This part focuses on the period between 1937 and 1940. These years witnessed a second major resurgence of pan-Asian agitation in Japan that was echoed to various degrees in other parts of Asia. However, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 had revealed the contradictions inherent in Pan-Asianism. In the eyes of most Chinese, Japan’s profession of lofty pan-Asian goals in its “holy war” (a term used to refer to the war in China at least from 1934) was brutally contradicted by the rapid escalation of the conflict into total war and by the atrocities committed by Japanese troops against their Asian “brothers.”
This wartime emergency situation required new strategies of legitimization. It was in this period that, for the first time, the Japanese authorities promulgated pan-Asian policy guidelines, drawing on slogans such as “Raising Asia” (Kōa). In 1938, the Agency for Raising Asia (Kōa-in) was founded, while the government issued declarations that proclaimed the establishment of a “New Order” in East Asia—an order that, in most cases, was linked to the pan-Asian ideals of an “East Asian Community” or an “East Asian League.”
A number of organizations were founded, some of which were granted official status as advisory bodies to the government. Eventually, the various pan-Asian organizations were merged, under government guidance, into a single organization—the Dai Nihon Kōa Dōmei (Greater Japanese League for Raising Asia). Government involvement had the effect of making Pan-Asianism an important component of official doctrine. Thus, in contrast to the early pan-Asian societies in Japan, some of these new organizations attracted relatively large memberships.