Political and Ideological Impacts of Decolonization upon Former Colonies and Colonizers: Japanese Colonialism in Comparison with the Western Colonialism and the International Environment

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The project obtained new insights on the nature of the decolonization in East Asia, by way of examining it in comparison with the Western experience and putting it in the post-war international environment. Some of the new findings are as follows:Firstly, the decolonization in East Asia was the direct result of the defeat of Japan. Moreover the Cold War spread to this region when the decolonization process had just started. This led the East Asian decolonization to have the following characteristics:(1)The U. S. strategic consideration of the Cold War had greatly influenced the way that Japan and the former colonies had established new relations, hence force, the way that colonial legacy be conquered.(2)In the first years of the post war period it was not those forces who could represent colonized people who experienced the plight under the Japanese colonial rule but were those occupying forces representing victors of the Pacific War that had upper hand in the political process. This affected the decolonization in the region to be a rather "surrogated" process.(3)Because of above mentioned reasons, conquering the negative side of the legacy left by the Japanese and thereby historical reconciliations between the former colonizers and the colonized has been rather imperfect.Secondly, there has come out in the years after the Cold War ended intolerant mass nationalism in each East Asian country on the face of growing economic interdependence as the globalization proceeds. It is fair to guess imperfect decolonization process mentioned above partly contributed to the making of this ominous phenomenon. In this regard, this project has found out that a sort of psychological process that can be called "decolonization of soul" has become one of the foci of the study of decolonization. Again in this regard those anti-colonialist thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi or Franz Fanon should be brought to forward for re-examination.