The purpose of this paper is to consider the successive changes in “Prophetic medicine” on the East African coast. “Prophetic medicine” is medicine that is based on the words of the Qur’an and hadith, in addition to the medical practices of the Prophet Muhammad’s era. In Zanzibar (Tanzania), there are two types of Prophetic medicine, “uganga (traditional healing practice)” and the “medicine of the Sunna.” While the practice of uganga contains Islamic and various other elements, the practice of the medicine of the Sunna excludes those elements that the practitioners believe are un-Islamic. The practice of the medicine of the Sunna has become active since the 1990s with the idea of interpreting the Qur’an and hadith literally, Ansaar Sunna. The supporters of Ansaar Sunna reformed uganga and began to practice the medicine of the Sunna for themselves. There are four reasons why the medicine of the Sunna is actively practiced on the East African coast today. First, the medicine of the Sunna fits the idea of today’s “true Islam,” as it follows the Qur’an and the hadith literally. Second, the medicine of the Sunna not only treats the problems of jini, but also addresses the practices of Islamic daily life. Third, people can easily access the information by themselves and begin to practice the medicine of the Sunna. Fourth, because some teachers also conduct classes to train practitioners, everyone has an opportunity to become a practitioner of the medicine of the Sunna.

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It is to explore possibilities of a new interpretation in the Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chido (hereafter referred to as the Kangnido) by focusing on discourses of map and map contents. For this it will be provided a general historical background knowledge of maps, such as intentions of map-making, the process of map-making, geographical information reflected on map, and map-makers etc, in the context of how political power has shaped those elements of map-makings. And also I attempt to grasp the perception of the ‘external world,’ which is in particular Arabia-Africa region by focusing on Arabia-Africa geographical and topographical characters and place-names, identified with about seventy-one names consisted of twenty-four names of places in Arabia and forty-seven names of places in Africa. A history of map can be interpreted as a historical discourse or a form of representation. Cartography is theoretically related to literary criticism, history of art, the sociology of knowledge. Map is never value-free, rather value-laden. Map knowledge is a social product. Any history of cartography which demeans the politico-social significance of its expression and description in the map would be an ‘ahistorical’ history.

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This article analyzes Ōkawa Shūmei’s changing interest in Islam during the course of his life. Although he was a famous right wing ideologue and Asianist, Ōkawa worked as a scholar in Islam. When he was a student at Tokyo imperial university, he became interested in Sufism. His interest however changed from the inward, spiritual Islam to the outward, political Islam in 1913. At this time, he interpreted “the Sword and the Koran” as Muhammad’s expression of the fighting spirit. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, he kept silent on Islam. After an interval of about 20 years, he published his best-known book An Introduction of Islam in 1942. Despite readers’ expectations to the contrary, this book was not intended to support Japanese war propaganda, because he only described in the book the ideal types of Islam or the idealized Islamic state at the zenith of the Islamic Empire from a Japanese Orientalist’s point of view. In the aftermath of the war, at the time of the Tokyo war crime trial, he was declared legally insane. While he translated al-Qur’an in Matsuzawa Hospital in Tokyo, he returned to Islam through a veneration of the Prophet Muhammad with a perfect personality. He came to understand religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and so forth through the founders in his later years.

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Dai-Nippon Kaikyo Kyokai (Greater Japan Muslim League, hereafter DNKK), one of the Islamic Research Institutes in wartime Japan, was established in 1938 and was dissolved in 1945. The DNKK carried out various activities, such as research on Islamic countries, the World of Islam exhibitions, Islamic policy-making, enlightenment activities, and planning trade with Muslim countries. We can examine the details of the DNKK by reviewing the “Deposited Materials by the DNKK” or the “Islam Library” in the possession of Waseda University Library. In this paper, the author introduces the deposited materials regarding the organization and activities of the DNKK in detail. Further investigation of Deposited Materials by the DNKK concerning the contribution of the Islamic Research Institutes to Islamic studies in Japan is then recommended.

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Recently the relationship between Japan and Islam, including the study about “the Japanese Policy toward Muslims,” has been the focal point for various studies. It is possible to classify these studies into into four groups: first, central institutions related to Islam; second, central figures related to the policy toward Islam; third, the reaction or opinion of Japanese people to the policy toward Muslims or Islam in general; and, fourth, the activities of Muslims in Japan. Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain results for the third type of study. We need to adopt media research to fill the gap. We intend to elucidate the Japanese opinion about Islamic affairs before and during World War II through the articles of Buddhist Daily Newspaper Chûgai Nippô (1937-1945), using its bibliographical database. We would like to introduce some examples of this interesting newspaper in this paper.

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Most of the Tatar migrants who lived in the Far East before and during World War II migrated to the USA or Turkey after the war. They and their families are still living in these countries. In this paper, their lives in prewar and wartime Japan, as well as their migration processes and their current situation living in the San Francisco Bay Area (Bay Area), will be discussed. The main sources on which this paper is based come from my fieldwork in the Bay Area from April 25 to May 7, 2012. Tatars of the Volga-Ural region immigrated to Japan, Manchuria, and Korea after the 1917 Russian Revolution. More than 1000 of them settled in prewar Japan, primarily in Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe, or Kumamoto. The Tatar community in Tokyo formed under the initiative of Kurbangali from the 1920s to 1933. This community split into two groups after Ishaki arrived on the scene in 1933. Although most of Tatar migrants gathered under the Idil-Ural Turk Tatar Cultural Association led by Ishaki, there was a struggle among the migrants in Tokyo. Thereafter, from 1938 to 1945, change in the Tatar community was dependent on the political situation in Japan. The Japanese Islam Policy at the time was to unify the Tatar community and put it to use for Japanese propaganda. After Ishaki and Kurbangali left Japan in the late 1930s, Abdurresid Ibrahim was chosen as the Tatar community leader. The number of Tatar migrants in Japan began to decline in the post-World War II era. Many of them moved to Turkey, the USA, and so on after being granted Turkish citizenship in 1953. The migration to the USA after the World War II can be divided into two groups. The first is those who directly migrated from Japan, Manchuria, and Korea to the USA, and the second is those who passed through Turkey on their way to the USA. In either case, most of the Tatar migrants immigrated to the USA from the Far East in the 1950s and 1960s. The American Turko Tatar Association (ATTA) was established in 1960 in the Bay Area. As of May 2012, the number of Tatar migrants from the Far East and their families, including partners of non-Tatar, who are ATTA members living in the Bay Area numbers 187. The ATTA bought and is managing four Muslim graveyards at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California, to serve the needs of its community. In total, three generations of Tatar migrants are living in the Bay Area. The first generation, who initially immigrated to the Far East because of the Russian Revolution, are all now deceased. Therefore, the oldest of these generations consists of people ranging in age from 60 years old into their 80s; this is, in fact, the second generation that emigrated from the Far East. Their children, who are from the third generation, range in age from 30 years old into their 50s. There is also now a fourth generation, who are the children of the third. The language acquisition level of the third generation is not high when compared to that of the second generation. A decline of interest in being identified as “Tatar” and a low rate of participation in ATTA meetings can therefore be found among this third generation. Future research issues are to: (1) conduct further interviews with those in the second generation of Tatar migrants, and (2) collect additional materials related to Tatar migrants.

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This paper tried to discover certain patterns in the “Arab Uprisings” and clarify which factors play a decisive role in the emergence, processes and results of the uprisings. For this purpose, I have focused on the relations between the ruling elite coalition (REC), the street protest movement (SPM), and external actors. In analysing these relations, I have introduced the notion of vulnerability/sensitivity in each group’s response to the other parties. This idea is based on the assumption that the composition, nature and internal power relations within each REC and SPM affects its relationship with the other party. If the vulnerability of the REC and the SPM to each other is high, the transformation of the REC can be achieved smoothly. On the contrary, low vulnerability in both the REC and the SPM leads either to the total reformation of the existing political system or to the perpetuation of the authoritarian regime. It may require international intervention to accomplish the goal of changing the regime but foreseeable post-revolutionary instability may prevent the international community from intervening. Thus the notion of vulnerability not only explains the nature of political transformation but also affects the post-Uprising political structure.

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