Nichibunken News

The Nichibunken Academic Encouragement Award 2024 debriefing session was held on December 5th, 2024.

This award was established in 2023 to foster the next generation of researchers in Japanese Studies. The awardees are selected from doctoral students recommended by overseas institutions holding academic exchange agreements with Nichibunken or international member institutions (Full Member) of the Consortium for Global Japanese Studies. (Please find out more about the award here.)

For the awardees, Nichibunken will provide research support for up to 90 days of their stay at Nichibunken, including research support from time faculty members and researchers and use of the Nichibunken library and research facilities.

At the debriefing session, the awardee, Ms. Oleksandra Bibik, who has been staying at Nichibunken since October, gave a brief presentation on her research. Following her presentation, participants, including the Nichibunken faculty members and researchers, exchanged many questions and comments actively.

In addition, at the end of her research stay at Nichibunken, Ms. Bibik gave the following report on her research.

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"Islam in the Context of Japanese Religiosity: A Case Study of the Early Works of Tanaka Ippei"

The research "Islam in the Context of Japanese Religiosity: A Case Study of the Early Works of Tanaka Ippei" aims to explore the evolution of Tanaka's view of Islam during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1924. The Taishō era was the first page in the history of Islam in Japan. During this period the cases of individual conversions (such as Noda Shōtarō, Yamada Torajirō, and Yamaoka Kōtarō) led to the opening of new dimensions of dialogue between Japanese culture and the Muslim faith.

Tanaka Ippei (1884–1932) was a pioneer of Islam in Japan, who shaped the trends for the future development of this religion. His works provide basic explanations of Islamic religious law, social structure, and the history of Islam in China and the Middle East. The main focus of Tanaka’s writings lay in depicting the integrated of religion into daily life in Islamic societies.

Tanaka viewed himself as a follower of both Islam and Shintō. That led him to the conclusion that both religions share a common origin. Accordingly, he introduced the rituals of both faiths as practices with the same purpose and structure, while deliberately avoiding detailed theological explanations. This practice-oriented approach constituted the foundation of his descriptions of Islam.

The central topic of Tanaka’s thought was the construction of an image of “Japanese Islam”. The image was developed within a pan-Asianist framework. As his understanding of Islam gradually deepened, his greatest challenge was to establish a set of Japanese terminology for explaining Islam.

This research presents Tanaka Ippei as a cultural mediator who primare task was creating possibilities for the Japanese acceptance of Islam. The research aims to define the methods Tanaka employed to integrate Islam into Japanese religiosity throught analyzing terms he used to explain Islam.

Tanaka’s intellectual legacy includes two travelogues on the pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as over fifty scholarly articles and essays. At the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), I was able to obtain the complete works of Tanaka. The materials provided by Nichibunken were extremely difficult to access abroad and served as an indispensable foundation for completing my doctoral dissertation. Furthermore, the two seminars I conducted during my stay allowed me to deepen my understanding of this research topic through meticulous discussions with colleagues and the valuable guidance of Nichibunken faculty members. Additionally, engaging with Muslim communities in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka greatly contributed to expanding my fieldwork and thereby developing a more comprehensive understanding of Islam within Japan.

In this way, the valuable research opportunities provided by Nichibunken represented an important milestone in my research, and served as a source of new inspiration for my future work.

（by Oleksandra Bibik, Nichibunken Research Fellow, Academic Encouragement Award）

• Ms. Oleksandra Bibik
• Q＆A session