I suspect that just as plants exist for the sake of animals, and animals exist for the sake of human beings, so perhaps the ‘ East ’ ( Tōyō ) exists for the sake of Europeans. 1
—Tokutomi Sohō (1886)
The glory of Europe is the humiliation of Asia! The march of history is a record of the steps that lead the West into an inevitable antagonism to ourselves. 2
—Okakura Tenshin (1902)
This book examines how Asianism became a key concept in mainstream political discourse in China and Japan and how it was used both domestically and internationally in the contest for political hegemony. I argue that, from the early 1910s to the early 1930s, this contest changed Chinese and Japanese perceptions of ‘Asia’, from a concept that was foreign-referential, foreign-imposed, peripheral, and mostly negative and denied (in Japan) or largely ignored (in China) to one that was self-referential, self-defined, central, and widely affirmed and embraced. These changes were facilitated by the emergence of ‘Asia’ as a central geographical, cultural, racial, and political category in Japanese and Chinese published discourse. As an ism, Asianism not only elevated ‘Asia’ as a geographical concept with culturalist-racialist implications to the status of a full-blown principle (Jp. shugi /Ch. zhuyi ), but also encouraged its proposal and discussion vis-à-vis other political doctrines of the time, such as nationalism , internationalism , and imperialism . By the late 1920s, a great variety of conceptions of Asianism had emerged which terminologically and conceptually paved the way for the appropriation from above of ‘Asia’ discourse from the early 1930s onwards. 3 By then—against the background of increasing military penetration of Asia by Japan—transnational Chinese-Japanese Asianism discourse and practice had largely become defunct. In this sense, in Japan the period under analysis (roughly the Taishō era , 1912–1926) forms an important turning point of ‘Asia’ discourse and constitutes a link between the official pro-Westernist orientation of the Meiji period and the ideologization of ‘Asia’ from the early Shōwa period onwards. In China, the close association of affirmative views of ‘Asia’ with Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), the founder of the Chinese Republic in 1912, provided the conceptual equipment with which Japanese attempts at a monopolization of Asianism could be challenged. Chinese cooperation and collaboration with Japan, especially from the 1930s onwards in Manchuria , Nanjing , and elsewhere, would also be difficult, if not impossible, to imagine without the official embrace of ‘Asia’ by the founding father of modern China and his disciples after his death.
Topic and Scope
Studying Asianism (Jp. Ajiashugi, Ch. Yaxiya zhuyi/Yazhou zhuyi) as a key concept in the transnational political discourse of China and Japan from 1912 to 1933, this book examines how and why Asianism was utilized in the contest for hegemony within the changing world order. The temporal limitations of this study are informed by shifts in published political discourse: in 1912, the first year of the reign of the Taishō emperor in Japan and the first year of the Chinese Republic, a Chinese newspaper published an article with the title ‘Da Yaxiya zhuyi lun ’ (On Greater Asianism). This article would be republished several times in the following years and decades in Japan and may therefore be seen as the origin of transnational Chinese-Japanese public discourse on Asianism. In 1933, two years after the so-called Manchurian Incident and one year after the founding of Manchukuo (Jp. Manshūkoku, Ch. Manzhouguo), the Dai Ajia Kyōkai (Greater Asia Association ) was founded in Tokyo . Its founding symbolized the end of transnational 4 and civil society-driven discourse on Asianism ‘from below ’. Asianism, or at least specific conceptions thereof, now became appropriated ‘from above’ 5 by government and military representatives. Manchukuo functioned as the locus of its assumed first implementation. 6 In the sense of a widely circulated and hotly disputed negotiation of the content and significance of Asianism as a key concept that terminologically unified extremely diverse conceptions of Asia, 1912 marks the beginning of transnational Asianism discourse and 1933 its end. It was during these two decades that previous notions of Asian commonality and solidarity as expressed in terms such as ‘same culture, same race ’ (Jp. dōbun dōshu , Ch. tongwen tongzhong ), ‘to raise Asia’ (Jp. kō A , Ch. xing Ya ), or ‘White Peril ’ were terminologically and conceptually subsumed under the neologism ‘Asianism’. Simultaneously, with the introduction of the term Asianism as a politico-cultural principle or doctrine, discussions about the ‘question of Asia’ in China and Japan ceased to be a prerogative of scholars such as Kang Youwei (1858–1927) or Liang Qichao (1873–1929) in China and of radical interest groups such as the Fukuoka -based Genyōsha or the Kokuryūkai in Japan. By the mid-1910s, Asianism as a political concept had entered the mainstream of public discourse in both countries. Politicians, educators, bureaucrats, poets, and others now joined influential thinkers as part of a wider debate that analysed, proposed, or dismissed Asianism as a viable alternative or a supplement to other political concepts such as internationalism , nationalism , or cosmopolitanism.
The spatial focus of this study lies in the transnational public sphere consisting of Chinese–Japanese interactions and exchanges. With greater publishing activities (and a more stable political and economic environment) in Japan, many of these Chinese and Japanese contributions to Asianism discourse from 1912 to 1933 were published in Japan and in the Japanese language. However, the mutual reception of Chinese, Japanese, and other contributions testifies to the fact that these publications were part of a larger discourse that transcended the borders of Japan. In fact, some of the most influential contributions to Asianism discourse in Japan, such as the ‘Greater Asianism’ proposal of 1912, the Mahan –Chirol dispute of 1913 on Japanese Asianity and assimilability (see Chap. 3), as well as Sun Yat-sen ’s influential Kobe speech on Greater Asianism in 1924 (see Chap. 5), have non-Japanese origins and protagonists. Obviously, Asianism discourse in Japan was connected to other parts of Asia and to other parts of the world, not only with regard to its content but also physically; most strongly, this influence came from Chinese thinkers and activists who contributed their own original conceptions of Asianism or discussed those proposed by their Japanese counterparts, who in turn rediscussed the Chinese reactions. At no time were these contributions unrelated to the shifting regional hierarchy, in which China declined and Japan rose. On the contrary, the renegotiation of regional order, including regional hegemony, was an essential impetus that drove Chinese-Japanese Asianism discourse during the period under study.
In order to analyse this functional dimension of Asianism discourse, first and foremost this study seeks to understand how contemporary thinkers and activists in both countries defined and discussed Asianism. Who affirmed, analysed, criticized, and rejected the content of the concept or its viability and for what reasons? How did thinkers and activists interpret and employ Asianism to position themselves within public political discourse? How was ‘Asia’ as a concept re-evaluated and politicized? Why did disinterest in or negative perceptions of ‘Asia’ gradually change into more widely and openly articulated affirmations of the existence and significance of ‘Asia’ in mainstream political discourse in Japan and China during the 1910s and 1920s? In other words, how and why did an increasing number of Japanese and Chinese embrace ‘Asia’ from the early 1910s through the early 1930s? 7 Of course, this embrace of ‘Asia’ must not be misunderstood as representing in all cases an expression of sympathetic feelings; rather, to some, this process of affirmatively integrating ‘Asia’ into their discursive toolbox was much less a sympathetic embrace than a strangleh...
