The next series of posts are going to be about chapters from:

    Tomohiko, Uyama, editor. Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007.

But first, this post attempts to briefly gather a few notes on Japanese scholarship of Central Asia (although authors of many nationalities contributed to the volume). Glancing at the Hokkaido Slavic Research Center’s website, Tomohiko appears to be the only among the minority of scholars there that specializes specifically on Central Asia. Others include Naganawa Norihiro (who only recently received a PhD) and Kikuta Haruka (who there is no information on).

Tomohiko is a scholar of modern history first, but also seems to dabble in contemporary political analysis; the English version of the site evidently lists only his English publications (presumably he publishes in Japanese as well). His (English) scholarship focuses on Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Komatsu Hisao has less of a web presence than Tomohiko, but that fact demonstrates that web presence is still not necessarily indicative of expertise. Adeeb Khalid, who wrote the book on Central Asian Jadidism, wrote this in the preface (xiv):

Hisao Komatsu also provided me copies of invaluable and impossible to find works fundamental to my work.

Komatsu might in fact be the only other person beside Khalid who has published in-depth on the subject of Jadidism. Born in 1951 and now with over 20 major publications, he could very well be Japan’s preeminent Central Asia scholar. He specializes in both Islam and modern Central Asian history.

At the very least, Japan has several highly esteemed Central Asia scholars. Pity I will never learn Japanese.

Some general facts to keep in mind as the edited volume is discussed

Like many volumes, it comes from papers produced for a conference held July 7-8, 2005, at Hokkaido University called: “Regional and Transregional Dynamism in Central Eurasia: Empires, Islam and Politics.” This means that most of the articles are probably condensed versions of research published elsewhere (which is not a bad thing, necessarily).

It is extremely wide ranging in content, covering the Russian imperial period, the early Soviet years, and even the present day.

Goals that unify this diverse volume include: 1) the inclusion of Turkic and Persian sources rather than just Russian ones, 2) the interaction between internal and broader, external trends.