Victor Prosper Considerant

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Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. The Japanese language does not make a clear distinction between ‘great’ and ‘greater’. When describing the war they fought between 1941 and 1945—the Allies called it the Pacific war—the Japanese, in their English-language coverage of the war directed at the peoples of the conquered territories, generally used the phrase ‘Greater East Asian War’ (Dai To-A senso). Like the earlier British use of ‘Great Britain’ and the German one of ‘das grosse deutsche Reich’, the words implied the idea of expansion and expansionism; but it also had an extra connotation, suggesting ‘freeing the peoples of Asia from colonialism and imperialism’, which satisfied the Japanese claim to be fighting a war of liberation in Asia.

This fact is relevant to any consideration of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (Dai To-A kyoeiken) which was a part of the ideological underpinning of the Greater East Asian war. To the Japanese the phrase did not convey a message of imperialism or expansion so much as one of co-operation, and it was part of a doctrine which began to be propounded midway through Japan's war with China (see China incident), and before the outbreak of the Pacific war in December 1941, in order to explain and rationalize its relationship with the peoples of Asia. It amounted to a statement of Japan's war aims at their most favourable and was intended to give heart to the Japanese people, and to enlist the support of the populations of countries occupied or about to be occupied by the Japanese armies. As a slogan, it tried to rally those in Japanese-occupied areas against imperialism and colonialism, and to encourage them to mobilize with Japan both in the war and in the peace that would follow. The emphasis on mutual prosperity increased as the scope of the war extended.

However, the idea of a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was being refined in Japanese minds for most of the 1930s. When the momentous decision was taken to sanction the setting up of a new state in Manchuria in 1932 (see Manchukuo), there was already a debate among Japan's leaders about the way Japan should react to its continental neighbours. One of the initiators of the Manchurian Incident, which precipitated the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, founded the Concordia Association in July 1932 in an attempt to combine economic objectives, such as promoting agriculture and industry, with pan-Asian concepts of racial harmony. In his view, the new Manchukuo should be regarded as a model for Sino-Japanese co-operation with equal opportunity for Chinese, Mongols, and Koreans alike (Korea was then a Japanese colony). It was a blueprint for benign intentions, though the reality was that Japan brought about an economic and defensive amalgamation of Manchuria with Japan.

Shortly after war broke out between Japan and China, in July 1937, the ideas of the Concordia Association surfaced afresh. In two declarations on 3 November and 22 December 1938, the then prime minister, Prince Konoe, spelled out the doctrine of a New Order for East Asia, a doctrine which was linked to proclamations about the New Order in Europe being issued in Germany and Italy which were, by this time, Japan's partners in the Anti-Comintern pact of November 1936 (see also Axis strategy and co-operation). The notion, still a vague one, was that Japan had a mission to eradicate European and American imperialism, and also the influence of communism, from East Asia. It created the idea of a bloc consisting of Japan, Manchukuo, and China whose object would be to keep out alien influences. It was a challenge to the world powers interested in China and did not appeal to China's leader, Chiang Kai-shek, who continued his stubborn resistance to Japan's invasion of his country.

The German occupation of the Netherlands and the fall of France in June 1940 made their East Asian colonial possessions (see French Indo-China and Netherlands East Indies) vulnerable—the Netherlands East Indies was an important source of oil which Japan badly needed—and on 29 June Arita Hachirō, the foreign minister, announced in a radio broadcast that the bounds of the New Order were being extended to take in South-East Asia. When Konoe returned as prime minister in July, he reiterated his views about the New Order, promising ‘increasingly to bind ourselves economically to Manchukuo and China and to proceed to South-East Asia’. Shortly afterwards a policy statement laid down that Japan should strive for world peace, based on Hakkō ichiu—literally, ‘eight points of the compass under one roof’, but meaning a spirit of universal benevolence—and that it should aim for a New Order in Greater East Asia centred on Japan, occupied China, Korea, and Manchukuo. The notion of the Co-prosperity Sphere was thus announced and in November 1940 it was adopted as a national objective; but there was still a large element of vagueness because of the emphasis given to phrases such as ‘New Order’, ‘the great spirit’, and ‘the Imperial Way’, which were undefined and had a peculiarly Japanese meaning. The concept was still far short of a blueprint and could hardly be the basis of a firm alliance in wartime.

The Co-prosperity Sphere was partly a response to world events and partly a retaliation to the economic sanctions the USA was imposing on Japan in an effort to stop its aggression in China. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and more especially on the British colonial territories of Hong Kong and Malaya the same month, the bounds of the sphere had to be further defined. In a policy statement to the 79th Diet on 21 January 1942 the new prime minister, General Tōjō, referred to Japan's conviction about the mutual benefits to be derived from coexistence and co-prosperity based on a common goal, with Japan as ‘the core, the kernel, whereby all states and peoples of Great East Asia will be enabled to find their true place (in the world)’.

In this speech Tōjō seemed to be reflecting ideas formulated by a body called the Total War Research Institute which had close relations with the army and the cabinet. In January 1942 the institute prepared ‘the draft plan for the establishment of the Co-prosperity Sphere’, which seemed to influence the thinking of the government. Here for the first time we have an attempt at a definition of the sphere. The document divided it into three areas: the Inner Sphere (Japan, Manchukuo, North China, the lower Yangtse valley, and the Soviet Maritime area); the Smaller Co-prosperity Sphere (including the Inner Sphere, plus Eastern Siberia, China, French Indo-China, and the Nanyo or South-East Asia; and the Greater Co-prosperity Sphere (including the Smaller Sphere, plus Australia, India, and various island groups in the Pacific Ocean area). It was the Smaller Sphere which would be developed in the immediate future, but it was envisaged that it would require at least 20 years to complete, after which there would be a gradual extension to the construction of the Greater Sphere, though this ‘presupposes the need for another great war in the future’.

It will be clear from this definition that, while the doctrine was sweeping, it was also imprecise. It represented long-range thinking, and had little relation to practical realities, but Tōjō at least made a move in the right direction when he established the Greater East Asia ministry in November 1942 which inevitably led to a greater concentration on pan-Asian thinking and propaganda. This move by Tōjō also amounted to a vote of no confidence by him in the foreign ministry which was relieved of many of its diplomatic functions, especially over Japanese-occupied areas. The administrative structure of these had been worked out in Tokyo in a hasty way in November 1941 when it was agreed that they would be largely under military control, though a large number of civilian bureaucrats followed the occupation forces (army and navy). But even when the Greater East Asia ministry took over it had only limited involvement.

Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere: Raw materials imported by Japan from GEACS, 1940–5

Ian Nish

Bibliography

Beasley, W. G. , Japanese Imperialism, 1894–1945 (Oxford, 1987).
Jones, F. C. , Japan's New Order in East Asia: Its Rise and Fall, 1937–1945 (Oxford, 1954).
Morley, J. W. (ed.), The Fateful Choice: Japan's Advance into South-East Asia, 1939–41 (New York, 1980).
Myers, R. H. and Peattie, M. R. (eds.), The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 (Princeton, 1986).

Victor Prosper Considérant , 1808–93, French socialist; follower of Charles Fourier . In 1837, at the death of Fourier, he became the acknowledged leader of Fourierism. He edited Fourierist newspapers, including the Philanstère and the Phalange, and published works on the subject, notably a digest of Fourier's writings, Destinée sociale (2d ed. 1847–49). As a member of the national assembly, he took part in the June Days insurrection (1848) and was forced to leave Paris and live in Belgium. At the request of Albert Brisbane, Considérant tried unsuccessfully to establish (1855–57) a Fourierist colony in Texas. His several books include Principes du socialisme (1847), an argument favoring Fourierism over other kinds of socialism.

Bibliography: See biography by M. Dommanget (1929).

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere The pseudo-political and economic union of Japanese-dominated Asian and Pacific territories during World War II. In the aftermath of Japan's dramatic conquests of 1941–42, some nationalist leaders (for example, Indonesia's SUKARNO and Burma's AUNG SAN) collaborated with the Japanese for tactical reasons. However, the hardships wrought by the Japanese (principally through their requisitioning of supplies and use of forced labour) soon disabused the local populations about Japan's intentions. By the end of the war, the Co-Prosperity Sphere had become an object of hatred and ridicule.