The title of Nakano Satoshi's fascinating book, Japan's Colonial Moment in Southeast Asia 1942–1945: The Occupiers’ Experience, explains the author's objectives clearly, but it's easy to overlook the point it makes. The publisher's blurb for the English version, which calls the book “The first-ever attempt to paint a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War (1942–5)”, is very wide of the mark, and doesn't help. As will become apparent, the English title is more revealing than that of the Japanese version: Tōnan Ajia senryō to Nihonjin: Teikoku Nihon no kaitai 東南アジア占領と日本人──帝国・日本の解体 [The Occupation of Southeast Asia and the Japanese: The Dismantling of the Japanese Empire].Footnote ¹

I began reading with certain questions in mind predicated on the idea that a book based on Japanese sources would provide a new understanding of the war and occupation, and I took reading notes based on whether the book answered them. Mostly it didn't, and I jotted down further questions in anticipation of writing a critical review. It turned out I was asking the wrong questions, and with that realization my opinion of the book changed altogether.

Nakano is a historian of the United States and traces his interest in this topic to his familiarity with American colonialism in the Philippines. The book deals with the Philippines and other territories occupied by Japan (the Netherlands Indies, British Malaya and British Burma), where Japan essentially displaced the pre-war colonial powers but maintained their administrations. Japan did not operate as a colonial power in French Indochina and Thailand, which remained under pre-war administrations for most of the war years, and Nakano pays less attention to these territories.

The Japanese presented themselves to the people of Southeast Asia as fellow Asians working to liberate them from colonial rule, and on this basis, relations between local populations and the Japanese should have been cordial. That they were not had to do both with Japan's policies and with the behaviour of individual Japanese sent to the region. Harsh measures to suppress resistance and restore order early in the occupation created widespread apprehension among local residents, and boorish and belittling behaviour on the part of various members of the military garrison force and civilian administrators led people to view the Japanese as an alien and hostile presence. Local residents adjusted to the new situation, working in offices where the senior figures were Japanese, acquiring some knowledge of the Japanese language, and satisfying Japanese administrative requirements, but Japan's propaganda slogans, such as Asia for Asians, promised economic benefits and political freedoms, and these promises were not fulfilled. Economic conditions deteriorated throughout the occupied territories, which experienced severe shortages of food and clothing, rampant inflation, flourishing black markets, a breakdown of transport networks, and widespread corruption. Local residents developed a deep cynicism about the capacities of their new colonial masters, a sentiment that surprised many Japanese when it surfaced at the war's end.

Nakano constructs his book by weaving together a “myriad of ‘narratives’ by Japanese sent to Southeast Asia as occupiers” (p. vii). It covers familiar ground and the terrain does look different seen through a Japanese lens, but it is not “a full-scale portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia”. There is scant information about individuals and events that normally occupy centre stage in accounts of Southeast Asia during this period: Jose P. Laurel, Sukarno, Mohamad Hatta, and Ba Maw appear only briefly, little is said about shortages of food and clothing and transportation, and the words “resistance” and “guerrilla” aren't in the book's index.

None of this matters, though, because the book is not about Southeast Asia; it's about Japan. The subtitle (The Occupiers’ Experience) lays out the author's agenda, which he pursues in a meta narrative that accompanies his minimalist account of events during the occupation. In writing about “The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia as a historical experience” (the title of the book's introduction), Nakano's concern is the historical experience of Japan rather than that of Southeast Asia. In the final chapter, he reinforces this point when he writes: “The present treatise … has been focused on the historical impact exerted on Japan by its military occupation of Southeast Asia, based on the existing ‘narrative’ told by Japanese who were directly involved in the occupation of that region” (p. 237, emphasis in the original).

Tucked away at the end of a section midway through the book, Nakano presents some remarkably harsh conclusions. At this point in the narrative, he is moving from a period when Japan's occupation was based on “unimpeachable armed coercion” to a true colonial encounter. Arguing that “Japan lacked the capability of taking over from the West as the governor and business manager of Southeast Asia”, Nakano writes: “The only thing the Japanese Empire was capable of was expropriating war goods in the style of the empires of antiquity through violence and military might, since it was bereft of the skills to manage the economies of the occupied territories, like most modern empires had.” He continues: “as soon as flaws began to appear in that ‘military might,’ the whole occupation apparatus would come tumbling down” (p. 132).

The trajectory of the book moves from initial military successes to faltering efforts to build an Asian co-prosperity sphere, to military defeat and a dismal failure of governance. The concluding chapter features Japanese statements looking back at the war and occupation that are flooded with sadness and regret. Nakano tries to understand what went wrong, and offers several answers. Inter alia, one is the tension between Japan as an occupying power based on military force and a colonial power unduly dependent on military force to sustain it. Another is the behaviour of individual Japanese, some of whom showed more interest in bars and brothels than in advancing Japan's war goals. A third is Japan's sense of racial superiority, captured in a line from a Kobe Shimbun editorial in February 1942: “It is an almost irrefutable fact that when compared to Japan, the level of the native peoples we are dealing with lags behind in every aspect of politics, economics and culture” (p. 76). In the concluding pages, one source suggests that Japanese objectives could have been realized by “Japanese acting as Japanese should” (p. 246), but others question whether the mentality and even the language of the Japanese were suitable for a colonial power.

Interesting as the book is, there is a disturbing omission. A number of Japanese historians have worked to provide objective accounts of the war and occupation that include negative aspects of Japan's wartime activities. In doing so, they have faced strong and sometimes threatening opposition from right-wing elements defending the country's war record, and their work has required a degree of personal courage rarely asked of historians. Nakano's book falls within this tradition, but he shies away from confronting the issue and limits his sources for the most part to individuals who questioned the war.

Since the book is both enjoyable and instructive, I am reluctant to conclude on a sour note, but I find myself wondering about its intended audience. The book seems to be written for Japanese readers and in fact is a translation of a Japanese publication that appeared in 2011. Prospective readers of the English version presumably include students of Japan and students of the war years in Southeast Asia, and they will benefit from reading it, but they will do so with a vague sense that they are eavesdropping on a conversation not intended for them.

The hardback edition, priced at £115, is clearly destined for libraries, but the publisher offers an e-book version for rental (starting at £20) or purchase. Much to my surprise, a quick internet search on the book's title turned up a freely available pdf of the entire book, as published.