Drawing on the idea that the Asian nations needed to cooperate, Japan began to propagate the ideology of pan-Asianism in the first decade of the twentieth century, arguing that the nations of the “spiritual” East should differentiate themselves from the “material” West. The term “pan-Asianism” played into the irrational, romantic streak in Japanese nationalism that drew on Zen and Nichiren Buddhism as well as German ideas of “blood and soil” to give meaning to the national quest for power and glory. Chinese nationalism, however, did not share much of that spiritual element. It was rooted in a
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