In the early 20th century Japanese Pan-Asianists were often explicit supporters of movements of national liberation. They supported Filipinos trying to free themselves from Spanish and American colonialism and Chinese trying to free themselves from the Unequal Treaties, Manchu rule, and China's general “backwardness.” Yet even then the story was complicated.

Sato Kazuo, in “Sun Yat-sen's 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tōkyō,” not only describes some of Sun's activities but gives a concrete example of the contradiction at the heart of Japanese Pan-Asianism by discussing two of Sun's friends. Miyazaki Toten is rightly remembered as a democrat who wanted to “promote reforms in Japan as well as the rest of the world through the revolution in China.” Sun was also aided, however, by Utsunomiya Taro who saw the 1911 revolution as a chance to split China into smaller units that could more easily be dominated by Japan. At that point there was no clear consensus among Japanese on what Japan should become, but all sides used China to project their visions of a Japanese future.