Japan: Imperial Japan's proposed 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere', from the Daitoa Kyodo Sengen ('Manifesto for Greater East Asian Cooperation'), a propaganda booklet for children, c. 1940.

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Dai-tō-a Kyōeiken) was a concept created and promulgated during the Shōwa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers.

The Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe planned the Sphere in 1940 in an attempt to create a Great East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchukuo, China, and parts of Southeast Asia, that would, according to imperial propaganda, establish a new international order seeking ‘co prosperity’ for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination.

In historical fact, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is remembered largely as a front for the Japanese control of occupied countries during World War II, in which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan.

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