Pan-asianism and renaissance in interwar Japan from a global perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present article explores Japanese interwar Pan-Asianism, namely Ōkawa Shūmei's, rhetoric in its relationship to a global narrative on renaissance and regeneration developing during the first decades of the twentieth century. First, it analyses the specific international framework in which Japanese Pan-Asianism developed. Then it contextualises the Pan-Asianist use of fukkō, a term that can be translated as “resurgence,” “revival” or “regeneration,” but that is also part of the standard translations for the European Renaissance (bungei fukkō, fukkō jidai , etc.). In order to do this, the article: a) highlights the fraught relationship of fukkō /renaissance to other transnational paradigm of change: revolution, reform, reconstruction; b) analyses the relationship in interwar Japan between fukkō and kaizō, another marker for change extremely common in that period's public discourse. In the second part, the article explores, through the case study of Pan-Asianist author Ōkawa Shūmei, how global sources, especially in English, are linked to the formation of the fukkō rhetoric and how, through them, we can establish a link to the semantic of renaissance.