Kenkoku University (Nation-Building University, abbreviated as Kendai) was the university founded in 1938 by the Kwantung Army, the Japanese army of occupation of the northeastern provinces of China commonly designated Manchuria. Sheared off from China by the Kwantung Army in March 1932 and declared an independent country, Manchukuo existed as a client state of Japan on the margins of the international order, recognized by a handful of nations. Kendai was the only institution of higher learning administered directly by the Manchukuo's governing authority, the State Council, which was dominated by Japanese officers. Kendai recruited male students of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Mongolian, and Russian backgrounds, and aimed to nurture a generation of leaders who would actualize the Pan-Asianist goal of "harmony among various peoples residing in Manchukuo," one of the founding principles of Manchukuo. Wartime relations between Japanese and non-Japanese are often framed in terms of binary narratives of resistance to or collaboration with Japanese imperialism. Assuming that national consciousness had firmly taken root in people's minds, most historians simply dismiss Japan's wartime discourse of Pan-Asianism as just another empty rationale for the domination of subject peoples by an imperial power, akin to the Anglo-American ‘white man's burden.’ Recent scholarship, however, has complicated the picture by identifying multiple and competing articulations of Pan-Asianism, while re-examining its effects on policy making and its reception by subject populations. My dissertation extends this effort by investigating actual practices of Pan-Asianism as experienced by Japanese and Asian students enrolled at a unique institution whose ideal was Asian unity on the basis of equality. Taking Kendai as a case study and uncovering the interactions that shaped relations below the level of the state, I attempt to demonstrate that the idealistic and egalitarian version of Pan-Asianism exercised considerable appeal even late into World War II.

The Republican period in Chinese history (1911-1949) is generally seen as a series of anti-imperialist and anti-foreign movements that coincide with the development of Chinese nationalism. The continual ties between Chinese nationalists and Japanese intellectuals are often overlooked. In the midst of the Sino-Japanese war, Uchiyama Kanzō, a Christian pacifist who was the owner of the bookstore, acted as a cultural liaison between May Fourth Chinese revolutionaries who were returned students from Japan, and Japanese left-wing activists working for the Communist cause, or visiting Japanese writers eager to meet their Chinese counterparts. I explore the relationship between Japanese and Chinese cultural literati in Shanghai, using Uchiyama Bookstore as the focal point. The ongoing Sino-Japanese tensions surrounding the "history problem" overemphasize the views of the right-wing nationalists and the Japanese state, dismissing the crucial role of left-wing groups. Uchiyama is a key link to understanding the ideological connection between Pan Asian anti-war activists in the pre-war period with peace activists in post-war Japan who were often accused of being "China's hand." Uchiyama, valued for his prewar connections with prominent Chinese intellectuals, becomes one of the founding members of Sino-Japan organizations upon his return to Japan after the war. I situate non-governmental Sino-Japanese organizations within the larger peace movement in Japan, which are transnational, in contrast with intergovernmental organizations that operate on the basis of nation-states. This work will contribute towards a growing recognition of histories that transcend nations, by focusing on both Chinese and Japanese cosmopolitan individuals who continued to form ties with each other, even as their respective nation-states were either at war, or did not have normalized diplomatic relations. I hope to also shed new light on histories of Republican China and post-war Japan, as well as explore issues related to empire and globalization in East Asia. / text

From the late nineteenth century, works inspired by Western art spread to China and Korea through Japan. Thus, Western art came to be accepted in China and Korea as a reinterpretation of Japan’s development of Western art, rather than a direct transmission from Western sources. This act of reinterpretation went on to have a lasting effect on the practice of Western-style painters in East Asia with their own acceptance modes. This thesis provides a study of self-portraits and nude paintings, two categories of painting without precedent in East Asia prior to the late nineteenth century, created by Kuroda Seiki, Li Shutong, Go Hui-dong, and Kim Gwan-ho in order to illustrate how East Asian countries established their own versions of modern art.

La recherche sur le développement du panasiatisme en dehors du Japon a été longtemps négligée par les historiens. Ce mémoire est une tentative de décloisonnement du panasiatisme afin de mieux comprendre son émergence en Asie et son rôle dans la construction de l'identité asiatique entre 1900 et 1924 en examinant le discours de cinq acteurs de l’« idéologie ». Utilisant comme perspectivel'histoire globale, il démontre comment le panasiatisme en Asie s'inscrit dans un réseau de contacts et de circulation d'idées intra-asiatique au début du 20e siècle, réseau influencé principalement par deux concepts dans sa définition de l'Asie: la race jaune et la civilisation asiatique. Tentant de mieux comprendre la relation entre la pensée en Asie et au Japon, le mémoire explore aussi les similarités et différences entre eux, notamment la création d'une identité et de la perception du Japon comme modèle de modernisation et chef du continent qui se propagent en Asie à travers la rhétorique panasiatique. / Research on the development of Pan-asianism outside Japan has long been neglected by historians. This thesis is an attempt of decompartmentalization of Pan-asianism to better understand its emergence in Asia and its role in the construction of an Asian identity between 1900 and 1924. This will be done by examining the speech of five actors of this "ideology." Using a Global History perspective, it demonstrates how Pan-asianism in Asia is part of a network of contacts and circulation of ideas in the early 20th century which was mainly influenced by two concepts in its definition of Asia: the yellow race and the Asian civilisation. Other than trying to better understand the relationships between Pan-asianism in Asia and Japan, this master’s thesis also explores the similarities and differences between them, especially the creation of an identity and a perception of Japan as a model of modernization and leader of the continent that spreads in Asia through Pan-asianism’s rhetoric.