The present volume is a collection of research studies in the field of Islamic Studies prepared by fourteen contributors belonging to two groups, one connected with Exeter University in the United Kingdom and the other those affiliated with various universities in Japan. The joint efforts of Professors Kazuo Morimoto and Sajjad Rizvi, the editors of the present work, realized this valuable and significant collection. It is a great pleasure and somewhat a wonder for me to find that Japanese scholars specializing in Islamic and Islamicate studies occupy the majority of contributors in this learned production.

Islamic Studies in Japan started in the first half of the twentieth century and was financially supported by Japan's colonial project in a similar way as occurred in colonialist Europe. However, Imperial Japan's defeat in World War II stopped its further development along a colonialist path. Research institutions were abolished and amassed research materials were broken up. A limited number of Japanese Islamicists who survived wartime had to start over from scratch. Toshihiko Izutsu (1914–93) is an internationally known specialist of Islamic thought, as well as being a philosopher of the “Oriental Philosophy” as he himself claimed to be. He started his academic career during the Wartime, survived the confusion of the Japanese defeat, and continued his studies both at home and abroad to become a globally recognized scholar. Izutsu's case is probably a happy exception.

Half a century ago when I began my research in Islamic Studies, our university library had no meaningful collection of Arabic texts or research monographs on Islamic subjects. We had to choose our research topics from the limited number of texts available to us. We had no choice to initiate research solely based on our personal research interest since we could not enter upon our studies without any relevant texts. In those early days we were very far from our current condition in which we have easy access to almost any classical text or many journal articles through the Internet. It is truly a wonder for me that so many Japanese scholars are actively working in a global setting as evidenced in this present volume.