From 1999 through 2002 an huge research project named "The Islamic Area Studies Project" was carried out by Professor Sato Tsugitaka and other well-known Japanese Islamic scholars. It contains several units, of which Unit 5 is for Islamic History and Culture. It also has some groups, A to C, and our group C is for this "The Potential of Comparative History" (although I translated it as "Possibility of Comparative History in the Journal of Sung Yuan Studies).
This group C is set up to promote researches the differences of economic phenomena in middle- and central-Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Later it dealt with comparison between the meanings of those words like "contract", "market", and "transaction" in each language.
The group has hold nine conferences, published three books on this topic.
Professor Miura Toru at Ochanomizu University, Kishimoto Mio at Tokyo University, and Sekimoto Teruo at Institute for Oriental Culture, Tokyo University are the managers. This group involved no less than 50 people, including Professor Roy Bin Wong, Barbara Andaya, Rudiger Klein, Edmund Herzig into extremely productive debates, as well as criticism.
Is comparative history possible?
Our conclusion is it is possible to compare several ideas over some cultures. What we did is to compare how yue or chi, the Chinese for contract, was used, with how other words in Thai, Arabic, Japanese were used in each culture.
Comparison throughs more lights on modern ideas. For other examples, there is no concept for humanity or human rights in Chinese. Jinken, the Japanese for human right means the right given to every human being that cannot be deprived of by anybody, however, speaking in Chinese, renchuan sounds more like people's political power. There is no idea of human right for Chinese, but is an idea of "power". Renchuan is also conceived as a linguistic weapon used when Japanese, American and European try to invade China. Don't misunderstand, its not because of P.R.C. was a communist country, but its because they have had such culture for thoughsands of years.
