History geeks will no doubt love Selcuk Esenbel’s essay, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945.” Just a sample:
During the years 1900–1945, the question that motivated Muslims and some Japanese was whether Japan could be the “Savior of Islam” against Western imperialism and colonialism if this meant collaboration with Japanese imperialism. Even during the 1930s, when there was little hope left for prospects of democracy and liberalism in Japan (for that matter in Europe as well), the vision of a “Muslim Japan” was so compelling to many Muslims in Asia and beyond, even among black Muslims of Harlem, as a means for emancipation from Western hegemony/colonial reality that it justified cooperation with Japanese intelligence overseas. Okawa Shumei, the major intellectual figure of Pan-Asianism, the “mastermind of Japanese fascism” in the Tokyo trials, who justified Japan’s mission to liberate Asia from Western colonialism by war if necessary, saw Islam as the means. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the relationship transformed into a major Japanese military strategy as the Japanese government began to implement its Islamic policy by mobilizing Muslim forces against the United Kingdom, Holland, China and Russia in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
Read the rest on your own.
(Hat tip to Japundit)
5 Comments
I was also surprised that the novel “English Patient” (book not movie) was also very sympathetic to Imperial Japan. I think the author was an Indian English…
I’m sure colonizing and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Asians into feeding the Japanese war machine was a result of fighting for Islamic vaules. GMAFB. If this is so damn true, why didn’t the Japanese surrender to the communists? Why was it that Japan’s **ONLY** (READ: ONLY) ally was Germany? Revisionist history at its finest. How many Muslims are in Japan now? .000001% perhaps?
I wouldn’t call the English Patient as “sympathetic” toward Imperial Japan, just unwilling to engage anyone in an Asian war or interfere with their politics, as their expedition was largely of a scientific nature. I’m sure there was no spying conducted on the Germans.
:P 
America at the time was extremely opposed to entering any type of conflict, and officially adopted an isolationist policy prior to being sucked into WWII by the British.
I will say this about Japan, they are going to have one hell of a price to pay when China finally makes similar claims as to what Japan had — claiming all Asian countries as rogue Chinese states/Chinese properties in the coming years. Poor Japan, they can’t get along with anyone. How do you say “Sony, Panasonic and Toyota” in Chinese?
I will say this about Japan, they are going to have one hell of a price to pay when China finally makes similar claims as to what Japan had — claiming all Asian countries as rogue Chinese states/Chinese properties in the coming years. Poor Japan, they can’t get along with anyone. How do you say “Sony, Panasonic and Toyota” in Chinese?
Whatever you say, baduk…
Last month I blogged a short excerpt about Japan’s attempts to get the Mufti of Pahang to issue a call for jihad against the British after the fall of Malaya in 1942. The Mufti said, ‘Yes, provided that the Japanese emperor is a Muslim.’
So what you are telling me is that Osama bin Laden is Japan’s fault.
Seriously, though, it completes the circle in terms of aligning with Germany’s policies with regard to the Islamic world.