In investigating the relationship between Pan-Asianism and Japanese official wartime planning during the Fifteen Years' War, Eri Hotta makes a strong claim that during the war, the ideology of Pan-Asianism continued to play such a critical role that, without it, “Japan might well not have taken the path from Manchuria to Pearl Harbor, to Southeast Asia, and to its ultimate defeat in 1945” (p. 2). More specifically, Hotta argues that Pan-Asianism functioned as “a consensus-building tool for an otherwise divided government” throughout the years between 1931 and 1945 (p. 226). Based on her useful categorization of Pan-Asianism—Teaist, Sinic, and Meishuron Pan-Asianisms—she demonstrates that while Meishuron Pan-Asianism became dominant by 1931, the continuing existence of the other two threads was key to Japan's consensus making during the war.
Hotta defines Teaist Pan-Asianism as the “most all-encompassing vision for both geographical and conceptual boundaries of Asia as a single group” (p. 30)....
