Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu’s contribution to Islam is not commonly known. One of his works, relevant in making us understand communication from an Islamic perspective is titled God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung (1964). I have much earlier attempted to integrate the text, among his other works, to the corpus and study of communication. The book is based on a course of lectures he gave at the Institute of Islamic Studies in McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in the spring of 1962 and 1963, at the request of renowned scholar on Islam and Islamic civilization, Wilfred Cantwell Smith who was then Director of the Institute. 

His book laid the groundwork on the subject in which he explores the semantics of the Qur’an and the communicative relations between God and Man. He likens semantics to the study of the nature and structure of the world view of a nation at a significant period of its history, the major cultural concepts it produced and how keywords are crystallized into its language. The Quranic vision of the universe is “a grand hymm in honour of divine Creation.”

God and Man in the Koran can be used in providing an understanding of Malay cosmology on the concept of man, God and Malay kingship. Izutsu’s framework unveils the Malay Islamic concept of man and the universe.  In Malay classical texts, we find man conceptualized as the Servant of God.  Hence, the position of Malay kings, as Man, are seen equal, as Servants of God. According to Izutsu, and this is central to our understanding from a communication perspective, there are at least four distinguished characters of the concept of man. Hence the position of the  Malay man embedded in the geography of the Malay Archipelago (but not exclusive to it) in relation to God can be explained as follow. First, ontological relations, that is between God as the ultimate source of human existence and man as the representative of the world of being who owes  his very existence to God. In theological terms, it is the Creator-creature relationship.  Second is communicative relations where God and man are brought into close relation with each other, where God takes the initiative through mutual communication, and from His side, the Revelation (wahy) and the signs (ayat). From the human side there is the du’a, prayer and other ritual and worship activities.

The third is Lord-servant relation where God is the Lord (Rabb) who has majesty, sovereignty and absolute power, and man His Servant (‘abd). Here we find a whole set of concepts such as humility, modesty,  absolute obedience as such  obligated as the Ultimate Servant. The fourth is ethical relations, where God bestows infinite goodness, mercy, forgiveness and benevolence on the one hand; and wrath, strict and unrelenting justice on the other. 

Izutsu echoes the Quranic position of  man as an image of God in the universe.  Resonating Maulana Rumi’s foam analogy, the great Malay Sufi Hamzah Fansuri said, “God created Adam in the Image of the Merciful, for the Merciful is like the ocean and Adam a bubble (in its waves)” The Malay kings carry the title of “the shadow of Allah in the universe.” A shadow is nothing but appearance nor reality.  Fansuri explains that like the image (reflected) in the mirror, though possessing form, the shadow does not possess real being.

In a paper at the first International Conference on Contemporary Scholarship on Islam: Japanese Contribution to Islamic Studies – The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu, organized by the International Islamic University in August 2008, titled “Unveiling the Concept of Man and Universe in the Classical Malay Islamic Texts Using Izutsu’s Approach,” Hussain Othman reveals that the characteristics on the relations between Man and God, and Malay kingship and God from the perspective of Izutsu can be found in such texts as Hikayat Raja Pasai, Sejarah Melayu and Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa. These works, founded on Sufism, draw upon  cosmological and ontological ideas informing of the Malay Man in the universe.

Hussain refers to spiritual evolution and gives the example of man in Malay history understood from the story of forgetfulness, sin and repentance. He cites Sultan Malikul Saleh of Pasai, Sultan Mahmud Shah of Melaka and Raja Phra Ong Mahawangsa or Sultan Muzaffar Shah of Kedah as among  those narrated to have experienced the cycle of life from fitrah to the world of form and then back to the fitrah, from the Self to the self and back to the Self. The concept of man in Malay Islamic history comprises the both material and the spiritual. The three, according to Hussain, were in fact, spiritual men. Fitrah is returning to the soul, the innate spiritual nature of being.

The paper was  published in 2020 by the IIUM Press as a chapter in the Japanese Contribution to Islamic Studies: The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu Interpreted edited by Anis Malik Thoha.  

Izutsu, from Keio University, Tokyo, is described as Japan’s foremost scholar in the history and culture of Islam. He is key to the understanding on Japanese-Muslim relations.  Described as a linguistic prodigy, mastering more than 30 languages, Izutsu is arguably the most famous translator of the Quran from Arabic into Japanese.  More significant is that Izutsu is an understated intellectual giant, possessing an enormous wealth of knowledge on language and issues across many academic disciplines.

Born on 4 May 1914 (d. 1993) in the Tokyo, Izutsu received early instruction from his father, a Zen Buddhist layman, subsequently becoming familiar with Zen thought through readings and meditation. He was also a literary critic on the theory of poetry.  His love for literature eventually landed him at Keio University’s Faculty of Letter in 1931.

Keio Times, the newsletter of Keio University, in one of its issues, paid tribute to the scholar.  It reported that Izutsu later worked as a researcher at the Keio Language Institute established in 1942. The institute was later renamed as The Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies. While working on the history of Islamic thought and researching into Greek mysticism at the Faculty of Literature, he taught Russian literature in addition to several languages such as Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Hindustani.

In 1969, Izutsu retired from Keio and continued his professorship at McGill University. With the opening of the Tehran Branch of McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies, he moved to Iran’s capital city. According to the newsletter, after working as a professor at Iran’s Royal Institute of the Study of Philosophy, he returned to Japan in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. While most of Izutsu’s writings had been authored in English until that point, he devoted himself to writing in Japanese until his death in 1993. 

The Keio Times article titled “Toshihiko Izutsu: The Genius that Bridged East & West,” disclosed that the collection of books left by Izutsu at his residence has since been entrusted to the Keio University Mita Media Center. Consisting of approximately 10,000 volumes of Japanese, Chinese, and Western-language books, the collection also includes roughly 3,700 volumes in Arabic as well as extremely valuable materials such as 90 Iranian lithographic books rarely seen outside of Iran.

In 2015, the Keio University Faculty of Letters established two academic awards named after Junzaburo Nishiwaki, his mentor  and Toshihiko Izutsu to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the faculty’s founding. The Toshihiko Izutsu Prize is awarded to promising researchers who share Izutsu’s spirit of inquiry, which spanned across academic disciplines including philosophy, ethics, history, anthropology, archaeology, library sciences, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, and other human sciences. 

The prize aims to foster and encourage the next generation of scholars who can rival Izutsu’s passion for knowledge in the 21st century. His works on Islam and the Quran, Islamic thought, sufism and linguistics, that bear the intricacies in his thinking, need serious attention by scholars across the disciplines. One of his books is titled Language and Magic: Studies in the Magical Function of Speech (1956). That book, on the magical power of words, arguably conjures Izutsu’ s spirit. 

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