An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus

was a secret Japanese government report created by the Ministry of Health and Welfare's Institute of Population Problems (now the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research), and completed on July 1, 1943. The document, comprising six volumes totaling 3,127 pages, deals with race theory in general, and the rationale behind policies adopted by wartime Japan towards other races, while also providing a vision of the Asia-Pacific under Japanese control. The document was written in an academic style, surveying Western philosophy on race from the writings of Plato and Aristotle to modern German social scientists, such as Karl Haushofer. A connection between racism, nationalism and imperialism was also claimed, with the conclusion, drawing by citing both British and German sources, that overseas expansionism was essential not only for military and economic security, but for preserving racial consciousness. Concerns pertaining to the cultural assimilation of second and third generation immigrants into foreign cultures were also mentioned. The document was classified, had a print run of only a hundred copies, had little effect on the war , and was forgotten until 1981, when portions were discovered in a used bookstore in Japan, and subsequently publicized by being used as source material for a chapter in historian John W. Dower's book War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. In 1982 the Ministry of Health and Welfare re-issued the full six-volume version along with another two volumes entitled The Influence of War upon Population as a reference work for historians. Although external Japanese propaganda during World War II emphasized Pan-Asianist and anti-colonial themes, specifically anti-Western imperialist themes, domestic propaganda always took Japanese superiority over other Asians for granted. However, Japan never had an overarching racial theory for Asia until well into the 1930s—following the Japanese invasion of China, military planners decided that they should raise Japanese racial consciousness in order to forestall the potential assimilation of Japanese colonists.