Theoretical Development
Meiji period nationalistic researchers and writers pointed to Japan's relations with the Pacific region from the 17th century red seal ship trading voyages, and Japanese immigration and settlement in Nihonmachi during the period before the Tokugawa bakufu's national seclusion policies. Some researchers attempted to find archeological or anthropological evidence of a racial link between the Japanese of southern Kyūshū (i.e. the Kumaso) and the peoples of the Pacific Islands.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the "Southern Expansion Doctrine" gradually came to be formalized, largely through the efforts of the Imperial Japanese Navy's "South Strike Group", a strategic think tank based out of the Taihoku Imperial University in Taiwan. Many professors at the university were either active or ex-Navy officers, with direct experience in the territories in question. The University published numerous reports promoting the advantages of investment and settlement in the territories under Navy control.
The Anti-London Treaty Faction (han-johaku ha) of the Treaty Faction within the Japanese Navy set up a “Study Committee for Policies towards the South Seas” (Tai Nan-yo Hosaku Kenkyu-kai) to explore military and economic expansion strategies, and cooperated with the Ministry of Colonial Affairs (Takumu-sho) to emphasize the military role of Taiwan and Micronesia as advanced bases for further southern expansion.
Read more about this topic: "Strike South" Group
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