The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Dai-to-a Kyoeiken) was a concept created and promulgated during the Showa era by the government and military of the Empire of Japan. It represented the desire to create a self-sufficient bloc of Asian nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers. The Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe planned the Sphere in 1940 in an attempt to create a Great East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchukuo, China, and parts of Southeast Asia, that would, according to imperial propaganda, establish a new international order seeking co prosperity’ for Asian countries which would share prosperity and peace, free from Western colonialism and domination. In historical fact, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is remembered largely as a front for the Japanese control of occupied countries during World War II, in which puppet governments manipulated local populations and economies for the benefit of Imperial Japan.