To add onto the other great comment made here, absolutely! What’s so fascinating about studying the imperial period in Japanese history is the ways in which the Japanese regime tried to frame it’s expansion in Western, imperial civilization-building terms, but with Japanese and inter-asian characteristics.

Though the Japanese lacked the strictly ‘white-black/brown’ scientific racism of 1800s Europe, they did take great pains to assert a sense of cultural dominance over other East-Asian peoples of their time, which in fact reinforced a sense of moral civilizing duty. This spawned largely from a sense of “hey given that we’re the only Asian culture that was advanced enough to resist European colonization, it must be up to us to serve as the ‘guardians’ of all Asian civilization”. In order to reinforce this viewpoint and justify colonial domination, Japanese scholars and government members spent a lot of time creating what modern academics call “temporal distance” between themselves and other Asians. In essence, because they couldn’t argue that they were THAT racially dissimilar, they had to make the distinction in cultural, political, and economic progress all the more stark.

In his book “The Abacus and the Sword”, Peter Duus goes into great detail about how the Japanese justified their decades long domination of Korea by establishing a curious (and likely spurious) shared racial lineage between Koreans and Japanese, and decades of Japanese scholarship framed the Korean people as almost a ‘little-brother’ culture that had lost its way and needed to be tutored and corrected by the older and wiser Japan. Many texts of Japanese travelers from the time expressed how “quaint” and “lazy” the Korean farming villages were, and how much cultural progress was being made in the urban areas under heavy Japanese supervision.

Similarly, China was viewed (in part thanks to a century of Western colonial influence and propaganda) as a once-great and ominous empire brought low by their own follies, and the Japanese view of them as a people oscillated between a kind of paternalistic sympathy and outright contempt. A great resource for getting a sense of this racial-cultural relationship can actually be seen in this short 1937 video about colonial Manchuria: https://youtu.be/Hztx8Me-JKo. This “documentary” was sponsored by the Japanese regime and aimed at western audiences, and all throughout justifies its domination of the region under the banner of a mission to civilize. Major talking points include better infrastructure, economic development, and human welfare (all the while, masking some of the most brutal economic exploitation of any colonial power).

You can see this moralistic, paternalistic framing in Japanese WWII propaganda as well, during the creating of the co-prosperity sphere. The phrase “Asia for Asians” was heavily employed, and the Japanese continuously argued that their invasion of huge swaths of southeast asia was a mission of liberation (even though they largely just de facto replaced the previous European colonial authorities, often with a more directly brutal ruling methodology).

For me, what binds together Japanese imperial ideology with western colonialism are all the morally grey areas of their “mission to civilize”. This is because, as with certain areas under European dominion, long-held Japanese colonies like Korea and Taiwan experienced very real, very substantive improvements in economic development, human welfare, and political governance. In fact, much of the modern economic institutional infrastructure and corporate economic specialization that we attribute to Taiwan and Korea specifically were in fact created and encouraged by Japanese colonial planners. However, just like their European counterparts, the Japanese also engaged in brutally repressive tactics of domination and exploitation and employed a decades-long campaign of ‘scientific’ cultural racism to justify their rule. It is in this duality you see the “white mans burden” ideology in full force, just molded and shaped to fit Japanese militant expansionism.

Edit: wow, first time getting gold on here thanks stranger!

Edit edit: clarification thanks to u/deathbythousandcats

In addition to /u/the_khan_caesar's comment, which highlights Japan's Pan-Asianist "burden" from the Japanese perspective, it also important to take a look at non-Japanese perspectives of Japan's role in the region.

The idea that Japan was the only Asian nation capable of defending Asia, and therefore burdened with a choice or duty of leadership in Asia, was not only an idea in Japan, but an idea recognized by major non-Japanese figures at the time as well, including the "father of modern China", Sun Yat-Sen, the Vietnamese Prince Cuong De (with Phan Boi Chau), among others. (Sun Yat-Sen was the first President of the Republic of China, leader of the Chinese nationalist KMT, and a figure who continues to be exalted both in the PRC and in Taiwan.)

For instance, in 1924, Sun Yat-Sen travels to Japan to deliver a speech titled "Pan-Asianism", exhorting Japan to make a choice with regard to its role in the liberation of Asia. In the speech, Sun Yat-Sen sees China (once it is unified) and Japan as being the guiding forces in a larger Pan-Asianist movement to emancipate Asia from Western imperialism:

In East Asia, China and Japan are the two greatest peoples. China and Japan are the driving force of this nationalist movement. What will be the consequences of this driving force still remains to be seen. The present tide of events seems to indicate that not only China and Japan but all the peoples in East Asia will unite together to restore the former status of Asia.

... Japan is the first nation in Asia to completely master the military civilization of Europe. Japan's military and naval forces are her own creation, independent of European aid or assistance. Therefore, Japan is the only completely independent country in East Asia ...

Japan to-day has become acquainted with the Western civilization of the rule of Might, but retains the characteristics of the Oriental civilization of the rule of Right. Now the question remains whether Japan will be the hawk of the Western civilization of the rule of Might, or the tower of strength of the Orient. This is the choice which lies before the people of Japan. [emphasis added]

There were also similar calls to Japan to fulfill its role in Asia, in virtue of its independence and military capabilities, among Vietnamese revolutionaries. Here is a rather explicit call of obligation by Phan Boi Chau:

Vietnam is an Asian country. It is also related to Japan by race and culture. .... So why has Japan allowed France to trample on Vietnam without making any effort to help? [emphasis added]

Prince Cuong De, too, spent much of his life in Japan petitioning Japan to intervene and liberate Vietnam from French rule, receiving personal support from Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi and other high-ranking Japanese statesmen. De even received a personal stipend during his stay from the supportive Japanese Prime Minister until Inukai Tsuyoshi's assassination at the hands of Japanese militarists in 1932.

The Bigger Picture

To say that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—which was created to formalize the Pan-Asianist ideals that had been brewing and theorized for many decades (see Saaler & Szpilman 2011)—was merely a pretension for Japanese expansionism would be overly simplistic and incorrect. On the other hand, to suggest that Japan's policies were all acts of liberationist altruism would also be sorely incorrect.

On the ground, Japanese commanders' and soldiers' commitment to Pan-Asianism, their treatment and perception of locals, etc., varied from place to place and across time (see Horne 2005 for many primary accounts). Some events are better explained by self-interested imperialism, while others are better explained by a genuine commitment to "Asia for the Asiatics." In general, Japan's policies changed over time as a function of the influence of different political factions, as well as the realpolitik of international relations with Western powers, many of whom were deeply wary of Japan's growing power and influence. For example, Vietnamese revolutionaries seeking refuge and assistance in Japan were expelled under diplomatic pressure by France with the Franco-Japanese Treaty of 1907.

At the same time, Pan-Asianist factions in Japan successfully established military schools and other programs—such as the Tokyo Shinbu Gakkou—to train other Asians in their fight against Western imperialism, with one extremely fascinating alumnus being Chiang Kai-Shek himself, the leader of the KMT after Sun Yat-Sen. This complicated, vacillating relationship of support and withdrawal reflects the internal struggles and competing forces in Japanese politics at the time.

Some in Asia saw Japan as having an obligation to use its position and platform as the only independent country in East Asia to help pave the way toward the liberation of Asia from Western aggression, while others were more suspicious of Japan's motives, such as the Chinese Liang Qichao who "cautioned Chau not to 'invite' the Japanese onto Vietnamese soil as they might then refuse to leave" (Tran 1999).

Some cooperated with the Japanese in large numbers when the time had come (such as the Cao Dai of Vietnam), while others—especially communist parties—were opposed to any Japanese intervention or occupation whatsoever. Part of this opposition, of course, was purely nationalistic and anti-colonial in character; another part was ideological, as Japan opposed the burgeoning Marxism-Leninism of the USSR and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936.

_________

Sources:

My-Van Tran, "Japan Through Vietnamese Eyes (1905-1945)", Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999.

Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York University Press: 2005).

My-Van Tran, A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan: Prince Cuong De (1882-1951) (Routledge: 2005)

Sun Yat-Sen, "Pan-Asianism" speech ("translation of a speech that was delivered in Kobe, Japan on November 28, 1924. Typed in based on a copy of Sun Yat Sen, China and Japan: Natural Friends, Unnatural Enemies, Shanghai: 1941 currently in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. USA.")

Sven Saaler & Christopher Szpilman, Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, 1850-1920 (Rowman & Littlefield: 2011), and the second volume from 1920-Present.

Amazing answer, really strikes to the heart of just how complex a phenomenon Japanese imperialism was, both ideologically and geopolitically. In many ways Chiang Kai-Shek and his shifting relationship with both Japan and other foreign powers at the time perfectly characterizes a lot of the dualities and shifts