Greater East Asia Conference

Also known as: Tokyo Conference · The Tokyo Conference of November 1943 · The Greater East Asia Conference of 1943

Definition

The Greater East Asia Conference — also called the Tokyo Conference — was the assembly held in Tokyo on November 5–6, 1943, to which Imperial Japan summoned the heads of the states of its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō for Japan; Prime Minister Zhang Jinghui of Manchukuo; President Wang Jingwei of the Reorganized National Government of China; Head of State and Prime Minister Ba Maw of Burma; Subhas Chandra Bose, Head of State of the Provisional Government of Free India, present as an observer; Wan Waithayakon as envoy of the Kingdom of Thailand; and President José P. Laurel of the Second Philippine Republic, who flew to Tokyo together with cabinet Ministers Recto and Paredes. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic) The conference issued the Greater East Asia Joint Declaration on November 6, 1943, to which the participating governments adhered — the Philippines among them, three weeks after the republic’s inauguration of October 14, 1943. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)

The conference was Japan’s showcase of Pan-Asianism — the presentation of the war as Asia’s liberation from Western colonialism — convened as the Pacific War turned against Japan, and it is so treated by historians: a propaganda show piece that “addressed few issues of any substance,” designed to rally regional support for the next stage of the war and to encourage China to make peace. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel) For the Second Philippine Republic the conference was the whole of its international life — the standing exhibit of an independence recognized by no belligerent outside Japan’s sphere — and this wiki’s entry on the Second Philippine Republic treats it accordingly. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Conference
Wikidata	Q702431
DBpedia	http://dbpedia.org/resource/Greater_East_Asia_Conference
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (the sphere’s LCSH heading, the conference’s frame)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22Greater+East+Asia+Conference%22+1943+Tokyo+declaration
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Tokyo Conference
The Tokyo Conference of November 1943
The Greater East Asia Conference of 1943

Examples and Analogies

A summit of dependencies: the assembly worked like a congress of client states — Manchukuo and Wang Jingwei’s China were Japanese creations, Burma and the Philippines had been granted “independence” under Japanese auspices in 1943, and Bose and Thailand stood in as the unoccupied well-wishers — so that the family portrait of sovereign equals was its entire product. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
A declaration against the West, in English: the Joint Declaration blamed the United States and Britain, which had “indulged in insatiable aggression and exploitation” in East Asia, and pledged the nations of the sphere to common prosperity based on justice, mutual respect for sovereignty and independence, cultural revival, economic development “upon a basis of reciprocity,” and the abolition of racial discrimination — ironic in that English, the delegates’ only common tongue, was the working language of Japan’s Asian rally. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
Verified conference data:
Dates and venue: November 5–6, 1943, Tokyo
Participants: Tōjō (Japan), Zhang Jinghui (Manchukuo), Wang Jingwei (China), Ba Maw (Burma), Bose (Free India, observer), Wan Waithayakon (Thailand), Laurel (Philippines)
Philippine delegation: President Laurel with Ministers Recto and Paredes
Output: the Greater East Asia Joint Declaration, adhered to November 6, 1943
Timing for the Philippines: three weeks after the republic’s inauguration (October 14, 1943) and the Pact of Alliance with Japan signed the same day, ratified October 16, 1943

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Second Republic’s Diplomacy

The conference is the single international event of the Second Philippine Republic’s twenty-three months — the occasion of Laurel’s one foreign trip as wartime president and of the republic’s one international act, adherence to the Joint Declaration — the frame this wiki’s Second Philippine Republic entry uses for the republic’s entire foreign record. (Wikipedia — José P. Laurel, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)

2. Teaching Wartime Propaganda

The assembly is a set piece for the study of propaganda as diplomacy: the Pan-Asian liberation theme, the anti-Western declaration, the English working language, and the assembly’s coincidence with Japan’s military decline make it the textbook exhibit of legitimacy engineering in the Co-Prosperity Sphere. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)

3. Researching Collaboration and Its Aftermath

Laurel’s presence at Tokyo — followed by the coerced declaration of war of September 23, 1944, the evacuation to Japan, and his 1946 indictment on 132 counts of treason closed by the amnesty of January 28, 1948 — is the documented arc in which the conference sits, the subject this wiki’s José P. Laurel entry traces. (Wikipedia — José P. Laurel, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)

4. Comparing Axis-Sponsored Assemblies

Comparative study of Japanese wartime state-building — Manchukuo, the Nanjing regime, the Ba Maw government, the Azad Hind — converges on this conference, the only occasion on which the sponsored states’ heads met together; the roster itself is the primary evidence of the sphere’s actual membership. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)

Strategies

Read the roster, not the rhetoric: the participant list — two puppet states, two fresh “independences,” an observer government-in-exile, and one non-belligerent envoy — tells more than the declaration; researchers use attendance as the index of genuine versus sponsored statehood. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
Date the turn: the conference followed Japan’s defeat at Guadalcanal, and historians date from it the shift of Japanese policy toward a “cooperation-based framework” with the occupied territories — reading the assembly as a war measure rather than a constitutional event. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)
Follow the ministry: that Japan routed the sphere through a new Greater East Asia Ministry rather than the Foreign Ministry is the documented ground for historians’ judgment that the independence pledges “were a sham” — institutional structure as evidence of intent. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
For Philippine researchers: set the conference beside the republic’s October 14, 1943 Pact of Alliance and its September 23, 1944 war declaration — the three acts together defining the republic’s alignment — and beside the amnesty that closed the collaboration docket, as this wiki’s entries on the Second Republic and José P. Laurel document. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel)

Security and Safety Measures

The alliance framework: the republic entered the conference under the Pact of Alliance with Japan signed on its inauguration day and ratified by the National Assembly on October 16, 1943 — the treaty basis on which Filipino troops stood alongside the Japanese. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic)
Wartime censorship and staging: the conference was a managed event in a censorious wartime capital — staged photographs, set speeches, an approved declaration — so researchers treat its record as produced propaganda to be verified against the military situation it omitted. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
Exclusions as policy: Vietnam and Cambodia were kept out to avoid offending Vichy France, Korea had no delegation (Korean intellectuals attended only within the Japanese delegation), and Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta were invited to Tokyo only after the conference for informal talks — the guest list’s deliberate boundaries. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)
For researchers: the republic’s own acts were voided by the restored Commonwealth and its officials prosecuted for collaboration until the amnesty of January 28, 1948 — the legal framework within which any statement of the conference’s Philippine significance must be made. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel)

Historical Context

Japan convened the conference in the autumn of 1943, after the tide of the Pacific War had turned — the defeat at Guadalcanal behind it — and after a season of stage-managed independences — Burma and the Philippines in 1943, the Philippines inaugurated on October 14 — each under Japanese auspices. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic) The Second Philippine Republic had been proclaimed at the Legislative Building in Manila with Laurel as president, had signed its Pact of Alliance with Japan on inauguration day, and three weeks later sent Laurel with Ministers Recto and Paredes to Tokyo, where he sat with Tōjō, Zhang Jinghui, Wang Jingwei, Ba Maw, Bose, and Wan Waithayakon. (Wikipedia — José P. Laurel, Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference) In his conference address Laurel claimed, in the documented phrase, that no one could “stop or delay the acquisition of one billion Asians of the free and untrammelled right” to shape their own destiny; the Filipino ambassador’s message to Filipinos to “disregard Anglo-Saxon civilisation” belongs to the same record. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)

The declaration of November 6, 1943 carried the five principles — common prosperity, mutual respect for sovereignty and independence, cultural revival, reciprocal economic development, and the abolition of racial discrimination — and the sphere’s states adhered to it. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference) Historians’ verdict has been uniform: the conference was “little more than a propaganda gesture,” the cooperative turn of 1943–45 “largely cosmetic,” and the independence pledges a sham administered through the Greater East Asia Ministry. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic) Within a year the republic was driven to proclaim martial law (September 21, 1944) and to declare war on the United States and Britain (September 23, 1944); within two, Laurel dissolved it from Japan on August 17, 1945, and the collaboration trials followed. (Wikipedia — Second Philippine Republic, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel)

Challenges and Controversies

Liberation Rhetoric Versus Occupation Reality

The conference proclaimed Asia’s liberation from Western exploitation while Japan occupied most of the proclaiming states; the gap between the declaration’s principles — sovereignty, reciprocity, racial equality — and the sphere’s administered reality is the conference’s central studied contradiction. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)

The Philippine Judgment

For the Philippines, the standing question is how Laurel’s attendance should be weighed: the collaboration indictments that charged him with 132 counts of treason, his defenders’ answer that the republic was a shelter under occupation, and the amnesty of January 28, 1948 that closed the question without deciding it — the dispute this wiki’s José P. Laurel entry carries. (Wikipedia — José P. Laurel)

The Excluded Asians

Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia — Asian peoples under Japanese or Vichy French control — had no voice at Asia’s liberation assembly, while Dutch India remained a military administration; the exclusions, driven by Japanese diplomatic convenience, are cited against the conference’s claim to speak for Asia. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference)

Source Problems

The conference’s record is largely Japanese-produced and participant memoir; speeches, photographs, and the declaration survive, but the delegations’ internal positions survive unevenly, so that claims about what was said off-stage — including the Filipino delegation’s private reservations — require attribution to their sources. (Wikipedia — Greater East Asia Conference, Wikipedia — José P. Laurel)