What question did this study set out to answer?

Explore the development of Japan's colonial cultural sphere and its ideological implications during the Pacific War.

April 3, 2026Open Access

Faye Yuan Kleeman, In Transit : The Formation of the Colonial East Asian Cultural Sphere

Key Points

Explore the development of Japan's colonial cultural sphere and its ideological implications during the Pacific War.
Interdisciplinary examination of texts and historical contexts
Analysis of Japan's governmental propaganda
Investigation of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere concept
The cultural sphere became a tool for imperial ideology by the Pacific War.
Historical narratives illustrate the complex interactions among various East Asian cultures within this sphere.
The articulation of the cultural sphere reflects broader geopolitical ambitions of Japan.

Abstract

With In Transit: The Formation of the Colonial East Asian Cultural Sphere, Faye Yuan Kleeman adopts an interdisciplinary and multi-textual approach for providing a transnational history of Japan's "empire-wide cultural sphere" (9), and the multi-faceted ways in which individuals were embroiled within this sphere.By the onset of the Pacific War, this "cultural sphere" had become articulated within government propaganda as the geopolitical construct of the "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," the paradigmatic expression of Japanese imperialist ideology.It is this ideological understanding of

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