Chapter 10: Global Policy with the

Yamato Race as Nucleus

July 3, 2013Sayaka HamanaYuta Ozaki

The Government destroying documents

• Japanese officials had intentionally destroyed huge quantities of documentary records before the US cooperation forces arrived

• A variety of additional documents that survive both the bombings and the destruction have come to the attention of scholars

The Report that survived the bombings

• One of the reports that survived was found in Tokyo in 1981, consisting of almost four thousand pages divided into eight volumes

• This report was written by researchers of the Ministry of Health and Welfare

• The researchers offered a long-range vision of Japan’s projected global “new order”

The contents of the Report• Directly confronted the issue of racism

• Sought the opportunity of finding “ideas unique to Japan”, “ideas common among the Asian races”, and “ideals shared by all mankind” when transcending such racism

• Stated that the Japanese were the “leading race” of Asia and destined to remain so “forever”

What is this Report in the first place?

• It is an detailed example of empirical racism in the hands of well –educated Japanese practitioners

• It is a frank statement of the relationship between Japan’s expansionist policies and its assumption of racial and cultural supremacy

• It shows Japanese racism and ethnocentrism to be far from a unique and sui generis phenomenon

“ proper place”

• Potent concept served in the mundane world to rationalize and reinforce disparate status and power relationships among people, races, and countries

• Japanese perception of themselves as the leading race was consistent with traditional philosophic concepts of “proper place”

The national character of the Japanese

• These three points effected the formation of national character as the Japanese

① Geographic isolation

② Natural disaster

③ The distinct seasonal variations

Japanism

• Japanese expansion abroad was first and foremost the unfolding of a benevolent mission

• To bring the quantitative improvement, the government promoted social-welfare legislation, created new medical facilities, and provided national health insurance, in order to raise the birth rate.

The eight directions under one roof

• The improvisation on the popular slogan

• “The ultimate ideal of the Cooperative Body is to place the whole world under one roof”

• Westerners often interpreted as signaling Japan’s plan for world conquest

Plan to immigration to the Co-Prosperity Sphere• Moving 14% of Japanese population to around the Sphere

• For the relentless demographic imperatives over population• For military strategies in order to ensure the cooperation of native people with Japan• For economic consideration impossibility of being fed from existing home resources• Avoiding intermarriage with native people for purity of blood

Country Total Japanese Population (million)

Japan 74.7Korea 2.7Taiwan 0.4Manchukuo 3.1China 1.5IndochinaThailandBurma 2.38PhilippinesEast IndiesAustralia 2.0New Zealand

Family Ideology• Each individual was to his/her proper place,

culminating at the top in the single patriarch or family head

• The family was the archetypical “organic” entity, whose inner relationships were inequitable, but in theory complementary and harmonious

• The ruling samurai elite in the feudal era

• Argued the relationship had been theirs since earliest time

Family Ideology (2)• Considering the emperor as the pater families

• Formally adopted in the 1930s Japan: self-proclaimed head of the family and parent The core countries: elder brother or brothers The people and nations of the south: younger brothers

• Textbooks for primary-school children

Resistance from Asian people

• Toward Japanese behavior to them oppression and outright brutality

• Toward racial composition by administrative personnel the visceral racism

Japanization

The basic financial and economic policy

• In order to assume the dominant financial and economic roles

• In order to refashion these is a manner which ensured Japan’s permanent supremacy in Asia

Opinions

• The text was important because it explained Japanese idea toward the race specifically. Also, in this chapter, it revealed how Japan had planned during the War.

• The text was interesting because the theory of family was familiar with us. Moreover, the report which the Ministry of Health and Welfare written impressed us.

• The part of family ideology was the most difficult to understand

The End !!