Asia Case

1. INTRODUCTION: Make a stand that YES, Japanese occupation act as a catalyst to the rise in political and social change in SEA in run up to independence.

2. Discuss about SEA before war (how was SEA being ruled, why SEA was being colonised in the first place?)

3. Discuss about the rise of sun (what Japanese did during wartime? Aggressive in what? Occupied where? for what started occupation?)

4. Discuss both parties impacted SEA (colonial lord and Japanese).

5. Discuss about problem faces after war:

> rise in nationalism (impact of nationalist) and spread of communism.

> borders issues

> armed struggle

> Some experience in government and 'meting out justice'

> Communist insurgencies in late 1940s-70s were in preparation; 'window of opportunity' for revolution, etc.

6. Discuss the catalyst effect trigger by the war and about the countries turning independence one after another.

7. Conclude that the Japanese occupation had indeed speed up the Independence of the individual countries in SEA changing their political and economic perspective.

What, though, did Japan contribute to this process? Was Japan's war effort only a catalyst, facilitating or accelerating changes that were already underway, or did Japanese rule in some basic way alter the circumstances of the people of the region, or their mentality, and in so doing create a historical watershed? Further, what was the nature of the Japan that emerged from the crucible of war and the American occupation? Were the cruelty, the militarism, and the xenophobia on display during the 1930s and 1940s inherent and ineradicable features of Japanese culture, or a strange aberration arising from economic depression and war? Was postwar Japan truly a changed place, or did the occasional outbursts of wartime rhetoric and the country's highly publicized controversies over textbook accounts of the war indicate that the old aggressive, chauvinistic Japan was simply hiding behind a new mask? Considered responses to these questions required a knowledge of Japan during the 1930s and 1940s that went beyond the simplifications of popular history, or the clichés uttered by people continuing to fight old battles, and that knowledge was lacking. An enormous literature in English and other Western languages detailed the activities of the Allied powers during the war years but did little to answer these

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