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Introduction
The official justification given by the Japanese government for its southward expansion, including the invasion of the Philippines, was to liberate the peoples of Southeast Asia from Western dominance and unify them in a self-sustaining economic bloc, namely the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS, Daitōa Kyōeiken). The underlying philosophy of the GEACPS was pan-Asianism (Han Ajia-shugi)—an ideology that propagated the liberation and unity of all Asian peoples.
This article examines Japan's application of pan-Asianism in the Philippines, arguably the most ‘Westernized’ country in Southeast Asia,1 and its attempt to adapt this ideology to local circumstances. It does this through a study of the Kapisanan sa Paglilingkod sa Bagong Pilipinas (KALIBAPI: lit., ‘Association for Service to the New Philippines’)—the organization founded by the Japanese to create a mass movement among the Filipino people towards the building of a ‘New Philippines’. Much research on the KALIBAPI has been undertaken by Filipino scholars, most notably by Ricardo Trota José, who, in his article ‘The Association for Service to the New Philippines (KALIBAPI) during the Japanese Occupation: Attempting to Transplant a Japanese Wartime Concept to the Philippines’, discusses the evolution of the KALIBAPI and its malfunctioning as a ‘wartime concept’.2 Trota José thoroughly explains the historical context in which the KALIBAPI was founded and gives an overview of similar organizations in other Japanese-occupied areas at that time. However, while he examines the KALIBAPI as an organization intended to mobile mass support for Japan in the Philippines, he is less focused on the pan-Asianist origins of wartime Japanese policy in the archipelago, nor on the KALIBAPI's function in disseminating this ideology. In contrast, this article posits that the creation of the GEACPS as the realization of Japanese pan-Asianist thinking was more than merely an ideological whitewash intended to justify Japanese expansionism. Rather, it was an ongoing transnational social and political project, and one in which the KALIBAPI played a critical, though ultimately unsuccessful, role.
Pan-Asianism and the complex vision of the GEACPS
Though many post-war scholars, especially from the Philippines, have depicted Japanese pan-Asianism and the concept of the GEACPS as a mere façade for the Japanese adaptation of Western-style imperialism,3 others have questioned this assessment. Ken'ichi Goto considers it ‘an...