I am engaged in research on the various plans for an East Asian regional order that were proposed in Japan during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War, as well as their transwar development across East Asia. An important aspect of this research is the analysis of the discourse on an “East Asian community” that arose as the Second Sino-Japanese War dragged on. My research in this area focuses on both the reactions this type of political discourse generated in China and the new transwar discursive developments to which it led.
My research on this point using historical sources available in Japan shows that in wartime China it was mainly pro-Japanese intellectuals who introduced and critiqued the concept of an “East Asian community”. However, to deepen my research, it was also essential to examine historical sources in Chinese archives and libraries. When I first came to this realization in January 2023, it was still difficult to conduct a survey of documents in China due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now I was able to complete this work smoothly because of subsequent changes in the situation and the help of this grant.
The survey of Chinese documents allowed me to verify that many pro-Japanese intellectuals in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, including converted leftists, freely accepted the concept of an “East Asian community”. Moreover, it has become clear that some anti-Japan left-wing intellectuals developed their own original arguments through their critiques of Japanese ideas about an East Asian regional order, including the concept of the “East Asian community.” I was also able to determine that, even after the war, these figures continued to develop their ideas about Japan using this experience as a foundation.
I plan to publish two articles based on the materials collected in this research survey: one article tracing the history of research on the concept of the “East Asian community” since the 1990s and situating cases of its acceptance among pro-Japanese Chinese intellectuals within that genealogy, and one article tracing the transwar development of the discourse on an East Asian regional order, ideas about China, and ideas about Japan that were articulated by Chinese intellectuals on the anti-Japan side during the war who opposed Japanese discourses on an East Asian regional order but showed interest in other formulations of an “East Asian community”. In this way, the grant has proven vital for the development of my future research.