ABSTRACT

Chapter 1 utilizes the top-secret daybook kept by the Army General Staff officers, showing the indecision and self-doubt about Japan’s military and national capacity, and discusses how these same officers’ preoccupation with acquiring military resources to continue the present war effort in China led to the ill-fated decision to invade Southeast Asia. Then the chapter argues that the above-mentioned preoccupation with a “war for resources” was a decisive factor in the formation of Japan’s occupation policy, based on the three principles of “restoration of law and order,” “use of existing administrative assets,” and “materiel procurement on the ground.” While these planners opposed the spread of anti-Western/Caucasian rhetoric calling for national liberation, fearing that such tactics would instigate nationalist uprisings that would hamper Japan’s war effort, the author argues it would have been hardly possible for Japan to occupy Southeast Asia without mentioning anything about the region’s liberation from Western colonial rule, since putting that subject on the table could be the only possibly acceptable justification for the occupied people to endure the hardships expected of them under Japanese military rule.