Pan-Asian Decolonization? Iranian Oil, Japanese Tankers, and the Nisshomaru Incident of 1953

Abstract: This article explores the shared desire for economic emancipation in Iran and Japan and its limitations at the moment of global decolonization, which coincided with Mohammad Mosaddeq’s oil nationalization movement ( 1951–53 ) and Japan’s recovery of sovereignty ( 1952 ). It does so by studying the case of the 1953 Nisshomaru Incident, when the Japanese oil company Idemitsu violated the British-imposed embargo of Iranian oil. Despite Japan’s recent imperial past, the rhetoric of emancipation resonated precisely because of the fresh memory of the Allied occupation of Japan among businesspersons and bureaucrats, who shifted emphasis from, yet did not completely depart from, the pre- 1945 discourse of pan-Asianism. Using Persian and Japanese sources, I show that, while both Iran and Japan acted on their perceived national interest, their shared political feeling to challenge the Euro-America-centered international order made their transnational coordination possible.