Changing Modes of Political Dialogue Across the Middle East and East Asia, 1880-2010 変遷する政治的対話 中東と東アジア 1880-2010
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Volume 12 | Issue 20 | Number 3 | Article ID 4118 | May 18, 2014 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Changing Modes of Political Dialogue Across the Middle East and East Asia, 1880-2010 変遷する政治的対話 中東と東アジア 1880-2010 Cemil Aydin absence of political dialogue or civil society solidarity. Remembering the intertwined East Asia’s relationship with the Middle East histories of the Middle East and East Asia in today is based mainly on economics and is the last century and a half may help in better devoid of grand political projects of solidarity understanding the challenges of today and in and intellectual dialogue. Countries such as finding ways to make the intellectual and China, Japan and Korea present the Middle political ties stronger in ways beneficial to both East with a model of state-led capitalist regions. While maintaining their dynamic neoliberal economic development. At the same economic ties, the Middle East and East Asia time, the redemptive transformation of East need a more sustained cultural, intellectual and Asia into a globally powerful region offers a political dialogue for constructive cooperation trajectory of development diverging from the on issues of global governance. Middle East, struggling with political turbulence, regime crises and regional wars Era of Humiliation both cold and hot. European empires came to Islamic areas before One hundred years ago, in 1914, both East and they expanded to East Asia, and their impact on West Asia were dealing with a similar reality of Muslim societies was more destructive European hegemony and colonialism. It was a compared to the East Asian zone, which had time of great convergence in identity as strong state traditions enabling resistance. subaltern Easterners, giving birth to several Even after the Opium Wars, China, Japan and projects of cooperation between pan-Islamic Korea were not colonized by Western powers. and pan-Asian currents of thought. There was a Between the 1870s and 1910, Okinawa, Japan moment in Middle Eastern intellectual Hokkaido, Taiwan and Korea were incorporated circles in the decades after the 1905 Russo- by Japan, the two former as prefectures, the Japanese war. The interest in the secrets of two latter as colonies. During the 1880s and Japanese progress continued, even as a vision afterward, however, East Asians and Muslims of solidarity with Chinese nationalism also in South and West Asia began to realize the emerged, peaking with the Bandungparallels between their experiences of conference of 1955. subjugation at the hands of European imperial powers. The peak of European global Today, however, while East Asians exhibit clear hegemony from the 1880s to the 1920s was not self-confidence, Middle Easterners continue to absolute and was always contested. Multiple talk about the “humiliation” of Arab and visions of anti-white racial and intra-regional Muslim societies, particularly vis-à-vis the solidarities emerged across Asia and Africa, West. There is an imbalance between East and fostering connections, solidarities and West Asia that has created miscommunication exchanges. It was ironic, indeed, that the peak in intellectual encounters, leading to anof European hegemony in Asia corresponded 1 12 | 20 | 3 APJ | JF with the zenith of intra-Asian politicalglobal consciousness of the 1880s seen through conversations. Pan-Asianists of Japan and China the eyes of a world traveler. The author did began to see Muslims as members of Asia, indeed travel to British-ruled Egypt and while pan-Islamists began to look at China and Ottoman Istanbul, where he spoke with leading Japan as allies and fellow Orientals. It was not personalities. The protagonist, a Japanese simply that they were sharing a revised student, weaves together multiple stories of an Eurocentric geographic notion about Asia oppressive West versus subaltern Asians to versus Europe, East and West, or white race present a picture of universal struggle for and colored races, they also had more chances justice and equity in the face of imperialism. of mobility, travel and journalistic information The novel includes a conversation with the exchange thanks to globalization ofEgyptian nationalist Col. Ahmad ‘Urabi about transportation and communicationBritish imperialism and the double standards of technologies. European powers, urging Japanese readers to learn lessons from how the British subordinated the Egyptian khedive by extending loans he could not repay. The British and Japanese steamships carrying passengers between the ports of Asia and Europe often stopped to refuel in Ceylon, where ‘Urabi was in exile from 1882 following his unsuccessful revolt against the khedive.Kajin no Kigu became the most popular novel during the mid- Meiji period, selling so many copies that it earned the reputation of “raising the price of paper” in Japan.making egy European orientalism created the initial epistemological foundation of the Asian- Arabian connection. If the same European center “othered” the Muslim world and “yellow” Asians as inferior and in need of the white man’s civilizing mission, Muslim and non- Muslim Asian intellectuals could learn from each other about how to talk back. At this exact moment, the steamship and the telegraph, as well as the construction of the Suez Canal, strengthened the ties among various Asians. Shiba Shiro (Sanshin Tokai) with Fez hat, The Suez Canal, while making Egypt part of 1886, Istanbul (Source) Europe as Khedive Isma‘il proclaimed, in many ways strengthened Egypt’s ties to Asia. The first modern Japanese political novel, Kajin Japanese and Chinese travelers to Europe often no Kigu (Strange Encounters of Elegant stopped in the Canal cities. Some made Females), presents the characteristics of the negative comments about the poverty of Arabs new pan-Asian thinking sympathetic toin Port Said in comparison to the European Egyptians and Arabs. Written by Shiba Shiro residents, but not necessarily to imply that (1852-1922) under the pen name Sanshin these conditions were irreversible. New anti- Tokai, this novel reflects the universalism and colonial visions of solidarity would gradually 2 12 | 20 | 3 APJ | JF induce the Chinese and Japanese travelers to appropriating “superficial and harmful” blame Europeans for the Arabs’ low economic Western habits or denying the Japanese status. Similarly, Arab intellectuals developed cultural heritage. In truth, the heritage that an interest in the diminution of Chinese power was preserved was more an invented image of and the extraordinary progress of Japan. Such traditional Japan than a reflection of actual pre- figures as the nationalist Mustafa Kamil and Meiji Japanese culture. But the concept of the Islamic reformer Rashid Rida argued that “Japanese selectivity,” a way to create an the Arabs could be as successful as the effective synthesis of Western and Eastern Japanese. Middle Eastern intellectuals, along knowledge, was fascinating to Muslim with their counterparts in the rest of Asia and reformists and nationalists, who had been Africa, celebrated the Japanese defeat of Russia preoccupied with the questions of East-West as a victory of fellow Orientals against a encounter and civilizational harmony for common enemy, the white Christian West. several decades. For example, the “good wife, Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen noted wise mother” ideology that Japan adopted from the congratulatory messages he received in Europe was depicted as a successful adaptation 1905 from Arab residents of Port Said when his of Japanese tradition to modernity, since ship stopped in that city on the way back from Japanese mothers and daughters could thereby Europe. Some Arab Muslims even hoped that serve the nation through Westernizing reforms the Japanese emperor, a Shinto deity, would without losing their traditional cultural role. convert to Islam and take the helm of the Second, the rise of Japan engendered optimism “Muslim world” in addition to spearheading a that it was not too late for the Ottoman, rising East Asia. Egyptian, Persian and Indian princely state reformers to usher their own societies into modernity and international equality. The Russo-Japanese war and the constitutional •See Shuang Wen's report on Muslim revolutions in Persia (1906), Ottoman Empire activists in Meiji Japan below• (1908) and China (1911) earned a collective representation as the “awakening of Asia” and were seen as a conclusive defeat of the notion From 1905 to the 1920s, there was a rich of white racial superiority over colored races. debate on Japanese progress in the Arabic-, In fact, slogans describing the “rise” or Ottoman- and Persian-language press. The “awakening” of the East associated with the debate might be considered rather surprising, Russo-Japanese war preceded, by a substantial given that Muslim reformists were promoting period of time, the image of the “decline” or the European-style modernization to strengthen the “retreat” of the West that gained currency in Ottoman Empire and Persia and pointing out the post-World War I period. that the Japanese empire could not be said to be anti-imperialist. There were three main Middle Eastern and Indian Muslim interest in reasons for the Muslim interest in the Japanese China carried an anti-colonial and anti-racist model. First, the Japanese example showed that charge, but the captivation with Japanese non-Western cultural and religious traditions, military success and state-centered such as Buddhism, Islam and Confucianism, modernization implied a search for a non- were not necessarily obstacles to progress. In Eurocentric model of political reform and self- Muslim writings on Japan’s modernization, the strengthening. The grandchild of pro-British prevailing consensus held that Japan had imperial loyalist Syed Ahmad Khan, Syed Ross intelligently selected the essential aspects of Masood (who, incidentally, inspired the Western civilization for adoption, without character Aziz in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to 3 12 | 20 | 3 APJ | JF India), visited Japan and wrote about the Muslim societies in their books and magazines. Japanese model especially for the Princely Two factors complicated the emerging anti- State of Hyderabad.