Japan's cultural policy toward China, 1918-1931

by See Heng Teow

Most existing scholarship on Japan's cultural policy toward modern China reflects the paradigm of cultural imperialism and emphasizes a linear pattern of Japanese cultural aggression, particularly after 1923 and the establishment of the China Cultural Affairs Bureau. In contrast, this study demonstrates that Japan, like the other Great Powers, was motivated by pragmatic interests, international cultural rivalries, ethnocentrism, moralism, and idealism. The author argues that Japanese policy can best be understood as the promotion of its own experience of development, which stressed the civilizing aspects of East Asian civilization, modernization, and the promotion of Japanese culture and interests.