Between Pan-Asianism and nationalism: Mitsukawa Kametarō and his campaign to reform Japan and liberate Asia

Introduction Pan-Asianism, as a doctrine, may be tarnished by its wartime associations with Japanese aggression, but it still has some powerful advocates. Witness Ishihara Shintarō (b.1932), now mayor of Tōkyō and then prominent LDP Diet member, who published a pan-Asianist pamphlet in 1994.2 While proclaiming Asian brotherhood and the unity of Asian values, however, Ishihara, a prize-winning novelist turned popular politician, has repeatedly made a number of racially motivated verbal attacks on the Korean and Chinese minorities in Japan and on Koreans and Chinese in general.3