Newsletter No. 480
Information-Announcement
January 11, 2007

 

MODERN EXCHANGES -- THE FIRST JAPANESE TRAVELERS TO EGYPT

Shingetsu Newsletter No. 477 brought up the issue of the Ottoman frigate Ertugrul and called it “in many ways the first truly significant chapter in direct relations between Japan and the Islamic world.” This description was a judgment call on my part, and I was well aware that there were some direct encounters between Japanese and Muslims before the 1890 Ertugrul Tragedy.

Still, I welcome the response that I received from the press and media office of the Egyptian Embassy in Tokyo (Shingetsu Member No. 110). They wanted to remind us that Japanese travelers were passing through Egypt for decades before the Ertugrul mission, and the embassy was even kind enough to provide us with an interesting written account (in Japanese) of the first two Japanese missions in 1862 and 1864.

The first group consisted of 36 men led by Takeuchi Shimosuke no Kami Yasunori, and included the young Fukuzawa Yukichi as a translator. It was headed to Europe as part of an inspection mission. The first Muslim land in which they landed was actually Aden, Yemen, but on March 20, 1862, they arrived in Suez for the overland journey by steam train to Alexandria (the Suez Canal did not exist yet). There is at least one written account left by this mission, and photographs as well.

I have spent several years studying the earliest modern contacts between Japan and the Islamic world, and the Takeuchi mission through Egypt is -- to the best of my knowledge -- the very first time that a significant Japanese political delegation traveled to an Islamic country. In the other direction, the first Muslim political leader to tour Japan was Maharaja (later Sultan) Abu Bakar of Johor in 1883.

Also, it should be mentioned that the first merchant ship under a Muslim flag to reach Japan in modern times was the Zadkia of the Bey of Tunis in 1872. At the same time, Malay sailors were often to be found on British and Dutch ships, and sometimes they wound up in consular courts in the treaty settlement of Yokohama for their knife fighting and other street adventures.

At any rate, returning once more to the materials provided by the Embassy of Egypt, the second group of Japanese travelers through Egypt followed Takeuchi only two years later in 1864. This 34-man mission was led by Ikeda Nagaoki, was bound for France, and retraced the steps of the previous mission through Egypt with one major exception: On February 28, 1864, this group traveled to Giza to become the first Japanese tourists at the Pyramids. Particularly famous is their group photo by Antonio Beato in front of the Sphinx.

Photo: The Ikeda Mission in front of the Sphinx on February 28, 1864
Source: Antonio Beato

In the years that followed, many Japanese traveled to Europe to see the material wonders of a civilization they began to eagerly copy. The sea route of that period demanded that these Japanese pass through Egypt, and usually Aden as well. This passage was greatly facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The usual stops by the 1890s were Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo, Aden, Suez, and Alexandria.

After 1882, of course, Egypt was formally occupied by the British, and the country suffered its lowest point in modern times -- at least from a nationalist point of view. There was some interest by Japanese in Ahmad Urabi and his proto-nationalist movement, but most of the elite Japanese who passed through Egypt in that period do not seem to have been greatly affected by what they had seen, nor did they feel much kinship with the sufferings of the fellaheen. In fact, the main, direct impact of 19th century Egypt on the Japanese official mind was to make them admire British imperialism even more. Japanese leaders quite consciously adopted British imperial methods in Egypt when they set out to conquer the Korean Peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But that is another story…