1st Edition

Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders

Edited By Sven Saaler, J. Victor Koschmann Copyright 2007
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    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 Saaler  Part I Creating a Regional Identity: Ideal and Reality  2. Pan-Asianism in Modern Japan: Nationalism, Regionalism and Universalism  Miwa Kimitada 3. The Asianism of the Kôa-kai and the Ajia Kyôkai: Reconsidering the Ambiguity of Asianism Kuroki Morifumi  4. Universal Values and Pan-Asianism: the Vision of Omotokyô Li Narangoa  5. Pan-Asianism and National Reorganization: Japanese Perceptions of China and the United States, 1914-1919 Katô Yôko  Part II Regionalism, Nationalism and Ethnocentrism  6. Between Pan-Asianism and Nationalism: Mitsukawa Kametarô and his Campaign to Reform Japan and Liberate Asia Christopher W. A. Szpilman  7. Forgotten Leaders of the Interwar Debate on Regional Integration: Introducing Sugimori Kôjirô  Dick Stegewerns  8. Were Women Pan-Asianists the Worst?: Internationalism and Pan-Asianism in the Careers of Inoue Hideko and Inoue Masaji  Michael A. Schneider  Part III Creating a Regional Hegemony: Japans's Quest for a "New Order"  9. Visions of a Virtuous Manifest Destiny: Yasuoka Masahiro and Japan's Kingly Way Roger H. Brown  10. The Temporality of Empire: The Imperial Cosmopolitanism of Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime John Namjun Kim  11. The Concept of Ethnic Nationality and its Role in Pan-Asianism in Imperial Japan Kevin M. Doak  Part VI  Pan-Asianism Adjusted: Wartime to Postwar  12. Constructing Destiny: Rôyama Masamichi and Asian Regionalism in Wartime Japan J. Victor Koschmann  13. The Postwar Intellectuals’ View of "Asia" Oguma Eiji  14. Overcoming Colonialism in Bandung, 1955 Kristine Dennehy  15. Pan-Asianism in International Relations: Prewar, Postwar, and Present Hatsuse Ryûhei 

    Biography

    Sven Saaler is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. He was formerly head of the Humanities Section of the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo.

    J. Victor Koschmann is Professor of History at Cornell University where he has specialized in modern Japan’s intellectual and cultural history with reference to political thought.

    'This volume is indispensable for understanding the intellectual history of Pan Asianism and to help understand current debates over Japan's wartime past. Recognizing the vast gap between rhetoric and reality, here the contributors help unravel the idealism that animated élite discourse and how this was used to indoctrinate and mobilize the Japanese people in a war that mostly victimized those who were supposed to benefit. One can only hope for a companion volume of similar quality focusing on regional discourse about Japanese Pan Asianism.'

    'The fifteen essays in this volume take the debate beyond how the ideology was instrumentalized and draw our attention to the intellectual history of Pan Asianism and how it morphed over the past century. These are detailed and complex scholarly essays that help readers understand that Pan Asianism was neither monolithic nor set in concrete.' - The JapanTimes Online

     

    'Collectively, these essays provide us with the most diversified perspectives on Japanese Pan-Asianism ever brought together in one volume. In them, we can sec how the idea engaged the interest, sympathies and even the passions of a range of Japanese thinkers, publicists, politicians and reformers due, undoubtedly, to the elastic nature of the concept, which offered something to a range of Japanese interests.' - Pacific Affairs

    'This collection of essays is brimming full of ideas that cannot fail to provoke and questions that will become future research topics. Although some of the essays are too densely written for most undergraduates, this collection should be required reading for graduate students and scholars of Japan who are interested in the complex and often contradictory relationship between the holy trinity of modern Japanese historyempire, nation, and state.' - BILL MIHALOPOULOS, Northern Michigan University, The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 67, No. 3 (August) 2008