Reading “Okakura Tenshin” in Wartime Japan: Genealogical Imagination and the Birth of an Author in Translation

This article examines the posthumous transformation of Okakura Kakuzō (1863–1913) into the author “Okakura Tenshin” who wrote the phrase “Asia is one.” His reputation increased during the Asia-Pacific War when the reading of his English books in Japanese translation became embraced as an act of national retrieval. Okakura’s wartime popularity was a product of genealogical imagination by multiple groups who claimed descent from him. Okakura came to be regarded as a prophet, and the vision of realizing his unfinished project from the Meiji era in the Showa present became integral to the experience of reading Okakura in wartime Japan.