Despite its title, Eri Hotta’s 2007 work Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War 1931-45 is less a military history and more an intellectual one, which Hotta argues are inseparably linked.* In a surprisingly clear and approachable work, Hotta traces the ideas of Pan-Asianism and its influence on Japan’s “Fifteen Year War” from their inception to present day while placing these ideas within the broader colonial and post-colonial discourse. Despite how popular the term Pan-Asianism is among historians of the Second World War, its ideology—a carefully chosen definition by Hotta—remains misunderstood and misrepresented. As such, Hotta directly confronts the post-war historiography of Pan-Asianism as a unitary belief utilized 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵-𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘰 to justify Japan’s militarization and imperial intervention in the 1930s to offer a far more complex image of Pan-Asianism which properly situates the way this ideology shaped and was shaped by international events.

Hotta’s introduction and first chapter are a genuine joy to read, showcasing a sophisticated knowledge of varied theoretical approaches that are so well integrated, one would be forgiven if these nods to broader colonial historiography were missed. She couples these theoretical approaches to a concise summarization of contemporary historiography on the subject before delving into defining the three major strands of Pan-Asianist thought which she labels Teasist, Sinic, and Meishuron respectively. Hotta utilizes these three definitions to demonstrate that the Meishuron path was far from determined, and that purer forms of Pan-Asianist discourse existed as competing options building and defining Japanese identity.

Like their Chinese and Vietnamese counterparts (part of the same letters, same race union), post-Meiji Japanese intellectuals straddled “tradition” and modernity” generating anxieties created with the collapse of mainland Asia, including India, under the yoke of imperialism and colonialism. In the following chapters, Hotta argues that Japan’s unique position as an emerging Great Power gave rise to genuine Pan-Asianist discourse aimed at freeing Asia from Western exploitation in an “Asian Monroe Doctrine” which found expression in their cooperation with Chinese and Vietnamese nationalists like Sun Yat-Sen and Phan Boi Chau (59). In a similar vein, Hotta offers multiple analyses of events like the formation of Manchukuo and how this state came to embody the hopes of the competing Pan-Asianist ideologies, providing manifold counter-arguments to the classic militarist interpretation. 

Ultimately, Hotta provides clear and concise evidence that Pan-Asianism was more a cause then an effect of the Fifteen Year War as intellectuals and the Konoe government “transformed Pan-Asianism into the country’s official war aim” (143). It was not, as many suggest, a varnish over bald-faced imperialism, but rather a legitimate ideology that drove Japan’s mission as a “savior” of Asia that became corrupted like the civilizing missions of the Western Empires as ideology blinded material reality. In general, Hotta’s work is a welcome contribution to transnational and colonial history while maintaining approachability that many post-colonial scholars should strive for making Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War a must read for scholars of all interests and levels.