The future of the Japanese colonial empire, 1914-1931

An enduring concern for critics of imperialism and colonialism, from Hobson and Lenin to contemporary cultural studies, has been the mechanisms through which metropolitan classes have been attached to a project of national identification through empire. The years between the first world war and the Manchurian incident mark an important transition in the Japanese colonial empire and in the metropolitan institutions that generated knowledge about the empire. This dissertation initiates a discussion of how Japanese professional and managerial middle classes, particularly intellectuals, colonial bureaucrats and public commentators, imagined the future of the colonial empire during these years.;In discussions of the future of the Japanese colonial empire during the 1920's, not only was there a central concern with cultural and economic development in any discussion of colonial policy, but moreover the intimate linking of culture and economics in colonial discourse activity attempted to push political issues to the margins. These intellectual trends were captured in the expression "Cultural Rule" (bunka seiji), which both labeled new administrative policies in Korea after 1919 and framed metropolitan discussions of cultural and economic development in the colonial context.;This study emphasizes the neglected and misunderstood role of liberal internationalism in the formation of Japanese colonial policy studies, but also calls for a deeper appreciation of the ways in which internationalist thought defined and reformulated Cultural Rule for metropolitan audiences. The two dominant figures, Nitobe Inazo and Yanaihara Tadao, were prominent internationalists, though their views on colonial policy have not been rigorously analyzed within an international context. Many of the other figures that appear--Yamamoto Miono, Togo Minoru, Goto Shimpei, Inoue Masaji, Naito Hideo--contributed to an understanding of the Japanese colonial experience in a broad framework of international economic development and its implications for ethnic and nationalist relations between Japan and colonial peoples.;This dissertation offers a history of thinking about the future of the Japanese colonial empire among the professional and managerial classes of an expanding consumer society. The evidence of the 1920's suggests that the broad incorporation of these classes into a project of empire did not emerge until the 1930's.