Anti-Colonial Japanophilia and the constraints of an Islamic Japanology: information and affect in the Indian encounter with Japan

Against a background of expansive Indian and Middle Eastern interest in Japan after the Russo-Japanese War, this essay examines the epistemological foundations of this evolving knowledge about Japan through a deconstructive case study of an important but neglected Urdu text. By drawing an analytical distinction between Japanophilia and Japanology, the aim is to measure the opportunities and constraints that defined Indian Muslim understanding of East Asia in the inter-war period. Through a contextualized close reading of the Haqiqat-e Japan, the essay reconstructs the infrastructural, social and intellectual networks that gave shape to the most detailed Urdu study of Japan to appear before the better known Indian nationalist alliances with Japan during the Second World War. The text has been selected for being the most detailed and best informed of the many Urdu books about Japan to appear between the beginning of Indian interest in Japan in the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Second World War. As such, it provides a suitable test case for assessing the scope and limits of Indian Muslim ‘Japanology’. By contrasting this Japanology with the Japanophilia that gave rise to it, the essay makes a case for the distinction and divergence between information and affect at the height of the anti-colonial movement across Asia.