Pan-Asianism

[3][4]: 99-100 Originally, Japanese Pan-Asianism believed that Asians shared a common heritage and must therefore collaborate in defeating their Western colonial masters.

[5] Their ideologues were Tokichi Tarui (1850–1922) who argued for equal Japan-Korea unionization for cooperative defence against the European powers,[6] and Kentaro Oi (1843–1922) who attempted to push social reforms in Korea and establish a constitutional government in Japan.

[citation needed] Pan-Asian thought in Japan was further popularized following the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).

In this environment, a number of Indian students came to Japan in the early twentieth century, founding the Oriental Youngmen's Association in 1900.

Okakura Kakuzō, a scholar and art critic, also praised the superiority of Asian values upon Japanese victory of the Russo-Japanese War:[7] The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas.

But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end, of life.

Sangoku literally means the "three countries": Honshu (the largest island of Japan), Kara (China) and Tenjiku (India).

Exceptionally, Ryōhei Uchida (1874–1937), who was a member of the Black Dragon Society, was a Japan-Korea unionist and supported Filipino and Chinese revolutions.

These were evident in government policies such as the Hakko ichiu and Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere agendas.

[5] Sun Yat-sen, despite his consistent praise of Japan as a cultural partner,[15] questioned whether they would follow the path of exploitation like Western powers in the future in his final years.