Intro
Japan is a land where time dances between the ancient and the futuristic, and for an Arab traveler, it is an experience that stirs curiosity, wonder, and a deep sense of connection. As I stepped off the plane, the air itself felt different—crisp, serene, and carrying the quiet hum of centuries-old traditions woven into the modern world.
For those of us from the Arab world, Japan is a place that we often see through the lens of media, where sushi, anime, and cherry blossoms represent a distant, almost mythical culture. But the real Japan is far more profound. It’s a place where every element of life feels intentional—each meal prepared with precision, every gesture laden with meaning.
Admiration of Japan was already being expressed in reformist writings at the end of the nineteenth centu- ry. In his discussion of the decadence of education in the Ottoman empire and Egypt, the Pan-Islamic thinker Jamal ad Din al-Afghani (1838-97) puts forward the example of Japan’s emphasis on sending students abroad. Al-Afghani juxtaposes this particular impulse with the useless missions that were sent from the Middle East. Such passages on Japan are revealing because al-Afghani is one of the first modern religious reformists to suggest that religion alone was not a sufficient element for the elevation of nations. According to al-Afghani, the lesson of Japan’s success lies paradoxically in the fact that religion was neutralized. Al-Afghani argues that the refinement and elevation of this oriental nation was pos- sible because religion did not intervene. The Japanese, he tells us, left pagan traditions behind and aspired towards the empirical sciences, and thus imitated the greatest nations. They introduced sound civic rules, and they discarded what they considered to be the bad customs of both the West and the East that did not suit their habits. What helped the Japan- ese nation most was its geographic remoteness, which res- cued it from Western interests.1
The reformist Rashid Rida, who founded the journal al- Manar (The Lighthouse) in Cairo (published from 1898 to 1936), also upheld Japan as an example to be emulated. Rida’s central mandate for al-Manar was to promote the idea that Islam was not in contradiction with modernity, science, rea- son, and civilization. Rida was mainly concerned with how to enter the age of modernity, and his view of Japan was new in that he concentrated on its admirable ability to blend old and new solutions.2 A contemporary of his, the Egyptian nationalist Mustafa Kamil, referred to Japan in a similar way in his 1904 book The Rising Sun (al-shams al-mushriqa).3
Economic Historians
In discussing the role and anatomy of the state in the Mid- dle East, Ghassan Salame brilliantly summarizes the fasci- nation of Arab intellectuals with Japan. He focuses his atten- tion on Egyptian economist Galal Amin’s argument that the failure of Muhammad Ali’s Egypt versus the relative success of a state undergoing modernization, such as Japan, was due to Egypt’s centrality versus Japan’s relative geographical isolation.5
The introduction of Enlightenment into non-Western soci- eties is an issue of scholarly contention that seems to occu- py significant space in comparative Egyptian-Japanese stud- ies. Two eminent scholars are interested in this issue. Both the Egyptian historian Ra ́uf Abbas and professor of philos- ophy Nasr Hamid abu-Zayd, were able to visit Japan. Ra ́uf Abbas was invited as a fellow at the Institute of Developing Countries from 1972-1973, and then as a visiting professor at Tokyo University from 1989-1990. In 1980, he published Japanese Society during the Meiji Period. This work is consid- ered the first of such scientific studies based on primary sources to be published in Arabic. Its success led Abbas to undertake The Japanese and Egyptian Enlightenment, a com- parative study of the biographies of two contemporaries, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) and Rifa`a al-Tahtawi (1801- 1874),6 in which Abbas discusses how the birth of the mod- ern state and the related questions of development were the main concerns of these two pioneers of enlightenment. Both
Yukichi and al-Tahtawi had futuristic visions of a new socie- ty, produced interesting travel accounts, and translated West- ern culture for their own societies. Both were also selective in their approaches. They were each considered great edu- cators of their time and founded schools, encouraged women’s education, and created important newspapers to influence public opinion. Each believed in the movement of history and in the evolutionary aspect of civilizations, and both searched for a pattern that could fuse tradition with acquired Western ideas.
Abbas’ interesting conclusion is that these two intellectu- als were deeply influenced by the development of modern thought, Western Enlightenment, and ideas of progress and evolution; they shared the same source and terms of refer- ence to inspire a second generation of intellectuals. Accord- ing to Abbas, however, Yukichi deserves praise for his more aggressive criticism of the traditional customs and morals on certain issues pertaining to gender and family status, and his harsh denunciation of Confucianism, and the tradition- al moral system and learning. Al-Tahtawi, on the other hand, was more accommodating with regard to traditional (Islam- ic) values. Most significantly of all, however, is that Yukichi seems to have been much more conscious than Tahtawi of the dangers of Western imperialist interests. He therefore emphasized seeking independence and self-reliance. Abbas portrays al-Tahatwi as someone who underestimated West- ern aggression and depicts him as having “lacked” a “clair- voyance”, missing the boat on modernization.
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