![]() Many Japanese nationalists, for instance, claimed that Japan’s rapid and successful modernization was a testament to the nation’s superiority and signaled Japan’s rightful place as the Asian leader in the region. They thought of their ambitions as bringing their Asian brethren together.Īs was the case with many other imperial powers at the time, such differences were often framed in a language of racial, ethnic, and cultural superiority. 2 In the minds of many Japanese, expanding their empire into other Asian regions was somehow different from that sort of imperialism. Advocates of Pan-Asianism in Japan believed that they were expanding their empire in order to liberate Asian territories from Western imperialism. These ideas were captured in a word widely used at the time but rarely heard today: Pan-Asianism. It was also fueled by a strong ideological sense of mission and racial superiority. Japanese imperialism was not simply about increasing the nation’s territory. It is a race feeling, which repeated triumphs have served only to strengthen. It is not a new feeling created by victory. Perhaps the future danger is just in this immense self-confidence. The war is ended the future, though clouded, seems big with promise and, however grim the obstacles to loftier and more enduring achievements, Japan has neither fears nor doubts. In 1895, a year after the end of the first Sino-Japanese War, writer Lafcadio Hearn Lafcadio Hearn recounted:
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