Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (大東亜共栄圏 Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken) was a concept created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient "block of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers".[1]
The Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe planned the Sphere in 1940 in an attempt to create a Great East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchukuo, China, and parts of Southeast Asia, that would, according to imperial propaganda, establish a new international order seeking "co prosperity" for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination.[2] Military goals of this expansion included naval operations in the Indian Ocean and the isolation of Australia.[3]
This was one of a number of slogans and concepts used in the justification of Japanese aggression in East Asia in the 1930s through the end of World War II. The term "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" is remembered largely as a front for the Japanese control of occupied countries during World War II, in which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan.
Japan's experiment with financial imperialism has been called "yen diplomacy" or the "yen bloc," and encompassed both official and semi-official colonies. In the period between 1895 (when Japan annexed Taiwan) and 1937 (the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War), monetary specialists in Tokyo directed and managed programs of coordinated monetary reforms in Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, and the peripheral Japanese-controlled islands in the Pacific. These reforms aimed to foster a network of linked political and economic relationships. These efforts foundered in the eventual debacle of the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.[4]
The negative connotations that still attach to the term "Greater East Asia" (大東亜) remain one of a number of difficulties facing the annual East Asia Summits, begun in 2005 to discuss the possibility of the establishment of a stronger, more united East Asian Community.
Contents |
History
During World War II puppet governments ran many countries occupied by Japan - manipulating local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan and backing the conception of a united Asia in the absence of (or opposed to) European influence. It was an Imperial Japanese Army concept that originated with General Hachiro Arita, an army ideologist who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1936 to 1940. "Greater East Asia" (大東亜 Dai-tō-a) was a Japanese term (banned during the post-war Occupation) referring to Far East Asia.
The Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke formally announced the idea of the Co-Prosperity Sphere on August 1, 1940, in a press interview, but it had already existed in various forms for many years. Leaders in Japan had long had an interest in the idea, in reality to extend Japanese power and acquire an empire based on European models, though ostensibly to free Asia from imperialism.
As part of its war drive, Japanese propaganda included phrases like "Asia for the Asians!" and talked about the perceived need to liberate Asian countries from imperialist powers. In some cases local people welcomed Japanese troops when they invaded, driving out British, French, and other governments and military forces. In general, however, the subsequent brutality and racism of the Japanese led to people of the occupied areas regarding the new Asian imperialists as equal to or (more often) much worse than Western imperialists.
From the Japanese point of view, one common principal reason stood behind both forming the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and initiating war with the Allies: Chinese markets. Japan wanted their "paramount relations" in regard to Chinese markets acknowledged by the U.S. government. The U.S., recognizing the abundance of potential wealth in these markets, refused to let the Japanese have an advantage in selling to China. In an attempt to give Japan a formal advantage over the Chinese markets, the Japanese Imperial regime first invaded China and later launched the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
According to Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo (in office 1941-1942 and 1945), should Japan be successful in creating this sphere, it would emerge as the leader of Eastern Asia, and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would be another name for the Japanese Empire.[2] An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a secret government document completed in 1943, explicitly states the superiority of the Japanese over other Asian races and suggests that the Sphere was merely propaganda intended to mask Japan's true intention of domination over Asia.[5]
The Co-Prosperity Sphere collapsed with Japan's surrender to the Allies in August/September 1945.
Projected territorial extent of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
In December 1941 a document detailing the anticipated extent of the projected Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere for Japan's future holdings was prepared by the Research Department of the Imperial Ministry of War[6]. Known as the "Land Disposal Plan in the Greater east Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" it was put together with the consent of and according to the directions of the Minister of War (later Prime Minister) Hideki Tojo. The conquests secured in Japan's earlier wars with China, Russia, and Germany would be retained, as well as the recently seized large and important portions of China and occupied French Indochina. It was also assumed that the established puppet governments of Manchukuo, Mengjiang, and the Wang Jingwei regime in Japanese-occupied China would continue to functioning these areas.
Beyond these contemporary parts of Japan's sphere of influence it also encompassed the seizure of a vast range of territories covering virtually all of East Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and even sizable portions of the Western Hemisphere, including in locations as far removed from Japan as South America and the eastern Caribbean. It noticeably lacked any mention of Soviet Siberian and Far Eastern lands to be taken, reflecting Japan's then-stance of non-aggression towards Russia while it was instead moving forward in the Pacific and South-East Asia.
The plan divided Japan's future empire into two different groups. On the hand there were the territories that were to either become part of Japan or otherwise be under its direct administration. Second were those territories that would fall under the control of a number of tightly-controlled pro-Japanese vassal states based on the model of Manchukuo, which were supposedly "independent" members of the Greater East Asian alliance.
Japanese-governed
- Empire of Japan
Japanese Home Islands including the Ryuku Islands, Southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, as well as Korea.
- Kwantung Leased Territory
Southern part of the Liaodong Peninsula.
- Government-General of Formosa
Formosa (Taiwan), Hong Kong, Macau (to be purchased from Portugal), the Philippines, the Paracel Islands, Hainan Island (to be purchased from the Chinese puppet regime).
- South Seas Government Office
Guam, Nauru, Ocean Island, the Gilbert Islands and Wake.
- Melanesian Region Government-General or South Pacific Government-General
British New Guinea, Australian New Guinea, the Admiralties, New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Islands, the Santa Cruz Archipelago, the Ellice Islands, the Fiji Islands, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, and the Chesterfield Islands.
- Eastern Pacific Government-General
Hawaii, Howland Island, Baker Island, the Phoenix Islands, the Rain Islands, the Marquesas and Tuamotu Islands, the Society Islands, the Cook and Austral Islands, all of the Samoan Islands, and Tonga.
- Australian Government-General
All of Australia including Tasmania.
- New Zealand Government-General
New Zealand North and South Islands, Macquarie Island, as well as the rest of the Southwest Pacific.
- Ceylon Government-General
All of India below a line running approximately from Portuguese Goa to the coastline of the Bay of Bengal.
- Alaska Government-General
The Alaska Territory, the Yukon Territory, the western portion of the Northwest Territories, Alberta, British Columbia, and Washington.
- Government-General of Central America
Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, British Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Maracaibo (western) portion of Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Haiti, Dominica, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
In addition, if either Mexico, Peru or Chile were to enter the war against Japan, substantial parts of these states would also be ceded to Japan. The future of Trinidad, British and Dutch Guiana, and British and French possessions in the Leeward Islands were left open for negation with Germany after the war.
The islands north of the equator that had been seized from Germany in World War I and which were assigned to Japan as C-Class Mandates, namely the Marianas, Carolines, Marshall Islands, and several others do not figure into this project. They were the subject of earlier negotiations with the Germans and were expected to be officially ceded to Japan in return for economic and monetary compensations.
Japanese-puppetized States
Chinese Manchuria.
- Mengjiang
Outer Mongolia territories west of Manchuria.
- Republic of China
Parts of China occupied by Japan.
- East Indies Kingdom
Dutch East Indies, British Borneo, Labuan, Sarawak, Brunei, the Cocos and Christmas Islands, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Portuguese Timor (to be purchased).
- Kingdom of Burma
Burma proper, Assam (a province of the British Raj) and large part of Bengal.
Pre-war Thailand, also expanded with portions of British Malaya, Burma, and French Indochina during the war.
- Kingdom of Malaya
Remainder of the Malay states.
- Kingdom of Cambodia
Cambodia and French Cochinchina.
- Kingdom of Annam
Annam, Laos, and Tongking.
Greater East Asia Conference
The Greater East Asia Conference (大東亜会議 Dai Toa Kaigi) took place in Tokyo from 5 to 6 November 1943: Japan hosted the heads of state of various component members of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The conference was also referred to as the Tokyo Conference.
The Conference addressed few issues of any substance, but was intended by the Japanese to illustrate the Empire of Japan's commitments to the Pan-Asianism ideal and to emphasize its role as the “liberator” of Asia from western colonialism.
The following dignitaries attended:
- Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan
- Zhang Jinghui, Prime Minister of Manchukuo
- Wang Jingwei, President of the Nationalist Government of Republic of China in Nanjing
- Ba Maw, Head of State, State of Burma
- Subhas Chandra Bose, Head of State of Provisional Government of Free India (Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind)
- José P. Laurel, President of the Second Philippine Republic
- Prince Wan Waithayakon, envoy from the Kingdom of Thailand
The Conference issued a Joint Declaration promoting economic and political cooperation against the Allied countries.[7]
Failure of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
Although Japan succeeded in stimulating anti-Westernism in Asia, the sphere never materialized into a unified Asia. Dr. Ba Maw, wartime President of Burma under the Japanese, blamed the Japanese military:
- The militarists saw everything only in a Japanese perspective and, even worse, they insisted that all others dealing with them should do the same. For them there was only one way to do a thing, the Japanese way; only one goal and interest, the Japanese interest; only one destiny for the East Asian countries, to become so many Manchukuos or Koreas tied forever to Japan. These racial impositions...made any real understanding between the Japanese militarists and the people of our region virtually impossible.[8]
In other words, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere operated not for the betterment of all the East Asia countries, but rather for Japan's own interests, and thus the Japanese failed to gather support in other East Asian countries. Nationalist movements did appear in these East Asian countries during this period and these nationalists did, to some extent, cooperate with the Japanese. However, Willard Elsbree, professor emeritus of political science at Ohio University, claims that the Japanese government and these nationalist leaders never developed "a real unity of interests between the two parties, [and] there was no overwhelming despair on the part of the Asians at Japan's defeat".[9]
It seems that the failure of Japan to understand the goals and interests of the other countries involved in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere led to a weak association of countries bound to Japan only in theory and not in spirit. Dr. Ba Maw argues that Japan could have engineered a very different outcome if the Japanese had only managed to act in accord with the hortatory concept of "Asia for the Asians". He argues that if Japan had proclaimed this maxim at the beginning of the war, and if the Japanese had actually acted on that idea,
- "No military defeat could then have robbed her of the trust and gratitude of half of Asia or even more, and that would have mattered a great deal in finding for her a new, great, and abiding place in a postwar world in which Asia was coming into her own."[10]
Political parties and movements with Japanese support
- Azad Hind
- Indian Independence League (Indian nationalist movement)
- Indonesian Nationalist Party (Indonesian nationalist movement)
- Khmer Issarak (Cambodian-Khmer nationalist group)
- Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) (Burmese anti-British nationalist association)
- Second Philippine Republic
See also
- Hachirō Arita: Army thinker who thought up the Greater East Asian concept
- Satō Nobuhiro: alleged founder of the Greater East Asia concept
- East Asia Development Board
- Imperialism in Asia
- Militarism-Socialism in Shōwa Japan
- Japanese nationalism
- Japanese war crimes
- Ministry of Greater East Asia (Japan)
- Greater East Asia Conference (November 1943)
- List of East Asian leaders in the Japanese sphere of influence (1931-1945)
- East Asia Summit: unrelated term in the early 21st century
- Debt of Honor
Notes
- ↑ Gordon, William. "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." March 2000.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Iriye, Akira. (1999). Pearl Harbor and the coming of the Pacific War: a Brief History with Documents and Essays, p. 6.
- ↑ Ugaki, Matome. (1991). Fading Victory: The Diary of Ugaki Matome, 1941-1945, p. __.
- ↑ Vande Walle, Willy et al. The 'money doctors' from Japan: finance, imperialism, and the building of the Yen Bloc, 1894-1937 (abstract). FRIS/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2007-2010.
- ↑ Dower, John W. (1986). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, pp. 262-290.
- ↑ Weinberg, L. Gerhard. (2005). Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders p. __.
- ↑ World War II Database (WW2DB): "Greater East Asia Conference."
- ↑ Lebra, Joyce C. (1975). Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II: Selected Readings and Documents, p. 157.
- ↑ Lebra, p. 160.
- ↑ Lebra, p. 158.
References
- Dower, John W. (1986). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon Books. 10-ISBN 0-394-50030-X; 13-ISBN 978-0-394-50030-0; OCLC 13064585
- Iriye, Akira. (1999). Pearl Harbor and the coming of the Pacific War :a Brief History with Documents and Essays. Boston : St. Martin's Press. 10-ISBN 0-312-21818-4; 13-ISBN 978-0-312-21818-8; OCLC 40985780
- Lebra, Joyce C. (1975). Japan's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in World War II: Selected Readings and Documents. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10-ISBN 0-196-38265-3; 13-ISBN 978-0-196-38265-4; OCLC 1551953
- Ugaki, Matome. (1991). Fading Victory: The Diary of Ugaki Matome, 1941-1945. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 10-ISBN 0-822-93665-8; 13-ISBN 978-0-822-93665-7
- Myers, Ramon Hawley and Mark R. Peattie. (1984) The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 10-ISBN 0-691-10222-8; 13-ISBN 978-0-691-10222-1
- Peattie, Mark R. (1988). "The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945," in The Cambridge History of Japan: the Twentieth Century (editor, Peter Duus). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10-ISBN 0-521-22357-1; 13-ISBN 978-0-521-22357-7
- Vande Walle, Willy et al. The 'money doctors' from Japan: finance, imperialism, and the building of the Yen Bloc, 1894-1937 (abstract). FRIS/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2007-2010.
External links
- Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere - academic paper
- Foreign Office Files for Japan and the Far East
- WW2DB: Greater East Asia Conference
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg.png)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
