Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

• 1. Origins And Ideological Roots

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  In the autumn of 1872, United States minister to Japan Charles DeLong explained to U.S. General Charles LeGendre that he had been urging the Government of Japan to occupy Taiwan and civilize the Taiwanese indigenous people just as the United States had taken over the land of Native Americans. General LeGendre encouraged the Japanese to declare a sphere of influence modeled on the Monroe Doctrine that the United States had declared for the exclusion of other powers from the Western Hemisphere. Such a Japanese sphere of influence would be the first time a non-White state adopted such a policy. The stated aim of the sphere of influence was to civilize the barbarians of Asia. Pacify and civilize them if possible, and if not...exterminate them or otherwise deal with them as the United States and England have dealt with the barbarians, LeGendre explained to the Japanese. Japan began invading Taiwan in 1874 and fought the Russian Empire for control of Manchuria starting in 1904. Continuing this American policy, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt also secretly reiterated to Japan that Japan should create its own sphere of influence in the Pacific Rim. Roosevelt envisioned demarcating respective United States and Japanese zones of military and economic dominance in the Pacific Rim. Roosevelt told the Japanese that they are more racially similar to Americans than Russians are, even though Russians are a White race. This mutual recognition of the U.S. and the Japanese zones of control in the Pacific would be secretly articulated in the Taft, Katsura Agreement of July 1905. In an interview with the New York Times days later, Katsura explained that Japan's policy in the Far East will be in exact accord with that of England and the United States.

• 2. Formation And Official Declaration

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  On the 3rd of November 1938, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe and Minister for Foreign Affairs Hachirō Arita proposed the development of the union, which was limited to Japan, China, and the puppet state of Manchukuo. They believed that the union had six purposes including permanent stability of Eastern Asia, neighbourly amity and international justice, joint defence against communism, creation of a new culture, economic cohesion and co-operation, and world peace. The vagueness of these points were effective in making people more agreeable to militarism and collaborationism. On the 29th of June 1940, Arita renamed the union the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which he announced by radio address. At Yōsuke Matsuoka's advice, Arita emphasised on the economic aspects more. On August 1, Konoe expanded the scope of the union to include the territories of Southeast Asia. On November 5, Konoe reaffirmed that a Japan, Manchukuo, China yen bloc would continue and be perfected. The term was first coined by Minister for Foreign Affairs Hachiro Arita on the 29th of June 1940. Initially, it covered Japan including annexed Korea, Manchukuo, and China, but as the Pacific War progressed, it also included territories in Southeast Asia and parts of India.

• 3. Military Expansion And Occupation

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  After Japanese advancements into French Indochina in 1940, knowing that Japan was completely dependent on other countries for natural resources, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a trade embargo on steel and oil, raw materials that were vital to Japan's war effort. Without steel and oil imports, Japan's military could not fight for long. As a result of the embargo, Japan decided to attack the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia from 7 to the 19th of December 1941, seizing the raw materials needed for the war effort. These efforts were successful, with Japanese politician Nobusuke Kishi announcing via radio broadcast that vast resources were available for Japanese use in the newly conquered territories. The Japanese government directed that economies of occupied territories be managed strictly for the production of raw materials for the Japanese war effort. A cabinet member declared, There are no restrictions. They are enemy possessions. We can take them, do anything we want. For example, according to estimates, under Japanese occupation, about 100,000 Burmese and Malay Indian labourers died while constructing the Burma-Siam Railway. The Japanese sometimes spared ethnic groups, such as Chinese immigrants, if they supported the war effort, whether sincerely or not.

• 4. Propaganda And Racial Theories

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  An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus , a secret document completed in 1943 for high-ranking government use , laid out that Japan, as the originator and strongest military power within the region, would naturally take the superior position within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Japanese propaganda was useful in mobilizing Japanese citizens for the war effort, convincing them Japan's expansion was an act of anti-colonial liberation from Western domination. The booklet Read This and the War is Won, for the Japanese Army, presented colonialism as an oppressive group of colonists living in luxury by burdening Asians. According to Japan, since racial ties of blood connected other Asians to the Japanese, and Asians had been weakened by colonialism, it was Japan's self-appointed role to make men of them again and liberate them from their Western oppressors. When World War II ended, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere became a source of criticism and scorn for the Allies. Japanese spokesmen openly described the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as a device for the development of the Japanese race. Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō stated that should Japan be successful in creating this sphere, it would emerge as the leader of Eastern Asia.

• 5. Economic Exploitation And Failure

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  To build up the economic base of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Japanese Army envisioned using the Philippine islands as a source of agricultural products needed by its industry. For example, Japan had a surplus of sugar from Taiwan, and a severe shortage of cotton, so they tried to grow cotton on sugar lands with disastrous results. They lacked the seeds, pesticides, and technical skills to grow cotton. Jobless farm workers flocked to the cities, where there was minimal relief and few jobs. The Japanese Army also tried using cane sugar for fuel, castor beans and copra for oil, Derris for quinine, cotton for uniforms, and abacá for rope. The plans were difficult to implement due to limited skills, collapsed international markets, bad weather, and transportation shortages. The program failed, giving very little help to Japanese industry and diverting resources needed for food production. Living conditions were poor throughout the Philippines during the war. Transportation between the islands was difficult because of a lack of fuel. Food was in short supply, with sporadic famines and epidemic diseases that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Stanley Karnow writes that Filipinos rapidly learned as well that co-prosperity meant servitude to Japan's economic requirements.

• 6. The Greater East Asia Conference

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  The conference took place in Tokyo on 5, the 6th of November 1943: Japan hosted the heads of state of various component members of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The common language used by the delegates during the conference was English. The conference was mainly used as propaganda. At the conference, Tojo greeted them with a speech praising the spiritual essence of Asia instead of the materialistic civilisation of the West. Their meeting was characterised by the praise of solidarity and condemnation of Western colonialism but without practical plans for either economic development or integration. Because of a lack of military representatives at the conference, the conference served little military value. With the simultaneous use of Wilsonian and Pan-Asian rhetoric, the goals of the conference were to solidify the commitment of certain Asian countries to Japan's war effort and to improve Japan's world image. However, the representatives of the other attending countries were in practice neither independent nor treated as equals by Japan. Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of the Empire of Japan, Zhang Jinghui, Prime Minister of the Empire of Manchuria, Wang Jingwei, President of the Republic of China, Ba Maw, Head of State of the State of Burma, Subhas Chandra Bose, Head of State of the Provisional Government of Free India, José P. Laurel, President of the Republic of the Philippines, and Prince Wan Waithayakon, envoy from the Kingdom of Thailand attended.

• 7. Legacy And Historical Criticism

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  The Co-Prosperity Sphere collapsed with Japan's surrender to the Allies in September 1945. Ba Maw, wartime President of Burma under the Japanese, blamed the Japanese military for the failure of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In other words, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere operated not for the betterment of all the Asian countries but for Japan's interests, and thus the Japanese failed to gather support in other Asian countries. Nationalist movements did appear in these Asian countries during this period, and these nationalists cooperated with the Japanese to some extent. 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. There was no overwhelming despair on the part of the Asians at Japan's defeat. 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. When World War II ended, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere became a source of criticism and scorn for the Allies.