Paradoxically, Japan achieved its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, not by military conquest, but peacefully after the war. It became the undisputable leader in Asia economically. It served as the engine for economic development in Asia until the peaceful rise of China.

As China began to threaten Japan's economic backyards, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi tried to revive the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. He wanted Japan to keep its leadership role in the Asian economy. He failed. Japan had to accept a “co-leadership” role in the Ten-plus-Three free trade zone in Asia, which is expected to come into being in 2011 or 2012. It is an expanded version of the Ten-plus-One zone — the One being the People's Republic — which emerges at the beginning of next year. The Ten are those member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), while Japan and South Korea form the other Two of the Three.

Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was voted out of power on August 30 after a little over half century of uninterrupted reign over Japan. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took over. The new DPJ government, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, has come up with an East Asian community, a miniature Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Japan now wants to keep the industrial base of Tojo's greater Japanese empire.

Hatoyama broached his idea with Chinese President Hu Jintao when they met on the sideline of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on September 22. To his surprise, Hu agreed to work together to bring into being the East Asian community with South Korea as its member. Hatoyama also talked with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who supported the Japanese initiative.

The foreign ministers of the three countries that formed the industrial base of Tojo's Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere met later to confirm cooperation in the fields of currency, commerce, finance, energy and the environment to create the community patterned after the European Economic Community, which has evolved into the European Union.

Despite Japan's aggressive initiative, such a community will not come about in East Asia.

For one thing, the ASEAN states are opposed to a bloc within their emerging Asian free trade bloc. They believe the projected community will make the richer North and the poorer South in Asia. The United States does not like the idea because it is excluded, albeit Washington hasn't openly registered opposition. The fact is that the community has to invite the United States in sooner or later when it meets with problems of regional security, and that defeats the primary purpose of the exclusive East Asian Group of Three.

On the other hand, the promised trilateral cooperation is tongue in cheek at best. Japan, after all, does not want to give up its long sole leadership in Asia, though it appears willing to play second fiddle to the economic giant neighbor it has looked down upon for more than a century since the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, at the end of which Taiwan was ceded by the Qing court in Beijing to the Land of the Rising Sun. On the other hand, the People's Republic can never forgive Japan for aggression that started with the Mukden Incident of 1931 and culminated in the military conquest of a large part of mainland China during World War II. No Chinese can forget the Rape of Nanking, or Nanjing, at the end of 1937. The Kingdom of Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910. Korean people do not like to work closely with their former colonial masters who treated them worse than their opposite numbers in Taiwan.

Moreover, the Hatoyama government is unlikely to last long enough to get his smaller Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere off the ground. His DPJ is an amalgamation of politicians of all stripes, ranging from leftists to neoconservatives. If the reform Hatoyama has promised could slog along, the party might be able to stick together. If not, the exorbitantly costly reform the country with the world's highest public debt cannot find more money to finance would spell the downfall of the Hatoyama administration sooner rather than later. And the now down but not out LDP looks forward to winning the upper house election next year. Its victory will lead to a split Diet, which hastened the end of the long LDP rule over Japan.

Uncle Sam seems to know all this full well. That's probably why the United States isn't alarmed or worried as Hatoyama continues to promote his smaller Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.