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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere from the viewpoint of Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Focusing on those “pioneer emigrants” and Japan’s emigration policy, I will analyze the training process in Japan and their experiences in Southeast Asia.

Paper long abstract:

　　This paper aims to explore the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere from the viewpoint of Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Focusing on those “pioneer emigrants” (takushi, 拓士) and Japan’s emigration policy to Southeast Asia, I will analyze the training process in Japan and their experiences in Southeast Asia by asking: What was the ideal image of the Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia that the Japanese Empire sought to train? What kind of training did they actually receive and what kind of reality did they live in Southeast Asia?

　　The Ministry of Colonial Affairs (Takumusho,拓務省) implemented the Japanese Empire’s emigration policy to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. This policy is characterized by two features. The first is that young men around the age of 18 were trained as practical human resources for the development of Southeast Asia and as the role model of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere in order to embody the idea of coexistence and co-prosperity. By using not only the official documents such as Imperial Diet documents and Takumusho publications but also personal archives such as memoirs, letters and diaries I have uncovered, I will analyze the characteristics of Takunan preparatory school Takunan Juku (拓南塾), one of the institutions that trained southern emigrants and reconstruct those pioneer emigrants’ experience in the Philippines of graduates sent to Southeast Asia.