ABSTRACT
Japan’s foreign policy and its relationship with Asia is marked with ambivalence. 1 Indeed, since the formation of the modern Japanese state in the 19th century, discourses on its foreign policy oscillated between a Western and Asian identity (Suzuki 2009). Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, prominent intellectuals, such as Yukichi Fukuzawa, advocated a course of rapid modernization through an embrace of Western values and a “de-Asianization” of Japan (datsua nyūō). In contrast, discourses emerging in the early 20th century began to focus on the Asian region as Japan’s civilizational space. The slogan “same culture, same race” (dōbun dōshu) was a result of this discourse and evolved alongside a Pan-Asianist movement in Japan (Saaler 2006). Propagating the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” the intellectual discourse on cultural identity was overtaken by Japan’s imperial expansion into Asia. The dismantling of Japan’s wartime state under US occupation was quickly followed by years of rapid economic growth, which marked the return of Japan to the international stage. Japan’s colonial legacy, however, has shaped its relationship with its Asian neighbors ever since, as did its postwar economic recovery.
