The
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (
Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken) was a concept, created and promulgated during the
Shōwa era by the government and military of the
Empire of Japan, to represent the desire to create a self-sufficient "bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers".
The Sphere was initiated by Prime Minister
Fumimaro Konoe, 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.
[Iriye, Akira. (1999). Pearl Harbor and the coming of the Pacific War :a Brief History with Documents and Essays, p. 6.] Military goals of this expansion included naval operations in the
Indian Ocean and the isolation of
Australia.
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, and the term "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" is remembered today 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 Taiwan was annexed, and 1937, which marked 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 were intended 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.
The negative connotations that many still associate with the term "Greater East Asia" (大東亜) remains 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.
History
During World War II, many countries occupied by Japan were run by
puppet governments that manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan, backed by this conception of a united Asia absent of, or opposed to, European influence. It was an
Imperial Japanese Army concept that originated with General
Hachiro Arita, who at the time was
Minister for Foreign Affairs and an army ideologist. was a Japanese term (banned during the post-war
Occupation) referring to
Far East Asia.
The idea of the Co-Prosperity Sphere was formally announced by
Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke on
August 1,
1940, in a press interview, but had already existed in various forms for many years. Leaders in Japan had long been interested 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 they were welcomed when they invaded neighboring countries, driving out
British,
French, and other governments and military forces. In general, however, the subsequent brutality and racism of the Japanese led to them being regarded as equal to, or, more often, much worse than Western imperialists.
From the Japanese point of view, the main reason behind forming the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, was the same reason Japan initiated war with the United States: Chinese markets. Japan wanted their "paramount relations", in relation to Chinese markets, acknowledged by the U.S. government. The U.S., however, saw the abundance of wealth that could be found in these markets, and thus refused to let the Japanese have an advantage in distributing to these markets. Therefore, in an attempt to give Japan a formal advantage over the Chinese markets, the Imperial regime invaded China and launched the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
According to Foreign Minister
Shigenori Togo, should Japan be successful in creating this sphere, it would then emerge as the leader of Eastern Asia and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would be another name for the Japanese Empire.
, a secret government document completed in 1943, explicitly states that the Japanese were superior to other Asian races and suggested that the Sphere was merely propaganda intended to mask Japan's true intention of domination over Asia.
The Co-Prosperity Sphere collapsed with
Japan's surrender to the Allies.
The Greater East Asia Conference
was held in Tokyo from
5 –
6 November 1943, in which 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 as a
propaganda showpiece, 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.
It was attended by:
The Conference issued a Joint Declaration promoting economic and political cooperation against the
Allied countries.
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, claims that this was because of 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.
In other words, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was not working for the betterment of all the East Asia countries, but rather for Japan's own interests and thus they 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".
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's fate would have been very different 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."
Political parties and movements with Japanese support
See also
Greater East Asia map stamp
- Hachirō Arita: Army thinker who thought up the Greater East Asian concept
