ABSTRACT
Introduction Japanese Pan-Asianism during the interwar period placed tremendous weight on the concept of minzoku (ethnic nationality) as the sole legitimate principle of social and cultural identity. What is surprising and needs some explanation is why advocates of Pan-Asianism often relied on this concept of “minzoku”, rather than the more direct argument that Pan-Asianism reflected a racial identity (jinshu) supposedly shared by those in the region. The emphasis on a common racial identity was in fact a familiar feature of late nineteenth and early twentieth century pan-Asianist discourse in general. And it should be emphasized from the outset that this move from race to ethnicity in Japanese discourse was not an absolute but a relative shift, not only because race is an element in the construction of ethnic identity, but also because the older racialist Pan-Asianism never completely disappeared. Yet we not only miss a great deal of the appeal of wartime Pan-Asianism if we simply reduce this cultural regional theory to its more biological, racialist dimensions. We would also have to sweep aside the historical reality of a rigorous insistence on the difference between race and ethnicity (or nationality) in late imperial panAsianist discourse. Far more than race, ethnicity was crucial to the development of wartime regionalist ideology, and the appeal of ethnicity helps to account for much of the sense of legitimacy that was associated with calls to “liberate Asia” during this era. Nor is this appeal of ethnicity dead today. It is equally important in the present, as the concept of ethnic nationality (minzoku) – far more than racialist beliefs – continues to underwrite much of contemporary cultural theory on the common bonds that link Japanese to other people in Asia, whether those bonds are deemed normative or actual.
