Wakamatsu on Izutsu CH 02
CHArrER TWO
between the two of them occurs on the "synchronic" dimension of what Izutsu calls the "synchrorc structuralization" of philosophy.
Aside from his existential fellow feeling, there are other points of contact between Izutsu and Massignon: an exceptional genius for languages and the Eranos Conference. Massignon was a linguistic genius in no way inferior to Thshihiko Izutsu. He spoke more than ten languages and read fluently more than twice that number. Herbert Mason wrote his recollections of Massignon.3 in his youth, as if drawn by something, Mason met Massignon toward the end of the tatter's life, cultivated an acquaintance with him and was ultimately entrusted with translating into English. For Massignon learning a language was not confined to acquiring a means of scholarship; it meant opening the eyes of the soul. What was truly astonishing, however, above and beyond his outstanding linguistic abilities, Mason says, was that he found documents in the dust and ashes of history, deciphered them, read and understood them and, what is more, uncovered their hidden meaning. it almost seemed as though Massignon were himself personally [theirj old interpreter restored momentarily to life."14 I have heard similar statements from people who had been taught by Izutsu.
The Eranos Conference began in 1933 under the leadership of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) with the aim of overcoming the fragmentation of spirituality, which had been split between East and West. Since Massignon first took part in Era-nos in 1937, it would be fair to say he was one of the participants at its beginning stage. His topic at that time was Gnosis in lslnif The last time he attended Eranos was in 1955; he continued to be a central member up until then. His final lecture was on Fatima, Muhammad's daughter, the wife of 'Au, founder of the Shi'ite sect, and the mother of his two sons. Women have tended to be hidden in Islam. Despite the indispensability of their activities, thev lurk in the shadows of history. The greatest of these, Massignon said, was Fatima. in this woman, reminiscent of Mary in Christianity, he saw the manifestation of the maternal aspect of religion, whose role is to effect an undifferentiated harmony. lzutsu participated in Eranos in 1967. He soon became a leading figure along with Corbin.
THE INCOUNThK WITH ISLAM
Earlier I wrote that in his later years Massignon became a priest. Massignon, who was married, could not become a Roman Catholic priest since they take vows of celibacy. And so, though himself a Catholic, he became a priest not of the Roman Catholic Church but of the Melkite Church. The Melkite Church (more accurately, the Melkite Creek Catholic Church) is virtually unknown in Japan. Its history is said to date back to the time of Jesus6 A unique form of Christianity, nurtured b Arab spirituality, it continues to live on in Arab society even today. In order to become a priest, Massignon did not have to convert to the Melkite sect. He received special dispensation from Pope Pins XII. Before Vatican II, it was not easy to find ways to bridge the gap between lsliii and the Christian world. That was a time when Catholics called any faith except their own a heresy. Massignon aimed to become a peacemaker between the two major religions by living as a Christian of the Melkite Church, which integrated the spirituality of Christianity with Arabic spirituality. On it October 1962, Pope John XXIII convened Vatican II. As if affirming the direction the Council would eventually take, Massignon died at the end of that same month. After Vatican II. Catholics initiated a dialogue with Islam. This dramatic change, it has been said, would never have occurred without Massignon.
Four years later, at the beginning of Sufisin and Taoism, Izutsu quotes Henry Corbin's words "Un dialogue dans la m&allistoire,',68and says that he is writing this work not only for its academic interest but in response to the needs of the times. Through his dialogue between Christianity and Islam on religious issues and through his activities on behalf of peace in Islamic society, Massignon spent his life not simply in scholarly study but in "Un dialogue dans Ia niétahistoire." "Metahistor-ical" or "transhistorical" are words that clearly convey Corhin's attitude toward scholarship, but this attitude also proclaims Corbin to be the student of Massignon.
The tenn "dialogue" would become a key word in Toshihiko Izuisu's late period. Religious dialogue can never achieve its objective if it is constantly concerned with identifying areas of agreement in dogma, ceremonies or rituals. "Religious" dialogue must be practiced on a strictly "religious" dimension. At the social level, lzutsu notes, no deepening
CHAFFER TWO
world acknowledge, if it had not been for Massignon, I3allj would never have been known toda)&.The reason behind Massignon's choice of the word "passion" in the title was, of course, Christ's Passion with a capital P. Massignon was a devout Catholic who in later years became a Melkite priest; it is perhaps possible to see this act as his profound homage to llaIlj.
Massignon was born in 1883 in Val-de-Marne, France. His father was a friend of Hnysmans, and, on his father's advice, the seventeen-year-old Massignon met the novelist. Like this writer, Massignon would later experience a dramatic religious conversion. Massignon's encounter with 1lalläj took place in 1907, when at twenty-four he learned of I3allaj's existence in "Memorials of the Saints" by the twelfth-century Persian poet 'Attar. The drama of his own conversion would take place the following year. His completed study of IIallj was published in i, many years after his death; it was literally his life's work.
In Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), Massignon and Hamilton Gibb are singled out for extensive discussion as Europeans with a superb understanding of the Orient. Jacques Derrida, who was personally acquainted witli'l'oshilliko Izut_su, wrote about Massignon's activities in his later years. One wonders whether Derrida and izutsu ever discussed Massignon. Derrida was an Algerian. Massignon was deeply involved in the Algerian War, as a friend of Algiers rather than as a Frenchman. A professor at the College de France and one of the finest scholars of Islam of his day, he was also an activist who revered Gandhi. What aroused Derrida 's interest was the movement known as Badaljya, which Massignon founded with the aim of bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity. Derrida regarded Massignon as someone who embodied the possibility of a religious reconciliation on a completely different dimension from syncretism - Derrida called it the "prayer front."'
Toshihiko Izutsu was even more forthright in his sympathy for Mas-signon. Massignon's influence led him "to a strange world that goes far beyond mere scholarship."
Massignon when discussing ija1lj—that is not what is called "scholarship" as we normally think of it. It is living record of the existential
THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
encounter between a tenth-century uft who, at the climax of an utterly transformative experience, called out, or could not help but call out. "Ma'! 1Iaqq" (I am Cod) at the risk of his own death, and that formidable and ivarvdous spirit. Massignon, who personally received him in the mid-twentieth century. it evokes enduring interest and invites us to a strange world that goes far beyond mere scholarship!"
In terms of his depth of knowledge and breadth of vision in the area of mystic philosophy as a whole and, in particular, for the originality of his study of Gnosis in the Shi'a school of Islam, there is no member of his generation comparable—the object of these words of high praise from Izutsu was Henry Corbin (1903-178). He was literally a member of the same generation as Izutsu and one of the few thinkers whom Izutsu acknowledged. But even Corbin "must be said to be inferior to his teacher," izutsu wrote, "especially when it comes to the existential profundiI' of his reading in Oriental thought." Corbin's teacher was Massignon. When one thinks of Massignon. Izutsu goes on to say, it is not just his extensive knowledge and the fruits of his scholarship but "the intensity of his passion that strikes the reader's heart."
Ilalthj was undoubtedly a heretic. He was judged and executed as such. But sometimes a heretic appears, leads a revolution and prepares for the appearance of true orthodoxy. We have seen over and over again the historical proof that such people are not destructive subversives but the enemies of delusion and hypocrisy. Those who have been branded as heretics are erased from history. Their memory is preserved in the testimonies of the side that condemned them. It is in these documents. Massignon writes, that we must find the fragments of truth. His was a spirit that gloried not in relating his own views but in breaking through the silence imposed by time and bringing hack to life views that had long been suppressed. This for him was indeed "a sacred duty." The fact that Massignon staked his life on reviving a person buried in historical oblivion is not simply a matter of scholarly interest. What is clear in Massignon's account is not that he discovered IIallj but rather his firm conviction that I1allj had chosen him to do so. For Massignon, IIalläj was not a person from the past. He was nothing less than sonic-one alive in another world, the living dead, as it were. The dialogue
CHAPTER TWO
First, there was his 'intellectual interest in him as the forerunner who prepared the way for Islamic mystic philosophy, which began with lbn 'Arabi (116-1240). Then, there was the influence of Louis Massignon (1883-1962), the leading twentieth-century French scholar of ls1ni, who brought Ilallj out of historical obscurity. And finally there was his awe and respect for the fate of this man, who, as the result of a statement made at the climax of a mystical experience, was executed and died what might well be called a martyr's death.
IlalIj was born around 857 in Baida, a town in Firs, in the southwestern part of what is now Iran, and died in Baghdad in 922. His entire life was spent in travel and ascetic practices, in pilgrimages and preaching. The experience of Cod filled his every day. A mystic is someone who aspires to devote his/her life to the Transcendent, but in 1Iallj's case, rather than experiencing God, he himself became "God." One day, I-lallai said, "Ana'! 1Iaqq"— I am the Truth. in other words, he said that he was Cod. If his words are taken literally, "Cod" had become incarnate in IIallj. His statement would be exactly equivalent to Jesus of Nazareth declaring himself to be God. In Islam, however, acknowledging the incarnation of God is not simply heresy; it is blasphemy. God is not like human beings whose existence is only local; Cod is the absolutely Transcendent One.
The fate of a mystic judged to have blasphemed God was death. In 922. after more than nine years in prison. Ilallãj was executed. According to Farid al-Din 'Attar's "Memorial of the Saints,"" when IlalIj was confined in prison, his captors intended to free him provided he recanted what he had said. A follower begged his teacher to recant. Whereupon lIallaj opened his mouth and said, "Are you telling Cod, who said this, to apologize?" He could retract his own words, he said, but it was not he who said he was God, but Cod himself. How could a human being stifle the words of the Absolute?
In the past, l:Ialthj's teachers Junayd and Bastrni had said that God was made manifest through themselves. But they had never said without any reservation, as llalthj did, that they themselves were God. 1.lallj knew that he was not the Absolute One. What he was saying instead was that God is omnipresent. If God is absolutely omnipresent, 11allj, too, might become part of God. Since this could be said of all
THE EN(;OUNTI:R WITH ISLAM
beings, they all could say that they were expressions, though incom-pktc, of Cod. Some might call this pantheism. But Ila1th's tinshake-able belief was something different. Pantheism is the polytheistic notion that all things are divine, but that was not what 11alIj meant. The One God exists in all things universally and inseparably. Hence, all things, he said, had to he Cod.
The one who said, "Anc,'I t.kiqq1" was "God' existing deep inside I3allj. If there is an Absolute who truly transcends human beings. that Absolute must not only be externally transcendent in the sense that people look up to it, it must also be deep within: in other words, it must transcend internally, i.e. immanently. The proposition that llallij risked his life to proclaim was that the unconditionally absolute transcendence of Cod was nothing less than Cod's titie nature in which God and human beings are inseparable and, what is more, in which the world originally and inextricably exists with God. Today, lIallj's concept of Cod is an accepted mode of thought called panentheism by R.A. Nicholson and others to distinguish it from pantheism, but almost no one thought that was' at the time. Panentheism would form the ontological foundation of Islamic mystic philosophy.
Toshihiko Izutsu observes that there may have been some Syrian Christian influence on lIallj's spirituality. There is a theory that the etymology of sari derives from the woolen dress of Christian anchorites. Moreover, I3allj's father was a Zoroastrian. Thus, a heterodox spirituality naturally coursed through IJalthj's soul. It was his lot to transcend religion in the narrow sense. The person who would raise IIallj's spiritual legacy to the level of philosophy was Ibn 'Arabi; his thought would break free of the confines of lshuiu and even have an influence on Dante.
In the Old Testament hook of Deuteronomy (21:23), the following verse seems to prophesy Ilallj's death: 411e corpse that is hanged on a tree is cursed by God." These seem like ill-omened words, yet a person hanged on a tree for calling himself the god of Jerusalem around the year 30 was later hailed as the savior of the world, Jesus Christ, What I have written here about IJaJlaj, brief though it is, depends on La passion de Husayn ihn Mansür Hallãj: martyr mystique de !'IsIcflfl by Louis Massignon.59 As not just Toshihiko Iziitsu but the people of the Islamic
t.
CHAPTER TWO
The period before the Prophet N4u1.iarnmad and the birth of lsthni is called the jahiftyya. the state of ignorance. The pre-Islamic Arabs, the children of Shem who lived during the jahi1rya, were nota sentimental people; they were entirely reliant on their sense perceptions. Izutsu sees it as inevitable that Islam would prefer Aristotle, whose ideas drew him to the phenomenal world, to Plato and his theory of transcendental Ideas.
The Arabs in ancient times were extremely sense-oriented; as a result. they were materialists; they were concerned with discreet, individual things. They were utterly unable to imagine a soul, the most immaterial thing of all, separately from the flesh. . . . The existence of a completely formless and invisible soul would not have seemed believable to them.
Islam solidified, deepened and expanded the primal, sense-oriented nature of the ancient Arabs. The words of the New Testament, "Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed" (jn 20:29), make no sense to Muslims. François Mauriac. citing Pascal, said that the greatest miracle of all is conversion, but for the ancient Arabs such words would probably have seemed delusional. They wanted their miracles to be utilitarian.
When Jesus began teaching in the land of Judea. most of the crowd that gathered around him held him in high esteem when they saw the many wondrous things Jesus performed. These masses never stopped asking Jesus for "a sign." 1-his finally caused Jesus to lament and say, "A wicked and unfaithful people seek a sign" [Matt 16:41. But it was this mental ity of persistently seeking "a sign" that is the essential ethos of the Semitic people. A sign is a miracle, in other words, a rnanifesta-lion, visible to the eyes, of the power of CodY
Curing an incurable disease is not the only miracle. If a miracle is defined as something that surpasses human limitations, something not achievable by human power alone, then the fact that the world exists is a miracle. In the very degree to which the ancient Arabs sought utilitarian "signs," they excelled in finding the workings of God in material things. It is impossible for human beings to make the sun or to cause the moon to shine. No one knows the depths of the oceans or the hearts of men. In an appeal to their keen sense perceptions, the
THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
Prophet Muhammad said to the Arab people: Look at the world; can you doubt that Cod exists?
Yes, they sought "a sign." but once they realized that signs were omnipresent in the world, they began to use their own powers to make the visible manifest. To do so was nothing other than to reveal God's work even more fully. The most important treatises of the great medieval Islamic philosopher lbn Sina were The Book of Healing and an abridgement of it entitled The Book of Salvation. As this shows, before being a learned pursuit, medicine in Islam was first and foremost a way to save the world. This was the reason that science along with metaphysics made such great advances tinder Islam. Iii the fields of medicine, anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, medieval Islamic Yunani medicine far surpassed contemporary levels in Europe in terms of empirical evidence. That was not all. The Arabs were also students of the practical sciences such as law and astronomy with its dose association with agriculture. In Islam there is no fundamental conflict between science and religion. Both are contained in God. Izutsu frequently notes that the Islamic sages were not thinkers who locked themselves away in their ivory towers but practitioners who lived among ordinary people.
On the other hand, if it is a miracle that the world exists, the search for truth consists in truly acknowledging this fact. Those who made it their duty to live this way of life were Islamic mystics, indigent ascetics known as softs. meaning those who wear coarse woolen clothing. John the Baptist comes to mind, who, in the Gospel according to Mark (1:6), wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist." Sufism is said to have begun around the ninth century. That is, of course, an English term; in Arabic it is called taawwuf A form of asceticism, it was the way of a holy person or, to borrow a Buddhist expression, the Hinayana or lesser-vehicle path of ascetic practice that sought the salvation of the individual soul. Suhsni would pass through the ninth-century Persians Bastanil and Junayd of Baghdad until with
allaj it would break through this harrier and reach religious heights, bringing blessing to the entire world of being.
l-lallaj was a mystic who defined his age, and not only for the history of Islam; Toshihiko Izutsu, too, had a special affection for him.
CHArtER IWO THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
dd
such an effort would incur the local peoples1 contempt, lie said. That was as far as he would go, howvcr, to accommodate the sponsors. As a single reading makes clear, the main point of Izutsu's lecture has absolutely nothing to do with understanding Islam as an administrative tool. As soon as the lecture starts, as if drawing a line on the subject, he begins to discuss reason and revelation in Islam, i.e. the conflict between theology and philosophy.
For rfbshihiko Izutsu, Shumei Okawa was never either a spokesman for the spirit of the age or a right-wing giant. "What I found interesting," Izutsu says in his colloquy with Rvotaro Shiba, "is that he [Shu-mci Okawa] was someone who truly had a personal interest in Islam." What he means by "personal" is the attitude someone has toward transcendental reality. It is nothing less than that person's confrontation with the Absolute in the search for salvation. On the other hand, if this
personal" experience does not go beyond the individual and aspire to the salvation of the world, there would be no reason to discuss these two men again here. As long as we remain fixated on Shumei Okawa as an ideologue of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, it is impossible to understand what for him was the fundamental issue. If what Okawa had been seeking had not been the salvation of Asians rather than the liberation of Asia, there would be no need to remember him today. For Toshihiko Izutsu, philosophy was the primal activity of human beings, which is directly concerned with the salvation of the human race. During the colloquy, Shiba suddenly said that Shümei Okawa, "rather than being a Japanese rightist, may have been a Japanese embodiment of nineteenth-century German romanticism."" Yes. replied Izutsu, with no hesitation whatsoever. This extremely forthright agreement seems to have made a deep impression on Shiba since he refers to it in a letter to Ken'ichi Matsumoto, the author of Okawa Shü-mei (2004). Considering that Shiba was a harsh critic of the war, his assessment of Okawa is worth noting.
Shtintei (Dkawa's research on Islam would become significant])-deeper
ignificantlydeeper after his eccentric behavior at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribu-
nal. his admission to Matsuzawa Hospital, psychological assessment and exemption from prosecution on the grounds of insanity. Dr Tsu-neo Muramatsu, the assistant director of Matsuzawa Hospital who was
responsible for Shumci Okawa's care, was the father of critic Takeshi Muramatsu (19z9—I9). An entry, in Okawa's diary (23 December 1946) reads, "I showed the manuscript of iiiv introduction to religion I i.e. Kaikvö gairon to Dr Muramatsu." One clay Dr Murarnatsu gave Okawa's manuscript to his son Takeshi and asked his opinion. 'i'hcre are occasional signs of emotional excitement, the son replied, but the reasoning is consistent. i'he father said he, too, was of the same opinion, adding in a murmur, 'Then I suppose his illness is cured." When Takeshi Mura-matsu was writing these recollections, he noted, "'Ilie Asian liberationist's role had ended. And with it Shümei Okawa, who, as a young man had planned to study religion, seems to have returned to it once again.
Martyrdom and Dialogue: IIallaj and Massignon
In the introduction to Arabic, shisOshi, lzutsu cites a stanza from the poem "l'urui kotoba" (Old words) in Masavuki Kajiura's poetry collection Tobiiiv no tsuki 0925; Auburn moon). When the work was revised and published as Isurclmu shisôsbi (1975), the stanza was removed.
Bygone worth do not die. Old words sleep in books.
Let the prayers of our God-fearing clays
Revive the old words.
Let our eyes in our quiet times
Penetrate into the old words' depths
And praise them.5
Masayuki Kajiura (1903-1966) was a nivstical poet whom people nowadays not only don't discuss but have consigned to oblivion. Flow did Toshihiko Izutsu read him? Wasn't "Let the prayers of our CocI-fearing days / Revive the old words" izutsu's prayer as well? The oldest words in Islam are the Koran. As Toshihiko Izutsu writes at the beginning of the Arabia shisOslzi, everything began with the Koran, not just Islamic theology but all the seeds of the development, disarray and transformation of Islamic philosophy are stored in that one book.
It took less than a hundred years from the appearance of the Koran for Islam to become a great spiritual movement that shook the world.
CHAPTER TWO
It must not be overlooked that Islamic philosophy was syncretic from the start and in the highest sense aspired to absorbing and integrating divergent views. There is a tendency to think of Islam as a mutant strand of spirituality that appeared suddenly out of nowhere, detached from culture or history, but in reality it might well be called the expression of .a religious impulse that synthesized the heritage of different eras and different cultures as it grew.
It was true, of course, in the case ofToshihiko Izutsu, but for Shümei Okawa as well, Islam was the consummation of the "Abrahamic religions" and akin to Christianity in its cultural origins. Its dynamic energy would find an analogue in the religious pilgrimage of Shümei Okawa himself, who came to Islam via Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism, Marxism, Greek philosophy, Indian philosophy, Emerson and the German mystic Jakob Bähme. And yet Islam for Izutsu and Okawa was only a way station, as it were. The eyes of both were on the "Orient" beyond. It would be a mistake to tie Okawa too tightly to Islam-, the same Is true of Izutsu. They both were always focused on what lay beyond "religion."
In Anraku no mon (1951; The gate to paradise), Okawa, who had been taken to a mental hospital after his erratic behavior during the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, writes that he frequently daydreamed "that he met Muhammad, and, as a result, this strongly revived my interest in the Koran."6 During nearly three long months of delirium, he writes, "Not (a single day) did 1 spend without meeting my mother."47 And when asked why he had been living in paradise, he immediately replies, 'because I was living there and thinking of my mother." He even goes so far as to say, "Religion is nothing less than the gate to paradise. And in my case, thinking of my mother was my religion, my gate to paradise"' Although Anraku no mon is his religious autobiography, this book is also a clear confession that the beginning and end of his own spirituality lay in its connection with his mother. The fact that the soul of this intellectual, who bestrode the religions of the world and its philosophical circles and who left his mark so indelibly on his era, was always bonded to his mother may not attract much attention in studies of his thought. Even those who deal with Shmei C)kawa as a profound student of Islam do not treat this issue with the same degree of seriousness. But when I think of Okawa,
THE ENCOUNTER WtTI1 ISLAM
I recall Augustine, one of the greatest of the Christian Fathers. Angus, tine and Okawa are alike in wholeheartedly confronting various types of spirituality, in their intense interaction with the world in times of invasions and upheavals and in having their mothers as the bedrock of their faith.
No discussion of Okawa's and Izutsu's relation to Islam is possible without considering its maternal aspect lithe Cod of Judgment is paternal, "Allah, the most gracious, the mod merciful" at the beginning of the Koran is maternal. Of course, they are not two different gods: they are two different personae. IZUISLI would later develop this theme in KOran o yomu (1983; Reading the Koran). The Cod of the Koran has two main forms of self-manifestation —jamal, expressing love, mercy, grace, etc., and jalal, expressing the power of majesty, awe, severity, and dominion. Neither Izutsu nor Okawa ever loses sight of the jamal side of Islam. We have already seen that both of them emphasize Islam as religion of tolerance. It is sheer prejudice to say that the monotheistic religion of Islam is jalal-like—paternal and intolerant—yet such prejudice can be said to be deep-rooted and, for the most part, based on denial. in the Koranic Weltanshauung, it is jamal rather than jalal that has the primary function," Izutsu says in Koran o vomu.49 If God's love did not come first,, we could not exist. The pervasive worldview in the Koran is that merely acknowledging the greatness of the Transcendent is not enough; faith begins in experiencing with one's whole being God's all-embracing benevolence,
Toshihiko Izutsu never went to the bttlefront.. Duringthe war he immersed himself in the study of linguistics and in research on Islam, beginning with Arabia shisôshi. In 13, a society for philosophical studies sponsored by the Committee for the Development of Sciences in Japan met to discuss the topic "Building a Greater East Asian Culture and the Various Philosophical Disciplines." The lecture Izutsu gave. there "Kaikyo ni okeru keiji to risei" (Islamic revelation and reasoning), nicely conveys his wartime attitude.5° Japan at the time had already occupied a string of Islamic countries in Southeast Asia. At the beginning of his lecture, Izutsu stated that no government in the true sense of the word was possible in those countries without a serious study of Islam. Actions taken Out of ignorance as the result of a failure to make
CHAPTER TWO
At the time I [i.e.' (Dkawa] left the university philosophy department, having completed a study of Nagirjuna as my graduation thesis, in the back of my mind I expected to dedicate my life to the reading and practice of Indian philosophy. It was the Upanishads the understanding of which has been refined by Buddhist monks and which explain the way to experience these insights through yoga, that was the inexhaustible holy source which would quench the thirst of my soul.'
If it is the mission of scholars of religion not to immerse themselves in the study of dogma but to rescue religion from dogma, then Okawa was indeed a scholar of religion. it was not as a student of Buddhism that he would display these gifts, however, but rather as a student of Islam.
What makes Kaikya gairon seem dated is only its. choice of words; the writing style is vigorous and its point of view seems fresh even now. Although more than sixty years have passed since its publication, it contains material that would live up to its title today. Okawa argued repeatedly that Mubammad's earnest desire was not jihad but moral instruction, that Muhammad was a pacifist in the true sense of the word, "Unfortunately, as a result of Christianity's hostility to all things non-Christian, Islam is always painted black," he writes.43 It would be 'wrong to see this statement as stereotypical animosity toward Christianity on Shomei Okawa's part. He is just frankly pointing out that the view of Islam as intolerant, which we encounter even today on an almost daily basis, is nothing more than sheer prejudice.
Toshihikoizutsu and •Shumei Okawa are in agreement in recognizing that Islam is not a religion of pureblood Arabs which emerged with the revelations to Muhammad but that it is nothing less than a richly diverse spiritual impulse forged in a melting pot of religions. As one example of the Islamic spirit of tolerance, Shümei Okawa cites the fact that the Eastern Christian John of Damascus long held the office of councilor under the Umayyad caliphate (661-750) and his father, SeTgius, 'served as finance minister. In Arabia shisöshi, Izutsu emphasizes the historical process by which this new world religion organically embraced different traditions, changing as it did so. Through its Semitic bloodlines, Islam was heir to Judaism and supplemented Christianity, while for its ideas it revived ancient Greek thought. Nor
THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
was this incompatible with accepting Mubammad's revClations. Izutsu describes how this openness extended even to connectionswith:ancient Indian thought and ZoroastTianisni.
During the time of the Abbasids (750-1258), who followed the Urna-vyad caliphate, religious policy in the Islamic world became even more tolerant. This was an era that recognized freedom of thought and saw the birth of Islamic philosophy. Al-Farabi embodies the spirit of the age. Called the "second teacher" of Islamic philosophy (the first being Aristotle), FärAbT, it would be fair to say, lay the foundations for it. If what he believed to be true contradicted Aristotle, he'remained steadfast in his views; his attitude was unchanged even if these views contradicted the Koran. For Muslims the Koran is not a book; it is nothing less than the presence in the phenomenal world of the living God. Toshihiko Izutsu devotes a chapter in Arabia shistshi to this philosopher, who tolerated no compromise whatsoever in his love of truth. Given the kind of person Farabi was, it may come as no surprise that some of his followers were not Muslims. In addition to his many Muslim students was Yal,iya Ibn 'MT, a Jacobite Christian. According to Yoshihisa Yamamoto's study of Ibn 'Mi's The Cultivation of Character,44 Y*liyã too, was not someone who made an issue of religious differences when faced with the big question, the search for truth. Since the two religions each developed its own theology, rapprochement is hard to achieve. When the two sides come together cloaked in their respective theologies, it is difficult to open a dialogue or make any breakthrough's. Philosophical discussions begin, however, Once the cloak of theology has been cast aside. Yalya was subsequently accepted as a scholar by the Islamic world even though he was a Christian.
If there had been no Christians of the Syrian Jacobite or Nestorian sects, Islamic philosophy might have been much poorer than it is today. YayL Izutsu writes, "is truly worth noting for his translations of Aristotle and especially for his contributions to the study of logic."5 Islamic sages read Aristotle, whom they regarded as the supreme human intellect, wrote commentaries on him and considered him their own flesh and blood. As a Muslim, Farabi was a pioneer in this regard, and yet the first to translate the works of Aristotle into Arabic were not Muslim philosophers but Syrian Christians in the employ of Islamic caliphs.
CHAPTER TWO
The world is fihld with the glory of the Absolute. Seeing with one's own eyes the diversity of Cod'creation, revering it, maintaining it and making it known—this woridview is the unwritten law that underlies Islam. That was the reason Ibrahim and Musa ended their lives on their travels. If eternity exists, human beings are always able to carne in direct contact with its primal life force. Ibrahim and Mcisa are the embodiment this idea.
And that is how Toshihiko Izutsu encountered Islam.
Shümei Okawa and the Origins of Japanese Islam
At the dawn of Islamic studies in Japan, two organizations were doing research on Islam and Islamic culture, the East Asian Economic Research Bureau, formerly affiliated with the South Manchuria Railway Company, and the Institute of the Islamic Area. When the first of these was founded, the person who served as its director was ShU-mci Okawa. Since, for all extents and purposes, the bureau functioned as Shürnei Okawa's private think tank, it was even called the Okawa school. The state supported Okawa, albeit indirectly, and the bureau published the journal Shin Ajia (New Asia). The Institute of the Islamic Area headed by Koji Okubo also published a monthly magazine, k'aikyoken (Islamic Area). According to Yoshimi Takeuchi (1910-1977), who was at the Institute of the Islamic Area in those days, even though the two organizations were not openly antagonistic to one another, that did not necessarily mean they held the same views. In iwo, Izutsu contributed articles to both Kaikyoken and Shin Ajia. According to Takehiro Otsuka's Okawa Shü,nei (1995). Izutsu taught Arabic at the Okawa schooI.7
Shumel Okawa spared no expense to amass a collection of important Islamic documents. Under the pretext of having him organize" Arabica and ls!amica, the two mammoth series he had purchased from the Netherlands, he allowed Izutsu to use them freely.5 The book Izutsu brought to Musa was one of these works. Without these hvo compendia. Izutsu's maiden work, Arabia shisshi (History of Arabic thought), might never have been written. That work, which came out in 1941 Oil the eve of World War II was, however, published as a volume in KOa Zensho (Asian
THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
Development series) edited by Koji Okubo.w Izutsu had close relations with both organizations and was warmly regarded by both of them.
Although not informed of the plot, Shuniei Okawa had been implicated in the attempted coup d'etat in 1932, known as the May 15th incident, having supplied guns and money to the conspirators. He was imprisoned but released on parole in October 1937, the year that Toshihiko Izutsu and Ibrahim met. Okawa's Kaikyo gairon (Introduction to Islam) was published in ip 40 But five years earlier, just before he was released from prison, lie notes in his diary that he had already completed half of it. It would be fair to say that by that time Shünici Okawa's views on Islam were already mature.
Recently the movement to reevaluate Shniei Okawa, not oil] in relation to World War II or for his eccentric behavior at the 'Ibkvo War Crimes Tribunal, but also as a thinker, has suddenly been gaining ground even in Japan. I add the qualifier "even in Japan," because the assessment of Okawa in India has always been quite different. At the end of Okawa's life, when he was on his sickbed and unable to attend, Prime Minister Nehru, who was on a state visit to Japan after the war, invited him to a banquet to honor his support for Indian independence. Gandhi had once declared that, given a choice between cowardice and violence, lie would choose violence, but Okawa correctly perceived and profoundly appreciated the revolutionary spirit behind Gandhi's nonviolence. Shumei Okawa was a revolutionary in the sense that Gandhi was. Both of them shared the belief that political revolution and religious revolution occur simultaneously.
Yoshimi Takeuchi was interested in Okawa from an carly period; he planned but never completed a study of him. A 1969 lecture of his entitled "Okawa Shüniei no Ajia kenkvü" (Shttmei Okawa's Asian research) still exists, however, and it contains the gist of the proposed work. In it, lie says, "Okawa did not have the personality of a religious man, but as a scholar of religion, I believe, lie was first-rate."4' Takeu-chi's words sum tip the essence of this man whose starting point had been research on Nagarjuna (ca 150-250), the greatest figure in early Mahayana Buddhism and the author of the MOlarnadJ:vciniakakdrikd (Fundamental verses on the Middle Way).
cHArtER TWO
committed to memory not only the Koran, but all the important liturgical texts, and could recite them by heart.
Ibrahim had at one time made Russia the base of his operations. Russia, which was then in the process of annexing Islamic countries on its way to becoming a Great Power, had a history of persecuting Islam. The first half of Ibrahirn's life was devoted to saving his brethren from danger in his capacity as a speaker and activist. Russia was not alone however; the countries of Europe were also oppressing the Muslims in their colonies. The aim Of Ibrahim's visits to Japan was to try to build an alliance with Japanese militarists, the right-wing activist Mitsuru Toyama (1855-1) and others to help Muslims break free of imperialist domination and promote the founding of an Islamic empire. Ibrahim presumably regarded Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War as a miraculous achievement: the defeat of the oppressor. He died in Japan in t944 and is buried in the foreigners' plot in Tama Cemetery.
In Toyoko Izutsu's novella, Ibrahim is warmly depicted as an engaging and affable man who spoke fluent Japanese and had a penchant for proverbs. One day. Ibrahim said that a remarkable scholar had arrived and took Izutsu with him to the mosque. Located in Yoyogi Ilehara in Tokyo, the mosque combined a place of worship known as the Tokyo Janice Mosque with the Muhammadan School. "As we neared the: mosque, I heard a voice reciting the Koran out loud with a special intonation full of Oriental emotion." "That is Mesa's recitation," Ibrahim said.n It was this person—whom Izutsu called "Professor Müsã"—who was truly agenius. Ibrahim, who knew all the sacred scriptures by heart, had a memory that is astonishing enough, but Mus's memory was another order of magnitude altogether. Not only had he memorized the holy books as well as works peripheral to them, "he had in his head almost all the important texts, not just those on theology, philosophy, law, poetry, prosody and gramm•ar."4 And it was not only works in classical Arabic that he knew by heart; he had memorized several volumes of commentaries and had his own opinions as well.
When Izutsu first visited Mesa and, as instructed, went not to the front entrance but around to the garden and called his name, Moss appeared from out of the closet, saying, Ahlan wa sahian, the Arabic greeting for welcoming guests. This distinguished scholar did not have
THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
the wherewithal to rent a single room, much less an entire house, and was forced to rent the upper half of a wall-cupboard. One day. when Izutsu was in, Mfisã visited him bringing some Arab sweets. He looked at all the books in Izutsu's study and asked, what do you do with your books when you move? Izutsu said that he packed them in a basket and took them with him—just like a snail, then, Mesa laughed. A person wasn't a true scholar, Mesa said, unless he could do scholarship anywhere empty-handed. In an interview toward the end of his life Izutsu recalled those days and said it had been his first experience with the teaching methods of an Islamic ulama (scholar). One day Izutsu brought some texts in Arabic to the place where Mesa was staying. A few days later Mesa had memorized them all.
Müsä like Ibrahim was a Tatar born in Russia. In Iburahimu, Nihon e no tabi (2oo8; Ibrahim's journey to Japan), Hisao Komatsu alludes to the meeting between the two men.5 At the time of the founding of Qifri, the journal for which Ibrahim served as editor-in-chief, there was a growing movement toward Muslim solidarity within Russia. In 1906, the formation of a Russian Muslim League was announced in Saint Petersburg. The author of the manifesto was Mesa. lie was both a scholar and a revolutionary as well as a religious leader who served as the imãm at the Great Mosque in Saint Petersburg. Later, after living in Mecca for three years he opened a publishing house in Russia, but after the Revolution he experienced persecution from the Russian government and was forced to go abroad. He came to Japan via Turkistan and China and stayed there for two years; most of his time in Japan was spent with Izutsu. As Izutsu writes in "Angya no hyohaku no shi,"Mtis subsequently wandered through the Islamic world, traveling to Iran, Egypt, India, Iraq and elsewhere before dying in Cairo in 19, aged 74. The model for the character of Tatsuo Aoki in ibyoko izutsu's novella was Toshihiko Izutsu. Some time after Mesa left Japan, a functionary at the Foreign Ministry conveys MUsA's words to Aoki. "Do you know, Tatsuo Aoki, my one and only student in Japan?" When Aoki hears this message from Mw, his eyes fill with tears as he recalls "the days of his youth that had sailed so swiftly by," and once again he hears Musa saying to him in Arabic, "To become like a tree rotting in the place it was planted—what a boring life, Tatsuo."6
CHAPTER TWO
The Two Tatars
nIoshihiko Izutsu had two teachers of Arabic, both Tatars whose native language was Turkish. One was Abdur-Rasheed Ibrahim (1857-19), the other was Mesa Jrul1h (1875-1949). In many reference works today the two are called Masa Bigiev and AbdürreTd Ibrahim. In what follows I will refer to them as Ibrahim and Müs. Toward the very end of his life, in the colloquy with Ryötaro Shiba, "Nijisseikimatsu no yarni to hikari" (1993; Darkness and light at the end of the twentieth century), Toshihiko Izutsu spoke about the two men. Had this colloquy never taken place, we might not have been aware today of ltzusifs relation to these two Tatars. Yet even earlier than these comments, there was an essay by Izutsu entitled '4Angva hyohakti no shi: Müs" (1983; MOs: The wandering pilgrim teacher), in which he wrote his recollections of Mtis, though hardly anyone has noticed it. In addition, a Japanese translation of Ibrahim's autobiography has been published.7 There are also references to the two Tatars in the novella by Toshi-hiko Izutsu's wife, Toyoko, "Bafuninnuru monogatari" (1959; The talc of Bahr-un-Noor)," and in Surutan Gariefu no )'urne (1986; Sultan Galier's dream) by Masayuki Yamauchi; and the Orientalist Shinji Maejima mentions Ibrahim in his autobiographical essay, Arabiagaku C no rnichi (1982; The road to Arabic studies).3° But none of these works attracted much attention to the relationship among these three men.
On the other hand, however, the fact that there was a time when no one knew much about Ibrahim indicates the extent to which Islamic studies in modern Japan, and Islam as a religion, have been overlooked. And yet no discussion of the vicissitudes of Islam in Japan would be conceivable without mentioning this man. Today research by Hisao Komatsu, Tsutomu Sakamoto, Akira Matsunaga and others is well advanced, and attention is focusing not only on the two rIiatars relationship with Toshihiko Izutsu but on their role as exemplars of a special late-nineteenth-century spirit that animated Islamic culture. If it is possible to discuss Islam in Japan not as beginning with Toshihiko Izutsu but, rather, that his appearance marked the end an era, it is likely to open a new chapter in modern Japan's intellectual and spiritual history.
TI It: 1NcOL,N11R Will I ISLAM
Judging from what Izutsu says, he met Ibrahim sometime in or after 1937 when the war with China had already begun and just around the time he had become a teaching assistant at Kcio University. After repeated requests for an interview, the aged Ibrahim finally agreed to meet Izutsu, but at first stubbornly refused to teach him Arabic. With a copy of the English translation of the biography of Mubammad in his hand, he said to the young man in Arabic, haza4-kitab jtw min Amerika. A/zhiinta? (This book has just arrived from America. Do you understand, I wonder') One wonders what the expression on Izutsu's face might have been at that moment. It was a "tremendous thrill," he would say much later, to hear the classical Arabic he so wanted to learn actually spoken.' That excitement may have conveyed itself to the old man because he agreed to Izutsu's request, on one condition: There was no point in studying only Arabic; he should study Islam along with it. Ibrahim's plan was for him to come 011CC a week, but Izutsu came almost every da. Two years later, ttzusu had become so immersed in the world of Islni that Ibrahim said to him, "You are a natural-born Muslim. Since you were a Muslim from the time of your birth, you are my son."12
Ibrahim was not a teacher of Arabic. Nor was the aim of his stay in Japan to disseminate knowledge of Islamic culture. He had first come to Japan in 1909. I-k stayed a few months at that time, and returned in 1933- Ibrahim is not an easy person to sum up. An eyewitness to history, a denouncer of injustice to the heavens, Ibrahim was first and foremost a journalist who typified modern Islam, but lie was also a religious leader who served as an imm—a position held by someone who has memorized the holy books.
Ibrahim himself claimed to he more than a hundred years old. 1 wouldn't go that far, Izutsu said in the colloquy with Shiha, but he was over ninety-five, I think. In fact, we now know he was eighty. elliat does not mean Ibrahim was lying. He was probably just teasing the young man. The story of him handing over an English translation of the Prophet's biography to Izutsu when they first met—that, too, was no accident; he may well have purposely ordered it and agreed to the meeting once the preparations were complete. There was no need for Ibrahim to read all English translation. He was an itnni; he had
CIIAPrER TWO
ethical norms set by modern man and, with his stern demeanor, is the moving force behind a people-and their history.
What izutsu learned from Kotsuji was something more than knowledge of a language; it was how to "read" Scripture. It was nothing less than a synchronic dialogue with history, a response to the call from the Transcendent Izutsu's exceptional genius, moreover, lay not in his linguistic ability to read the Bible in the original Hebrew. but rather in his capacity to perceive its staggeringly great mystical aura. It is worth recalling that the sequel to Shinpi tetsugaku (Philosophy of mysticism) was supposed to have been "The Hebrew part," in which izutsu intended to discuss the judges and prophets who are the spiritual heroes of Judaism all the way down to the Apostle Paul. 1 attempted to show in my previous work [Shin p1 tetsugaku, part one, "The Creek part," the 1949 edition that behind the God of Greek philosophy, which at first glance seems like some abstract, inanimate object, in fact, lay concealed a God of unbroken belief." As can be inferred from this statement, 'Shin-pishugi no erosuteki keitai" was consciously written as a continuation of Shin p1 tetsugaku. What it inherited from the earlier 1)00k was the "God of unbroken belief," namely the issue of a personal god.
The "Cod" that constitutes the Supreme Being of Creek metaphysics was not, as people often mistakenly believe, the abstract, inanimate object that, as a rational requirement of philosophical thought, was assumed to be at the apex of its ontological system. Not was it simply a product of the imagination, the blind, mechanical forces of nature conjured up in humanized form. This was a Cod of life that appealed to the hidden depths of the human soul and entered into an unbroken personal relation with it.'
Human beings can only represent God in human terms. This is a human limitation. But "God is not human," Izutsu says. "God is personal." it may be easier to understand "person" by substituting for it the concept of nous (Intellect) inS hinpi tetsugaku—God is not human; God is "noumenal." And so, "Although 'human' and 'personal' seem close to one another, the difference between them is actually so vast as to permit absolutely no comparison," he writes in "Shinpishugi no erosuteki keitai." "Thus, if we were to apply human form, which has meaning only
THE ENCOUNTER WIT11 ISLAM
as an outward sign, not symbolically but directly, as it were, to God, what would this be if not a dreadful blasphemy against God?"
When Cod from the transcendental world appears in the phenomenal world in which human beings live, God appears in the guise of the human soul. This mode of being is what is known as a "person"; it does not indicate a divine limitation but only a conforming on the part of God to the limitations of human beings. The origin of "person" is the word persona. As its meaning "mask" suggests, the world we perceive is merely, the mask-like world of the absolute Intellect. And yet it might well be said that, without the interposition of persona, human beings would be unable to live, or be capable of having real existence. for the transcendental world beyond the mask surpasses the power of human understanding.
Persona is also indwelling in peoples, periods and cultures. That is the reason "the distinction between the Hellenic Cod and the Hebraic God" occurs. Human beings are no exception to this rule. We become human by sharing a persona with and from Cod. But the theory of persona for Izutsu was also a subject that breaks through and overcomes the superficial differences between the Greeks and the Hebrews. These differences, he believed, offer counterevidence for the One Cod and the singular nature of divinity.
\Vhv, one wonders, is the creative agent of eternal life throughout the entire universe, the Lord Cod of all things in heaven and earth. different among the Creeks and the Hebrews? Here, too, disputatious theologians have brought the petty distinctions of their human intelligence into the nature of divinity itself—as lithe itemization of differences that have great value for their scholarship would naturally have enormous significance for God as well. The distinction between the Hellenic Ccxl and the Hebraic Cod, however, is not a divine distinction but, in fact, a man-made one. The differences are not in Cod; they are, instead, fundamental differences in the attitudes of Imnian beings toward Cod.
The differences between the Hellenic God and the Hebraic God cannot exist in the Ultimate One. These are not differences in Cod, izutsu says; are they not, rather, differences among theologians who argue
CHAPTER TWO THE ENCOtJN'EER WII'H ISLAM
Someone who loved the Old Testament and could not hold back tears while reading it was unlikely to fit easily within the fold of the Christian church in Japan. At Aoyama Gakuin University, the Tokyo Theological Seminary, wherever he went, Kotsuji was treated almost like a heretic. Even after founding the institute of Biblical Research, obstacles continued. Perhaps since he could not expect anyone to
understand him in Japan, he wrote his autobiography, From to
Jerusalem, in English under the name he had taken at the time of his conversion, Abraham Kotsuji. 'rhis spiritual journey seems to have had lasting repercussions since his name is hard to find in histories of Japanese Protestantism; only in works like Ni/ion to Yudaya: sono yaka no rekishi (2007; Japan and )udea: A history of their friendship) by Ben-Ami Shillony and Kazumitsu Kawai are there several chapters devoted to him and his relation to Judaisni.
By iwo, the Nazi persecution of the Jews had already begun. The wave of attacks reached from Poland into nearby Lithuania: for the Jews there, remaining in Europe meant imminent arrest. One day a group of Jews gathered outside the Japanese consulate in Lithuania seeking visas. The only route left for them was to proceed through the Soviet Union and Japan to some place beyond the reach of Nazi hegemony. Visas are normally issued only to those who have already been accepted by the country of their intended destination. It was, of course, unlikely that most of these Jews had any such guarantee. The man who issued more than z000 visas to these Jewish refugees and helped 6000 of them escape was Chiune Sugihara (J900-1986). Not that the Japanese government readily supported his decision: the Foreign Ministry was opposed. Today many people are aware of what Sugihara did, but it would be many decades after the war before his existence became widely known in Japan.
The Jews who made their way to Japan visa in hand did not set off for their eventual destinations without encountering obstacles there as well. Because they had arrived as a result of a loophole in the law, Japan did not readily allow them into the country. Setsuzô Kotsuji repeatedly asked the immigration office to admit the Jews, even conferring on the matter with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yösuke Matsuoka (i88o—i6), and lie finally succeeded in getting them allowed into the country. That was not all; he personally borrowed a huge sum Of money to support them during their stay there. Kotsuji had once worked under Matsuoka in Manchuria. From October 1939 to the following July, he served as a consultant on Jewish matters for the South Manchuria Railway. It was Matsuoka who had asked him to come to Manchuria. At first, Kotsuji had stubbornly refused. But as the persecution of the Jews drew closer to the Far East, YOsuke Matsuoka's clear opposition to anti-Semitism convinced Kotsuji to accept. Sometime later, after lie had resigned his position in Manchuria and returned to Japan. and a mere two weeks after lie had set up house in Kamakura, Kotsuji writes, lie [earned that Jews arriving in Japan were being refused admission. As a glance at his life shows, ordeals seem to await him, almost as if he were being tested. Around the time the Jews had all left for their various destinations, Japan declared war. Once again he had to fight against anti-Semitic forces. But the Jewish people did not forget what Kotsuji had done. In Israel, the name of Sctsuzö Kotsuji is honored to this very day.
For Kotsuji, teaching the Hebrew language was not a matter of giving lessons on grammar or the writing system; it was an initiation into reading the Bible. To do so is to experience first-hand a primordial dynamic between a people and a religion that is still alive today.
There is a work in which Ezutsu speaks of his own experience with the Bible—"Sliinpishugi no erosuteki keital: sei Bcrunini-ron" (191; The mysticism of St Bernard). As can be seen from the title, the essay is a study of the twelfth-century Father of the Christian Church, but, in fact, it deals with Cod in the Hellenic and Hebraic traditions and, in particular, with Hebrew mystic philosophy, which is a source of Chris-tianitv. The Old 'testament as translated into the Latin of the Catholic Church, Izutsu writes, is no longer Intelligible in a neutered and sterile translation from which the noxious air has been removed." But when you read the Bible in the original Hebrew, from the very first page "an indescribably powerful human scent suddenly comes wafting directly out at you, leaving you unexpectedly trembling and transfixed."4 As he reads the Hebrew Bible, he witnesses in vivid detail the spectacle of the "living God" intervening in the human world. This is the God who smashes the
CHAPTER TWo THE ENCOUNTER WITII ISLAM
he mastered Russian and encountered Dostoevsky. The next language he studied was Hebrew. It should not pass unnoticed that, after coming in contact with the Oriental mentalities of Greece and Russia, he went on to learn Hebrew and became deeply involved with Jewish spirituality through the Old Testament. Indeed. I believe that studying these languages prepared the way for his encounter with Islam.
According to "Izutsu Thshihiko no koto" 0991; About Thshihiko Izutsu), an essay Masao Sekine wrote for an insert that accompanied Izutsu's selected works,' he became acquainted with Izutsu in 1937 at the Institute of Biblical Research (the name was later changed to the Institute of Hebrew Culture) run by Protestant pastor Setsuzo Kotsuji (1899-1973). Although called an "Institute," it was not an organization to which large numbers of researchers belonged but rather Kotsuji's private study group. It was Kotsuji who introduced Izutsu to Sekine. At the Institute of Biblical Research. the "Bible" in the title was not the New Testament but the Old Testament—not that Judaism recognizes the expression Old 'i'estament, which is merely a term applied from the Christian perspective. For the Jewish people, the sacred text that begins with the five Mosaic books including Genesis and Exodus has been the one and only Bible from ancient times and remains so to the present day; there is nothing "old" about it. in the present chapter, following Kotsuji's example, the term "Bible" refers to the so-called Old Testament, the original text written in Hebrew.
"'lb my knowledge," Kotsuji writes in his autobiography, he was "the first Japanese to convert to Judaism."9 Had he been able to do so, he would have preferred to become a Jew from the outset, but in Japan, in those days, that was not possible. i-Ic was baptized a Christian only out of a desire to come a little bit closer to the God of the Jews. Christianity for him was nothing more than a new religion that acknowledged the significance of the Old Testament. Kotsuji was born on 3 February 1899, Oil setsi,bun, the first day of spring in the old Japanese calendar, and so he was given the name Setsuzö, setsu from setsubun and zö for "three." The family he was born into had been chief priests at the Shi-mogamo Shrine in Kyoto. I use the past perfect tense because early in the Meiji period (1868-1912), during Kotsuji's grandfather's time, the position ceased to be hereditary. The Shimogarno Shrine is said to trace its history back to before the common era. One of the greatest shrines in Japan and a designated World Heritage Site, ills dedicated to the tutelary deity of Kyoto. The Shinto tradition, far from being a hindrance to Kotsnji's conversion to Judaism. prepared the way for it. With ShintO as his starting point, he writes at the beginning of his autobiography, he went in search of "a religious resting place," a spiritual home in the true sense, and his conclusion was that this was Judaism.
Setsuzo Kotsuji's hook on Hebrew grammar, I-Iiburugo genten nvUinon (introduction to the original text in the Hebrew language), was published in December 1936," and in all probability it was through this book that Izutsu learned about the Institute. In the copy that I have at hand is a flyer inviting students to enroll. 'I'll(-"original text in the Hebrew language" is, in other words, the Hebrew Bible. And, of course.. Izutsu knocked on the Institute's door for that very reason: to learn Hebrew, the language of the Bible. When he began studying Hebrew, Izutsu made astonishing progress. In a colloquy with Shüsaku Endo, Izutsu left the following statement about those days.
That man [Setsuzo Kotsujil was also a truly fervent [Protes(antl believer; when he read a text of the Old Testament out loud in Hebrew. his voice would tremble with emotion, and tears would glisten in his eyes. This, too, was a tremendous experience for Inc."
The reason Kotsuji cried while reading the Bible was because he saw the persecution of the Jewish people recorded there as a contemporary event. Time passes, but that persecution was by no means over; this is the harsh reality of religious time that Kotsuji recounts in his autobiography.
"Arc the Jews an ethnic group or a religious group?" Kotsuji writes at the beginning of Yudavci rninzoku no sugala (1943; The true character of the Jewish nation).'-' Although a historical issue, for Kotsuji, this topic was, if anything, an existential question, one on which be had staked his life—could he or could he not become a Jew? If "Jew" was another name for a member of an ethnic group, there was no place for him. But if a Jew was a member of a faith-based religious group, then the way was open for him as well. The conclusion Kotsuji reached is apparent from his formal conversion to Judaism in 1959.
C}IAPThR TWO THE ENCOUNTER WITH ISLAM
The sea grew darl. As I lay on the sandy shore one day looking upward in a gently falling rain, a chalk-white native came crawling slowly toward me and said these words. I want to dream the butterfly dream, to become a bird flying serenely to the east, to the west. In olden limes wasn't there a person in your country named Lôshi, or something like that, who had a follower called BashO? Isn't there an element of truth in "all things are in flux"? There arc many in your country, I hear, who do not understand this. We know it from the time we are born. Don't they say if you're not careful, you'll end up like Icarus? The sea is no use; the sky is no use. Ah, I long for the horizon. Ali, I replied, 1, too, can see the horizon. But I long for the sea. Oh. thalcitla. thalattal Suddenly 1 looked, and the chalk-white native had vanished, and a huge albatross was circling around and around in the sky. And it laughed the laugh of Mallarmé. ("On Truth or Falsehood")
Even his fellow students, who had half-jealously grumbled that Izutsu might be exceptionally gifted in languages but had no appreciation for literature, Ikeda writes, were clearly astonished when they read this poem and were forced to change their minds. Around the same time, Izutsu handed Ikeda his complete translation of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Since the manuscript is lost, its literary style is impossible to gauge, but it is additional proof of Toshihiko Izutsu's love of poetiy. This took place some twenty years before Professor Junzaburo Nishiwaki's translation, Ikeda writes.
In Izutsu's poem cited above, it is perhaps not sufficient merely to recognize the surrealist influence of Jurizahuro Nishiwaki. The Taoist sages Lao-tzü and Chuang-tz, who saw the butterfly dream; Bash, the latter's Japanese heir; ancient Greek ontology and theories about the soul are linked together with Mallarmé to form a mental and spiritual genealogy that presages the world of Ishiki to honshitsu (1983; Consciousness and essence) nearly fifty years later. What is even more worth noting, however, is that, rather than this poem being a projection of the future, Izutsu would go on to formulate his thought in ways that remained true to the end to the poetic intuition of his youth.
In the colloquies with Rvotaro Shiba and Shotaro Yasuoka, Toshi-hiko Izutsu left statements that, even if spoken in jest, make one aware of his astonishing genius—that he was able to read most languages after a few months and that English. French and German came so effortlessly he didn't consider them "foreign languages." But until an incident in middle school, Izutsu had been a "poor student who hated studying English. One day that student's eyes were opened to language. "Gogaku kaigen" 0981; My initiation into the mysteries of language) is the title of an essay that looks back on that time. Not that the incident was anything special. Unlike Japanese., English makes a distinction between singular and plural. For that young man, this simple fact alone was enough to bring out his sensitivity to languages. A person who uses a different language must surely experience the world differently, the young man thought. "The absurd notion kept running through my mind that I would master all the languages in the world, every single one of them."4 This experience, as he would say years later, was the "internal leap" that resembles the experience of enlightenment known as kenshô (seeing one's true nature) in Zen or kenbutsu (seeing the Buddha) in the Pure Land sect. "As a result of that momentary experience, I stepped into the scholarly world," Izutsu writes. "The fascination of that mysterious thing called scholarship took bold of me as if in premonition of what lay ahead."
What is more, his raw insight that learning a language means acquiring a new world agrees in principle with German linguist Leo Weisgerber's Menschheitsgetset: der Sprache (humanistic law of language) and Geset.z der Sprachgemeinschaft (law, of linguistic community). which would subsequently exert a strong influence on him. It would, of course, be much later before Izutsu became aware of this.
When Shiba says he has heard that Izutsu read the classics in their original languages, Izutsu answers, "Yes, I did."' If there was a book he wanted to read, he would learn the language in which it was written. He didn't know the exact number of languages he knew, but guessed it was more than thirty. According to "1ZLILSU Toshihiko-sensci o itamu" (3; Mourning the death of Professor Toshihiko lzLltsn, the tribute that lwao Takahashi (1928— ) wrote, a joke even circulated among his university students that Izutsu knew as many as zoo languages.7 He learned Greek and became acquainted with Plato and Aristotle; then
CHAPTER ONE
Transcendent suddenly manifesting itself,"90 and its subject, he asserts, is not human beings but rathctthe absolutely Transcendent itself. This view will emerge more clearly when Izutsu deals with Ishim.
The following is a passage from Yanagi that Izutsu cites. Although its source is not mentioned, ills found at the beginning of "The Way of Tea." I cite it in the same abbreviated form as Izutsu did.
They saw; before all else, they saw. They were able to see. Ancient mysteries flow out of this spring of seeing. Everyone sees things. But all people do not see them in the same manner; therefore, they (It) not perceive the same thing. . . . [E]veiyone says he sees things, how few can see things properly.9'
Without pausing, izutsu continues. "Every time I read these charming words of Söetsu Yanagi, I can't help recalling the eyes of the Arabs." This passage occurs in an essay entitled "Mahometto" (Muhammad), a work not included in Izutsu's selected works.
CHAPTER T1W()
The Encounter with Is1m
The Children of Shern: Setsuzö Kotsuji
INZA TENKIN, my family home, was the second building from
the corner in Ginza 41chOme, where the road turns toward Sukivahashi," writes Yasaburô Ikeda at the beginning of "Thnkin monogatari' (The Tenkin story) in Ginza junisho (Cinza in twelve chapters).' Ikeda was the son of the owner of Tenkin, an old, established tempura restaurant patronized by Izutsu's father. I mentioned earlier that Izutsu, on his father's orders, had enrolled in the Faculty of Economics at Keio University but found his time there unbearable and transferred to the Faculty of Letters. There may well have been a relationship between the two fathers because, when izutsu presented the argument that he was not the only one, "Tenkin," too, was making the switch, his father, who had opposed the move, strangely relented saying, then, in that case, it couldn't he helped.
During his undergraduate days, Yasaburô Ikeda published a literary magazine called Hito ('People) ostensibly as publicity for Tenkin. Advertising for the family business was merely a pretext; Ikeda and the young men in his circle contributed their work to the magazine. In an essay entitled "Izutsu l'oshihiko-kun to no kOsai" (1981; My friendship with Tosh ihiko Izutsu), Ikeda introduces "Philosoph ia haikon," the prose poem that Izutsu wrote for 1-Iito.
CHAPTER TWO THE ENCOUNThR WITH ISLAM
about such matters Yet even though we intuitively recognize this fact, there are problems that must' be overcome before it can be rationally fleshed out into a philosophy and help everyone everywhere understand this insight. One of these problems is language. As the Bible tells us, the birth of language has a direct bearing on cultural differences.
Kotsu Ii's English-language work The Origin and Evolution of the Semitic Alphabets (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan) was published in i, around the time that Izutsu was attending the Institute. In it, Kotsuji writes that the greatest contributions made to the world by the Jews and other Semitic-speaking peoples were the Bible, the alphabet and the Koran. Language may have been the beginning of the divisions among peoples, but it would also he a means of restoring them to unity.
In all cultures or ethnicities, language and spirituality—an attitude of reverence toward the transcendental world—exist inseparably from one another. Indeed, language is regarded as the origin of that primal awe which human beings feel when they encounter the Transcendent. To borrow a formulation from Shinpi telsugaku, language is nothing other than the expression of the enlightened embodiment of "spiritual reality." Toshihiko Izutsu's ur-experience might well be said to be his recognition of this inextricability of language and spirituality. The language that played a decisive role in the making of Izutsu's philosophy was not language as ergon, a code representing a finished product; it cuts deeply across human affairs, often manifesting itself in human form. To follow his journey to this recognition is to conic in contact with the source of what izutsu would later call "WORD."' WORD in this sense transcends linguistic codes and signifies the origin of all things.
When, toward the end of his life, Izutsu was asked what led him to the world of lsIiii, he said he didn't really know, but one event that had probably prepared the way for it was his encounter with Setsuzo Kotsuji. In "Yndava minzoku no kobo" (ip; The rise and fall of the Jewish people), Kotsuji states that there are mans' theories about the origin of the Semites, but he believes they can be traced back to Arabia.' Izutsu may have heard him say something similar during his lectures. At any rate, one day Izutsu said to Masao Sekine. let's start studying Arabic. Not modern Arabic. The two of them began a study group in classical Arabic.
Kotsuji speculates in Yudaya min.zoku no sugata that Abraham and Moses, Isaac and Jacob were not simply the names of individuals but generic eponyms for clans or tribes. Independently of Abraham or Moses as historical entities, there were countless, nameless individuals who inherited their spirit. Kotsuji recognized that Jewish history was formed by, and still lives on today in, people who left no names behind in that history. When developing his own account of Judaism, he complained about the flagrant and glaring anachronisms in existing studies of the Jewish people, who arose in southwest Asia and even today adhere to an Asiatic religion, and he deeply lamented the fact that the Japanese were still limited to uncritical direct translations of Western works. '['he Jews, too, are an Asian people; as a fellow Asian, he said, I would like to tell their true history. Kotsuji's "Asian" spirit would be passed on to Izutsu. I-Ic would call it "Oriental." Kotsuji's Asia, like lzutsu's Orient, is not a word that designates a geographical area only. It is nothing less than the place where "eternal" creation takes place, beginning with the book of Genesis and continuing on down to the present day.
Izutsu's interest in Hebrew never waned; it lasted to the end of his life, indeed, along with Buddhism. it was the subject that most intensely fascinated him in his later years. Izutsu's work on the history of medieval Judaic philosophy is an obvious case in point, and his studies of Derrida evolved out of I)errida's Jewishness? The essay on "the divine Hebrew language" in Ishiki to honshitsu is yet another example. "The WORD of God, starting from the ultimate root sound 'aleph,' evolving and ultimately realizing itself in its true and perfect form, is, as I have just explained, the Hebrew language made up of twenty-two letters," Izutsu writes. "It is the Hebrew language, vet it is strictly the divine Hebrew language and fundamentally different from the human Hebrew language."24 '['he basic thesis in Ishiki to Irnnshitsu is a "depth-consciousness philosophy of language." the mystical philosophy of WORD.2 Central to the discussion there is the Hebrew language, including the letter mysticism of the Qabbllm, a form of esoteric Judaism. It seems likely, does it not, that Izutsu was recalling Kotsuji as he was writing this? Perhaps we might say that Izutsu's meeting with Kotsuji can truly be described as his encounter with the "divine Hebrew language."
