The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 4 | Issue 1 | Jan 04, 2006

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The New Imperialism and the Post-Colonial DevelopmentalState: Manchukuo in comparative perspective

Prasenjit Duara

The New Imperialism and the Post-Colonial Developmental State: Manchukuoin comparative perspective

By Prasenjit Duara

With recent developments in Iraq andelsewhere, an argument is beginning toappear—or re-appear-- that much of twentiethcentury imperialism might better be thought ofas a kind of federalism. Thus, Anthony Pagden,who provides the most cogent version of thisargument, believes that “it would be far wiserto look upon both the United States and theEuropean Union as, in their very differentways, attempts to revive a federalist ratherthan an imperial object.” Pagden traces hisideas to thinkers like Joseph Schumpeter andJean Monnet (credited with the idea of a“United States of Europe”). According toPagden, the ages of conquest and commercewere, by the twentieth century, being replacedby a global order in which the 18th centuryEuropean idea of sovereignty was transferredfrom the nation-state to “something moreamorphous: a modern, or postmodern, globalsociety.” At the base of this development wasthe idea of empire, which survived thecompetitive nationalisms of the 19th century,as an “extended protectorate” and in the wordsof Edmund Burke, a “sacred trust”.(1)

A closer look at the mid-twentieth centurytransformations of imperialism suggests thatPagden’s argument has greater credibility thanmany might want to give it. But I believePagden is fundamentally mistaken in hisassumption that nationalism has basically been

overcome, especially on the part of the imperialor “federating” power. Ironically, one of theearliest and best instances of what Pagdendescribes is not one that Pagden writes about:the relationship between imperial Japan andManchukuo, its puppet state in northeast Chinathat existed between 1932 until 1945.

Manchukuo was the first full-blown instance ofwhat I call the “new imperialism”—animperia l ism rooted in the histor icalcircumstances of the United States, the SovietUnion, and Japan, rather than in those of theolder European colonial powers.(2) The newimperialism reflected a strategic conception ofthe periphery as part of an organic formationdesigned to attain global supremacy for theimperial power. The imperialism that evolvedthrough the middle fifty or sixty years of thetwentieth century differed especially fromearlier European colonial imperialism inseveral ways. While the new imperialistsmaintained ult imate control of theirdependencies or clients through militarysubordination, they often created or maintainedlegally sovereign nation-states with politicaland economic structures that resembled theirown.

The new imperialists espoused anticolonialideologies and emphasized cultural orideological similarities; they made considerableeconomic investments, even while exploitingthese reg ions , and a t tended to themodernization of institutions and identities. Inother words, these imperialist formations werenot founded in principle upon the sustaineddifferentiation between rulers and ruledcharacteristic of most colonial formations.

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Moreover, the new imperialism occasionallyentailed a separation of its economic andmilitary-political dimensions. Althoughsubordinate states were militarily dependentupon the metropole, it was not necessarily inthe latter’s interest to have them economicallyor institutionally backward. In some situations,as in the Soviet Union-Eastern Europe and theJapan-Manchukuo relationship, massiveinvestments and resources flowed into theclient states thus breaching the classicaldualism between an industrialized metropoleand a colony focused on the primary sector. Inthis way, too, my conception of the newimperial ism di f fers from theories ofneocolonialism, which continue to emphasizeunderdevelopment and traditional forms ofexploitation.(3)

Another aspect of this new kind of imperialismwas its tendency to form a regional or(geographically dispersed) bloc formation,promoting economic autarky as a means for theimperial power to gain global supremacy oradvantage. In this formation, while benefit tothe metropole continues to be the rationale fordomination, benefit does not necessarily derivefrom transferring primary wealth to it but oftenentails the industrialization of the puppet- orclient-state. Thus, the new imperialismdepended on a variety of nationalism thatextends the benefits and pains of creating anintegrated, globally competitive entity, butextends them unevenly over the whole. By thesame token, the imperial formation is oftenripped apart by enduring nationalist prejudicesfostered in earlier and simultaneous processesof nation-building, especially within theimperial metropole.

The Japanese empire, 1942

Anti-imperialism and Imperialism in theInterwar Period

The emergence of anti-imperialist nationalismrepresented, of course, one of the mostimportant conditions for the transformation ofimperialism. Anti-imperialist nationalismattained a new height in East Asia with theMarch 1919 protest against colonialism inKorea and the May 4th movement in China ofthe same year. While both movements weredirected against Japanese imperialism,ironically the Japanese also began to developan anti-imperialist discourse—the discourse ofanti-Western pan-Asianism. Japanesenationalists tended to represent themselves asvictims of Western imperialism and racismwhile building their own empire and brand ofracist nationalism. But they were also bound bya pan-Asian rhetoric of common victimhood asthey developed their contiguous empire in aregion occupied by people whom the Japaneseperceived as culturally or racially continuouswith themselves. In other words, whileJapanese imperialism targeted East Asiansocieties, it at the same time sought toincorporate them through ideas of pan-Asianbrotherhood. It is, I believe, less fruitful to viewthis idea of brotherhood as a smoke screenthan to understand it as a self-contradictory

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ideology of the new imperialism, in whichdomination and exploitation coexisted withdevelopment and modernization.

Of course, historically, modern imperialism hadalways been closely identified with nation-states. From a world-systems perspective,capitalism was a product of competitionbetween states for global resources: the moresophisticated versions of this theory eschewsimple economic arguments. According toGiovanni Arrighi, the creation and maintenanceof global capitalism was made possible by thefusion of “two logics,” territorial and capitalist.Competition among states in the early modernperiod entailed the capture of mobile capital forterritorial and population control, and thecontrol of territories and people for thepurposes of mobile capital. Beginning in theseventeenth century, the territorial state(possessing absolute jurisdiction within itsboundaries and growing mil itary andorganizational capabilities) became necessaryto control the social and political environmentof capital accumulation on a world scale. InArrighi’s scheme, the hegemonic power in thecompetitive system of European states—Dutchpower in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, British power in the nineteenth—wassuccessively challenged by latecomer territorialstates that sought, in the drive to becomeglobally competitive, to first mobilize theeconomic and human resources within theirown jurisdictions, thus producing some aspectsof nationalism. Immanuel Wallerstein is moreexplicit, declaring that nationalism became themeans whereby a state or social formationsought to leverage itself out of the periphery ofthe world system and into the core.(4)

By the twentieth century, nationalism hadbecome the driving force behind imperialism,just as imperialism had become an importantm e a n s i n t h e f o r m a t i o n o f s o m enationalisms.(5) Nationalist principles becamestill more deeply implicated with imperialism inthe intensifying competitive environment.

Responding to this heightened competitionamong themselves, including militarycompetition, several imperial formations soughtto organize colonies into relatively autarchicregional structures or economic blocs. InBritain and France, the value of empire formilitary competition was not fully recognizeduntil World War I when colonial troops andresources played a vital role. In Britain, JosephChamberlain’s neomercantilist ideas of colonialdevelopment (which had been largely ignoredbefore the war) and ideas of “imperialpreference” began to be taken more seriously.Even so, only once before 1940 did expenditureon colonial development creep above 0.1% ofBritish Gross National Product.(6) The post-World War I transformation of French attitudesto the colonies is summed up in Albert Lebrun’swords that the goal was now to “unite Franceto all those distant Frances in order to permitthem to combine their efforts to draw from oneanother reciprocal advantages.”(7) But whilethe French government extended imperialpreference and implemented reforms,particularly with reference to legal and politicalrights in Africa during the 1930s, investmentsin economic and social development projectswere insignificant until the creation of theInvestment Fund for Economic and SocialDevelopment in 1946.(8)

In order to compete with Britain and France,Germany had sought to develop a regional blocin Central and Eastern Europe since the end ofthe nineteenth century.(9) This trendaccelerated during the interwar years, andGerman commercial influence before the warreached its peak in 1938 when Austria wasincorporated into the Reich and Hitler annexedthe Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. TheGerman economic New Order in Europe, builtupon states that were essentially Germanpuppets or had German military governors, wasdesigned to supply the Nazi war effort.However, there were also plans to build aneconomic region around a prosperousGermany, linked to new industrial complexes in

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Central Europe and the captured areas of thewestern Soviet Union. This unitary Europeanmarket, however, remained a nationalisticGerman vision—and we should be wary ofseeing it as a predecessor of the EuropeanUnion. The German plan represented in severalways no more than an aborted version of thenew imperialism.(10)

The Japanese economic bloc built throughoutthe 1930s and intensified during the Pacificwar resembled the German New Order in thatthe entire occupied zone became subordinatedto Japanese war needs and Japan’s defeatrepresented a failure of the new imperialism.Still, Japan’s initial experience with Manchukuoreveals the lineaments of a more functionalversion of the new imperialism, not entirelydriven by wartime needs, though oftenrepresenting a preparation for war. Moreover,beginning especially in the 1930s after theestablishment of Manchukuo, the Japaneseexploitation of colonies such as Korea wasaccompanied by increases in productivecapacity. As the Korean economist Sub Parkhas demonstrated, while Indian growthbetween 1900 and 1946 was under 1%annually, the yearly mean growth rate of grossdomestic production in Korea was 3% duringthe period from 1915 to 1940.(11) Theaccumulated per capita British investment inIndia and Japanese investment in Korea wereeight dollars and thirty-eight dollarsrespectively in 1938.(12) Given the commonglobal climate, how and why did Japanesecolonial policy become more oriented towardeconomic development than European colonialpolicy did? Pan-Asianism had emerged as anideology incorporating Japan’s curious role asboth victim and victimizer in the imperialistgame; and that ideology permitted theJapanese the conceit that it was obliged to leadthe Asian nations against the West. Such claimswere, however, belied by the vigorousnationalism of Asian peoples against theJapanese. In response to this complicatedscenario, Japanese colonial bureaucrats,

military officers, and intellectuals began toexperiment with modes of association andalliance that would reinvent empire and nation.

Manchuria and Japanese Imperialism

From early in the Meiji period, Japaneseimperialism was justified by nationalism, andmainland northeast Asia was characterized asthe outer zone of national defense against theadvancing EuroAmerican powers. Japaneseexpansionism in northeast Asia during the firstthree decades of the twentieth century wasaccompanied by the rhetoric that Korea,Manchuria, and Mongolia represented the“lifeline” of the Japanese nation. The Treaty ofPortsmouth which concluded the Russo-Japanese War o f 1904–1905 , wh i l eacknowledging in theory China’s sovereignty inManchuria, granted Japan the Russian lease onthe Kwantung peninsula and the SouthManchurian Railroad. From this time, Japaneseinterests and influence grew, particularly afterthe annexation of Korea in 1910 and during theimperialist power vacuum in East Asia duringWorld War I.(13)

The economic and political affairs of the leasedterritories were managed by the Kwantunggovernment and the South Manchurian RailwayCompany, a quasi-governmental corporationwith many subsidiary enterprises and one ofthe largest research organizations in the worlduntil 1945. Japanese investment in the SouthManchurian Railway Company in 1920 alonewas 440 million yen. By 1927, 85% of Japaneseforeign investment was in China, and of itsChinese investments, 80% was in Manchuria.In 1932, Japan’s share of the total industrialcapital in Manchuria was 64%, while theChinese share was 28%.(14)As early as the 1920s, the Japanese controlledManchuria economically and militarily bymeans of an unstable alliance with the warlordof the region, Zhang Zuolin. Each party had itsown reasons for the alliance and Zhang’s desireto control Beijing increasingly militated against

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the Japanese interests in Manchuria,whereupon the Japanese murdered Zhang.Zhang’s son and successor, Zhang Xueliang,was, however, even more China-directed anddeclared his allegiance to the KMT. It wasunder these circumstances that elements in theKwantung army overthrew the Zhang regimeon September 18, 1931 and established thepuppet state of Manchukuo in 1932.

Until recently, Manchukuo was thought torepresent a break in Japanese imperial policy.In this scenario, the Japanese government inthe 1920s sought through diplomacy to secureconcessions from imperial powers and subjectnations such as China. The 9/18 ManchurianIncident is said to constitute a new turnbecause army officers took the initiative andpresented the Japanese government with a faitaccompli. This event may be seen as the first ina sequence of faits accomplis in the 1930s,enabling the military to take over the civiliangovernment in Japan and ultimately lead Japaninto the China war (1937), the Pacific war(1941), and ignominious defeat. But recentscholarship has changed this account of eventsin several ways. First, while military officers,with or without the tacit approval of higherauthorities, did present the Japanesegovernment with imperialist faits accomplis,there was enormous popular support mobilizedfor their actions. After fifty years of steady andforceful nation-building, by the 1920s Japanesenationalism had developed a life of its own notfully within state control. The emergent massmedia, the various social and politicalorganizations such as labor unions, politicalparties, and social associations, were infusedw i t h h i g h n a t i o n a l i s t — a n dimperialist—sentiment that military officerscould and did easily mobilize. By the late1920s, with the onset of the depression whichaffected Japanese farmers acutely, agrarianradicals, together with young disgruntledmilitary officers—the Showa restorationists,who felt that capitalists, politicians, andbureaucrats had abandoned the true bushido

spirit of Japan—catalyzed this popularnationalism and laid the conditions for supportof imperial expansion.

Second, as Yoshihisa Matsusaka and othershave pointed out, new imperialist ideas hadbeen incubating, especially in the militarystationed in the colonies and Manchuria sincethe last years of World War I. The primacy ofdiplomatic and multilateralist approaches ofparty governments during the 1920s kept theseideas out of the limelight, but several advocateso f t h e n e w i m p e r i a l i s m w e r e b u s yexperimenting with them in the 1920s,especially in Manchuria. The scale and durationof World War I convinced the Japanese militarythat the competition for global resources wouldbe a long-drawn-out war for which Japan wouldneed to be economically self-sufficient. Thuswas born the idea of “strategic autarky” whichentailed an entirely new conception ofimperialism: the colony or dominated regionw a s t o b e m a d e s t r u c t u r a l l y a n dorganizationally amenable to imperialist intentby utilizing the principle of the nation-state andnationalism. Military analysts like Major KoisoKuniaki, who would later become chief of staffof the Kwantung army, conceived of resourcemobilization within a regional rather thanmerely national framework. For Koiso, the ideaof autarky implied an alliance: the Chinesewould supply land, resources, and labor, andthe Japanese would furnish technology andcapital. He was mindful that a genuine autarkywould involve some sacrifice of Japaneseinterests for the sake of the whole.(15)

With the growth of nationalism in theseterritories and the spread of pan-Asianist ideasamong various Japanese groups in the 1920s,the conditions for regional control came to beseen, increasingly, to involve cooperation (orforced cooperation) with potential allies.Matsuoka Yosuke, who argued the Japanesecase for the independence of Manchukuo fromChina at the League of Nations in 1933, bestexempl i f ied the s trategy of the new

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imperialism. In the 1920s, when he served onthe board of directors of the South ManchurianRailroad Company, he developed the idea ofautarky by creating a relationship of dependentalliance with Zhang Zuolin; and Matsuoka’sideas were embraced at the time by theKwantung army. Through a series of loans forrailroad construction and other projects,Matsuoka sought to transform Zhang’sadministration into a client state. At the sametime, according to Tak Matsusaka, Matsuoka’svision transcended the old imperialist game ofdealing with native allies merely to gainconcessions and privileges. Rather Matsuoka’sgoal was first to bring the regional government,principally through financial ties, firmly underJapanese control, and subsequently to pursueeconomic policies for developing Manchuria asa whole. Development was to take place not byexcluding Chinese and others but byencouraging them to contribute to theprosperity of the region. The Japanese (whowere presumed to be the principal actors andnatural leaders of this effort), could onlybenefit from this general development.(16)

While the new imperialism was being tested inManchuria, experimentation with strategies ofcolonial development also characterized the1920s in Korea. The shock, to the Japanese, ofthe March 1919 nationalist uprisings in Koreawas processed originally by academics,journalists, and colonial bureaucrats, andemerged as a policy called “Cultural Rule.”Cultural Rule was designed to producecooperation between colonizer and colonized ineconomic and political matters. Characterizedby slogans of “Japanese Korean joint rule”(Nissen dochi) and doctrines of “coexistenceand coprosperity” (kyoson kyoei), Cultural Rulewas in many respects a failure: the Japanesewould have had to give more autonomy to theKoreans than they were prepared to do. Thenew thinking in Japanese colonial discoursewas driven, according to Michael Schneider, bymiddle-class professional and managerialclasses keen to align Japanese colonialism with

the norms of international modernization,respond to the rising nationalism of thecolonized, and develop the colony within awider program of regional integration andmanagement under Japanese leadership. Thepolicy of Cultural Rule was, as Schneider hassaid, “an attempt to fit Japanese colonialisminto the new internat ional ism of the1920s.”(17)

In the aftermath of World War I, Japaneseimperialism came to be rethought radically inthe context of pan-Asianism, the new discourseof civilization that began at the time to burgeonin Japan and many other parts of the continent.Pan-Asianism also had a special meaning forJapanese nationalists and thinkers during the1920s because of the growing perception that,despite Japan’s effort to become a world-classnation-state (with colonies to boot), theJapanese continued to encounter racism anddiscrimination. Discrimination was perceived inthe international conferences in Washington(1922), the London Naval Conference (1930),and wherever Japan was allotted a lower quotaof ships than the British and Americans. Butmost of all, it was the build-up of exclusionarypolicies in the United States and the finalExclusion Laws prohibit ing Japaneseimmigration in 1924 that galled Japanesenationalists. In their view, Asian civilization didnot exhibit inhuman racist attitudes andpolicies of this kind, and for militants likeOkawa Shumei and his followers in theKwantung army, these ingrained civilizationaldifferences would have to be fought out in afinal, righteous war of East against West.

In providing a moral explanation for wrongsinflicted upon Japan, pan-Asianist discoursealso demanded empathy for the other exploitedpeoples of Asia, including those that Japanitself colonized. The ideas behind the CulturalPolicy in Korea reflected, in theory, some ofthis empathy. During the 1920s, manyintellectuals argued that Japanese and Koreanshad the same ancestors, and this idea grew

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together with a theory of the mixed origins ofthe Japanese. Note that this expression of pan-Asianism led ultimately to the policies ofassimilation of the Koreans (and Taiwanese)into the Japanese nation.(18) In Manchuria,pan-Asianism was expressed not in a strategyof assimilation and homogenization but ofindependence and alliance. Not only would ithave stretched the contemporary imaginationoutrageously to argue that the Chinese andJapanese had the same origins, but the nationalmovement and international opinion regardingthe status of China was much too strong for theJapanese to seek to assimilate the Chinese inManchuria, whom they insisted on calling“Manchurians.” Here pan-Asianism, expressedas shared Asian ideals and common history(especially against Western imperialism), spoketo the new conceptualization of globaldomination through regional autarky.

In order to achieve an industrial-resource basein Manchuria, the Japanese military had todevelop an alliance with key groups in thissociety, among the Chinese but also among theJapanese settler community in the Kwantungpeninsula. Accordingly, the military wascompelled to champion the rhetoric of theseallies, which included talk of a sovereign state.Ishiwara Kanji and his associates in theKwantung army, Itagaki Seishiro and DoiharaKenji, recognized that they could ignore thenew discourse of rights and autonomy only attheir peril.(19) Pan-Asianism thus necessarilyserved as the basis of this alliance and“economic bloc.” Whereas figures like Ishiwarawere motivated primarily by Japanesenationalism, their nationalism was itself framedby a vision of the inevitable confrontationbetween East and West. The cooperation ofChina and Manchuria under Japaneseleadership was necessary for success in thisholy war or righteous duty (zhengyi, seigi).(20)Ishiwara allegedly became a convert to the pan-Asianist idea of the formal equality of Asiannations. He found no contradiction betweenviewing the alliance as representing the

supposed difference between Asian ideals andWestern imperialism or viewing it as a meansin a final war for global dominance.(21)

The idea of an autarkic Japan-Manchuria blocwas influenced by models of autarky in fascistEurope but was understood within thecivilization discourse of pan-Asianism. By themid-1930s the bloc idea had helped to producethe East Asian League (Toa renmei) and theEast Asian Community (Toa kyodotai), and stilllater the Greater East Asian Co-prosperitySphere (Dai-Toa Kyoeiken). Indeed, figuresassociated with the propagation of theseinstitutions were critical of Nazi theories ofracial superiority and emphasized cooperationwith the Chinese in a regional alliance underJapanese leadership.(22) To be sure,commitment to the idea of an alliance—andeven to the notion that Japan should renounceextraterritoriality in Asian countries—waspremised on the Japanese belief in theirintrinsic superiority and the need for theseAsian nations to accept Japanese leadership.Yet it is impossible to fully understand why themilitary encouraged the rapid modernizationand industrial build-up in Manchuria withoutgrasping the framework of pan-Asianism.

Manchukuo

In an earlier period, Manchukuo might haveb e c o m e a c o l o n y . B u t t h e n e wconceptualization of imperialism entailed thatthe might-have-been colony become more like asubordinate ally or client-state in globalcompetition. The status of the dependent stateunder the new imperialism was quite fluid, inpart because the rapidly changing demands ofglobal competition could, depending upon thecircumstances, give it more leverage (as in thecase of the relationship between postwar HongKong and Britain) or generate more resistanceand further subordination. The status ofManchukuo over its fifteen-year historygradually shifted, in official rhetoric, from thatof an independent nation-state—with Japan

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conceived as a friendly country (Ch. youbang, J.yuho) and ally (Ch. mengbang)—to that of adependent kinsman, even a child or youngerbrother. In the end, the rhetoric used wasConfucian: the language of the “family state”model of imperial Japan. By the time of thePacific war, Manchukuo had become, in thewords of its ambassador to Japan, Li Shaogeng,“the eldest son of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.”

Pu Yi, the last Manchu emperor—who becamef irs t pres ident and then emperor o fManchukuo—underwent a rebirthing ritual in1940, from which he emerged, as from thewomb of Amaterasu, as the younger half-brother of Hirohito, the Japanese emperor.(23)Ridiculous as this may sound to us (and as itdid to the Chinese), it is fruitful to think of thisritual relationship as an innovation madepossible by the theory of the mixed origins ofthe Japanese nation, a theory studied closely byOguma Eiji. According to Oguma, the imperial“family state” ideology was able to incorporatethis theory because it privileged the (modern)Japanese ideal of the ie or household which,unlike the lineage model, could acceptoutsiders by adoption into the family: “In thissystem,” Oguma writes, “as long as ancestorsof the ie are linked to the current membership,blood is of secondary importance.”(24)Becoming the younger brother of the emperor,entailed, of course, a strictly dependent andsubordinate status. Brotherhood in theConfucian understanding reflected ahierarchical relationship. In more modernrhetoric, brotherhood was often invokedinstead to character ize egal i tar ianrelationships: Sun Yat-sen used the slippage inthis trope to rally secret fraternal societies (ofthe inegalitarian kind), while entering them inthe historical record as at the core ofrevolutionary brotherhood (of the egalitariankind).(25) The same slippage in the idea ofbrotherhood was also very important in pan-Asianism, and we might even say thatbrotherhood was the pivot that joined the

hierarchical “family state” ideology with pan-Asianism.

Pu Yi as emperor of Manchukuo

Brotherhood or, more broadly, the familyrelationship among East Asian peoples impliedsharing a mission regardless of one’spreferences. It was the obligation of thepatriarch or the older, dominant brother tocreate the ethos of the family, its enterprise,and deliver the goods it promised. Japaneserhetoric did not fully develop this metaphor toembrace the relationship between Japan andManchukuo, and the rhetoric always appearedsomewhat contradictory, perhaps because ofthe continued lip service to the independenceof Manchukuo. Nonetheless, by 1940 the“fami ly state” model was ut i l ized tocharacterize the relationship of citizen to statewithin Manchukuo: “National citizenship is theexpanded version of family membership. Just as

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the family member has an obligation to obeythe family unconditionally, so does the citizenhave to obey the state.”(26) Manchukuo wasdeveloped as an East Asian brother or son whoset up a house modeled closely upon, andsubordinate to, that of the Japanese patriarch.Practically, this structure meant using Chineseofficials at all levels, including in the topadministrative and political positions, buthaving their activities supervised by Japaneseofficials responsible ultimately to the KwantungArmy.

Developing the family enterprise and deliveringthe goods amounted to creating the moderndevelopmental state in Manchukuo, whichemerged as the most industrialized part of Asiaoutside Japan. The Manchukuo banking systemwas reformed and for the first time thecurrency of the region was unified. The newcurrency was made equivalent in value to theJapanese yen, which facilitated its integrationinto the yen bloc. There was a dramatic rise ofJapanese investments which, according toLouise Young, grew to almost six billion yenbetween 1932 and 1941 (in 1941 exchangerates)—a figure far greater than any othertransfer from a metropole to a colony. By 1945,Japanese investment in Manchukuo exceededthe combined total of its investment in Korea,Taiwan, and the rest of China.(27) Industrialproduction tripled between 1933 and 1942, andproducer goods output grew the fastest.(28)Considerable attention was also paid to thesocial infrastructure, at least in the urbanareas: to the system of public health andeducation.(29) The new regime always toutedthese achievements as having reversed thedecades of warfare and economic chaosperpetuated by the previous warlordgovernment.

Manchukuo's industrial production

The rapid increase in industrial employmentmeant that immigration from China continuedto pour in, although the government sought tolimit it for a while. Koreans came intoManchuria in large numbers from the 1920sand their numbers reached almost 800,000 by1935. The Japanese had a plan to bring in fivemillion Japanese settlers into Manchukuo, butthe rural settler population never exceeded250,000. In the mid-1930s, the total Japanesep o p u l a t i o n w a s u n d e r 6 0 0 , 0 0 0 .Demographically, over 90% of the populationwas Han Chinese. (30)

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Manchukuo's future, 1937

The other side of this development state wasthe brutality of an occupying army. Themassacres of the resistance, the notorioushuman experiments with bacteriological toxinsdeveloped by Unit 731 in Harbin, thedispossession of agricultural land from Chinesefarmers, and other brutal crimes have beenwell recorded. Manchukuo presents us, on theone hand, with a record of cruel violence; and,on the other hand, with the record of adevelopmental state.There is perhaps no better symbol of theantithetical structure of the modern state inManchukuo than its police. Manchukuo’s hugepolice force conducted punctiliously detailedcensuses and surveys; made extensive andcomplex plans for settlements; paid closeattention to hygiene and welfare; madeavailable education, drinkable water, andshelters; and mobilized the population for

inoculations—sometimes at gunpoint.(31) Butthere were many modern states characterizedby this duality. What made Manchukuodifferent from Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union,or Japan was that it lacked the legitimacy of anation. In a time when nation-states allegedlyrepresented the “will of the people,” theManchukuo regime claimed instead torepresent the essence of Asian culture.The “kingly way” was presented as the ancientChinese ideal of the just and moral ruler, atrope that Sun Yat-sen extended beyondChinese civilization in a lecture on pan-Asianism delivered in Kobe. In Manchukuo, thekingly way, related notions, and the example ofthe Manchu emperor were deployed as symbolsof pan-Asian civilization, bringing togetherdiverse groups who, whether by choice,opportunism, or necessity, came to support thenew regime. These included many of thewarlords and political leaders of the oldsociety, dyed- in-the-wool Confucianmonarchists, and, most numerously, the deeplyreligious and universalist redemptive societies.The followers of the redemptive societies inChina and Manchuria included many millions,and, while some were closely associated withsectarian traditions including the worship ofBuddhist and folk deities, they mostlyrepresented the late imperial syncretictradition (sanjiaoheyi), which combined thethree religions of Confucianism, Buddhism, andDaoism into a single universal faith. Thesesocieties had historically been persecuted bythe Chinese state, both imperial and modern;and the Japanese in Manchuria sought to reachout to them. Tachibana Shiraki, architect ofManchukuo ideology, said that the redemptivesocieties exemplified the essence of Asiaticcivilization and were amenable to mobilizationas civic organizations.(32) Less easy tomanipulate than the Japanese had hoped, thesesocieties seized the opportunity to pursue theirown goals: by the late 1930s, the MoralitySociety of Manchukuo claimed a membership ofeight million out of a total population of fortymillion.(33)

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The second legitimacy claim made by thepuppet regime was that it represented the“concord of nationalities” (minzoku kyowa) aconceit that was supposed to represent twoadvances over older colonial ideas. Not onlywas the concord supposed to reject exploitationand the reproduction of difference betweenruler and ruled, but it was also designed tocounter the homogenization of differences thatnationalism had produced and that had led tonearly insoluble conflicts. By allegedly grantingdifferent peoples or nationalities their rightsand self-respect under a state structure,Manchukuo presented itself as a nation-state inthe mode of the Soviet “union of nationalities”.Among others, Tominaga Tadashi, the author ofManshu no minzoku (Nationalit ies ofManchuria), wrote copiously about the earlySoviet pol icy towards nat ional se l f -determination. It was a policy that fulfilled thegoals of federalism and protected minorityrights, while at the same time it strengthenedSoviet state and military power particularlywith regards to separatism in the old Tsaristempire. Thus, nationalism ought not to besuppressed, but rather utilized positively forthe goals of the state.(34)

The "concord of nationalities"

These sources of support were managed,maintained, and mobilized by the ConcordiaAssociation (Ch. xiehehui, J. kyowakai), whichwas effectively the Manchukuo regime’s party.But whereas in theory the Association was torepresent the will of the people and wasultimately destined to replace the Kwantungarmy, by mid-decade it was purged of itsoriginal leadership and made into aninstrument of the army and government.(35)Less a means of ethnic, cultural , andoccupational representat ion than ofmobilization and surveillance, the ConcordiaAssociation closely resembled contemporary“totalitarian parties” in Europe. The leadersrefrained from calling it a party preciselybecause the appellation smacked too much ofpartisanship. The association enrolled allofficials and government functionaries,including teachers, as well as important figures

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in society. All youth between the ages ofsixteen and nineteen were compulsorilyenrolled beginning in 1937; and by 1943, theassociation included about 10% of thepopulation (as compared to 5% for the ChineseCommunist Party in the PRC today).

Like its fascist counterparts, the ConcordiaAssociation was corporatist, anticommunist,anticapitalist, and sought to overcome classdivisions by organizing people through theircommunities, both occupational and ethnic,while promoting a dirigiste economy. But theassociation was distinctive in representingAsian communities—Mongols, Manchus, HuiMuslims, Koreans, Japanese and white Russiansaccounted for about 10% of the population), aswell as the majority Chinese—and theirtraditions. This commitment often meantsupporting the religious leadership amongthese peoples: Mongol lamas, Manchu andDaur shamans, Muslim ahongs, Bud¬dhistmonks, and Confucian moralists. The regime’scontrol of local society was enhanced by thework of association units established within, forexample, Manchu villages, Hui mosques, andthe Chinese community self-surveillance system(baojia). Thus pan Asianism came to play animportant role in maintaining both thecorporatist, fascistic character of the regimeand its claim to legitimacy based uponadherence to the “kingly way.”At the same time, the Concordia Associationhad been founded to realize the modern goalsof jianguo (Ch: nation-state building; J:kenkoku). Japanese ideologists like Tachibanasaw no contradiction between the goals ofrepublicanism, equality, and modernization, onthe one hand, and the “Eastern” values ofcommunity, solidarity, and the moral state, onthe other. After all, did not Japan exemplify asynthesis of the best of both worlds? Inpractice, however, the very different programsand interests pursued by modernizers and pan-Asianists led to many tensions and conflictsthat leave us with a view of Manchukuo as apolarized rather than harmonious society.

Mongol youth demanded modern education andthe elimination of the power of the lamas;Chinese supporters were fiercely dividedbetween those who favored the restoration ofthe emperor and those who opposed it.Propaganda activists were frustrated by theirinability to mobilize redemptive societies forwartime work. The contradiction reflected inparticular the tensions of an artificial nation-state dominated by an imperial power in an ageof nationalism. The inability to construct a trulyindependent nation-state led Manchukuo tocling to constituencies that would have to begradually overcome in the process of nationalmodernization. As it was, the wildly ambitiousJapanese imperialist military leadershipderailed the entire process by plunging thiscarefully constructed state into a mad anddestructive war.

Conclusion: Trajectories and Affinities

The Japanese domination of Manchukuorepresented a new form of imperialism. Asnationalism, rights consciousness, and socialmobilization developed in the colonized andsemi-colonial world, the costs of direct colonialrule increased while the conditions for indirectrule were enhanced. With the creation ofmodern ins t i tu t ions in the mi l i tarydependencies, it became possible to controlthem more economically by dominating theirinstitutions of resource and social mobilization(such as the Concordia or redemptivesocieties). Japan, like the later Soviet Unionand the United States, sought to bring itsclient-states into a structure of governance thatnot only permitted dominance but integratedthem into a regional and ultimately, global,game plan.(36)

We have already alluded to the perception andinfluence in Manchukuo of the Soviet Union’sinternal nationality policy as an instrument ofcontrol. During the post-World War II era, theSoviet Union’s creation of a regional system ofmilitarily dependent states in Eastern Europe

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reflected many features of the new imperialism.A shared anti-imperialist and anticapitalistideology sanctioned a centralized economic andpolitical system. The Soviet Union combinedeconomic leverage and military threat tointegrate what were often states moreeconomically developed than itself into aregional economy. In some ways, theimperialism of the Soviet Union revealed thecounter-economic consequences of this logic ofempire. Not only were the client-states of theSoviet Union in Europe often more developed,the U. S. S. R. may have been subsidizing theireconomies by supplying them with cheap oiland raw materials while importing finishedproducts from their economies. This was theprice paid by the imperial power to create andmaintain dependence upon it and assure itssecurity.(37)

In part because of the consciousness of its owncolonial past, and with the exception of a fewplaces (most notably, the Philippines), the U.S.had long practiced imperialism withoutcolonialism. After the Spanish war in 1898, theU.S. created a system of client states aroundthe Caribbean basin in Central America. Thesenominally independent states becameincreasingly dependent on the United States,which accounted for more than three fourths ofthe region’s foreign trade as well as the bulk offoreign investment.(38) During the decade ofthe 1920s, when Japan was experimenting withindirect imperialism in Manchuria, the US toowas seeking to develop and refine informalcontrol over Central American countriesespecially as it faced anti-Yankee, andfrequently revolutionary, nationalism in theregion. Officials, diplomats and businessgroups stressed means such as US control ofbanking, communication facilities, investmentsin natural resources, and the development ofeducation—particularly the training of elites inAmerican style constitutions, “free elections”and orthodox business ideas. But the threat andreality of military intervention remained closeat hand.(39)

Of course, American imperialism wascharacterized not only by the Monroe Doctrinebut also by the Open Door policy. Althoughthere were contradictions and tensionsbetween the two approaches, there were alsocontinuities, most importantly, in the practiceof using sovereign or nominally sovereignpolities to advance American interests. In 1917,Woodrow Wilson saw the continuities when hedeclared that the nations of the world should“with one accord adopt the doctrine ofPresident Monroe as the doctrine of theworld…..no nation should seek to extend itspolity over any other nation or people.” But justtwo weeks before, Wilson had sent troops tothe Dominican Republic and committed USmilitary forces in Haiti and Mexico as well.(40)The US sought to foster an ideological andeconomic hegemony among its client states bycreating them as reliable emulators subject toexternal economic and military constraints.Note, however, that this imperialism did notbecome developmentally oriented until the1950s in response to the Cuban revolution.(41)

The tensions between American interests andglobal enlightenment were to be contained notonly by military power, but perhaps moreimportantly by the notion of a limited self-determination, the idea of tutelage. AsSecretary of Interior, Franklin Lane wrote in1922: “What a people hold they hold astrustees for the world…It is good Americanpractice. The Monroe Doctrine is an expressionof it….That is why we are talking of backwardpeoples and recognizing for them another lawthan that of self-determination, a limited law ofself-determination, a leading-string law.”(42)Litt le wonder then that the Japaneserepresentative at the League of Nationshearings on Manchukuo repeatedly insisted onthe Asiatic Monroe Doctrine as the basis ofJapan’s prerogative in Asia.

In the post-WWII period, this combination ofinterest, enlightenment and military violencehas developed into what Carl Parrini has called

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“ultraimperialism.” The latter refers to U. S.efforts to maintain cooperation and reduceconflict among imperialist nations who werebusily scrambling to create monopolistic orexclusive market conditions in various parts ofthe world during the f irst hal f of thecentury.(43) “Ultraimperialism” is secured by achain of military bases around the globe—andstructures such as the International MonetaryFund, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,and the World Bank—to enable the conditionsof cooperation among advanced capitalistp o w e r s a n d t o f a c i l i t a t e t h e n e w(developmental or modernizing) imperialism inthe decolonized world.(44) Although the U. S. ishardly a regional power any longer, as a globalempire it employs, in the words of Arrighi, Hui,Hung and Selden, a vast system of “politicaland military vassalage” and fosters a“functional specialization between the imperialand vassal (nation) states….” In this respect,the post- war US represents the apogee of thenew imperialism.(45)

Looking at Manchukuo comparatively, it isclear that its creators were influenced by boththe US and the Soviet Union and by Germanideas of the economic bloc. But Manchukuoalso synthesized and crystallized these ideasinto the prototype of the developmental clientstate within a new imperialist formation thatcould be found after World War II in EasternEurope, French Africa, the British sterling zoneand the US empire. The US in particularfavored the model of modernizing client nation-states centered on royal identity in Asia,witness Japan, Vietnam, Iran, Saudi Arabia andothers.

Despite the differences between this form ofimperialism and the “classical” nineteenth-century form, nationalists emphasize thecontinuities between the “classical” and theclientelistic or dependent forms, and they areright to note the lack of autonomy in both.(46)But does the ability of power-holders toinfluence and manipulate institutions and

rhetoric overwhelm the effects of newinstitutions and policies in changed domesticand international circumstances?To be sure, Manchukuo remained a highlyexploited society. For instance, rural societyremained stagnant largely because thelandowning classes represented an importantbase of support for the regime. Chineseworkers received less than a third of wagespaid to Japanese workers in state factories. TheManchukuo government and Japaneseenterprises, which controlled 72% of totalinvested capital, made it hard for Chinesecapital to penetrate the modern sector.(47) Atthe same time, the idea of strategic autarkynecessitated the development of Manchukuo asa developmental state with advancedtechnologies of economic growth, generatinghigher standards of urban life until the Pacificwar.

In general, the state in Manchukuo was able todeploy modern technologies of control,surveillance, discipline, and mobilizationamong the populace. The regime and itsaffiliated organizations—such as the ConcordiaA s s o c i a t i o n a n d t h e r e d e m p t i v esocieties—penetrated the lives of people tokeep a stricter watch on them but also togenerate new consciousness regarding, forinstance, the proper nuclear family, consumerspending, engagement in afforestationprograms and other projects prioritized by themobilizing state. If some of these projects weredriven by the immediate needs of themetropole, others were driven by the logic of amodernizing state.

The immediate factors behind the failure ofManchukuo had to do with its growingdependence on Japan and the role that it wasforced to fill in the Japanese wartime empire.Indeed, the Manchukuo model of client stateswas partially extended to regimes in occupiedChina and in Southeast Asia during the Pacificwar. This regional imperial formation bentupon global domination was characterized by a

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set of interdependencies within an imperially-dictated enterprise. A simple model ofeconomic exploitation, utilizing existing modesof production and colonial difference, was to besupplemented (if not replaced) by high levels ofinvestment, the development of new modes ofmobilization and identity production, and arhetoric of brotherhood and regionalfederalism. All of this came to nought withdefeat.

Ultimately, however, the case of Manchukuoreveals the fault lines of the new imperialism.By pointing to the wartime emphasis on thefact that the Japanese were of mixed origins,Oguma Eiji has stressed the importance ofassimilation over nationalist-racist elementswithin Japanese imperial ideology. Others, suchas Komagome Takeshi have persuasivelyargued that while Japanese imperialismreflected the extension of the principlesunderlying national integration, Japanesenationalism was a contradictory affaircomposed not only of the principle of commonlanguage and culture (or civilization) but alsoof “blood descent.” Whereas language andculture created possibilities of integrating thecolonized based on assimilation or alliance,historically the exclusionary principle of blooddescent invented new ways—institutional,legal, or attitudinal—to circumvent theincorporation of non-Japanese in the empire asequal citizens.(48)

Imperialist competition in the first half of thetwentieth century was catalyzed by a particularconfiguration of capitalism and nationalism.Although novel formations and ideals—then andnow—have sought to transcend both capitalismand nationalism, the force of nationalistidentity and interests from the earlier periodhas proved remarkably tenacious, particularlyas they develop new linkages with competitivecapitalism. The globalization, cooperativeeconomic blocs, and regional formations of ouro w n t i m e a r e n o t u n p r e c e d e n t e ddevelopments—and the precedents are not

encouraging.

Prasenjit Duara is professor of History and EastAsian Languages and Civilizations at theUniversity of Chicago. He is the author ofseveral books and essays on East Asian history,nationalism and imperialism, decolonization,and history and theory, including Sovereigntyand Authenticity: Manchukuo and the EastA s i a n M o d e r n(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0742530914/sr=1-3/qid=1138652955/ref=pd_bbs_3/002-6376764-4701644?%5Fencoding=UTF8)available in paperback. This article waspublished at Japan Focus on January 30, 2006.

Notes

1)Anthony Pagden, “The Empire’s New Clothes:From Empire to Federation, Yesterday andToday” in Common Knowledge 12:1 Winter2006, (36-46), 13-14. The present essay is arevised and extended version of my response toPagden in the same volume. Prasenjit Duara,“Nationalism, Imperialism, Federalism and theExample of Manchukuo: A Response to AnthonyPagden” Common Knowledge 12:1 Winter 200647-65. For another expansive and revisionistview of empire, see also Frederick CooperColonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge,History Berkeley, University of CaliforniaPress, 2005.2) The German case also exhibited manyaspects of this new imperialism (see below).However, Nazi racism and defeat in the warobscure the extent to which Germany wouldhave developed along these lines. Manchukuo,on the other hand, represents a moment of thenew imperialism before the wartime drivedestroyed it.3) It is also to be distinguished from the olderhistoriographical term “new imperialism”referring to the late 19th century scramble forAfrica and efforts to “slice the Chinese melon”among other developments that destabilizedthe imperialism of free trade. Creatingnominally sovereign modern nation-states was

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not part of that imperialism.4) Giovanni Arrighi, The Long TwentiethCentury: Money, Power, and the Origins of OurTimes (New York: Verso, 1994), 34–58.Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Construction ofPeoplehood: Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity,” inRace, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed.Etienne Balibar and Wallerstein (London:Verso, 1991), 81-82.5) See Er ic Hobsbawm, Nat ions andNationalism since 1780: Program, Myth,Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990), 102; and Hannah Arendt, TheOrigins of Totalitarianism (1948; New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 152–53.6) Stephen Constantine, The Making of BritishColonial Development Policy, 1914–1940(London: Frank Cass, 1984), 25, 276. MichaelHavinden and David Meredith, Colonialism andDevelopment: Britain and its Tropical Colonies,1850–1960 (London: Routledge, 1993), 148–59.7) As quoted in D. Bruce Marshall, The FrenchColonial Myth and Constitution-making in theFourth Republic (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1973), 44.8)Marshall, French Colonial Myth, 224-26.9)Barry Eichengreen and Jeffrey A. Frankel,“Economic Regionalism: Evidence from TwoTwentieth-Century Episodes,” North AmericanJournal of Economics and Finance 6.2 (1995):97.10)See Richard Overy, “World Trade and WorldEconomy,” in The Oxford Companion to WorldWar II, ed. Ian C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).11) Sub Park, “Exploitation and Development inColony: Korea and India,” Korean Journal ofPolitical Economy 1.1 (2003): 5.12) Sub Park, “Exploitation and Development,”19.13) C. Walter Young, The InternationalRelations of Manchuria: A Digest and Analysisof Treaties, Agreements, and NegotiationsConcerning the Three Eastern Provinces ofChina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1929), 136–52.14) Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso-lin in

Northeast China, 1911–1928: China, Japan, andthe Manchurian Idea (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1977), 7-8.15) Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, Making ofJapanese Manchuria, 214–23.16) Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, Making ofJapanese Manchuria, 285.17) Michael A. Schneider, “The Limits ofCultural Rule: Internationalism and Identity inJapanese Responses to Korean Rice,” inColonial Modernity in Korea, ed. Gi-wook Shinand Michael Robinson (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Asia Center, 1999), 122.18) Oguma Eiji, A Genealogy of “Japanese”Self-images, trans. David Askew (Melbourne:Trans Pacific Press, 2002), 125–42.19) Komagome Takeshi, Shokuminchi TeikokuNihon no Bunka Togo (The Cultural Integrationof the Japanese Colonial Empire) (Tokyo:Iwanami Shoten, 1996), 236–37.20) Yamamuro Shinichi, Kimera: Manshukokun o s h o z o ( C h i m e r a : A P o r t r a i t o fManzhouguo)(Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1993),42–48.21) Mark R. Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji and Japan’sConfrontation with the West (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1975), 167, 281,335.22) Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Reinventing Japan:Time, Space, Nation (Armonk, NY: M. E.Sharpe, 1998), 97–101.23) Yamamuro Shinichi’s Kimera emphasizesthe parent-child relationship between theJapanese emperor and Pu Yi, but the image ofbrotherhood was also current, even in thepassages that Yamamuro himself cites(261–64).24) Oguma Eiji, Genealogy, 337.25) See Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History fromthe Nation: Questioning Narratives of ModernChina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1995), chap. 4.26)Chianbu keisatsushi (Law and OrderMinistry, Police Dept), ed. Komin (Citizen)(Xinkyo: Manshukoku tosho kabushiki geisha,1940), 41.27) Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire,

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183–84, 213–15. Francis Clifford Jones,Manchuria Since 1931 (London: Royal Instituteof International Affairs, 1949), 139.28) Kungtu C. Sun, The Economic Developmentof Manchuria in the First Half of the TwentiethCentury, ed. Ralph W. Huenemann (Cambridge,MA: East Asian Research Center, HarvardUniversity, 1969), 101-2.29) Suk-jung Han, “Puppet Sovereignty: TheState Effect of Manchukuo, from 1932 to 1936”(PhD diss, University of Chicago, 1995), chaps.3-4.30) Han Suk-jung, 1995, 233. Yoshihisa TakMatsusaka The Making of Japanese Manchuria,1904-1932. (Cambridge, MA, Harvard UnivPress, 2001), 414.31) Suk-jung Han, “Puppet Sovereignty,”chaps. 3-4.32)Komagome Takeshi, Shokuminchi Teikokuno Bunka Togo 265.33) Shao Yong, Zhongguo huidaomen (China’sReligious Societies) (Shanghai: Renminchubanse, 1997), 321.34) Tominaga Tadashi, Manshukoku nominzoku mondai Shinkyo, 1943, 43-45.35) Peattie, Ishiwara Kanji, 171, 174.36) Further, creating similar institutionsfostered a similarity of interests and goalsbetween elites in the metropolitan anddependent societies. Thus Latin Americansocieties have found it difficult to sustainsocialist states or even large-scale publicexpenditures without incurring the disfavor ofthe United States; and the Soviet Union wouldnot tolerate “market-happy” bourgeoisies.Manchukuo too began to resemble (and inseveral instances, led) the military-dominateddirigiste economy and centralized politicalsystem that developed in Japan beginning inthe 1930s.37) See Paul Marer and Kazimierz Z.Poznanski, “Costs of Domination, Benefits ofSubordination,” in Dominant Powers andSubordinate States: The United States in LatinAmerica and the Soviet Union in EasternEurope, ed. Jan F. Triska (Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press, 1986), 371–99.

38) John Coatsworth, Central America and theUnited States: The Clients and the Colossus(New York: Twayne, 1994), 18–19, 52–53.39) Robert Freeman Smith “Republican Policyand the Pax Americana, 1921-1932” in WilliamAppleman Williams ed., From Colony toEmpire: Essays in the History of AmericanForeign Relations, John Wiley and Sons, NY,1972. 273-275.40) Andrew J Bacevich, American Empire: TheRealities and Consequences of US DiplomacyHarvard U P, Cambridge, MA 2002. 115-116.See also Bacevich for the quotation. 115.41) Coatsworth 1994, 90–91.42) Quoted in Robert Freeman Smith 1972,271.43) Carl Parrini, “The Age of Ultraimperialism,”Radical History Review 57 (fall 1993):7–9.44) Parrini, “Age of Ultraimperialism,” 8–11.Bruce Cumings, “Global Realm with No Limit,Global Realm with no Name,” Radical HistoryReview 57 (fall 1993): 53–54.45) G. Arrighi, P K Hui, H F Hung and MSelden, “Historical capitalism, East and West”in G. Arrighi, T Hamashita, and M. Selden, ed,The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50year perspectives. Routledge, 2003, 301.46)To be sure, even within the power structurein Manchukuo there were forces working forautonomy. On several occasions, specialJapanese rights were attacked by the Kwantunga r m y , m o s t n o t a b l y i n 1 9 3 6 w h e nextraterritorial rights for Japanese citizenswere abolished and a series of significantprivileges began to unravel. The Japanesegovernment also raised tariffs against theoverwhelming exports from Manchukuo. Ingeneral, more recent research takes seriouslythe Kwantung army’s autonomy from thedespised civilian governments at home—atleast until the war in Asia. Suk-jung Han,“Puppet Sovereignty,” 257–58. Young, Japan’sTotal Empire, 205, 211.47)Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty andAuthenticity: Manchukuo and the East AsianModern, 2003, 67-70.48) Komagome Takeshi, Shokuminchi Teikoku

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Nippon no Bunka Togo, 356–70.