[[Karl Haushofer]], a German general, geographer, and geopolitician, whose ideas may have influenced the development of Hitler's expansionist strategies, saw Japan as the brother nation to Germany. In 1908, he was sent by the German Army "to Tokyo to study the Japanese Army and to advise it as an artillery instructor. The assignment changed the course of his life and marked the beginning of his love affair with the orient. During the next four years he traveled extensively in East Asia, adding Korean, Japanese, and Mandarin to his repertoire of Russian, French, and English languages. Karl Haushofer had been a devout student of [[Arthur Schopenhauer|Schopenhauer]], and during his stay in the Far East he was introduced to Oriental esoteric teachings."<ref>''The Swastika and the Nazi's'', Servando González, Chapter 2: The Haushofer Connection, 1997-1998.</ref> It was based on such teachings that he came to make similar bestowals of his own upon the Japanese people, calling them the "Aryans of the East", and even the "[[Herrenvolk]] of the Orient" (i.e. the "[[Master race]] of the Orient").<ref>''The Spear of Destiny: The occult power behind the spear which pierced the side of Christ and how Hitler inverted the force in a bid to conquer the world'', Trevor Ravenscroft, p. 229, June 1982.</ref>

The Japanese were still subject to Germany's [[racial policy of Nazi Germany|racial laws]], however, which &ndash; with the exception of the 1935 [[Nuremberg Laws]], which specifically mentioned Jews &ndash; generally applied to all "non-Aryans". Hitler's government began enacting the laws after taking power in 1933, and the Japanese government protested several racial incidents involving Japanese or Japanese-Germans that year. Influential Nazi anti-Semite [[Johann von Leers]] favored excluding Japanese from the laws due both to the alleged Japanese-Aryan racial link and to improve diplomatic relations with Japan.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3982136&forum_id=2#36090763)