ABSTRACT
W.E.B. Du Bois's visit to Japan and Manchukuo in 1936, Imperial Japan’s 1930s laboratory for Pan-Asian colonialism, convinced him that Japan’s Pan-Asian empire provided a parallel example in support of his speculative idea for a Pan-African international community. Japan had become internationally isolated in the aftermath of the 1931 Manchurian Crisis. However, the geographical scope of interest for the social scientists in the 1920s was largely confined to Japan proper. The rise of Pan-Asianism in defense of a new, Japan-led Asian order demanded actual changes that would politically distinguish Japan’s empire from the European form of imperialism. In contrast, the rise and consumption of Pan-Asianism in early-twentieth-century Japan took on a much more subtle political form. The social scientists aimed to rationalize the construction of an East Asian Community, calling for domestic reforms and the deconstruction of the traditional forms of empire-colony hierarchies.
