaches in East Asia are still heavily burdened by the legacies of the past, as shown by the recent discussions about the Yasukuni Shrine issue and the territorial disputes between Japan and her neighbors. Another important and controversial aspect of these legacies is Pan-Asianism, an ideology that served not only as a basis for early efforts at regional integration in East Asia, but also as a cloak for expansionism and as a tool for legitimizing Japanese hegemony and colonial rule. The history of Pan-Asianism is therefore highly ambiguous, as previous research² has demonstrated, and it is this ambiguity that still continues to pose a major obstacle for regional integration in contemporary East Asia.³ This volume aims at exploring the ideology and the movement of Pan-Asianism as a precursor of contemporary Asian regionalism, thereby bringing historical perspective to bear on recent approaches to regional cooperation and integration.

Regionalism, as Peter Katzenstein has argued, “offers a stepping-stone for international cooperation between unsatisfactory national approaches on the one hand and unworkable universal schemes on the other.”⁴ Europe is widely seen as a pioneer in regional integration and in the quest to overcome the nation-state; while in Asia, regional approaches, although en vogue in journalism and academia, have yet to produce comparable institutional manifestations in international relations.⁵ However, recent initiatives such as ASEAN+3⁶ and Free Trade Agreements between Asian countries illustrate the growing importance of regional cooperation and integration.⁷ In this context, references to historical precedent, i.e. nineteenth-century and prewar Pan-Asianism, are conspicuously avoided, made a taboo, or even taken as a “negative model.”⁸ This approach stands in contrast to the ubiquity of historical pan-Asian discourse in prewar Japan and Asia, as the contributions in this volume demonstrate.

The concept of a “pan”-movement originated within the framework of European history and international relations and thus, at first sight, may seem an inappropriate tool for analyzing Asian history. However, since the end of the nineteenth century, terms such as “Asian solidarity” (Ajia rentai), “Raising Asia” (kō-A), “Asianism” (Ajia-shigi or Ajia-shugi), “Pan-Asianism” (Han-Ajia-shugi or Zen-Ajia-shugi) and “Asian Monroe-ism” (Ajia Monrō-shugi) have had a wide circulation in discussions of foreign policy-making as well as in the discourses leading to the construction of modern identities in East Asia. Pan-Asianism developed in the discursive space between national identities and possibilities for transnational cooperation. It appeared in a wide variety of forms, as the variety of terms in use demonstrates, and it was also used in different ways. In all its historical manifestations, Pan-Asianism emphasized the need for Asian unity, mostly vis-a-vis the encroachment of Western colonialism and imperialism, but also emphasizing indigenous traditions, as will be shown below. Over time, the content of pan-Asian thought, including even the definition of “Asia,” evolved as much as the consequences of its utilization in foreign policy. While Pan-Asianism was originally directed against Western influence and colonialism, it also functioned as a tool for legitimizing Japan’s claim for hegemony in East Asia and Japanese colonial rule, i.e. as a way for Japan to deal with the emerging nationalisms of other Asian nations.⁹

Indeed, as a result of its prewar history, the idea of Pan-Asianism, and therefore Asian regionalism, has been much discredited. However, pan-Asian rhetoric continued to be employed in the postwar period, most notably in the quest to define so-called “Asian values” in response to the supposed universality of Western thought. Given the persistence of pan-Asian thought, and notwithstanding its problematic historical background, the phenomenon of Pan-Asianism obviously possesses a strong transnational character which appeals to intellectuals as well as politicians throughout Asia, notably at a time when economic bonds among Asian nations have reached high levels. When employed in efforts to establish a collective regional identity, pan-Asian thought has the capacity to cut across nation-state boundaries¹⁰ and appeal to certain cohesive factors, such as culture and religion, language and script, shared historical experience, geography, and race. By addressing these aspects of Pan-Asianism in Japan¹¹ from the late nineteenth century until the postwar period, this volume aims at making both an empirical and a theoretical contribution to the study of Pan-Asianism and the historical background of regionalism as a factor in international relations.

The roots of Pan-Asianism

Pan-Asian ideology was an omnipresent force in modern Japan’s foreign policy as well as in the process of the creation of a “Japanese” identity. In the Meiji era (1868–1912), it evolved into an ideology that was the antithesis of the government’s “realist” foreign policy, which aimed at joining the club of “great powers” (rekkyō). Early pan-Asianist writings, in a rather “romantic” and “idealistic” manner, emphasized Japanese commonalities with Asia and aimed at uniting Asian peoples and countries against Western encroachment. In the process of the construction of a modern regional identity, Asianism was part of the criticism of modernization, against which pan-Asian thinkers advocated a “return to Asia” (Ajia kaiki) – a return to Asian culture and values.¹² Identification with Asia was not always an affirmative experience, as the quest for “casting off Asia” in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s (1835–1901) famous “Datsu-A-ron” suggests; but Asia, as the contribution by Oguma Eiji in this volume points out, always functioned as a mirror for Japanese efforts at defining Japanese identity. Asia was “the spatial and temporal object through which Japanese defined themselves,” as Stefan Tanaka has put it.¹³ The resulting discussion about whether modern Japan was a part of the West, or rather of Asia, was central to modern Japanese discourse on national identity.¹⁴ During this discourse, “Japan vacillated between insisting on being not Asian at all, and declaring itself the epitome of Asianness.”¹⁵ With the passage of time, the growing power of the Japanese nation-state and growing Japanese self-confidence, emerging as a consequence of growing power, eventually militated against a return to Asia, but led instead to ever-strengthening Japanese claims of superiority over Asia and leadership in Asia culminating in the “new order” of the 1930s and the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” of the early 1940s.

The early roots of Pan-Asianism go back to the mid-nineteenth century, when China and Japan were forced to “open up” their long-isolated countries to foreign pressure and enter the system of international relations, dominated by the European imperialist powers. During that process, both China and Japan struggled to redefine their place in the new international order. Historically, a system of inter-state relations and tributary trade centered on China, also called the Sinocentric world system,¹⁶ had been the framework holding East Asia together as a region. Japan had long been part of this system through relations conducted with China over the Ryūkyū Kingdom, controlled by the Japanese Satsuma domain, and through relations with Korea over Tsushima, as well as through its own tributary relations with China prior to the Tokugawa era.¹⁷ At the same time, Japanese scholars had long challenged the “central” role of the “Middle Kingdom,” China, in this system. Scholars of the kokugaku school such as Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843) had claimed that Japan was the “Middle Kingdom,” since the unbroken imperial line of Japan (bansei ikkei) demonstrated that the island empire was the “Land of the Gods,” not China, where dynastic changes and “Tartar rule” were frequent.¹⁸ In this theory of “Japan as the Middle Kingdom” (Nihon chūkaron) lay the seeds of the Japanese claim of superiority over China and the Japanese claim to leadership in Asia (Nihon meishu-ron).¹⁹

Notwithstanding the collapse of the Sinocentric world order in the second half of the nineteenth century, Japan could not immediately replace the old order with a pan-Asian “new order” under Japanese leadership. After the “opening” of the country in 1854 and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan, above all, devoted her energy to securing national independence in view of the threat to it posed by Western imperialism. We can identify two approaches to dealing with the Western threat: aligning with other Asian nations to present a unified front, or joining the Western system of international relations and strengthening Japan economically and militarily in order to enable it to survive on its own. The Meiji government, faced with overwhelming Western military strength – which had been demonstrated on occasions such as the bombardment of the town of Kagoshima in 1863 or the fighting in the Shimonoseki Straits in 1864 – chose to adjust to the Western “Law of Nations” and secure national independence through modernization and the creation of a strong economy and a strong military (fukoku kyōhei). Only a few voices rejected this approach. Katsu Kaishū (1823–99), a Bakufu official who also worked for the Meiji government, advocated a Japanese–Chinese alliance (Nisshin teikei) as early as in the 1860s, an option taken up again by politician Sugita Teiichi (1851–1929), author of Kōa-saku (A Policy for Raising Asia), in the early Meiji era.²⁰ Authors like Fukuzawa Yukichi, too, before embracing a policy of “casting off Asia” argued for Japan becoming the leader (meishu) of a united Asia.²¹

During the Meiji era, a number of political associations were formed that fervently advocated the ideal of “solidarity with Asia” (Ajia rentai) or the notion of “raising Asia” (kō-A) or “developing Asia” (shin-A). These organized pan-Asianists criticized the government’s foreign policy of cooperating with the Western powers. In order to promote a pan-Asian foreign policy, independent of the government, they maintained close contacts with opposition groups in Korea and China. The most influential of these early pan-Asian organizations were the Kōa-kai (Society for Raising Asia, founded in 1880), its successor organization Ajia Kyōkai (Asia Association) and the Tōa Dōbunkai (East Asian Common Culture Association, founded in 1898).²² While these organizations were above all an instrument of the opposition to criticize the foreign policy of the government, some also received government funds to pursue their ideals. Societies such as the Gen’yōsha (Black Ocean Society, founded 1881) or the Kokuryūkai (Amur Society or Black Dragon Society, founded 1901) worked in close cooperation with the government.²³ The Kokuryūkai under the leadership of Uchida Ryōhei (1874–1937) developed into the pan-Asian organization par excellence, lobbying intensively for a regionalist approach in foreign policy.²⁴ But also the above-mentioned Tōa Dōbun-kai, headed by court noble (kuge) Prince Konoe Atsumaro (1863– 1904), cooperated closely with the government, for example in 1900 when it founded the Institute of East Asian Common Culture (Tōa Dōbun Shoin) in Nanjing with government funding;²⁵ throughout the following decades it produced China specialists who were frequently hired into government service. The first director of the Tōa Dōbun Shoin, Nezu Hajime (1860–1927), a former army officer, had founded another institute for the promotion of closer Sino-Japanese relations as early as 1890, the Research Institute for Sino-Japanese Trade (Nisshin Bōeki Kenkyūjo), together with Arao Sei (also Kiyoshi, 1859–96), another retired army officer.²⁶

However, the early pan-Asian movement could not yet gain influence on foreign policy-making, because of the government’s realist course and its efforts at establishing a positive image of Japan in the West. Since the end of the nineteenth century, in Europe fears of a “Yellow Peril,” the notion of a unified “yellow race” threatening European supremacy and European colonial control of parts of Asia, had gained prominence.²⁷ The Japanese government made continuous efforts to avoid adding fuel to Yellow Peril fears. Therefore, it refrained from using pan-Asian rhetoric and, at times, suppressed the pan-Asian movement and jailed authors of pan-Asian writings. For example, Tarui Tōkichi (1850–1922), who in the 1880s had written an “Argument for a Union of the Great East” (Daitō Gappō-ron) in which he rejected the Western Law of Nations and argued for a union of Japan and Korea, was arrested for participating in the Oriental Socialist Party and his manuscript was lost. However, after his release he rewrote the tract and it was published in 1893, becoming of major importance in pan-Asian circles.²⁸

While Tarui was subject to government suppression, other writers who are nowadays considered representative of pan-Asian thought, such as Okakura Tenshin (Kakuzō), did not even make the effort to address their fellow countrymen. Okakura (1862–1913), who in 1903 coined the famous phrase “Asia is one,”²⁹ did not write for a Japanese audience,³⁰ but rather for an Indian one. Moreover, he could not have possibly promoted Asian unity against the West in Japan, since the government had just signed an alliance with Great Britain – the colonial master of India and other parts of Asia. Okakura’s works, authored originally in English, were translated into Japanese only during the 1930s and his influence on earlier pan-Asian discourse must be considered marginal.³¹ The efforts of the government to prevent “Yellow Peril” fears were not limited to the national scene. Japan also developed an active “PR campaign” abroad. In 1904, for example, when Japan set out to wage war on Czarist Russia, the Japanese government dispatched diplomats to Europe and the United States to head off the resurgence of “Yellow Peril” propaganda and influence public opinion in Japan’s favor.³² Suematsu Kenchō (1855–1920), a diplomat who was dispatched to Europe, emphasized in a speech given to the Central Asian Society in London that nothing resembling a pan-Asianist ambition to unite Asia against the West existed in Japan:

Of late, there has been much talk about the Yellow Peril, or the possibility of a Pan-Asiatic combination; this appears to me . . . nothing more than a senseless and mischievous agitation. . . . Can anyone imagine that Japan would like to organize a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Pan-Asianism in modern Japanese history
• Part I: Creating a regional identity: Ideal and reality
• Part II: Regionalism, nationalism and ethnocentrism
• Part III: Creating a regional hegemony: Japan’s quest for a “new order”
• Part IV: Pan-Asianism adjusted: Wartime to postwar
• Notes