Japan Focus
(2008-3-10). Fair use may apply.
Japanese propaganda claimed that the Japanese were the liberators of Asia from Western colonialism. While the appalling conduct of the Japanese Army in China and elsewhere put the lie to this claim, there were significant numbers of Asians who were willing to take seriously the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (Daitoa Kyoeiken). As a result, the Japanese were able to establish collaborationist governments in most of the conquered territories.
The notion and terminology went back at least as
far as September 1940, when Matsuoka Yosuke, the Japanese Foreign
Minister,
declared that Japan's policy was to establish a Greater East Asia
Co-prosperity Sphere that would include French Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies.
On 24 January 1941, Prince Konoye, the Japanese Prime
Minister, stated that:
I am convinced that the firm establishment of a Mutual Prosperity Sphere in Greater East Asia is absolutely essential to the continued existence of this country.
The Yomiuri,
a prominent Japanese newspaper,
stated that:
Japan must remove all elements in East Asia which will interfered with its plans. Britain, the United States, France and the Netherlands must be forced out of the Far East. Asia is the territory of the Asiatics...
On 27 January 1941 Matsuoka gave a speech in which he said:
The Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Far East is based on the spirit of Hakko Ichiu, or the Eight Corners of the Universe under One Roof.... We must control the western Pacific.... We must request United States reconsideration, not only for the sake of Japan but for the world's sake. And if this request is not heard, there is no hope for Japanese-American relations.
(All quotes from Prange 1981.)
While some Japanese
pan-Asians were sincere in
their motives, most Japanese leaders
believed the Japanese were
racially superior to other Asians, and they viewed the Greater East
Asia Co-prosperity Sphere as simply a euphemism for the Japanese
Empire. This
became increasingly clear as the war turned against the Japanese and
the Japanese, in turn, began making greater demands upon the resources
of the conquered areas. By the time the war ended, "Greater East Asia
Co-prosperity Sphere" had become a pejorative throughout Asia, and even
the most ardent Asian nationalists, such as those in the Netherlands
East Indies,
had turned against the Japanese. Thus Japan in Asia, like Germany in Russia, squandered a valuable
political opportunity because it contradicted a defining racist
ideology.
Much of the exploitation of the Greater East Asia
Co-prosperity Sphere took place under the Asia Development Board or Kōain,
which was originally established as the China Board in October 1938.
The Asia Development Board was composed of senior Army and Navy
officers and had power to issue military scrip without restrictions.
This was equivalent to confiscation of whatever material and property
the Japanese wished to take.
Japanese demands on French Indochina, which
included the conversion of rice
patties
to production of fiber crops and the commandeering of much of the
remaining
rice crop for export, resulted in a famine in 1944-45 that killed at
least a million persons. Other harsh policies produced an overall death
toll in southeast Asia estimated at five million persons. By August
1945, somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 excess deaths were taking
place monthly among Asian noncombatants in Japanese-occupied
territories.
The Japanese planned to aggressively colonize their conquests. The Ministry of Health and Welfare projected that, by 1950, there would be 2.7 million Japanese in Korea, 400,000 in Formosa, 3.1 million in Manchuria, 1.5 million in China, 2.38 million in other Asian territories, and 2 million in Australia and New Zealand. These emigrants would constitute 14% of the Japanese population. Rigid segregation would be enforced, including a ban on intermarriage with the local population.
Japanese contempt for other Asian cultures was
manifest in other ways. One Japanese historian noted that "More than a
million Japanese soldiers served in China, and not one of them troubled
to learn its language" (quoted in Hastings 2007). The China Affairs
Board is
alleged to have controlled a $300 million per year traffic in opium,
both to raise cash and to weaken the Chinese. At least part of this
opium was obtained from the Chinese
Communists, and it was distributed by Mitsubishi in Manchuria and Mitsui in north China.
The Japanese conscripted
large numbers of slave laborers, or romusha,
from occupied territories. Figures are uncertain, but one authority
(Frank 1999) estimates that the Japanese impressed a total of 600,000
laborers, of whom 290,000 perished.
The fear of a genuine pan-Asian movement taking
root, and proving hostile to Western interests in Asia, lay behind much
of the American emphasis on
keeping China in the war. The Americans
also put considerable pressure on the British to make concessions to
Indian nationalists,
which likely hastened the postwar independence of
India and Pakistan.
References
Frank
(1999)
Hastings
(2007)
Hsiung and Levine
(1992)
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