In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions―one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines. Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.
Author(s): Jeremy A. Yellen
Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 303
Tags: Imperial Power, Colonial Power, Total Empire, Total War, East Asia
THE GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
A Note on Names, Transliterations, and Translations......Page 12
Introduction: When Total Empire Met Total War......Page 16
Part I The Imagined Sphere......Page 38
1. Into the Tiger’s Den......Page 40
2. Order Begets War......Page 61
3. Imagining Co-Prosperity......Page 91
Part II The Contested Sphere......Page 118
4. The Patriotic Collaborators......Page 120
5. A New Deal for Greater East Asia?......Page 156
6. Independence in Transition......Page 184
Conclusion: The Co-Prosperity Sphere in History......Page 220
Abbreviations......Page 232
Notes......Page 234
Bibliography......Page 270
Index......Page 294