Shūmei Ōkawa

File:Okawa Shuumei .jpg

Shūmei Ōkawa

Shūmei Ōkawa (大川 周明, Ōkawa Shūmei, 6 December 1886 - 24 December, 1957) was a Japanese nationalist, Pan-Asian writer and Islamic scholar.

Background

Ōkawa was born in Sakata, Yamagata, Japan in 1886. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1911, where he had studied Vedic literature and classical Indian philosophy. After graduation, Okawa worked for the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff doing translation work. He had a sound knowledge of German, French, English, Sanskrit and Pali.

In the summer of 1913 he read a copy of Sir Henry Cotton's New India or Indian in transition (1886 revised 1905) which dealt with the contemporary political situation. After reading this book, Ōkawa abandoned "complete cosmopolitanism" (sekaijin) for Pan-Asianism. Later that year articles by Anagarika Dharmapala and Maulavi Barkatullah appeared in the magazine Michi, published by Dokai, a religious organization in which Ōkawa was later to play a prominent part.

After years of study of foreign philosophies, he became increasingly convinced that the solution to Japan’s pressing social and political problems lay in a revival of traditional Japanese philosophy and a renewed emphasis on the kokutai principles.

In 1918, Ōkawa went to work for the South Manchurian Railway Company, under its East Asian Research Bureau. Together with Ikki Kita he founded the nationalist discussion group and political club Yuzonsha. In the 1920s, he became an instructor of history and colonial policy at Takushoku University, where he was also active in the creation of right-wing and anti-capitalist student groups.

In 1926, Ōkawa published his most influential work: Japan and the Way of the Japanese (Nihon oybi Nihonjin no michi), which was so popular that it was reprinted 46 times by the end of World War II. Ōkawa also became involved in a number of attempted coup d'etat attempts by the Japanese military in the early 1930s, including the March Incident, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison in 1935. Released after only two years, he briefly re-joined the South Manchurian Railway Company before accepting a post as a professor at Hosei University in 1939. He continued to publish numerous books and articles, helping popularize the idea that a “clash of civilizations” between the East and West was inevitable, and that Japan was destined to assume the mantle of liberator and protector of Asia against the United States and other western nations.

Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal

After World War II, Okawa was prosecuted as a class-A war criminal by the Allies. However, he started behaving erratically - hitting the bald head of the former prime minister Hideki Tojo, shouting "Inder! Kommen Sie!" (Come, Indian!) in German, etc. Therefore, the presiding judge Sir William Webb (The President of the Tokyo Tribunal) concluded that he was mentally ill and dropped the case against him. From the beginning of the tribunal, Ōkawa was saying that the court was a farce and not even worthy of being called a legal court. Therefore, some people still believe that he was faking his nervous breakdown in order to be released.

Translation of Quran

Ōkawa was transferred from the jail to a US Army hospital in Japan, which concluded that he had mental instability from syphilis. Later, he was transferred to the Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital, a famous mental hospital in Tokyo, where he completed the first Japanese translation of the entire Quran. He was released from hospital in 1948. The translation effectively restored his honor and he died in Tokyo in 1957.

Major publications

• Some issues in re-emerging Asia (復興亜細亜の諸問題), 1922
• A study of the Japanese spirit (日本精神研究), 1924
• A study of chartered colonisation companies (特許植民会社制度研究), 1927
• National History (国史読本), 1931
• 2600 years of the Japanese history (日本二千六百年史), 1939
• A Chronicle of American and British invasions to East Asia (米英東亜侵略史), 1941

　　☆☆Best seller in Japan during the WW2☆☆

• Introduction to Islam (回教概論), 1942
• Quran (Japanese translation), 1950

References

• Calvocoressi, Peter (2001). The Penguin History of the Second World War. Penguin Non-Classics. ISBN 0140285024.
• Jansen, Marius B. (2000). The Making of Modern Japan. Belknap Press. ISBN 0674009916.
• Maga, Timothy P. (2001). Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2177-9.
• Samuels, Richard J (2007). Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801446120.
• Wakabayashi, Bob (2007). Modern Japanese Thought. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801446120.

Links

• Takeuchi Yoshimi: "Profile of Asian Minded Man x: Okawa Shumei"
• Prof Dr. Selçuk Esenbel, Dozentin an der Bosporus-Universität: "Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945"