Competing Against Universalism: Rereading the “Principles of an East Asian Cooperative Community” of Rōyama Masamichi

Abstract

Despite the various levels of discussion since the 1990s to gauge thepossibility of an East Asia Community, there has been little clear progress. Thepurpose of this article is to uncover the theoretical but negative legacy ofRōyama Masamichi’s late-1930s theory of an East Asian CooperativeCommunity. To this aim, I reread Rōyama’s texts, highlighting the perspectivethat he competed against universalism. In particular, I focus on the main premiseof his theory, the regional identity of East Asia, while acknowledging thefundamental limitations of discourse on East Asia in the 1930s. The paper isdivided into three parts. First, I explain the background of howconceptualization of an East Asian Cooperative Community was raised by anepistemological break from the West being considered as the universal world. Ithen examine the concept of regionality presented by Rōyama to highlight thespecific identity of East Asia. Lastly, I review Rōyama’s claim that the East AsianCooperative Community is not a particularization of the world order, but thatregionalism itself forms a universal world order. In this paper, rather thandirectly criticizing Rōyama’s complicity in an imperialist invasion, I intend toreveal the dilemma that he inevitably encountered when competing againstuniversalism. In that sense, the problem presented in this article leads to themore fundamental question of whether there could be any theoretical apparatusthat allows for the criticism of Europe-centrism but does not also result inAsia-centrism and Asia-hegemonism in discourse on East Asia.