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In investigating the relationship between Pan-Asianism and Japanese official wartime planning during the Fifteen Years' War, Eri Hotta makes a strong claim that during the war, the ideology of Pan-Asianism continued to play such a critical role that, without it, "Japan might well not have taken the path from Manchuria to Pearl Harbor, to Southeast Asia, and to its ultimate defeat in 1945" (p. 2). More specifically, Hotta argues that Pan-Asianism functioned as "a consensus-building tool for an otherwise divided government" throughout the years between 1931 and 1945 (p. 226). Based on her useful categorization of Pan-Asianism--Teaist, Sinic, and Meishuron Pan-Asianisms--she demonstrates that while Meishuron Pan-Asianism became dominant by 1931, the continuing existence of the other two threads was key to Japan's consensus making during the war.
Hotta defines Teaist Pan-Asianism as the "most all-encompassing vision for both geographical and conceptual boundaries of Asia as a single group" (p. 30). This type emphasized the shared culture of Asia (such as the art of tea drinking, hence the name "Teaist") without clear boundaries for "Asia," and claimed that Asia was on par with the West philosophically and culturally, if not materially. Sinic Pan-Asianism was more concerned about the racial struggle between the white and yellow peoples and "attempted to configure various Asian nationalist aspirations to the international order" (p. 44). Sinic Pan-Asianists' emphasis on a Japan-China alliance can be seen in their cultural organizations, such as Toa Dobunkai and Toa Dobun Shoin. Meishuron (discourse on leadership) Pan-Asianism believed in Japan's leadership in the crusade against the West. Preoccupied with the notion that Japan shared its fate with China (and other East Asian nations), Uchida Ryohei and the members of Kokuryukai (Amur River Society) and Genyosha (Dark Ocean Society) insisted that Japan had "an active role to play in transforming China and other Asian nations in the image of Japan" (p. 45). Despite the differences, Hotta points out, all three types shared "the assumption of Japanese superiority in all spiritual, cultural, and...