Racialisation in the Malay Archipelago during the Asia-Pacific War

This chapter focuses on the racial ideas circulating during the occupation of Malaya and Sumatra during World War II in Japanese-sponsored magazines and popular publications. In attempts to forge a greater archipelagic community, Sumatran writers for Malay-language magazines made use of Western racial studies in order to inform readers of the other related races in the archipelago, to argue for closer connections between native peoples of the former British Malaya and Netherlands East Indies in what could be a future political entity under the Japanese, and to endorse specific groups within this larger brotherhood of races for positions of leadership. These authors also posited racial connections between the Japanese and people in the Malay archipelago, a connection that was reinforced by Japanese propaganda material which appeared in English published in Malaya. These popular, Western scientifically-based racialisations are instances of how “Malay” and “Indonesian” races were constructed by intellectuals, and how these constructions fit in with Japanese racialisations of empire which placed the colonizer at the head of racial and civilizational hierarchies while affording room for Western anti-colonial and nationalistic sentiments.