Research Activities

Report On March 18, 2025, Tobunken Seminar “International Workshop on Long-Term Social Transformations in Nepal” was held jointly by the Center for Indian Ocean World Studies at Kyoto University (KINDOWS), the IASA research project "Reconsidering Anthropological Studies in the Northern South Asia", and Center for South Asian Studies, the University of Tokyo. In Part 1, Sara Shneiderman (University of British Columbia), and Dipesh Kharel (University of Tokyo) presented on the long-term transformation of two Thangmi villages in Dolakha District, which each has studied for many years. The contrasts and commonalities between the village  closer to the District Headquarter which chose to become a part of the Municipality when the local

Post-Seminar Summary: Dr. Karl Ian Cheng Chua's Lecture on Southeast Asian Scholarship in Global Academia On January 9, 2025, the Japan Foundation-Global Japan Studies (JF-GJS) Initiative and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo, hosted the fourth installment of the JF-GJS Talk Series. Dr. Karl Ian Cheng Chua, Assistant Professor at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, delivered a lecture titled “Southeast Asians Can Think Outside of Southeast Asia”, exploring the challenges and opportunities for Southeast Asian scholars in global academia, particularly within Japanese Studies. Dr. Cheng Chua discussed how academic knowledge production remains dominated by Anglo-American and Japanese institutions, with English as the global academic

Report On Thursday, January 16, 2025, from 14:00, the Tōbunken Seminar titled "A new discovery of the 'Huihui Household Registers' in genealogical literature: On nine Muslim families in Jiangning County during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644)" was held, presented by Dr. Zheng Dechang (Fudan University). This seminar was held based on an exchange agreement with Fudan University. In this presentation, a detailed analysis of Huihui Xiaoce, a newly discovered material related to a genealogy compiled by the Ma family during the Qing dynasty was provided, describing the history of nine Muslim families who settled in Jiangning County during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, religious policies of the Yuan and Ming periods,

Report On October 18, 25, and November 1, 2024, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia hosted a seminar series entitled, "Migration and Identity in the Late Ottoman Empire." The lectures were delivered by Dr. Fuat Dündar (Tobb University of Economics and Technology, Turkey), who has been in Japan as a JSPS invitational fellow and a visiting fellow of IASA since September 2024. There were 6–10 participants at the venue and 8–12 participants online. In the first lecture, Dr. Dündar demonstrated that the immigration policy of the Ottoman Empire from 1850 to 1908 was characterized by the deliberate invitation of Muslim immigrants, guided by the principle of "state and religion."

Report On December 4, 2024, the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (Tobunken) hosted a seminar titled “‘Who I was his master, ʿAlī is his master’: The Narrative Development of a Shīʿī Hadith and Its Transmitters in the Eighth Century,” with Professor I-Wen Su from National Chengchi University (Taipei) as the speaker. Professor Su’s lecture examined the traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that convey the message, “For whoever considers me his master, ʿAlī is his master,” focusing on variations in both the transmission chains and the content of these traditions. Identifying Kufa in the late 7th to 8th centuries as the starting point for the widespread dissemination of this

Report On April 4, 2024, the Tobunken Seminar "Commercial Courts in the Ottoman Legal Reforms: The Case of Selanik (Thessaloniki)" was held in the IASA. In this seminar, Dr. Veysel Çolaker, a visiting fellow of the IASA, gave a lecture on the commercial court of Selanik (Thessaloniki) in the late Ottoman Empire based on the archival sources of the commercial court.Dr. Çolaker began by outlining the history leading to the establishment of the commercial court, before introducing the sources available for study. He noted that the archives of Selanik contain several types of commercial court registers, including those pertaining to petitions, bonds, decisions, judgments, minutes, attorneys, and protests. The petition

Report On March 13, 2024, Tobunken Seminar “Petitions and “Individuals” : First-Person Narratives and Historical Agency at Intersections of Diplomatic, Administrative, and Legal History” was held jointly by the IASA and the Islamic Trust Studies Group B01 “The Ideas of the Muslim Community and State Systems."The seminar featured Dr. Orçun Can Okan of University of Oxford, who specializes in the history of the transition period from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the post-WWI Middle East. His lecture focused on petitions in Ottoman and post-Ottoman societies during and after World War I.After examining memoirs and other first-person narratives, Dr. Okan discussed the agency that can be traced from petitions,

Associate Professor Shoko Watanabe's co-authored book “Sabrina Mervin and Augustin Jomier (eds.), Savants musulmans au Maghreb (Série « Islamo-logiques »)” was featured in “UTokyo BiblioPlaza “   Click here to read the full article.     UTokyo BiblioPlaza:https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/biblioplaza/en/index.html

Report On February 16, 2024, the Tobuken Seminar "Forged in Battle: A Comparative Examination of Boyhood Transformation in the Devşirme System" was held at IASA, the University of Tokyo. Professor Gülay Yılmaz of Akdeniz University, who specializes in the history of the Ottoman janissaries, and had been in Japan since January under the JSPS program of Invitational Fellowships for Research in Japan, gave a lecture on the devşirme or janissary recruitment system from a comparative perspective. Professor Yılmaz first examined how boys were recruited in the early 17th century based on the devşirme registers, and then discussed how the training process and the beliefs of the Bektaşi order influenced the

Report On January 29, 2024, the Tobuken Seminar, "Role of Armenian Construction Companies in the Capitalist Urbanization of the Late Ottoman Istanbul" was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia. Professor Yaşar Tolga Cora of Boğaziçi University, who specializes in the social and economic history and labor history of the late Ottoman Empire, gave a lecture on the role of Armenian urban development companies in the suburban development of Istanbul during the late Ottoman period. Through a detailed examination of the activities of two Armenian urban development companies and their shareholders in the 1880s and late 1910s, Professor Cora discussed the involvement of Armenian entrepreneurs, the state, and

Report On Tuesday, January 23, 2024, the Tobuken Seminar, "Japonya'da Sohbet-i Osmaniye-7" was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. This workshop has been organized since 2009 to bring together younger scholars of Ottoman history in Japan and leading Ottomanists from abroad in order to promote academic exchange and dialogue. This time, two PhD students and a post-doctoral researcher presented their research papers, which was responded to and discussed by Professor Gülay Yılmaz of Akdeniz University, who specializes in the history of the Ottoman Janissaries. Dr. Suemori discussed how the punishment for sea robbery began to change in the seventeenth century, based on the

Report On January 20, 2024, the Tobunken Seminar “Denominational Dynamics within Futuwwat Literature of the Medieval Period in Anatolia and Iran” was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, featuring Dr. Lloyd Ridgeon from the University of Glasgow as the lecturer. Dr. Ridgeon elucidated, through a diachronic survey of futuwwat works written in Persian from the 12th to the 16th century, how it was inappropriate to link the ʿAlidization clearly observable in the futuwwa tradition during the period to any form of Shiʿitization. Approximately 15 participants attended the seminar in person or online. After the presentation, a lively question and answer session took place.       Event

Report On January 23, 2024, the Tobunken Seminar “Graduate Workshop: Al-Shaykh al-Akbar and Ustād-i Bashar: Aspects of Mystical Thoughts in Medieval Islam” was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, with Dr. Lloyd Ridgeon from the University of Glasgow serving as the main commentator. Two graduate students from the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology of UTokyo made presentations therein. Firstly, Mr. Michinari Fujiwara discussed the concepts of “primordial cloud” (ʿamā) and “essence” (jawhar) in Ibn ʿArabī's thought. Secondly, Mr. Naoki Nishiyama presented on the connection between philosophy and mystical thought in the ethical philosophy of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī. The seminar was attended by a total of six

Report On January 20, 2024, the Tobunken Seminar Workshop: “Military Elites in the Early Modern Islamicate World and Beyond” was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo. This workshop was organized by Gülay Yılmaz (Akdeniz University/IASA visiting researcher), who came to Japan under the JSPS Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan, and Jun Akiba of IASA. The workshop focused on the military elites in the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Japan in the early modern period, exploring them from a variety of perspectives. During the first half of the workshop, Gülay Yılmaz discussed the transformation of the Ottoman Empire's military recruitment methods up to

Report On December 20, 2023, the Tobunken Seminar "Science and scripture in classical Islam: an Analysis of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's Treatise on the Plague" took place at IASA. Professor Mairaj Syed from the University of California, Davis, delivered a lecture on Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani's treatise on the plague, written during the Mamluk period. Professor Syed classified intellectuals into three types and identified Ibn Hajar as a "synthesizer," the third type of intellectual. He discussed how Ibn Hajar attempted to synthesize knowledge about the plague derived from hadiths, theology, medicine, and others. After the presentation, a lively Q&A session followed, with questions such as whether Ibn Hajar was also a "synthesizer"