THE SHINGETSU INSTITUTE PROJECT

Thank you for participating in the Shingetsu Institute project. For this first newsletter, I’d like to explain in a little more detail why I started this project and what I have in mind for the future.

For the past five years my research has been focused on Japan’s historical and contemporary relations with the Islamic world, especially West Asia. In the course of pursuing these studies, I have made a few discoveries.

One key discovery was that quite a bit has been written on this subject over the past 130 years or so, but that most of books and articles mention the same general information again and again. It seems to me that studies of modern Japan’s relations with Islamic peoples have had great difficulty in moving forward. In the Meiji period, Japanese pioneers like Masaharu Yoshida, Torajiro Yamada, and Shotaro Noda tried to build public interest in the Muslims of West Asia, but before long most of their accomplishments were virtually forgotten. Then, in the years before the Pacific War, there was some Japanese interest in Muslims because of imperial expansion in China and the Southern Seas. Decent scholars appeared like Hosuke Nagase, Chishu Naito, Koji Okubo, and others, but the scholarship of that period was often fatally compromised by its links to the Imperial Army and Japanese colonial policy in Asia. At the end of the war, Islamic studies in Japan virtually disappeared in the dust of defeat. Much later, especially after the first oil shock, studies of Japan’s relations with the Islamic world finally began to surpass the prewar efforts, but weaknesses have remained. One major problem is the boom and bust cycles in which elements of the Japanese public has momentarily shown interest in Islam, and then quickly moved on to something else. The creation of the Japan Association for Middle East Studies (JAMES) in December 1984, however, was a distinct advance. The prospectus for JAMES included the following comments:

“Many Japanese have come to feel the need for closer cultural and human understanding of the Middle East as personal contact increases with the area. This is due to the rapidly deepening involvement of the Japanese government and business enterprises in the Middle East in the post ‘Oil Crisis’ period in which many have come to appreciate that Japan’s ‘economic miracle’ in the 1960s was fuelled by the Middle Eastern oil and that Japan’s survival rested on a fragile energy base.”

These statements are as true now as they were then. Regrettably, however, the following comment from the JAMES prospectus is also equally true more than twenty years later: “the efforts to organize Middle East studies as an area studies at universities and research institutes have fallen far behind the growing need.”

From my own perspective, when I view the tremendous impact that recent events like the Persian Gulf War, September 11, and the Iraq War have had on the Japanese nation as a whole, I find it simply remarkable that the Japanese government and most Japanese universities have remained largely indifferent to the expansion of research about modern Japanese-Islamic relations. Well, I cannot control the behavior of the Japanese government or the Japanese university system, but in my small way I want to do what I can to advance my chosen field of research.

In the course of collecting my bibliography, it has come to my attention that aspects of Japanese-Islamic relations are now being studied and written about by a growing number of people outside Japan as well. Many of these people have no relation to JAMES, and I suspect that these different communities of researchers are hardly even aware of each others’ existence.

One major factor is the language barrier, of course, but I think there’s more to it than that. On the one hand, many Japanese scholars seem very reticent about reaching out to the community of foreign scholars. On the other hand, the fact that most members of JAMES focus their studies exclusively on the premodern period may seem to diminish useful channels of communication. Also, there seems to be an almost complete lack of communication between the JAMES community and other useful communities like those in Japanese studies, Asian studies, Southeast Asian studies, international relations, and even national security and policymaking circles.

My objective in establishing the Shingetsu Institute is briefly this: I want to create a space where these different scholarly and political communities can finally start to communicate with one another. It is time to move past general surveys of Japanese-Islamic relations and to explore more deeply, and in more convincing detail, what Japanese-Islamic relations has been, is now, could be, should be, and will be. It is time for interested scholars around the world to advance this field of studies beyond what it has been up until now.

Unlike the mandate of JAMES, the Shingetsu Institute microscope will be focused on Japan, Britain, the United States, China, and Korea, in addition to the peoples of the Islamic world. Its mandate is both narrower and broader than JAMES. It is narrower in the sense that it is focused specifically on modern Japanese relations with Islamic peoples. It is broader in the sense that it will reach out more effectively beyond the national borders of Japan, and into scholarly and political communities beyond those of traditional area studies.

The Shingetsu Institute is based in Kitakyushu, Japan. Since last August, we have operated an actual, physical office in the middle of the city. The members of the small Board of Directors are still discussing the legal institutional framework of the institute, but we are considering applying for NPO status. Almost all financial support has so far been provided by me personally, but I hope that in time donations, language classes, and sales of publications will allow the Shingetsu Institute to fund itself. In the meantime, I will assume the financial burden of keeping it running.

The plan is to have a published bibliography of Japanese-Islamic relations in English, a twice-a-year journal in English, policy papers in Japanese, a website, and a collection of books, articles, and archival materials available for use by Shingetsu members at the office. At the moment, we don’t have the funds to hire an office manager, so the office is usually empty during the day. For the time being, any lack of professionalism you detect in our operations stems from deficiencies in my own knowledge and energy. I hope that you will be patient with me.

That is all for now. Thank you for joining the Shingetsu Institute. Let us hope that it is the start of something wonderful.

Michael Penn
Executive Director
Shingetsu Institute