ABSTRACT
The concept of geopolitics according to Swede Rudolf Kjellen was first introduced to Japan in 1925, when his work of 1916 appeared in a book review in a Japanese journal of international law and diplomacy. To analyse Haushofer's subsequent influence on Japanese geopolitical thought, it is necessary to take into account his personal connection with Japan. Japanese academics, who felt themselves otherwise incapable of employing their scientific achievements in the difficult situation facing Japan during that period, the German political movement appeared an archetype to which they could look for guidance in formulating their thinking. Jiro Yonekura, assistant of the department in the second half of the 1930s, who by the 1937 Japanese invasion of China had already carried out geostrategical examinations on behalf of the Japanese army, based on the documentary analysis of past wars on Chinese soil. Apart from the emphasis on Japan's geopolitical advantages due to her geographical location, there were neither environmentalist nor racial interpretations.
