Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-twqc4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-09T00:13:47.126Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850-Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman's “Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850-Present” deals with Pan-Asian ideas in a broad context, from the earliest encounters with Western imperialism and nationalism to contemporary concepts of “Asian Values.” They argue that Pan-Asianism only became part of Japan's mainstream political vocabulary in the 1910s, and it was problematic from the start. Unresolved questions included: Did Japan want to lead Asia in resisting European imperialism, or did it want an alliance with Great Britain? How should Asia fit into a European-dominated world? How did Korea and China, both of which Japan had long and complicated relationships with, fit into the vision of a Japanese-led Asia? Saaler and Szpilman also make clear that as time went on, Japanese proponents of Pan Asianism increasingly imagined the future as one of Japanese domination over the rest of Asia rather than equal partnerships, and they also found themselves winning increasing support from the Japanese government. The authors provide a thorough survey of the varieties of Japanese Pan-Asianism's leading thinkers and texts, (as well as many Chinese and Korean responses), briefly touching on all the issues discussed below.

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

References

2 This essay is a summary of some of the main points in their excellent two-volume collection of sources Pan-Asianism. They include many readings on Pan-Asianism outside of Japan/China in addition to those discussed here.