Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2015

 

The “East Asian Community Theory” during the Japanese Invasion of China

(Abstract)

 

Shi Guifang

 

The “East Asian Community” was proposed by the Showa Institute, the think tank of Fumimaro Konoe, the then Japanese Prime Minister. As a renowned team of intellectual advisers to the Japanese government during the Sino-Japanese War, the Showa Institute gathered the “Japanese elite” in fields like politics, economics, culture and education who were able to assist and support Japan’s wars of aggression intellectually and theoretically. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, and especially after the Japanese invasion of China entered a protracted stage, the Showa Institute, seeking to maintain and expand Japan’s “special advantage” in China, proposed to undermine the national spirit of the Chinese people, transform China’s resistance into “cooperation” and put forward the idea of an “East Asian Community,” premised on the racial, historical and cultural differences between the East and the West, under the banner of joint Sino-Japanese resistance to the oppression of the Western powers and of peace in East Asia. This theory aimed to reach a goal that could not be attained through force of arms: so-called “economic cooperation” and a “cultural alliance” between China and Japan would realize “mutual friendship” and “common prosperity” between the two countries, which would share the responsibility of “establishing a New Order in East Asia.” The East Asian Community idea further developed the Asianist theory that had grown up in Japan since the Meiji Restoration, taking it from popular thinking to the official level. A classic theory of invasion and expansion, it sought to cloak barbarous aggressive warfare under “culture” and “civilization,” in a way that was more deceptive and covert than military invasion.