Pan-Asianism and the complex vision of the GEACPS

Though many post-war scholars, especially from the Philippines, have depicted Japanese pan-Asianism and the concept of the GEACPS as a mere façade for the Japanese adaptation of Western-style imperialism,Footnote ³ others have questioned this assessment. Ken'ichi Goto considers it ‘an undeniable fact that, peaking in the early 1940s, Japan had been broadcasting to Southeast Asia an ideological mood that could only be termed “Asianism”, and the thought built on its foundation intoxicated the whole of Japan’. Eri Hotta has similarly argued that Japan's pan-Asianism was ‘not a vacuous ideology proclaimed to provide an ex post facto explanation for its expansionism, but rather an integral part of the very active force behind its expansionism’.Footnote ⁴

Hotta comes to this conclusion by arguing for ‘a certain ideological consistency’ in the realization of the GEACPS in Japanese-occupied territories throughout Asia. According to her, it was beyond dispute that Japan, in its own eyes, as the most developed country of the region, had to be the natural leader of this Asian liberation process. Likewise, she argues, there was no questioning that the societies of the various countries Japan occupied had to be remoulded according to the Japanese model.Footnote ⁵

But, while Hotta's first claim is undoubtedly accurate, her second appears, on closer inspection, much less so. By December 1941, two concurrent streams had emerged within Japanese pan-Asianist thinking that shaped two differing conceptions of how to implement pan-Asianist ideas. Better known to scholars is the orthodox stream represented by the Dai-Ajia Kyōkai Footnote ⁶ (Greater Asia Society), which advocated the application of the concept of the GEACPS in all occupied territories without any adaptation to local circumstances. Less well studied is the more progressive and pragmatic stream represented by the Shōwa Kenkyūkai Footnote ⁷ (Shōwa Research Association), which emphasized the cultural differences between Japan and Southeast Asian countries within the sphere. Rōyama Masamichi (1895–1980)—a political scientist, member of the Shōwa Kenkyūkai, and one of the pragmatic stream's most prominent spokesmen—even rejected the idea that there existed a common Asian unit.Footnote ⁸

The application of Japanese pan-Asianist ideas across Asia was further complicated by distinct and often shifting local responses. In China, the country that many Japanese pan-Asianists considered their country's natural ally, pan-Asianism was overall a failure. In Southeast Asia, however, it found local advocates, especially in Indonesia. While, in China, Japan was perceived as a long-time rival that had eventually fulfilled its imperialist ambitions, many Indonesians, having been subjected to Dutch colonization, embraced the idea of a ‘new Asian order’ as a way to modernize their country without sacrificing their indigenous culture and traditions. The ‘Japanese way’ of modernization, according to Western standards but with a simultaneous re-Orientation towards ‘Oriental values’, became highly attractive. For several Indonesian nationalists, the decline of Western colonial powers manifested in the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, along with Japan's recent rise to economic and military power that had created the image of Japan as a role model for emancipation from Western oppression. Ethan Mark observes that, for some members of this ‘nationalist class’, the ‘notion of non-Western indigenous modernity’ presented by Japan seemed to offer ‘a “third way” by which the power of the masses could be mobilized in a shared national battle against the illegitimate interests of the old colonial order, including the old native aristocracy, while promoting social harmony and avoiding a Western-style social revolution’. ‘In sum,’ he continues, ‘it appears the radical yet conservative promises of Japanese wartime Asianism found a particular resonance with pre-existing Indonesian nationalist political and social concerns.’Footnote ⁹

Yet, while some Indonesian nationalists such as Ahmad Subardjo (1896–1978) and Douwes Dekker (1879–1950) became convinced that Japanese pan-Asianism would pave the road to Indonesian independence, others proved more doubtful.Footnote ¹⁰ By the time the Pacific War broke out, Mohammad Hatta (1902–80) had become completely disillusioned by the prospect of Japanese pan-Asianism, moving from a position in the early 1930s where he hoped that Japan might become the liberator of oppressed Asian peoples to a conviction that ‘Japanese fascism and imperialism’ had to be destroyed as, otherwise, ‘the Indonesian ideal of independence would be reduced to nil’.Footnote ¹¹ Hatta's fears were shared by Sutan Sjahrir (1909–66)—an outspoken advocate of Indonesian independence who would become the first post-war prime minister of Indonesia, who even suggested that his countrymen cooperate with the Dutch against the Japanese to defend democracy.Footnote ¹²

The complex history of Japanese pan-Asianism is further underlined when we turn to the thinking of progressive proponents of the GEACPS such as Rōyama Masamichi. Though Rōyama made the nationalist appropriation of Japanese pan-Asianism across Asia a central tenet of his political thinking, he nevertheless doubted whether the time was ripe for the realization of pan-Asianist ideas in the periphery of the region. Instead, he envisioned the GEACPS as divided into two spheres: the Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere (Tōhō kyōeiken), consisting of Japan, Manchukuo, and China (the ‘Yen-bloc’); and the Southern Co-Prosperity Sphere (Nanpō kyōeiken), consisting of the Philippines, India, Malaya, Thailand, and the Dutch East Indies. Without this division, he contended, former colonies in the periphery would slow down the economic development of the entire sphere.Footnote ¹³ In 1941, shortly before the war in the Pacific broke out, Rōyama then advocated a further three-part division that took all of Asia's cultural and economic differences into account. The GEACPS would now comprise the ‘Eurasian continental region’ (Yūrashia tairikuteki chiiki), the ‘continental peninsula region’ (tairikuteki hantō chiiki), and the ‘region of the islands in the Southwest Pacific’ (seinan taiheiyō tōsho chiiki).Footnote ¹⁴ The impact of Western colonial rule in Southeast Asia, however, remained one of his major concerns.Footnote ¹⁵ He saw the instigation of a dynamic popular movement towards the ‘formation of a Greater Regional Bloc’ (daichiiki kyōdōtai keisei) in these three regions as therefore still a necessity. As things stood, the preconditions for the establishment of the sphere did not yet exist.Footnote ¹⁶

Similar views were held by Rōyama's colleague in the Shōwa Kenkyūkai, Yabe Teiji (1902–67). His own five-tier model of the GEACPS placed Japan, as the leading Asian country, on the first tier. The second tier consisted of territories outside the sphere, such as French Indochina and Timor. The third tier featured independent countries like Thailand, China, and Manchukuo. The fourth tier consisted of ‘independent protectorates’ (dokuritsu hogokoku) such as Burma, the Philippines, and Siam. The fifth tier was reserved for territories directly controlled by Japan (chokkatsu ryō), although these were not clearly identified in the model. As Rōyama did, Yabe emphasized the differences between the various Asian peoples within the sphere. He even expressed his ‘fear that Japan will be extinguished if we allow the mixing of blood (konketsu) with the South (Nanpō)’.Footnote ¹⁷

Significantly, both men did not see the ultimate purpose of pan-Asianism in terms of the remoulding of countries within the GEACPS into ‘Japonized’ societies, but as something more. Rōyama, especially, revealed this in his role as head of the Research Commission on the Philippines, where he was sent by the Japanese government in 1943. This Commission issued a large report with suggestions on how to administer the islands and implement the concept of the GEACPS. One of its key arguments was that the Philippines’ cultural specificity had to be taken into account. Rōyama and his colleagues’ core aspiration was to win over the Filipino people to the concept of the sphere, rather than make them more Japanese. For this purpose, it was necessary to initiate a mass movement towards the establishment of the ‘New Philippines’ as part of the GEACPS.Footnote ¹⁸

Japanese pan-Asianism was thus far from a monolithic or even globally homogenizing ideology. The progressive vision of the Shōwa Kenkyūkai to which Rōyama belonged placed its emphasis on local differences throughout Asia and strove to adapt the ideology of pan-Asianism to local circumstance. In the Philippines, the KALIBAPI became the main political instrument for this localizing effort, meaning that it was more than a mere tool for Japanese propaganda, as the existing historical literature has tended to reinforce. Instead, as the rest of this article will now show, the close and often overlooked connection of progressive Japanese pan-Asianists, such as Rōyama, with the KALIBAPI saw it emerge as a body that attempted to co-opt Filipino nationalist sentiments and the memories of famous Filipino patriots to the GEACPS cause, with consequences that again marked out the impact of pan-Asianism in the Philippines as distinct from other parts of Japanese-occupied Asia.

Patriotic pan-Asianists: the KALIBAPI leadership

The KALIBAPI was shaped after the model of Japan's Taisei Yokusankai (Imperial Rule Assistance Association), which, from its official inauguration on 12 October 1940, following the dissolution of political parties two months earlier, was intended to function as a ‘national association’ that fostered ties between the government and the military in a newly unified Japanese state. Similar organizations were established in many Japanese-occupied territories, the first of which was the Kyowakai (Concordia Society) in the new state of Manchukuo in 1931. Intended to promote mutual understanding between the different ethnicities of Manchukuo and an overall sense of national identity, the Kyowakai clearly adopted and propagated pan-Asianist ideals.Footnote ¹⁹ Following the outbreak of the Pacific War, similar organizations emerged in Southeast Asia. In Burma, the Japanese-appointed Prime Minister Ba Maw founded the Dobama Sinyetha Asi Ayon (Poor Man's Party, also known as National Service Association).

In Java, the Japanese first formed the Pergerakan Tiga A (Triple A Movement) as soon as they landed on the island in March 1942. This organization presented Japan as the great unifying ‘Light of Asia’ and was led by the nationalist Raden Samsudin, who had opposed Dutch colonial rule and hoped to realize his nationalist objectives within the framework of the GEACPS.Footnote ²⁰ Samsudin's failure to integrate other nationalist groups into the Triple A's activities led the Japanese to abandon it in favour of a new organization known as the Pusat Tenaga Rakjat (Center of the People's Spiritual Power) or simply Putera, which was established in March 1943 and led by the more influential nationalist leaders Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta. Eventually, however, Putera, hamstrung by Japanese suspicions regarding its membership and Japanese attempts to control its leadership, was replaced by yet another organization: the Java Hokokai (Java Service Association). Pertaining to the latter, the Japanese did not even maintain the pretence that it was a grassroots organization.Footnote ²¹ In addition to overseeing the activities of this association directly, they extended its remit, as the war turned against Japan, to include mass mobilization through labour recruitment.Footnote ²²

By comparison, the Philippines did not go through the same process of associational dissolution and rebirth as the Japanese searched for a more amenable national organization. Following the forced dissolution of all other political parties, the KALIBAPI remained the Philippines’ de facto political party throughout the remainder of the war. The Japanese appointed Jorge B. Vargas (1890–1980), the Philippine Executive CommissionFootnote ²³’s Chairman, as its official leader. But the real men in charge were Benigno S. Aquino, Sr (1894–1946), as the party's director general, Pio Duran (1900–61) as Secretary-General, and Benigno Ramos (1893–1946?) as a member of the executive. These three men were concerned with the daily affairs and management of the KALIBAPI. In Japanese eyes, they all possessed both patriotic Filipino and pan-Asianist credentials. Aquino had served in the Commonwealth government as Secretary of Agriculture before the Japanese invasion. Besides functioning as director general of the KALIBAPI, he was also assistant chairperson of the Preparatory Commission for Philippine Independence and Speaker of the National Assembly during the Second Philippine Republic. Duran was a successful lawyer who originally came from Guinobatan, Albay province, in the Bicol region of Luzon, before he took office in Manila. In 1935, he published his book, Philippine Independence and the Far Eastern Question, in which he condemned American rule in the Philippines and praised Japan as ‘the only country in the world that can adequately defend the Philippines from foreign invasion’.Footnote ²⁴

Ramos, meanwhile, had been a member of the Nacionalista Party in the 1920s and a close comrade of Manuel Quezon, but had parted ways with him in 1930, regarding Quezon's policy as being too pro-American and insufficiently focused on the Philippine independence issue. In 1933, Ramos formed the Sakdal Party, which demanded immediate independence for the Philippines. In the following year, he travelled to Japan, where he established contact with several Japanese pan-Asianist groups, including the Dai-Ajia Kyōkai, and published an article in this organization's journal, emphasizing the necessity for the Philippines to rediscover its Oriental character.Footnote ²⁵ After his return to the Philippines, Ramos was arrested by the Filipino police and sentenced to serve jail time. He was eventually released by the Japanese in 1942 and remained loyal to the Japanese until the very end of the occupation. Ramos had close ties with the Dai-Ajia Kyōkai, which had established branches in Kwangtung and Taipei already in 1933Footnote ²⁶ and inaugurated its Philippine offshot, the Hirippin Dai-Ajia Kyōkai, on 8 July 1934. At that time, the organization was seen as very critical by the Japanese Consul General, who was afraid that it could affect Japanese–Philippine economic relations in a negative way and evoke fears of Japanese plans to invade the archipelago.Footnote ²⁷ It was only after the invasion of the Philippines that the Hirippin Dai-Ajia Kyōkai and people like Ramos became of interest for the Japanese officials who needed support in the establishment of an infrastructure for their occupation policy.

All the same, the Japanese did not completely trust Ramos and the Sakdalistas, despite their anti-American attitude. In his diary entry from 9 January 1943, Takeuchi Tatsuji, a colleague of Rōyama's in the Research Commission on the Philippines, described the Sakdalistas in the Laguna area as a movement that ‘did not hesitate to resort to extortion against good citizens in the region’. As a consequence, he went on, ‘with the liquidation of political parties, steps were taken to curb their activities’ and ‘the founding of the Kalibapi organization was primarily aimed at the liquidation of the Sakdal party’.Footnote ²⁸

The organization's political role was therefore clear. Even though Aquino described the KALIBAPI as a ‘non-political service association’, he also pointed out that ‘no person can be employed in the government and any of its institutions unless he is a member’.Footnote ²⁹ From Takeuchi's comments, it might appear that the Japanese viewed the KALIBAPI as, first and foremost, an instrument to appease and control the radical independence movements in the Philippines and less as a tool for the proliferation of pan-Asianist ideas. But, as we shall now see, both aims became closely interlinked within the organization.

Co-opting Rizal as patriotic pan-Asianist

The official inauguration of the KALIBAPI took place on 30 December 1942, which was the anniversary of Philippine national hero José Rizal's (1861–96) death. The Japanese chose this special date to underline the patriotic credentials of the KALIBAPI, whose members saluted each other by bowing with their right hands on their hearts.Footnote ³⁰ At the inauguration, Vargas pointed to the close connection between the goals of Rizal, who had died for a Philippines freed from Occidental rule, and Japan's war aims: ‘The mighty Japanese Empire, moved by the generous desire of emancipating and protecting the nations of the Orient, has accomplished what we ourselves sought for long without success.’Footnote ³¹ Vargas put forward membership of the Philippines in the GEACPS as the fulfilment of Rizal's legacy. The party would be ‘dedicated to Rizal's great humanitarian principle of peaceful cooperation among all nations as brothers’—a Rizal-endorsed notion of the universal brotherhood of man that strongly resembled the Japanese pan-Asianist core principle of hakkō ichiu (‘all eight corners of the world under one roof’).Footnote ³²

Benigno S. Aquino's speech at the same inauguration ceremony emphasized the necessity for the Filipino people to develop a spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of the Philippine nation. Once again, Rizal was the model:

Such sentiments were no doubt music to the ears of Japanese officials in the Philippines. They had intended that Filipinos rid themselves of their Western-imposed weaknesses and develop, in their place, a stronger sense of duty towards the state. A spirit of national self-sacrifice was what pan-Asianists such as Rōyama Masamichi Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945) demanded in the Philippines. Imamura Chūsuke (1899–1954) was head and founder of the Department of Colonial Economics at Nihon University. He had visited the Philippines already in 1934 and published his travel impressions in the Dai-Ajia Kyōkai’s journal, Dai-Ajiashugi. Imamura was convinced that Japan had to support the Philippines in gaining its independence as, otherwise, the archipelago would turn towards the West as Siam had done.Footnote ³⁴ Miki intended Japan to provide Filipinos with an ‘older brother's guidance’ in their efforts to contribute towards the formation of the GEACPS.Footnote ³⁵ Aquino set out the KALIBAPI as the very tool to provide that kind of guidance:

Imamura also visited Java in March 1942 and emphasized the Japanese motive to liberate the native people from Dutch oppression. At a press conference after his visit, he pointed out that it was by no means Japan's intention to exploit Javanese resources, with the exception of oil, which was a necessity for Japan's victory in the Greater Asia War.Footnote ³⁷ The Japanese army adopted a much less friendly tone when it came to describing its ‘mission’ in Indonesia more generally and Java in particular. In the journal Sekidoho, which targeted a Japanese readership, the Indonesians were labelled ‘lazy coolies of the Dutch’ who had to be made ‘diligent workers for Japan and Asia’. It would ‘require extraordinary efforts to make these Indonesians our cooperators in the construction of Greater East Asia’.Footnote ³⁸ In the Philippines, this dual service to the nation and to the GEACPS was reinforced by the oath of allegiance that was sworn by those present at the inauguration ceremony of the KALIBAPI. It demanded that each member strove

Further reinforcing Rizal's symbolic function as the early pan-Asianist who sanctioned such a formula was the fact that the great Filipino patriot had visited Japan in the spring of 1888 (although he only stayed there for a brief stint of six weeks). Together, Japanese pan-Asianists and KALIBAPI officials used this evidence to paint a picture of Rizal as someone who had admired Japanese culture. However, they largely ignored the reality that Rizal had never been a Japanophile, and that he had also paid visits to various European countries. Rizal had certainly been both a Filipino patriot and a cosmopolitan, but he was not an obvious early pan-Asianist. For example, in 1887, Rizal published his novel, Noli me Tangere, in which he took an utmost anti-colonial stance against the Spanish rulers, while at the same time writing in the colonial language, Spanish. As Pnina Werbner puts it, this novel was a satirical critique, which was cosmopolitan in its intellectual approach while at the same time it addressed a Filipino readership through the language used and the scenarios it described.Footnote ⁴⁰

The KALIBAPI's utilization of Rizal could therefore be interpreted as part of its rather desperate attempt to prove that pan-Asianist ideals were part of local Philippine culture, and that the Philippines could therefore easily form a natural part of a Japanese-dominated East Asian bloc.

Selling pan-Asianism: the KALIBAPI as a people's movement

Following the KALIBAPI's inauguration, Aquino, Duran, and Ramos took off on a promotion tour throughout the entire Philippines to gain support for the idea of the New Philippines and establish party chapters across the country. The active involvement of these three pre-war pro-Japanese leaders underlines the KALIBAPI's role as an organization intended to promote pan-Asianism. However, not all its influential members had advocated close Filipino–Japanese ties before the conflict. Rather, some KALIBAPI leaders had established close ties with the Americans. One of the most interesting was the United States-educated Camilo Osias (1889–1976), who served as first assistant director general of the party, and later became Aquino's successor as director general. A nationalist and prominent figure in the Philippine Commonwealth who had studied in the United States of America, Osias had in 1929 been elected Resident Commissioner in the United States House of Representatives.Footnote ⁴¹

The Japanese intention was that the KALIBAPI, as well as promoting the GEACPS, would also function as a labour-recruitment agency, especially to provide support to the Japanese army.Footnote ⁴² It fell to Osias to write the preface of The KALIBAPI Worker's Handbook, which was published in July 1943. Osias summarized the purpose of the volume as ‘to give a basic working notion of the KALIBAPI as a people's movement dedicated to national service’.Footnote ⁴³ He, like other KALIBAPI leaders, also used Rizal as a point of reference when he described the Oriental values that the KALIBAPI would teach Filipinos. According to Osias, Rizal was a patriot whose ‘love of country was not selfish; it was of the sacrificial kind’.Footnote ⁴⁴ The goal of the KALIBAPI was therefore to instigate the kind of dynamic mass movement among Filipino workers that pan-Asianists such as Rōyama Masamichi had demanded as a precondition for the success of the GEACPS.

Away from the public platform, however, Osias proved far less optimistic about the KALIBAPI's mission. In a meeting with Takeuchi Tatsuji on 8 September 1943, the latter asked Osias to explain the organization's objectives, and he struggled to do so. Osias also expressed his concerns regarding its mass acceptance by Filipinos. According to Takeuchi, Osias's two main points of concern were:

1. a. The Kalibapi owed its creation to inspiration from the Japanese army.

2. b. It was conceived as a formula to incorporate the Sakdalistas. It lacked unity at its inception; it included many factions. Ramos is a good orator, but he has no brains. His subordinates have less.Footnote ⁴⁵

For a people's movement to evolve in the shape of the KALIBAPI would thus prove difficult. It had been initiated by an occupying army in order to gain control over the country's radical nationalists. It included a range of radical members, including their leader Ramos, who proved fractious and unreliable.

The other major challenge the KALIBAPI faced was in its attempt to sell Japanese pan-Asianism at a popular level in a context when many people struggled to think of themselves as Asian. The initiators of the KALIBAPI repeatedly stressed that ‘Oriental values’ had always been part of Philippine culture until American rule in the islands had marginalized them. The question was whether the KALIBAPI could effectively undertake its programme of ‘re-Orientalizing’ the Philippines and eliminate undesirable Westernized habits from Filipino society, and whether all its members shared a common desire to do so. Other ideas of Filipino identity that circulated at this time presented an alternative picture of the Philippines’ place in Asia. For example, Carlos P. Romulo (1899–1985), later Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the post-war Philippines and the first Asian to serve as president of the United Nations General Assembly, described his countrymen in the following way:

For Romulo, the fact that Filipinos were less Asian in effect made them more cosmopolitan and, presumably, also better equipped for the eventual global work of promoting the universal brotherhood of humanity. His assessment of the Filipinos in general is quite similar to Pnina Werbner's view of Rizal as a cosmopolite. Romulo made these comments in 1943, in the United States of America, from his position as Resident Commissioner in the American House of Representatives. Certainly, not all Filipinos would have shared his positive evaluation of the American impact on their country. Harsh critics of American rule in the Philippines such as the Filipino historian Renato Constantino (1919–99) bemoaned the loss of an original Filipino culture because of the years under American administration.Footnote ⁴⁷ Nonetheless, Romulo's alternative views, and the generally agreed opinion that the Filipinos’ former ‘Asian-ness’ has been irretrievably lost as a result of European colonization, were indicative of the problems Japanese pan-Asianism would face in the Philippines.

The KALIBAPI's re-Orientalization effort itself also included the repeated assertion that Americans had been responsible for the extinction of Oriental values in the Philippines. But this effort also sought to emphasize other, older connections that made the concept of the GEACPS in the Philippines still a viable one. According to the KALIBAPI Worker's Handbook, ‘geographical propinquity and biological factors would dictate the Filipinos’ being a part of a great Asiatic system’ and thus a natural part of the GEACPS.Footnote ⁴⁸ This argument resembled exactly the approach of the pan-Asianists of the Dai-Ajia Kyōkai in Tokyo who had been eager to establish geographical and racial affinities between Japan and the Philippines. In addition, the same Handbook offered patriotic Filipino workers clear political guarantees. If they devoted their hearts, bodies, and minds to the creation of a New Philippines, which would take its place in the GEACPS, they could rest assured they would be ‘free to shape their own national destiny and develop their individuality as a nation; that their sovereign and territorial integrity will be respected; and that the wealth and natural resources of the Philippines will be left to the enjoyment of the Filipino people and their posterity’.Footnote ⁴⁹

In practical terms, the KALIBAPI's re-Orientalization efforts targeted workers through the organization of its new Labor Institute, founded on 3 May 1943, where Filipinos could take Japanese- and Tagalog-language classes and attend courses on Oriental and Filipino culture.Footnote ⁵⁰ Besides the main working populace, its efforts also began to focus on the archipelago's next generation when a Junior KALIBAPI youth wing was established on 19 May 1943. This youth organization was open to ‘any Filipino, less than 18 years of age, who likewise believes in the ideals, aims and purposes of the Association and who is of good standing in the community’.Footnote ⁵¹ It was especially intended to make Filipino youth aware of the Oriental values that stood at the centre of Japanese pan-Asianism. At the official inauguration of the Junior KALIBAPI on 19 July 1943, Osias declared that

The co-opted image of Rizal again proved an essential element in this campaign. The Junior KALIBAPI was the successor of the Kabataang Maka-Rizal (Rizal Youth Movement) and, in May 1944, it was renamed the Rizal Youth Movement again. The Philippine Executive Commission's Department of Education, Health, and Public Welfare established a Section on the Preparation of a Graded Word List in the National Language, which would ‘prepare handbooks on the habits and character traits of Rizal for use in the proposed Kabataang Maka-Rizal or Rizal Youth Movement’ and ‘briefs on the character traits of Philippine heroines’.Footnote ⁵³ In the report of his Research Commission, Rōyama had demanded that education in the Philippines had to help young Filipinos develop a sense of being part of an Oriental community.Footnote ⁵⁴ In the KALIBAPI's youth literature, Oriental values were again equated with the virtues credited to Rizal and other prominent Filipino nationalist icons.

The establishment of the Junior KALIBAPI was in line with the general attempt of the Japanese Administration to lay the groundwork for the New Philippines by means of education. On 19 May 1942, and thus prior to Rōyama, Hayashi Yoshihide, director general of the Japanese Military Administration, had already emphasized the need to reform the Philippine education system in this manner:

The Junior KALIBAPI became the primary instrument for this educational renovation. It consisted of a section for children aged 7–15 years (Kabataang Maghahanda) and a section for youths aged 16–18 (Kabataang Katulong). Boys and girls were kept separate.Footnote ⁵⁶

The Japanese Military Administration in the Philippines also showed a strong interested in the movement towards the re-Orientalization of the Philippines. Lieutenant-General Kuroda Shigenori (1887–1954), the highest commander of the Japanese army in the Philippines from May 1943 to September 1944, spoke in front of KALIBAPI delegates and members of the Preparatory Commission for the Philippine Independence at a banquet following its meeting on 20 June 1943. In his speech, he pointed at the utmost importance of the KALIBAPI's task to help integrate the Philippines into the GEACPS. Kuroda, similarly to Osias, emphasized the KALIBAPI's role as ‘a people's movement on a large scale dedicated to the cause of the New Philippines on the basis of solid unity among social, cultural and economic circles in the Philippines’. He wanted the KALIBAPI to become an instrument of unification with its main purpose being to create a sense of Asian identity among the Filipino people.Footnote ⁵⁷

Interestingly, Kuroda was longer in office as commanding general in the Philippines than his predecessor Homma MasaharuFootnote ⁵⁸ and his successor, General Yamashita Tomoyuki.Footnote ⁵⁹ Yet he was the only of the three commanding generals who survived the war. Homma and Yamashita were tried in the US Military Commission in Manila and executed afterwards. Kuroda received a life sentence in 1949, but was sent back to Japan in 1952. It is very likely that Jorge B. Vargas and Camilo Osias saved Kuroda's life by giving positive statements in his defence. Osias described the general as someone who had repeatedly ignored orders from Tokyo and who had opposed the abandonment of English in favour of Japanese at Philippine schools.Footnote ⁶⁰

The Japanese Military Administration's interest in the KALIBAPI's re-Orientalization programme was certainly also a pragmatic one. It wanted the Philippines to contribute to the establishment of the GEACPS economically, which, of course, meant the exploitation of the islands’ natural resources. First of all, the Japanese wanted to restructure the local cotton industry and turn the Philippines into the largest cotton-producing country within the GEACPS. Simultaneously, they desired to extent its textile industry. However, already in 1943, food became scarce and arable land had to be used for cultivating crops instead of cotton. Therefore, textile production became more and more difficult, to the extent that eventually the Philippine textile industry became more dependent on the United States of America than it had been before the war.Footnote ⁶¹ In addition, the Philippine mining industry was of great importance to the Japanese war machine. Already in 1940, the Philippines exported the better part of its metal ore and almost its entire copper-ore production to Japan.Footnote ⁶² By providing further such resources, the Philippines was supposed to make its signal contribution to the future GEACPS. The ‘Proposed Measures Dealing with the Philippine Islands in the Event of War with the United States’, as issued by the First Department Research Section of the Japanese Army General Staff on 31 March 1941, showed a similar emphasis on the nature of the Philippines membership of the GEACPS. According to this document, it was imagined that the Philippines would contribute to the common prosperity of all Greater Asia.Footnote ⁶³

The Japanese established the KALIBAPI for both ideological and strategic reasons. The archipelago should become a valuable member of the GEACPS and also contribute to the successful progression of the war. Therefore, it was necessary for the Japanese to convince the majority of the Filipino people of the advantages of their country becoming part of the Japan-led sphere and create a people's movement in the Philippines supporting this concept. The KALIBAPI was arguably the most important tool in this respect. However, despite the KALIBAPI's co-option of the memory of José Rizal, and even though it reached a strength of 550,000 members by April 1943, the organization did not become deeply rooted in Philippine society as a national body. Its membership remained mostly based in Aquino's home province of Tarlac and the capital Manila.Footnote ⁶⁴ It therefore failed to develop into the kind of popular national organization that pan-Asianists such as Rōyama Masamichi had envisioned. Even Camilo Osias, as director general of the party, was not convinced that it could meet the Japanese expectations as a people's movement, on account of its origins and its complex political make-up.