An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus

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An Investigation of Global Policy with the

Ministry of Health and Welfare's Institute of Population Problems (now the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research
), and completed on July 1, 1943.

The document, comprising six volumes totaling 3,127 pages, deals with

race theory in general, and the rationale behind policies adopted by wartime Japan towards other races, while also providing a vision of the Asia-Pacific under Japanese control.[1]

The document was written in an academic style, surveying

overseas expansionism was essential not only for military and economic security, but for preserving racial consciousness. Concerns pertaining to the cultural assimilation of second and third generation immigrants into foreign cultures were also mentioned.[2]

Discovery

The document was classified and largely forgotten until 1981, when portions were discovered in a

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War.[3]
In 1982 the Ministry of Health and Welfare re-issued the full six-volume version along with another two volumes entitled The Influence of War upon Population as a reference work for historians.

Impact

Although external Japanese propaganda during World War II emphasized Pan-Asianist and anti-colonial themes, specifically anti-Western imperialist themes, domestic propaganda always took Japanese superiority over other Asians for granted. However, Japan never had an overarching racial theory for Asia until well into the 1930s[4]—following the Japanese invasion of China, military planners decided that they should raise Japanese racial consciousness in order to forestall the potential assimilation of Japanese colonists.[4]

Since the document was written by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which was not a powerful arm of the bureaucracy at the time and it had to essentially censor its own recommendations so as not to violate official doctrine and policy of the Japanese Empire and it could not even obtain a public hearing over its ideas, it seems that the document itself would have had little impact over Japanese policymakers.[5]

Themes

Colonization and living space

Further information: Hakkō ichiu

Some statements in the document coincide with the then-publicly espoused concept of

Blood and Soil" was frequently used, though usually in quotes, as if to indicate its alien origin.[6]

The authors rationalized Japanese colonization of most of the Eastern Hemisphere including New Zealand and Australia, with projected populations by the 1950s, as "securing the living space of the Yamato race," a very clear reflection of the Nazi concept of Lebensraum.[7]

Racial supremacy

It has been noted that even in the decades before World War II, the Japanese culture regarded

racially superior people, were destined to rule Asia "eternally" and become the supreme dominant leader of all humanity and ruler of the world.[11] The term "proper place" was used frequently throughout the document.[6]

The document left open whether Japan was destined eventually to become head of the global family of nations.[2]

Jinshu and Minzoku

The document drew an explicit distinction between

民族) or Volk (English: people), describing a minzoku as "a natural and spiritual community bound by a common destiny".[12] However, the authors went on to assert that blood mattered.[13] It approved of Hitler's concern about finding the "Germanness" of his people.[14] It made explicit calls, sometimes approaching Nazi attitudes, for eugenic improvements, calling for the medical profession not to concentrate on the sickly and weak, and for mental and physical training and selective marriages to improve the population.[15]

See also

North Korea:

  • The Cleanest Race, which suggests that the ideology of the North Korean government is derived from 1930s Japanese racialism.

References

  1. ^ Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (Fall 2000), Ethnic Engineering: Scientific Racism and Public Opinion Surveys in Midcentury Japan, vol. 8, Duke University Press, pp. 499–529
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-415-22403-9
  3. ISBN 0-394-50030-X
  4. ^ a b c Dower, John W. (2012). Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World. The New Press. pp. 58–60.
  5. ^ Roebuck, Kristin (2015). "JAPAN REBORN:Mixed-Race Children, Eugenic Nationalism, and the Politics of Sex after World War II". Columbia University. pp. 70–71.
  6. ^ a b Dower (1986), p. 265.
  7. ^ Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p. 246, 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
  8. ^ Rigg, Brian Mark (July 28, 2020). "Racial Purity and Domination in World War II". LinkedIn. Retrieved November 12, 2023.[unreliable source?]
  9. ^ Zohar, Ayelet (October 15, 2020). "Introduction: Race and Empire in Meiji Japan". The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved November 12, 2023.
  10. ^ Dower (1986), p. 266.
  11. ^ Dower (1986), p. 263–264.
  12. ^ Dower (1986), p. 267.
  13. ^ Dower (1986), p. 268.
  14. ^ Dower (1986), p. 269.
  15. ^ Dower (1986), p. 270.
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