Abstract
In this chapter, I want to explain how Yanaihara strongly opposed the anti-Western thesis embedded in Japanese attempts to establish a new political and economic order in East Asia. In the 1930s when the Japanese army took steps to extend control of the northern part of China, a wide range of scholars in humanities and social sciences were eager to provide a philosophical rationale and strategic explanation for the reordering of East Asia. The idea of Asian unification was justified as the application of the Western imperial and international systems had failed to improve the political and economic situations of the Asian populations including the Japanese. However, Yanaihara refused to accept this pan-Asian justification. For him, it was apparent that any further military expansion would increase Japan’s further isolation both from Western powers and other Asian nations and eventually bring the whole thesis of Asian justice and harmony to an end. How did he come to a different conclusion from the majority of Japanese scholars? What was the alternative to championing an Asian collective identity to overcome the gap between the civilized and uncivilized, the strong and weak, and ultimately, the West and Asia? This chapter mainly focuses on his writings in the 1930s.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order, 1914–1938 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), Ch. 6.
Harumi Goto-Shibata, “Internationalism and Nationalism: Anti-Western Sentiments in Japanese Foreign Policy Debates, 1918–22,” in Nationalism in Japan, ed. Naoko Shimazu (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 66–84.
Yumiko Iida, “Fleeing the West, Making Asia Home: Transposition of Otherness in Japanese Pan-Asianism, 1905–1930,” Alternatives 22 (1997): 409–432.
Yoshihisa Taku Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria 1904–1932 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001).
Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
Kimitada Miwa, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia, 1938–1940,” in The Ambivalence of Nationalism: Modern Japan between East and West, ed. James Wilson White, Michio Umegaki, and Thomas R. H. Havens (Lanham, MD: University Press of A merica, 1990), 135.
James B. Crowley, “A New Asian Order: Some Notes on Prewar Japanese Nationalism,” in Japan in Crisis: Essays on Taishō Democracy, ed. Bernard S. Silberman, Harry D. Harootunian, and Gail Lee Bernstein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 272.
J. Victor Koschmann, “Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy,” in Network Power: Japan and Asia, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 87–95.
Tosaka Jun, Nihon Ideorogīron [On Japanese ideologies] (Iwanami Bunko, 1977), 128–129.
Eri Hotta, Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War 1931–1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Ch. 3.
Rōyama Masamichi, Tōa to Sekai [East Asia and the World] (Kaizōsha, 1941), 16.
Sakai Tetsuya, “Sengo Gaikoron no Keisei” [The Development of the Postwar Diplomatic Theory], in Sensō, Fukkō, Hatten: Shōwa Seiji-shi ni okeru Kenryoku to Kōsō [War, Renewal, and Development: Power and Knowledge in the Political History of Showa Era], ed. Kitaoka Shinichi and Mikuriya Takashi (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2000), 126–127.
Kobayashi Hiroharu, “Rōyama Masamichi’s Perception of International Order from the 1920s and 1930s and the Concept of the East Asian Community,” in Nationalism and Internationalism in Imperial Japan: Autonomy, Asian Brotherhood, or World Citizenship? ed. Dick Stegewerns (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 154.
John Namjun Kim, “The Temporality of Empire: The Imperial Cosmopolitanism of Miki Kiyoshi and Tanabe Hajime,” in Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, ed. Sven Saaler and J. Victor Koschmann (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 156.
Miles Fletcher. “Intellectuals and Fascism in Early Showa Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 39, no. 1 (1979): 50–51.
Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’s Confrontation with the West (Princeton, NJ, and London: Princeton University Press, 1975), 337.
Miles Fletcher, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1982), 106–107.
Yanaihara Tadao, Manshū Mondai [The Manchurian Question] (1934), in YTZ 2, 483.
Yanaihara later wrote that he had to use a euphemism, “developmentalism of Japanese imperialism” (nihon teikoku hatten shugi), instead of “Japanese imperialism” (nihon teikoku shugi) because of the restriction of freedom of speech. Yanaihara Tadao, “Ikusa no ato” [Aftermath of the war] (1946), in YTZ 26, 104.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Manshu Kenbun-dan” [My Experience in Manchuria] (1932), in YTZ 2, 659. The translation is Hotta’s. Hotta, Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War 1931–1945, 119.
Susan C. Townsend, Yanaihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire (Richmond, VA: Curzon, 2000), 167.
Gregory J. Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 1918–1945 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1988), 49–50.
Mitani Taichirō, “Kokusai Kankyō no Hendō to Nihon no Chishiki-jin” [Dynamics of International Environment and Japanese Intellectuals], in Nichibei Kankeishi: Kaisen ni Itaru Jūnen 1931–41: Masu Media to Chishiki-jin [Ten Year History of Japan-US Relations before the War, 1931–41: Mass Media and Intellectuals], ed. Hosoya Chihiro et al. (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2000), 143–148.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Sensō to Rieki” [War and Interests] (1933), in YTZ 18, 196.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Shina Mondai no Shozai” [Locating the China Question] (1937), in YTZ 4, 332.
Hosokawa Karoku, Ajia to Nihon: Hosokawa Karoku Chosakushū 3 [Asia and Japan: Series of Hosokawa Karoku’s Papers 3], (Rironsha, 1972).
Tai Kokuki, Taiwan to Taiwanjin: Aidentiti wo Motomete [Taiwan and Taiwanese: Seeking Identity] (Kenbun, 1979), 169.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Kami no Kuni” [The Kingdom of God] (1937), in YTZ 18, 649–650.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Tairiku Seisaku no Saikentō” [Reexamination of the Policy toward the Continent] (1937), in YTZ 5, 104.
Yanaihara Tadao, Shokumin oyobi Shokumin Seisaku [Population Migration and Colonial Policy] (1926), in YTZ 1, 478.
Yanaihara Tadao, Shokumin Seisaku no Shin-kichō [The New Foundations of Colonial Policy] (1927), in YTZ 1, 525.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Sekai Keizai Hatten Katei to shiteno Shokuminshi” [The History of Migrations as the Process of Developing a World Economy] (1929), in YTZ 4, 165–166.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Shokumin Seisaku yori Mitaru Inin Tōchi Seido” [The Mandate System from the View of Colonial Policy] (1937), in YTZ 4, 192–193.
Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 143–144.
For the governance of the South Pacific mandate, see Mark R. Peattie, Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992).
This book was translated into English. Yanaihara Tadao, Pacific Islands under Japanese Mandate (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1940).
Ichiro Tomiyama, “Tropical Zone: The Academic Analysis of Difference in the ‘Island Peoples,’” in Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia, ed. Tani E. Barlo (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 211.
Yanaihara Tadao Nan’yō Guntō no Kenkyū [Research in South Pacific Islands] (1935), in YTZ 3, 413.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Nanpō Rōdō Seisaku no Kichō” [The Foundations of the Labor Policy in the South] (1942), in YTZ 5, 231.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Mikai Dojin no Jinkō Suitai Keikō ni tsuite” [On the Tendency of Aboriginal Populations to Decrease] (1933), in YTZ 4, 266.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Nan’yō Inin Tōchiron” [On the mandatory Rule in the South Pacific Islands] (1933), in YTZ 5, 143.
Imaizumi Yumiko, “Senzenki Nihon no Kokusai Kankei Kenkyū ni Miru ‘Chiiki’” [Regional Concept in International Studies of the Prewar Japan], Kokusai Seiji Keizaigaku Kenkyū [Review of International Political Economy (Tsukuba University)] 7, (2001): 35–42.
Yanaihara Tadao, “Shokumin Seisaku ni okeru Bunka” [Culture in Relation to Colonial Policy] (1939), in YTZ 5, 323–325.
Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
Kanishka Jayasuriya, “Embedded Mercantilism and Open Regionalism: The Crisis of a Regional Political Project,” in Asian Regional Governance: Crisis and Change, ed. Kanishka Jayasuriya (New York: Routledge, 2004), 21–22.
J. Victor Koschmann, “Asianism’s Ambivalent Legacy,” in Network Power: Japan and Asia, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 107.
Andrew Hurrell, “Power, Principles and Prudence: Protecting Human Rights in a Deeply Divided World,” in Human Rightsin Global Politics, ed. Tim Dunne and Nicholas J. Wheeler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 277–302.
Lee Kuan Yew, “Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994): 111–112.
Kishore Mahbubani, Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide between East and West, 3rd ed. (Singapore: Times Edition: 2004).
Kishore Mahbubani, “The Case against the West: America and Europe in the Asian Century,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 3 (2008): 111–124.
Jagdish N. Bhagwati, “The Capital Myth: The Difference between Trade in Widgets and Dollars,” Foreign Affairs 77, no. 3 (1998): 7–12.
Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter?: An Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
Rein Raud, “A Comparative Analysis of Challenge Discourses: ‘Overcoming Modernity’ and the ‘Asian Values’ Debate,” in Japan and Asian Modernities, ed. Rein Raud (London, New York, and Bahrain: Kegan Paul, 2007), 167–182.
Copyright information
© 2013 Ryoko Nakano
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nakano, R. (2013). Asianism versus Internationalism?. In: Beyond the Western Liberal Order. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290519_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290519_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45058-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29051-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)