Albeit with little reference to Woodrow Wilson, Yanaihara Tadao, the Chair of Colonial Policy at Tokyo Imperial University in the 1920s and 1930s, and a pious Christian, adapted the core ideas of Wilsonian liberalism such as national self-determination, multilateralism, and democracy to the political and legal framework of imperial Japan. Yanaihara advocated the principle of autonomy for the Japanese empire to transform itself into the core of a liberal international order. He articulated that the combination of colonialism and unfettered capitalism had detrimental effects on the colonized and advocated for a Japanese empire that reflected the voice of its colonized people. However, having seen little improvement in the status of the colonized, Yanaihara increasingly regarded Japanese pan-Asianist ideas in the 1930s as a cover-up of Japanese expansionism. Almost abandoning his earlier ideas about empire as a multiethnic society, he criticized Japan's military venture as economically unprofitable, and policies toward Manchuria as stoking the rise of Chinese nationalism. He advocated for the normative framework advanced by the Mandate System of the League of Nations as a way toward the universalization of sovereignty, and protection of stateless populations. The failure of the Wilsonian moment in Japan forced Yanaihara out of Tokyo Imperial University but also strengthened his inclination towards liberal internationalism.
