Japanese Coprosperity Plan for Southeast Asia?

If there's a link regarding this topic, please help me.
Was there a plan by the Japanese Empire for Southeast Asia during WW2?
Were the Japanese willing to make the region a collection of puppet states or directly administrating it?
Lastly, were they willing to have single Indonesian puppet state or planned to divide it ala the Dutch in OTL?

Thanks in advance!
 
The Japanese Empire would not directly annex Southeast Asia but expel white imperialists and help to install friendly governments. Given they appealed to local nationalist movements (i.e. Sukarno) I would assume that they would fuse Malaysia and Indonesia and Papua New Guinea into a new state as Indonesian nationalists were appealing to that...

EDIT: remember, for example Manchuko was not made part of the Japanese Empire but was an allied state. There was not historical legacy for the Japanese to formally add it to their empire, unlike the Koreans who had the same language family as the Japanese...
 
Last edited:

Cook

Banned
The Japanese Empire would not directly annex Southeast Asia but expel white imperialists and help to install friendly governments. Given they appealed to local nationalist movements (i.e. Sukarno)
The local nationalists were puppets with absolutely no independent authority. The ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’ was merely a euphemism for their new empire since they claimed to be liberating Asia from imperialism.
 
Japanese SE Asia was limited to a few SE Asian nations taking a token independence, although the Philippines itself was projected to be included under the Governor General of Formosa along with Hong Kong. (ironically, they wouldn't have the real Formosa in it)
 

Thande

Donor
In fairness on this site we tend to look at WW2 through hindsight-tinted lenses: remember at the time, people had less of an idea about things like how Japan was at such an industrial disadvantage to the USA or Germany wasn't actually as well armed as its propaganda implied, so to people at the time, Operation Sealion, Japan invading California or whatever did not seem that far-fetched. After all, remember that this was a war which had already changed beyond anything ever seen, so it wasn't that much of a leap for it to grow even more dramatic like that.
 
The local nationalists were puppets with absolutely no independent authority. The ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere’ was merely a euphemism for their new empire since they claimed to be liberating Asia from imperialism.

It's true, but even puppethood is better than being directly annexed to the Empire. Poor Korea and Taiwan had it worst of all - not even the tokens of sovereignty, but direct rule from Tokyo, by foreigners. They probably envied countries like Thailand and Manchukuo.
 

d32123

Banned
In fairness on this site we tend to look at WW2 through hindsight-tinted lenses: remember at the time, people had less of an idea about things like how Japan was at such an industrial disadvantage to the USA or Germany wasn't actually as well armed as its propaganda implied, so to people at the time, Operation Sealion, Japan invading California or whatever did not seem that far-fetched. After all, remember that this was a war which had already changed beyond anything ever seen, so it wasn't that much of a leap for it to grow even more dramatic like that.

Besides, in order to convince Americans that their well-being was really at stake in WWII, the government had to exaggerate the threat of Germany and Japan. In order for the German and Japanese governments to continue to get their soldiers to fight on even as things were getting more and more dire, they had to convince them that the odds of winning were actually better than in reality. It was beneficial for both sides to exaggerate the threat of the Axis.
 

Cook

Banned
They probably envied countries like Thailand...
Thailand was a unique case; they weren’t part of the empire (Co-prosperity Sphere) but were under the protection of the Japanese. Circumstances for them were markedly different from the rest of S.E. Asia.
 
I seem to remember that the Japanese had written during the war some massive volume explaining their actual intentions (no matter how unrealistic they may have been), in which it was explained that pretty everything Japan touched was supposed to become part of its its empire and that the "Co-Prosperity" stuff was BS.

However the document was never translated and is relatively rare, so not many of its details are available.
 

Cook

Banned
...everything Japan touched was supposed to become part of its its empire and that the "Co-Prosperity" stuff was BS.
The Co-prosperity Sphere seems to have been a euphemism for empire, like referring to an eight year war in China as an incident.
 
Top