Japan on the Silk Road: Encounters and Perspectives of Politics and Culture in Eurasia, by Selçuk Esenbel, ed. Leiden: Brill. 2018. ISBN 978-90-04-27430-3. 114 euro / $132.

Reviewed by Jason Morgan, associate professor, Reitaku University, Kashiwa, Japan

In recent years, the rise of the People’s Republic of China—and in particular the drive by PRC President Xi Jinping to create a “One Belt, One Road” network stretching from the Pacific Ocean to Europe and Africa—has linked the term “Silk Road” with modern China in the minds of many. However, a century and more before the present, the old Silk Road was the vector for Japan’s attempt to bring all of Eurasia into one fold. Largely forgotten today, Japan’s Silk Road pan-Asianism, building on the pan-Islamic and other pre-Westphalian religious, cultural, and political trans-Eurasian connections of the past, was the dominant force in the waning years of Qing, Russian, and Ottoman sway over the Eurasian continent.

In this important new volume, edited by Professor Emerita of Japanese and Asian History at Boğaziçi University in Turkey Selçuk Esenbel, Japan’s forays into Silk Road pan-Asianism are examined from a variety of historical perspectives. (Here and below, author information taken from “List of Contributors,” pp. x-xv.) Japan on the Silk Road is rooted in Turkish, Uighur, Chinese, Japanese, German, and even Tatar and Azerbaijani sources, and is an invaluable overview of a time when Japan, not China, was bidding to be master of the Silk Road.

Esenbel’s introduction sets the stage for the volume by contextualizing Japan’s foray into the Silk Road. The backdrop for Japan’s pan-Asianism was the Great Game, Rudyard Kipling’s phrase to describe the longstanding rivalry between Britain and Russia for control of Eurasia. Another important factor was the unraveling of the Qing Dynasty and the political instability ensuing from that decline. “During the nineteenth century,” Esenbel writes, “the Japanese entered into the region [of the Silk Road] in their imperial quest to replace the Qing Dynasty’s historic legacy in the region and to form a series of alliances against the Russian and Chinese empires.” (1)

Japan also inherited the political imaginary of earlier European explorers, Esenbel reminds us, including:

Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905), the German geographer and traveler [who] invented the term “Seidenstrasse” or “the Silk Road(s)” in his work on the geography of China in 1877, where he designated the routes of inter-continental trade in the precious commodity of silk, which he thought was in much demand in the Roman Mediterranean. […] At the time, imperial governments enthusiastically supported the work of the European explorers of Central Eurasia who pioneered mapping this unknown region […], as this information was thought to be crucial for global geopolitical strategic interests. (4)

After Esenbel’s introduction, Japan on the Silk Road is divided into sixteen chapters of varying lengths.

The first chapter, by London School of Economics and Political Science professor emeritus Ian Nish, further contextualizes Japan’s early Silk Road adventures within the Great Game. Nish introduces the career of Major Fukushima Yasumasa (1852-1919), “military attaché in the Berlin legation, [who] undertook an adventurous journey on horseback across Siberia in 1892-93.” (39) Fukushima was one of Japan’s first and most ambitious intelligence-gatherers in Asia, and helped spur much greater Japanese involvement in the Silk Road as part of the Great Game. (Nish cites here the work of Sakurai Ryōju, an important source on the Kokuryūkai society which was also a vital part of pan-Asian activity based in Japan. (42))

The chapter by Christopher W.A. Szpilman, Professor of Modern Japanese History at Teikyo University in Tokyo, is a continuation of Szpilman’s research on the “Japanese radical right”. (48) Szpilman focuses on how “right wing radicals” viewed “the Middle East and Islam,” with an emphasis on “the thought of two military men, Colonel Hashimoto Kingorō (1890-1957) and Lieutenant Fukunaga Ken (1899-1991), and three civilian leaders of the radical pan-Asianist association, the Yūzonsha, namely, Ōkawa Shūmei (1886-1957), Mitsukawa Kametarō (1888-1936) and Kanokogi Kazonobu (1884-1949).” (48) Szpilman finds “that the views of these individuals are representative of Japan’s radical right in general,” and also provide “a fair summary of the views of Japan’s radical right on the Middle East.” (48) Although colored by naivete, Szpilman argues, many on Japan’s political right thought that Islamic states, such as Turkey under Kemal Atatürk, as well as the Bolsheviks in Russia, were “bucking the trend” of “fake and corrupt democracy […] exemplified by the United States, Britain, and France.” (64)

Sven Saaler, Szpilman’s co-editor on the landmark two-volume Pan-Asian: A Documentary History and Professor of Japanese History at Sophia University in Tokyo, provides rich documentary, cartographical, and iconographical context for Fukushima’s trans-Eurasian trek. Asking rhetorically whether the Fukushima travels constituted “Silk Road romanticism, military reconnaissance, or modern exploration,” (69) Saaler finds that “Fukushima’s writings and actions exemplify the ambiguous character of Pan-Asianism: […] sympathetic to a pan-Asian rapprochement with China and other Asian nations, [… but] convinced of Japan’s ability—and divine mission—to colonize its ‘underdeveloped’ neighbors.” (84)

The chapter by Esenbel, who has published widely on the history of Japan and Turkey, is one of the strongest. Esenbel situates the intelligence work by Fukushima and General Utsunomiya Tarō (1861-1922) within Meiji Period debates in Japan over whether Japan should try to work within the unequal treaties system imposed by the West, “or strike out on its own by forging relations with potentially collaborative ethno-religious communities in Eurasia against the Western Powers.” (89) “Russia was a major foe in this alternative international vision—especially in military circles, and especially among the General Staff,” Esenbel remarks, “for which a buffer zone would be forged by signing treaties with non-Christian polities such as Ottoman Turkey and Qajar Iran on equal terms.” (89)

Li Narangoa, Professor of Asian History at Australian National University, foregrounds the importance of “Mongolia as a base for Central Asia and the Silk Road,” (119) showing how the Zenrin Kyōkai (Good-Neighborhood Society), “established in January 1934,” was a cultural liaison for the Kwantung Army in “Mongol regions west of Manchukuo.” (124) Narangoa argues that this initiative had begun with an eye to “out-flanking the Soviets in case of war against the Soviet Union,” but that this strategy had been ruined when the Japanese military expanded war in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. (142)

Komatsu Hisao, Professor of Central Asian Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, brings to light an “official report prepared by a young diplomat, Nishi Tokujirō (1847-1912),” who observed “Russian colonial policy in Asia as well as the Great Game in Central Asia.” (145) Nishi’s visit to “the Amirate of Bukhara under a Russian protectorate” and his meeting with “Amir Muzaffar himself in September 1880” helped pave the way for later Islamic-Japan contacts. (145) Komatsu is particularly focused on Abdurreshid Ibrahim (1857-1944), “an ardent Pan-Islamist and one of the most aggressive political figures among Russian Muslims, who filled the gap between Central Asian peoples and Japanese authorities.” (146) Ibrahim’s visit to Japan in 1909 helped spark further interest in Islam and pan-Asianism in Japan.

Brij Tankha, former Professor of Modern Japanese History at the University of Delhi and an expert on such Japanese pan-Asianists as Kita Ikki (1883-1937) and Okakura Tenshin (1863-1913), provides another very strong chapter in the volume in his investigation of Nishi Honganji monk and scholar Ōtani Kōzui (1876-1948) and “architectural historian Itō Chūta (1867-1954)”. (157) Tankha presents a masterly history of Nishi Honganji thought, showing why and how Ōtani traveled to Central Asia and India in search of Buddhist roots. Tankha then shows how Itō also sought in India and Central Asia the answers to questions about architectural and broader cultural connections with Japan.

Erdal Küçükyalçın, research associate at Boğaziçi University Asian Studies Center and at Ryukoku University Research Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia, continues in the Ōtani vein, providing more detail about Ōtani’s life, such as his friendship with early Japanese journalist Tokutomi Sohō. (188)

Ali Merthan Dündar, Professor of Japanese Langauge at the University of Ankara, provides a chapter comparing how the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) was reflected in the poems, elegies, and folks songs of various Turkic nations. (199-227, including an Appendix with the texts in various languages of the poems and songs under consideration)

Katayama Akio, Professor of Oriental History and Inner Asian Studies at Tokai University, provides an eminently scholarly account of how the Turks (“Tokketsu”) were portrayed in Japanese records, some from perhaps as early as the late seventh century. (228) Ōtani Kōzui figures in this chapter, too, as Ōtani’s visits to the land of the Turks was partly inspired by these ancient records. (234)

Art historian Miyuki Aoki Girardelli, lecturer at Istanbul Technical University, provides yet another stand-out chapter, tracing Itō Chūta’s attempts to find whether certain architectural elements in Japan, such as entasis found in columns at the Hōryūji Temple complex in Nara, could be traced to Hellenistic elements in Central Asia. (245-247)

Klaus Röhrborn, former Professor of Turkish and Central Asian Studies at the University of Göttingen, provides an intellectual and institutional history of the emergence of Turkish philology in Japan. (Röhrborn’s extensive bibliography will be an invaluable resource for scholars in this field. (280-88) Mehmet Ölmez, specialist in Uighur studies, rounds out this bibliography even more. (289-305))

Banu Kaygusuz, graduate of Boğaziçi University and at the time of the publication of Japan on the Silk Road a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, introduces the life and work of Felice (“Felix”) Beato (1834-1907), “the epitome of […] transnational photographers who were active beyond the vague and fluid boundaries of the empires, and who were the key figures in the transmission of knowledge, experience, technologies and viewpoints through photographs and photographic networks.” (306) Beato, well-known to those who study Japan, was active in Japan as a commercial photographer after a career photographing military campaigns and expeditions for the American and British governments in Eurasia, South Asia, and the Far East.

Oğuz Baykara, Associate Professor of Translation at Boğaziçi University, offers a comparison of the Tang Dynasty tale “Du Zichun,” about a tragic Daoist quest for immortality, and Japanese literati Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s (1892-1927) retelling of that tale as “Toshishun” in 1920. Baykara tracks the literary influences of this tale through India and Eurasia, presenting a rich cultural backdrop to much later pan-Asianism along the Japan-dominated Silk Road.

Satō Masako, Professor of International Relations, Nihon University, finishes the volume on a literary note, showing how Buddhist and other Silk Road influences shaped the “Heavenly Young Prince” tale found in the Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (1920) records from ancient Japan.

Japan on the Silk Road provides a welcome expansion of Silk Road studies to include Turkish, Persian, and Mongolian participation in the exchange of cultures and ideas across the Eurasian continent. For those, like the reviewer, who do not read any of these languages, the present volume is particularly valuable as a guide to the state of the field.

The chapters could have been organized into thematic sections. As it is, the chapters are sequenced with little apparent reason for the order in which they appear. And there are quite a few typographical errors in the text that could have been caught with a careful round of proofreading. I was also scratching my head in places over what appear to be missing Chinese characters and non-standardized transliterations in the text and footnotes. (Standardizing transliterations is a serious challenge for an edited volume working across so many languages, to be sure.)

But these are cavils, and should not dissuade readers from appreciating this fine volume, which, it is hoped, will provide the basis for even more research on this important topic. The authors are to be thanked for having provided a glimpse into the forgotten history of Japan on the Silk Road.