Rudyard Kipling, one of the most popular writers in the English tongue of his generation, addressed his poem "The White Man's Burden" to the American people in 1899 -- when the United States was emerging as an imperialist power in Asia, having made the Philippines its colony in the western Pacific. Of the poem Theodore Roosevelt said it "is rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansionist standpoint," the standpoint of the "powers" that divided the world among them.
Sukehiro Hirakawa recounts this episode not just for its own sake, interesting though it is, but to remind his readers that "the white man's burden" soon found "the yellow man's burden" as its counterpart. This concept was advanced by Soho Tokutomi, Kipling's contemporary, who was a prolific writer and became the most influential apologist of Japan's imperialism.
In his nationalistic writings Tokutomi challenged white supremacy and urged his countrymen to come to the aid of the oppressed peoples of the same "yellow" race of Asia.