260 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
Toward the end of October, Bose left Singapore for Tokyo. On No-
vember 1, as head of the Provisional Government, he parleyed on equal
terms with Tojo. He expressed displea sure with the attitude of the liai-
son agency Hikari Kikan, and of Japanese military of fi cers in Southeast
Asia. He wanted to deploy the entire first division of the INA in the
Indian offensive and to train two further divisions in Malaya. He de-
manded full control of intelligence operatives to be sent to India. He
asked Japan to hand over the Andaman and Nicobar islands to the Pro-
visional Government, which also had to be in charge of liberated zones
within India. He sought acknowledgment of his government’s right to
issue currency and exercise jurisdiction over abandoned Indian prop-
erty all over Southeast Asia. Tojo yielded on the po lit i cal and economic
questions and promised to discuss the military matters with his com-
manders.^47
On this visit, Bose was hosted at the home of Shibusawa Shakuro,
the governor of Japan’s reserve bank, whose father had presided over
Meiji Japan’s fi nan cial reforms in the late nineteenth century. Meiji
constitution day, on November 3, provided the occasion for a visit to
the Meiji shrine and Tokyo’s museum of art. The primary purpose of
the trip was to enable Bose to attend the Greater East Asia Conference
on November 5 and 6, 1943. Bose, according to the Japanese Foreign
Office, “chose to be an observer because he was of the opinion that In-
dia would not join the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere,” which
was regarded by many as a façade for spreading Japan’s economic hege-
mony. Despite his observer sta tus, Bose’s “imposing fig ure” dominated
the proceedings.^48
Rising to speak on the second day, Bose said that he had visualized
the “panorama of the world’s his tory” as he listened to the proceed-
ings:
My thoughts went back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the
downfall of the Napoleonic Empire, to the Congress of Paris in 1856
after the Crimean War, to the Congress of Berlin in 1878 after the
Russo- Turkish War in the Balkans, to the Versailles Peace Conference in
1919 at the end of the last War, to the Washington Conference held in
1921 for ensuring the Anglo- American domination of the Pacific and