ABSTRACT
In the final year of the First World War Japan was suddenly confronted with the new slogan of ‘self-determination of nationalities’, introduced by Lenin in November 1917 but most influentially propagated by his ideological opposite Wilson a few months later. The principle of'self-determination of nationalities' was presented by Wilson as one of the pillars on which a new and just world order, to be laid down at the Paris Peace Conference, would rest and accordingly it was an issue also very much in focus in the Japanese media of the immediate postwar days. Within both the civilization and the race discourses, Japan's Asian neighbours were generally looked down upon and their national identity was ignored. In the case of China, however, things were very different from Korea. Since China was not a colony, its nationalist movement could not be so lightly dismissed.
