ABSTRACT
From the moment Japan invaded Manchuria and China in 1931, the Japanese government was forced to respond to Chinese anti-imperialist nationalism and confront the Western powers that were hostile to its imperial ambition. Nonetheless, rationalizing colonial subjects’ commitment to the Japanese empire called for the imperial government to implement new policies to realistically convince people of the veracity of Japan’s rhetoric, as it proclaimed the new Japanese empire as a “Greater Asia.” The project of building a Pan-Asian empire in East Asia came to an end with Japan’s unconditional surrender in 1945, and the clear-cut binary of victor and loser defined the way in which the Asia-Pacific War would be historicized. Pan-Asianism has had a significant impact on the formation of modern Asian society and its challenge to Western hegemony throughout the twentieth century. As such, the legacy of Japanese imperial social science continued to linger through the inception of an oppressive hegemonic Asian regionalism into the 1950s and 1960s.
