Nanshin-ron (Southern Expansion Doctrine)
남진론
One of the Empire of Japan's competing expansion strategies, Nanshin-ron held that Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands fell within Japan's sphere of interest and offered greater value for economic and territorial expansion than elsewhere. Favoured chiefly by the Imperial Japanese Navy, it stood opposed to the Army's Hokushin-ron (northward advance into Manchuria and Siberia), and it prevailed as national policy after the Army's defeat at Khalkhin Gol (1939) and the quagmire in China. It later supplied the rationale for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and Japan's southward war in the Pacific.
In depth
Origins
Nanshin-ron reaches back to the Meiji period (1880s–1890s), when it was advanced in a gradual register as an argument for trade, emigration, and colonisation in the South Seas. After the First World War, when former German possessions (the Marianas, Carolines, and Marshalls) became Japan's South Seas Mandate under League of Nations supervision, the Navy stressed their military and economic value. A Navy-linked 'South Strike Group' based at Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan produced studies rationalising southward advance.
Rivalry with Hokushin-ron
Japan's Army and Navy were locked in deep rivalry from the Meiji era. From the early 1930s the Army saw the Soviet Union as the chief threat and backed Hokushin-ron (advance into Manchuria and Siberia), while the Navy, eyeing the United States and Britain, backed Nanshin-ron. The June 1936 Imperial Defence Plan tried to balance the two, but the Kwantung Army's crushing defeat at Khalkhin Gol (the Nomonhan Incident, 1939) and the stalemate in China discredited the northern line and let the southern line prevail.
National policy and consequence
Nanshin-ron was formally adopted as national policy with the proclamation of the 'New Order in East Asia' in 1936, and in 1940 it became the basis of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere announced by Konoe Fumimaro. From the September 1940 occupation of northern French Indochina to the opening of the Pacific War in December 1941, Nanshin-ron supplied the ideological frame for Japan's southward aggression.
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) definition, origins, Navy support, adoption as national policy in 1936 (New Order in East Asia), and basis of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
- Wikipedia (EN) the rival northward doctrine backed by the Imperial Japanese Army and its abandonment after Khalkhin Gol (1939) and the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact (1941)
- pacificatrocities.org Army-Navy rivalry, Navy promotion of Nanshin-ron, and the shift after the Battle of Khalkhin Gol