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Abstract
Against a background of expansive Indian and Middle Eastern interest in Japan after the Russo-Japanese War, this essay examines the epistemological foundations of this evolving knowledge about Japan through a deconstructive case study of an important but neglected Urdu text. By drawing an analytical distinction between Japanophilia and Japanology, the aim is to measure the opportunities and constraints that defined Indian Muslim understanding of East Asia in the inter-war period. Through a contextualized close reading of the Haqiqat-e Japan, the essay reconstructs the infrastructural, social and intellectual networks that gave shape to the most detailed Urdu study of Japan to appear before the better known Indian nationalist alliances with Japan during the Second World War. The text has been selected for being the most detailed and best informed of the many Urdu books about Japan to appear between the beginning of Indian interest in Japan in the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Second World War. As such, it provides a suitable test case for assessing the scope and limits of Indian Muslim ‘Japanology’. By contrasting this Japanology with the Japanophilia that gave rise to it, the essay makes a case for the distinction and divergence between information and affect at the height of the anti-colonial movement across Asia.
Notes
1. Bharucha, Another Asia; Hay, Asian Ideas and Lebra, Jungle Alliance. More recently, see Bose, His Majesty's Opponent and Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire, 127–56, 230–41.
2. Green, “Forgotten Futures.”
3. Conrad and Sachsenmaier, Competing Visions.
4. Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism; Green, “Forgotten Futures.”
5. Aydin, Politics of Anti-Westernism; Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim”; Esenbel, Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam; Georgeon, “Un voyageur Tatar”; Haag-Higuchi, “A Topos and Its Dissolution”; Laffan, “Watan and Negeri”; Watson Andaya, “From Rūm to Tōkyō”; Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’”; and Worringer (ed.), Islamic Middle East and Japan. For further discussion of the term ‘trans-Islamic’; see Green, “Forgotten Futures.”
6. Green, “Forgotten Futures.”
7. Visvesvaraya, Reconstructing India.
8. Aqeel, “A Culture Shock,” 135–6. The Mu'sir-e Hamidi was published in Agra in 1896.
9. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 1.
10. Ibid., 1–13.
11. Ibid., 147–9.
12. Gelvin and Green, “Introduction” and Green, “Shared Infrastructures.”
13. Roussillon, Identité et modernité.
14. Goldfinch, Steel in the Sand and Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen.”
15. Sahhāfbāshī, Safarnāma.
16. Qurēshī, Urdū Adab.
17. Laffan, “Making Meiji Muslims” and Roussillon, Identité et modernité, 41–8.
18. al-Jirjāwī, Safarnāma-yi Jāpān.
19. Roussillon, Identité et modernité, 48–55.
20. Ibid., 55–63.
21. Kreiser, “Der japanische Sieg”; Laffan, “Tokyo as a Shared Mecca”; and Worringer, “Rising Sun over Bear.”
22. Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, 141–7 and Oishi, “Indo-Japan Cooperative.”
23. Oliphant, Tārīkh-e Chīn.
24. Muhammad Husayn Fazl, Mukammil Mukhabarat and Muhammad Ibrāhīm, Jang-e Rūs ū Japan.
25. Khān, Jang.
26. Hidāyat, Safarnāma, 107.
27. Singh Vaid, America te Japan.
28. As the result of his travels, Mas‘ud authored several works on Japan: Masood, Japan and its Educational System; Masood, Travels in Japan; Masood, Japān aur uskā Ta‘līmī and Masood, Rūh-e Japān. For fuller discussion of these writings, see Green, “Forgotten Futures.” and Green, “Shared Infrastructures.”
29. Masood, Japān aur uskā Ta‘līmī.
30. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān.
31. Ibid., title page.
32. Ibid., 10–11.
33. Ibid., 10–13.
34. Ibid., 15–24.
35. Ibid., 17–19, 22–3.
36. Jaffe, “Buddhist Material Culture,” 274.
37. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 24–5.
38. Ibid., 22–3.
39. Ibid., 53–63.
40. Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1145–6.
41. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 11.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 1, 24.
44. Ibid., 1, 19–21, 26–7, 52–3, 63–6, 78–80, 115–22, 143–6.
45. Ibid., 1, 20.
46. Ibid., 1, 78–80.
47. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 28–9.
48. Jaffe, “Buddhist Material Culture” and “Seeking Śākyamuni”.
49. Badr al-Islām Fazlī, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 2, 172–82.
50. Ibid., 2, 86–91, 102–22.
51. Ibid., 1, 63–6.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 1, 52–3.
54. Bharucha, Another Asia.
55. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 2, 107–22.
56. Ibid., 2, 123–34.
57. Ibid., 2, 224.
58. Hamilton, “Gwatkin.”
59. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 89, 96; hissa 2, 71–6.
60. Ibid., 1, 42–3, Ibid., 2, 27, 71.
61. Ibid., 1, 20–1.
62. Watson Andaya, “From Rūm to Tōkyō,” 139; Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1148–69; Georgeon, “Un voyageur Tatar,” 54–7; and Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’,” 217–18.
63. Ashraf, Qārī Sarfarāz Husayn, 9
64. Masood, Travels in Japan, 80.
65. Badr al-Islām Fazlī, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 115–22, 143–6.
66. Cf. Mustafa Kamil's Arabic account of Shinto discussed in Laffan, “Mustafa and the Mikado,” 280–1.
67. On Japanese travelers to ‘Buddhist India’ in this period, see Jaffe, “Seeking Śākyamuni.”
68. Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’,” 218.
69. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 194–5.
70. The extensive bibliography covers four pages: see Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 2, 224–7. Even so, Longford was a respectable source: after retiring from the British Japan Consular Service, Longford served as Professor of Japanese at King's College, London.
71. Ibid., 1, 209–23.
72. Ibid., 2, 227.
73. Ibid., 2, 226.
74. Masood, Travels in Japan, 5.
75. Ibid.
76. Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan.
77. Masood, Travels in Japan, 5.
78. Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan, vol. 1, vii.
79. Masood, Japān aur uskā Ta‘līmī, 35–78, 93–103.
80. Ibid., 119–29, 141–200.
81. Masood, Japān aur uskā Ta‘līmī, 262–481.
82. Masood, Travels in Japan, 34.
83. Ibid., 35–6.
84. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 51–2, 111–2.
85. Ibid., hissa 1, 28, 89–90.
86. Ibid., hissa 1, 90.
87. Watson Andaya, “From Rūm to Tōkyō,” 146.
88. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 30 et passim.
89. Ibid., 1, 111–3.
90. Abdul Aziz, The Crescent, 11.
91. On the propagation of Islam in Japan, see Abdul Aziz, The Crescent, 16–25.
92. For the text of the speeches/pamphlets, see Abdul Aziz, The Crescent, 109–39. The free publishing and distribution is mentioned on page 9.
93. Usmanova, Türk-Tatar Diaspora.
94. Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1156–7.
95. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 113–4.
96. Usmanova, Türk-Tatar Diaspora.
97. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 114, 301.
98. Kojiro, “Early Japanese Pilgrims.”
99. Abdul Aziz, The Crescent, 25.
100. Esenbel, “Japan and Islam Policy.”
101. On the nexus between Japanese converts, Islamic Studies and intelligence work, see Aydin, “Overcoming Eurocentrism?” 153–6 and Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1165–9.
102. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 112.
103. Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1157–9.
104. Yānī Yāpūn Mukhbirī, 17–21, 25–8, 32, 36, 43. While the 1936 issue dates from after Badr al-Islam's departure, it is the only copy of this rare journal I have been able to locate.
105. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 26–7.
106. Ibid., 1, 28–9.
107. Ibid., 1, 27.
108. Ibid., 1, 29–30.
109. Konishi, “Translingual World Order.”
110. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 135–7.
111. Esenbel, “Japan's Global Claim,” 1160, 1165. On ‘Abd al-Rashid Ibrahim in Japan, see Georgeon, “Un voyageur Tatar.”
112. Badr al-Islām Fazlī and Shaykh Muhammad, Haqīqat-e Jāpān, hissa 1, 165.
113. On this, see Green, “Forgotten Futures.”
114. It seems possible, though, that a Gujarati language Japanology remains waiting to be discovered …