War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was the English translation for a political entity designed to deal with the lands Japan conquered roughly between 1930-1945. The propaganda behind the name is that the Japanese were there to free the other Asian nations from the yoke of European servitude. The name is a euphemism, however, because all other nations were seen as being inferior to Japan. While the Japanese vowed to rid Asia of the Europeans, they still would maintain a colonial-type system, just under their own aegis, arguing that being led by an Asian nation is better than by a European one. Thus, any nation that fell under their sway would inevitably fall within a ranking system that always placed the Japanese on top. One of the chief roles of these other nations would then be to provide Japan with vital resources.

For the Japanese, social hierarchy was not, during the war years, a concept relegated solely to Japanese society. The plan was, in the conquered areas, to establish a strict autarkic system that would replace the old European colonial paradigm with the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. The idea of proper place was also something divine, in that the Japanese viewed themselves as the purest race in the world based on the belief, among others, that they very first Japanese emperor,