The Asia-Pacific War as Social Revolution?

The war in Asia is often portrayed as a showdown between the opposing forces of Japanese imperialism and Asian nationalism, but it was also the product of, and in turn impacted upon, profound social struggles that were at once national, regional, and global, spanning borders and heralding new social orders.  At issue were not only the fate of the global order of empires and Euro-American dominance, but also that of the hierarchical and exclusive, “semi-feudal” social orders associated with them.  For those at the forefront of these struggles, the moment of the “Greater East Asia War” was often perceived not only in terms of grim confrontation but also in terms of transcendent social possibility.  That these struggles and visions played across as well as along boundaries separating empire and nation is revealed with exceptional vividness in the case of occupied Indonesia.  Yet the contours and contradictions of these visions, along with their inextricable incorporation into existing structures of power, circumscribed and prefigured a wartime outcome and a postwar, “postcolonial” social reckoning that were less than transcendent.  Tracing the kaleidoscopic experiences and dynamic positioning of author and social commentator Takeda Rintarô vis a vis Japan, Asia, the war, and “liberation” in a shifting context in Japan and occupied Java, this presentation probes the breadth and the limits of the war in Asia as social revolution, and its lessons and legacies for the “postcolonial” era.