Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)
Dec 26, 2023
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Jeremy Yellen discusses The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan's attempt at creating a new bloc order in East and Southeast Asia during WWII. He explores the origins and evolution of the Sphere, Japan's alliance with Germany and Italy, and the concept of collaboration in the Philippines and Burma. Yellen also delves into the motives behind Japan's new internationalist ideology and highlights the Greater East Asia Conference of 1943. The podcast ends with a lighthearted discussion on job hunting and cultural exploration.
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a complex concept that evolved during World War II as a response to Germany's influence and Japan's geopolitical strategies.
The Co-Prosperity Sphere's vision changed over time, with serious efforts to shape Asia's future happening after the war started and the government's approach adapting as the war went poorly.
Collaboration with Japan in the Philippines and Burma was driven by the shared purpose of attaining national independence and freedom from colonial rulers.
Deep dives
The Origins and Vision of the Co-Prosperity Sphere
The podcast episode explores the origins and vision of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere during World War II. It discusses how the concept emerged as a response to Germany's potential influence over East Asian colonies and how Foreign Minister Matsoka's sphere of influence diplomacy played a role. It also highlights the mix of great imagination and naivete in the early stages of the sphere, and how serious efforts to shape Asia's future began to take shape after the war started.
The Evolution and Legacy of the Co-Prosperity Sphere
The podcast episode delves into the later period of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, emphasizing the post-Matsoka era and the significant changes that occurred in the sphere's development. It notes that the government's approach to the sphere evolved as the war went poorly, leading to a doubling down on liberal internationalism. The episode also touches on the Greater East Asia Conference of 1943 and discusses the legacy of the sphere in Southeast Asia, highlighting how sham independence brought opportunities for nations like the Philippines and Burma to build new institutions that impacted the post-war era.
Legacies and Conclusions
In this final part of the podcast episode, the focus is on the post-war legacy of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. It emphasizes how the sphere initiated the decline of empires in Asia, with Britain and other colonial powers facing challenges in maintaining control. It also notes the influence of the 1943 version of the sphere on Japan's post-war foreign policy, and its use in shaping Japan's relations with the Philippines and its admission to the United Nations. The episode concludes by highlighting how the Co-Prosperity Sphere's ideas continued to impact the post-war era with its enduring presence and ongoing debates surrounding its true purpose and significance.
The Concept of the Co-Prosperity Sphere
The podcast episode discusses the concept of the Co-Prosperity Sphere as a series of ideas and plans that were not coordinated. It emphasizes that the Co-Prosperity Sphere should be seen as a process of envisioning Asia rather than a single unified vision. The podcast provides examples of how even influential figures like Loyama Mata Nichi and Prime Minister Tojo were unclear about the meaning and purpose of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. It reveals that the vision for the sphere varied outside of government as well, with organizations like the Naval Intelligence Division, Total War Research Institute, and National Policy Research Association viewing it as a hierarchical political system, combining both formal colonialism and informal anti-colonial control.
Patriotic Collaboration in the Philippines and Burma
The podcast episode explores the concept of patriotic collaboration in the Philippines and Burma. It challenges the negative perception of collaboration and argues that political elites in these countries were caught between two empires, Japan and their former colonial masters. The episode highlights that collaboration was driven by a shared purpose, which was to secure national independence and freedom from their respective colonial rulers. The podcast reveals that Filipino leaders saw collaboration with Japan as necessary in the short run, as it offered potential independence and promised caring for their region until the Americans returned. Similarly, Burmese middle-class nationalists collaborated with Japan to secure full independence from the British Empire, as the British repeatedly showed a lack of commitment to granting Burma independence. The episode demonstrates that these elites were working towards their long-term goals of national independence, and their collaboration was driven by their aspirations for their countries' futures.
Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnational exploration of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan’s ambitious, confused, and much maligned attempt to create a new bloc order in East and Southeast Asia during World War II. Yellen’s book is welcome both as the first book-length treatment of the Sphere in English and for also being innovative in both approach and analysis. The book is divided into two parts, each addressing one of the “two Pacific Wars,” as Yellen puts it: a “war of empires” and “an anticolonial war… for independence.” The first half of the book treats the Japanese “high policy” of the Sphere. Here, Yellen not only provides—through the Coprosperity Sphere—a provocative new reading of the Tripartite Pact and the imbrication of Japan’s regional and global geopolitical strategies, but also outlines an important timeline of how Japanese conceptualizations of the Sphere evolved with the changing economic, political, and military expediencies of the Pacific War. Though ideas about the Sphere as a regional order of hierarchical solidarity with Japan at its apex, a “grand strategy of opportunism” rooted in the “sphere-of-influence diplomacy” and “cooperative imperialism” of Japan’s bombastic and enigmatic foreign minister, Matsuoka Yōsuke, Yellen shows that plans for the Sphere only became specific and concrete when Japan’s war situation descended into increasing desperation from 1942 on. The second half of the book shifts gears to examine responses to the Sphere in the Philippines and Burma. Yellen shows that for local nationalist elites like Burma’s first prime minister Ba Maw, whether Japanese rhetoric about the creation of more-or-less liberal international order within the Sphere for the top-echelon nations like Burma and the Philippines was genuine or self-serving, “even sham independence brought opportunity.” By focusing on these pragmatic nationalists (“patriotic collaborators”) Yellen contributes to a growing body of literature on empire that refuses to be pigeonholed by binaries of virtuous resistance and traitorous collaboration.
This podcast was recorded as a lecture/dialogue for a live audience at Nagoya University.
