In 2016, SOKOLOVA-YAMASHITA, MACHIDA, and ISHIKAWA began a joint research project entitled “Politics and Society in the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’: Representations and Memories of the Media” to elucidate the political ideology surrounding Japan’s wars in 1938-1945 and the actual conditions of war cooperation among literary figures and the public, and to redefine the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”.
Through this research, SOKOLOVA-YAMASHITA first analyzes the writers who were sent to the war zone, and clarifies the actual conditions of war propaganda through the media in the occupied territories by literary figures such as HAYASHI Fumiko, and their role in the formation of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” ideology. He also pointed out that the writers’ unique literary characteristics, which went beyond propaganda, were expressed in their wartime texts, and suggested the possibility of literary reappraisal of writers who were sent to the war zone.
Based on an examination of the employment situation of highly educated people, MACHIDA examined the employment situation in Manchuria and Taiwan, as well as in the occupied territories of China and in companies associated with “the Japanese military advancement to the south” and pointed out that the upturn in the employment situation was linked to the economic recovery of Japanese conglomerates and to the trend in the business world regarding the abolition of employment agreements.
Adopting an analytical approach to the history of political thought, ISHIKAWA clarified the position of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” in the lineage of the pre-war Japanese theory of Asian expansion, and elucidated the process by which the concept was accepted in Japan based on the discourse of the same period. In addition, the political propaganda activities in the south of the country to implement the idea of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” are also discussed based on the original historical documents.