Newsletter No. 921
Discussion-Debate
February 23, 2008

 

DISCUSSION -- THE DAWN OF JAPANESE-ISLAMIC RELATIONS

Abd al-Salam al-Khatib (Shingetsu Member No. 157), a Palestinian businessman, is interested in hearing from the Shingetsu Membership about the very earliest links between Japan and the Islamic world. We briefly touched on this subject back in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 101 in October 2005. I urge those of us who have studied these issues to be kind enough to respond to the questions that Mr. Al-Khatib raises:

1) From Abd al-Salam al-Khatib, a Palestinian businessman, on February 23, 2008:

I have been wondering for a long time about the very first links between Japan and the Islamic world, especially as regards how Japanese first gained knowledge of the area. I am not an expert, but I am interested in hearing from the scholars who sometimes contribute here about a number of questions. I hope that this will also form a good starting point for enriching discussion.

I have always wanted to know the following:

In Japanese literature or other remaining publications, when and where were Islam or Muhammad or Arabs first mentioned? When precisely did Japanese readers first hear about the religion of Islam or the Arab peoples?

Also, when was the first Arabic-language book translated into Japanese?

From the other side, when did Arabs first come to know about Japan? Was this really related to the stories of Waqwaq?

When was the first book published in Japanese translated into Arabic?

I realize that answering these questions may not be as easy as it looks, and history doesn't always have sharp edges in any case. I believe, however, that learning more about these issues would be interesting to me, and perhaps others on this network as well.

2) From Michael Laffan of Princeton University on February 24, 2008:

Regarding your question: "When did Arabs first come to know about Japan? Was this really related to the stories of Waqwaq?"

I can't claim authoritative knowledge, especially as I look more at Southeast Asia, but my sense from looking mainly at the accounts relating to the sea route to China is that it is hard to link Waqwaq to anywhere in any meaningful way, especially as subsequent accounts would often incorporate material from earlier ones and collect all the place names without regard for the fact that one place may have been subsumed by another over time. Indeed the accounts that did speak of Waqwaq are unclear as to whether it lay at the end of Africa or in the vicinity of China, or perhaps even somewhere in the Indonesian archipelago (Fakfak?).

Of course, some Arabs (and Persians) must surely have known of Japan quite early on. There are reports of a large Muslim presence in Zaytun (Quanzhou) by the 9th century. Still, such knowledge as they had seems not to have made it to the cosmographies being written much further west. The very fact that Japan is not on the way to Zaytun probably meant it was of less interest.

Just as an aside, it is also interesting to note that some of the medieval accounts of distant lands of wonder would often be cited by later travellers to connect to places that they had never seen. For example, one Persian traveller to Siam in the 17th century, Muhammad Rabi' bin Muhammad Ibrahim, used al-Qazwini's Aja'ib al-Makhluqat to assert that Japan (which he had never visited) was identical with a certain "Zabaj," although that word had originally referred to the area of east Sumatra and west Java, before the advent of the term "Jawa" in the 13th century.

3) From Michael Penn of the Shingetsu Institute on February 28, 2008:

I myself want to try to address the issue of pre-modern contacts between Japan and the Islamic world. What I can offer is -- in the final analysis -- unsatisfactory, but I can explain the picture as I currently understand it.

The real answer to your questions, I believe, is that nobody really knows. The reason why nobody knows is because there have not been enough talented scholars who have entered that field and done the work that is necessary. What exists at present are various fragments that are suggestive, but nothing truly comprehensive and convincing.

From the Islamic world, I don't believe that there is any first-rate scholar who has appeared who has done serious work on pre-modern Muslim-Japanese contacts. I would be pleased to be informed that I am wrong about this, but I can say plainly that I've never heard of anybody to date. While I feel confident that tucked away in old libraries there are fascinating manuscripts in Arabic and Persian and other languages, nobody to my knowledge has really gone into the archives to study the earlier periods of contact with Japan.

In Japanese, the situation is somewhat better. While I don't think that any Japanese scholar has really done the pre-modern period full justice, there are a number of pioneering scholars who have made useful early steps. In the past generations, Hajime Kobayashi was probably the top figure. In the current generation, probably Hideaki Sugita of Tokyo University can be considered the world's expert. Unfortunately, the key works are only in Japanese language at present, which I don't believe you can read. However, honorable mention must also be made of Hiromu Nagashima, whose work is indeed available in English. He doesn't cover the full picture, but the work that he has done is important and suggestive.

The picture that I have overall is that some Japanese were aware of Islam from the time of the Nara Period (710-794). It was through the medium of China, primarily, that some fragmentary knowledge of Islam first reached Japanese shores. Aside from the silk road, Islam later reached Japan through the sea route of the East Indies, and along the China coast. Also, there were some contacts at the court of Siam in the 17th century. See The Ship of Sulaiman and Nagashima's work for this aspect.

I believe that there was a lot more that we still don't know about. Maybe we will never really know. To make serious progress on understanding these pre-modern contacts, it's going to take the lifetime efforts of a scholar with linguistic and other skills that far exceed my own. When I glanced at the pre-modern period some years ago, I quickly decided that I would confine my main attentions to the 1860s and after. The Shingetsu Institute and our journal SEJJIR welcomes scholarship on the pre-modern period, but I myself will not attempt to write it. The past 150 years will keep me busy.

Here is an English-language bibliography that covers what I'm currently aware of:

Book

Ebrahim, Ebn Mohammad (trans. John O'Kane), The Ship of Sulaiman, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972.

Articles

Maejima, Shinji, "Middle Eastern Culture: A Heritage for Japanese," in Japan Foundation, eds., Dialogue: Middle East and Japan: Symposium on Cultural Exchange, Reference Series 3, The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 1977.

Min, Hong Seong, "The Middle East and Its Trade with Far Eastern Countries in Medieval Ages," Korean Journal of Middle East Studies, No. 10, 1989.

Mizuguchi, Akira, "From Ancient to Modern Times: A Retrospective of Japan's Relationship with the Middle East," Asia-Pacific Review, Vol. 9, No. 2, November 2002.

Nagashima, Hiromu, "Iranians Who Knocked on the 'Closed Door' of Japan in the Edo Period," Omar Farouk Bajunid, Akira Usuki, and Tomoko Yamagishi, eds., Population Movement beyond the Middle East: Migration, Diaspora, and Network, Japan Center for Area Studies, National Museum of Ethnology, JCAS Symposium Series, No. 17, March 2005.

Nagashima, Hiromu, "Persian Muslim Merchants in Thailand and Their Activities in the 17th Century: Especially on their Visits to Japan," Nagasaki Kenritsu Daigaku Ronshu, Vol. 30, No. 3, January 1997.

Nagashima, Hiromu, "Muslim Merchants' Visits to Japan in the 17th Century," Journal of East-West Maritime Relations, Vol. 1, 1989.

Okazaki, Takashi, "The Eastward Movement of Mideastern Civilization -- An Archeological and Historical Perspective," in Japan Foundation, eds., Dialogue: Middle East and Japan: Symposium on Cultural Exchange, Reference Series 3, The Japan Foundation, Tokyo, 1977.

Rajabzadeh, Hashem, "The Middle East, Images and Ideas: The Japanese Discovery of the Middle East; by Hideaki Sugita," Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies, Vol. 12, March 1997.

Sugita, Hideaki, "Moth and Candle: An Allegorical Motif in Comparative Perspective," Annals of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, March 2002.

4) From Michael Laffan of Princeton University on February 28, 2008:

I think Michael Penn might be of more help to you on many of the Japan-specific questions. Otherwise, here are a few general replies:

Yes, I understand that Zaytun was the term used to refer to the largest of China's southern ports, usually identified as Quanzhou. There is a place called Fakfak -- in West Papua actually, but I wouldn't like to place my hand on my heart and claim that it has always been so-named.

The Persian account I was referring to is published in translation as The Ship of Sulaiman (trans. O'Kane), Persian Heritage Series, No. 11, Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1972, in which there is reference (from memory) to the author claiming that Japan was the Zabaj (usually spelt z.a.b.j) in old sources. In truth, though, Zabaj is a very old name usually relating to the western reaches of the Malay archipelago.

Anyway, I discuss some of this stuff in a piece of amaterish sleuthing I put on the web:

"Finding Java: Muslim Nomenclature of Insular Southeast Asia from Srivijaya to Snouck Hurgronje," Asia Research Institute Working Paper, No. 52, October 2005.

http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm

5) From Elmostafa Rezrazi of the Maghreb Arab Press Agency and the Tokyo National Center of Behavioral Studies on February 29, 2008:

I would like to add two elements to the detailed comments made by our two colleagues, Professor Michael Penn and Professor Laffan.

If you are interested in the wide view of this issue, I would advise you to consult two good references which are available in French and English. The French one is La Revue du Monde Musulman. During the period between 1904 and 1912, about seven articles on the issue of WakWak and Japan were published in this journal. As for the English reference, there is a very solid article by Professor Yuzo Itagaki published by the Bahrain Centre for Research (the contact person there is Dr. Jalal Nouman).

For additional reference, as mentioned by Mr. Penn, Professor Hideaki Sugita is may be the best person to consult for the period of medieval contacts between the Arab-Muslim Culture and the Far East. Also, the book entitled The Advent of Islam in Korea, which was the PhD dissertation of the Korean researcher Dr. Jamil Lee Hee Soo, could also be interesting if you are extending your research to the Korean peninsula.