Booker T. Washington’s Global Impact: Transimperial Entanglements Between Pan-Africanism and Pan-Asianism

This lecture discussion explores the influence of Pan-Africanism in Japan. At the turn of the 20th century, Booker T. Washington emerged as one of the most well-known Pan-African figures in Japan. While he embodied the ideal of a self-uplifting man of color, the practical education model he promoted at the Tuskegee Institute also influenced Japanese intellectuals in their policies toward the indigenous Ainu people and colonized Koreans. This study examines the reception of the “Tuskegee model” both in Africa and imperial Japan. The model’s expansion into colonial Africa highlights the inherent paradox of Pan-Africanism as both anti-imperialist and, at times, complicit in imperialism. This ambiguity is further mirrored in its complex interactions with Japanese Pan-Asianism.

For accommodations, please contact the Program Manager for the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora at ac8829@nyu.edu.

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Sakiko NAKAO is an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, where she teaches courses in African history and French area studies. She earned her Ph.D. in History from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France. Her research interest is centered on the making of African identity and the processes of decolonization in West Africa. She analyzes Pan-African movement and its connection to anti-imperialism from a transimperial perspective. Her recent project focuses on the function of the concept of “race” as a form of belonging and its impact on the Pan-African movement, as well as its eventual linkage with Pan-Asianism, which developed in the same period.