An academic affair : Japan - Thailand

`Is it good that I had this much fun?' CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT -Yoneo Ishii presenting his five-volume `The Computer Concordance to the Law of the Three Seals' to HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn - as a monk at Wat Bowon Niwet -translating for prime ministers Sarit Thanarat and Hayato Ikeda -at home in Thailand -doing field research -with Professor Hideo Kobayashi, to whom Ishii attributes his discovery of Thailand since Kobayashi suggested Ishii take up a little-known Asian language -more field research.

Japan's foremost Thai scholar Yoneo Ishii discusses his long relationship with the Kingdom

STORY BY VASANA CHINVARAKORN, PHOTO BY KARIN KLINKAJORN

Yoneo Ishii

The story of their friendship is extraordinary, unprecedented and loaded with repercussions for the years that followed. Due to the proximity of their abodes, the two men were likely to have met almost every day. Their exchanges would probably have covered a wide range of topics - from language and culture to politics, science and spiritual beliefs - but both remained firmly in their respective creeds: The Siamese monarch in Theravada Buddhism and the French Catholic priest in Christianity. At any rate, during the years they knew each other the first stage of Siam's modernisation was set in motion.

Now in his late seventies, Japanese scholar Yoneo Ishii finds the above cross-cultural relationship between King Mongkut (1804-1868) and Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix (1805-1862) so intriguing that he wants to write a book about it. If completed, that book will add to the vast corpus he has already produced in his prolific academic career that has run for over half a century. Considered the doyen of Thai studies in Japan, Professor Ishii has commanded respect from generations of students from different disciplines and ideological camps. This should come as no surprise: Ishii is a truly learned man but one who is also full of humility and diplomacy when dealing with others.

But why take such an interest in the relationship between two people who died well over 100 years ago? Ishii's eyes brightened when he described his visit to Conception Church where Pallegoix resided and how he discovered it was less than 200m away from Wat Samor-rai (aka Wat Rachatiwat), which was King Mongkut's quarters during his monkhood prior to taking the throne. His enthusiasm is like the delight of a child piecing together a jigsaw. Only this game is intellectual. Ishii even went so far as to speculate that Pallegoix, who had a generous physique, would probably walk on foot when visiting his royal friend and avoid taking a row boat. The Japanese professor discussed at length how the more he researched the topic the more he marvelled at both King Mongkut's profound knowledge of Christianity and Pallegoix's amassing of 146 samut-khoi (traditional books) from the Kingdom, an exceptional feat considering the limited printing technology of the time and the restricted access a foreigner would have had to such books.

Ishii reckoned that two famous works by the French priest, a book on Thai grammar and the very first Thai dictionary, must have been written in large part with the private collaboration of King Mongkut himself.

"I don't know how many more years I have to live," said Ishii, speaking in Thai. "I'm 78 now. But if possible, I would like to write this book."

`Is it good that I had this much fun?' CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT -Yoneo Ishii presenting his five-volume `The Computer Concordance to the Law of the Three Seals' to HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn - as a monk at Wat Bowon Niwet -translating for prime ministers Sarit Thanarat and Hayato Ikeda -at home in Thailand -doing field research -with Professor Hideo Kobayashi, to whom Ishii attributes his discovery of Thailand since Kobayashi suggested Ishii take up a little-known Asian language -more field research.

Ishii could be the only person capable of the task. His fluency in French, Latin, and Pali (among the 20-plus languages he has acquired) facilitated his reading of archival materials. This included browsing through Pallegoix's reports to the Societe des Missions Etrangeres (Missionaries Society) during a one-month stint in Paris. Ishii's acclaimed doctoral thesis, Sangha, State and Society - Thai Buddhism in History, which he wrote in the 1970s, already touched briefly on the ties between the two men. But the seeds of Ishii's curiosity were probably planted five decades ago when he spent three months as a monk at Wat Bowon Niwet, which is where King Mongkut first founded the Thammayut sect as part of his effort to reform Buddhism to withstand the influx of Western civilisation and beliefs.

Are these factors merely coincidences? Or have they been the schemes wrought benevolently by the Almighty up there? Ishii's academic career, recounted in the Thai translation of his autobiography Gueng Sattawat Bon Sentharng Thai Suksa (Half a Century of Thai Studies), tells of several twists and turns which, in the course of time, eventually fitted perfectly together. Ishii summed this up as "luck", writing "I even had to ask myself: 'Is it good that I had this much fun?' I think I am such a happy human to be able to discover what I find sanuk to do."

All this started from a simple passion: Languages. In his autobiography, the professor shares his recollections of growing up in postwar Japan. Unlike many of his contemporaries, the young Ishii did not have much concern for mundane matters like graduation or future employment. His sudden, rather haphazard, series of decisions to change fields were a rarity then as now. From a high-school major in science, he switched to take English language and literature in university then moved over to the French department. After a few years taking courses in numerous European languages he dropped out and took up Thai, which at the time he called pasa Siam, at another university. "It was all because of what one of my teachers said to me: That I should try to study an Asian language, one that few [Japanese] had yet to learn," he said. After studying Thai for one year Ishii sat for an exam at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hoping to get a chance to be posted to Thailand as an exchange student. Around two years later, on April 23, 1957, 27-year-old Ishii finally set foot in Thailand.

"I pressed my nose against the [aeroplane] window and peered hard," he writes in the opening chapter of Gueng Sattawat. "I could see it must be a water buffalo. It seemed to be dragging a plough behind, followed by a human. As the buffalo moved, so did the person. That must be a Thai. Is this a real living Thai person? When I finish my studies, I should be able to talk with these people.

"Hmm ... but will I really be able to speak Thai? Nay, I must be able to speak it! I have two full years. I will try my best."

And he did. The following years saw the eager young man enrol at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Arts (where he studied with the likes of Phya Anuman Rajadhon), take private Thai lessons with the late Khunying Kanitha Wichiancharoen, travel extensively throughout Indochina with two separate research teams and enter the monkhood at Wat Bowon Niwet. At the Japanese embassy, he was the interpreter for the historic meeting between Thai prime minister Sarit Thanarat and his Japanese counterpart, Hayato Ikeda, that resolved the thorny issue of the "special Yen loans" made by the Japanese government during World War Two. Ishii's linguistic skills pleased Sarit so much that he later made the unprecedented move of recommending Ishii for a royal decoration.

"It was a great honour. I was only a junior embassy staffer," said Ishii with a grin. "I think I am the second foreigner who earned it. I respect them both, Sarit and Ikeda, so I tried to do perhaps more than my usual duty as a translator. Later a friend told me: 'You are a very dangerous interpreter. An interpreter should be a kind of machine, not a person. So you are not a good interpreter!"'

The Japanese professor's capacity to grasp the essence of a language is second-to-none. To say the least, he is naturally gifted - and is renowned for dogged perseverance, too. His Japanese translation of Thongchai Winichakul's Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation earned him the Grand Prix Asia Pacific Award from Mainichi newspaper in 2004. Ishii said that, partly due to his busy schedule, he spent a total of six years on the translation and went through four revisions. Despite his trademark humbleness, he recommended, with an open laugh, that his Japanese translation might serve Japanese intellectuals better than the original English version.

Ishii described the Japanese language as a door to the world's knowledge. "Japan is virtually a translating country," he said, going on to date this trend to the Edo period when Japan's ruling elite initiated translations of major foreign works as a way to get themselves up-to-date with the outside world. The tradition carried on in the Meiji era, when Japan was forced to open itself, and has been there since.

Ishii's passion for Thai knowledge soon moved beyond language. In his acceptance speech for the prestigious Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prize in 1994, he described the unfolding of his love for Thailand:

"I first began learning Thai solely as a means to study linguistics. However, as I gradually deepened my bonds to Thailand, the language became a tool to understand the country itself.

"Although my research focus is Thailand, I decided to stop confining myself inside the limited methodological framework. Whether the focus is linguistics, religious study, sociology or historical research, we should use any means we can try and understand Thailand. This is my basic attitude. As a result, I had to cover extremely diverse fields of study."

The Japanese scholar's insights on Thailand may be deeper than those of many Thais. He has always had the determination to get to the very roots of things. In the same speech, Ishii explained his desire to enter the monkhood as a wish to "obtain clues to understand Thailand, to understand Buddhism as it is, rather than as it should be.

"The reason I entered the priesthood was that I wanted to experience Thai Buddhism as the Thai people do and understand it from within and eventually, feel it for itself. I put all my work together into my dissertation in 1975, 17 years after I entered the priesthood."

Ishii also has an awareness of inter-connectedness, an ability to look at issues in broad, comprehensive terms. At Kyoto University's Centre for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) where he worked for 25 years including five, from 1985 to 1990, as director, Ishii launched several outstanding inter-disciplinary research projects that propelled the institute to be recognised as a world leader in area studies. Among the works produced at this time is one that focuses on the culture and ecology of Thailand as a rice-growing society that inspired similar studies of other such communities. CSEAS pioneered having natural scientists work alongside social scientists, a process conducive to Ishii's belief that the heart of collaboration among intellectuals lies in the deceptively simple act of being able "to dine and drink together".

Initial distrust of CSEAS by the public and leftist students who viewed the organisation as a lackey for US imperialism in Asia (due to opposition to the Vietnam war and the fact that the centre's first sponsor was the Ford Foundation) eventually gave way to praise and admiration for its work. Meanwhile, although he never aimed to be someone who climbs for the top, Ishii's management skills have nonetheless been much sought after. In 1990, he was invited by Sophia University to be director of its Institute of Asian Cultures. Other offers poured in later, the Japanese professor being asked to hold, often at the same time, senior positions in different organisations. He has been director of the Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for Unesco (Tokyo), rector of Kanda University of International Studies, director of the Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, and is presently president of the National Institutes for the Humanities (Nihu), an umbrella group of five Japanese research centres.

"I have done too many [jobs]," Ishii said, laughing. "This March, I plan to take off my biggest 'hat', at Nihu."

The amazing thing is that in the midst of all the administrative demands from his offices, Ishii has been able to keep producing quality research. His autobiography is inspiring largely because it is about motivations, and professor Ishii has plenty. He tells in the book of his private vow that even though other academics could spend 10 hours on their research and he could only spare 30 minutes, he would still keep up the effort. Even dust, he said, citing a Japanese saying, when accumulated over a long period of time could turn into a mountain. After all, this academic game of learning and testing new ideas is, for Ishii, extremely good fun.

So what does Ishii plan to do down the road? There is that book about King Mongkut and Pallegoix. Another interest is Ayutthaya, on which Ishii proposed a ground-breaking idea a few years ago recasting the kingdom as a cosmopolitan port polity to which maritime trade counted more than previously held. Ishii is even studying two more languages in order to pursue this self-assigned research project - Persian and that of the Cham ethnic group.

So does he ever think of relaxation?

"For me, what I like to do most is to study," he said. "I travel in my head. Each language is a world in itself. Whenever I learn new languages, it is like I have discovered another world. So when I, say, get bored with the Japanese world, I could slip into another one."

The Japanese scholar certainly has many "worlds" at his disposal.

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A scholar's insights on modern Thailand

Having followed Thai history for more than half a century, Yoneo Ishii believes the biggest turning point for Thailand is the period between October 14, 1973 and October 6, 1976.

"Many people usually refer to the 1932 revolution [as the key event]," he said. "But I believe the October 14 and October 6 are far more important. More Thai academics should seriously study this period - the time when there was a radical change in the mentality of Thai people, especially those of the younger generations. Thailand has progressed at the cost of the lives of students who sacrificed themselves for the good of the country.

"That [period] is what I consider to be the true revolution."

For Ishii, the proliferation of books - and ideas - in Thailand during the mid-1970s was a real breakthrough. It was a huge contrast to the lack of reading materials available to the public 50 or more years ago. As a student at Chulalongkorn University, the young Ishii was surprised to learn there was no philosophy class offered to undergraduates. But the curious man soon found solace in another pursuit - collecting "cremation volumes", the books distributed at a person's cremation containing information on the deceased's life as well as reprints of other pieces of writing, from a second-hand book market at Sanam Luang. At the end of his first seven years in Thailand, Ishii returned to Japan with 27 cartons of cremation volumes. Later, while at Kyoto University, he managed to acquire another 6,000 of the books from a Thai collector, making the library there the world's largest collection of these unique works.

Ishii went on to produce numerous quality pieces of research on Thailand, both independently and with teams of co-researchers. Among them are the classics Sangha, State and Society - Thai Buddhism in History and Thailand: A Rice-Growing Society, the comprehensive five-volume The Computer Concordance to the Law of the Three Seals, and The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia: Translation from the Tosen Fusetsu-gaki, 1674-1723.

A pity that most of Ishii's works have yet to be translated into Thai, for they are critical, well-researched and, despite the passage of time, continue to be relevant to understanding this country and its people. Sangha, State and Society, for example, contains several revealing passages such as:

"The modernisation of Thailand, planned and executed by the ruling classes, had as its aim the entrenchment of their privileged position by rationalising the enforcement of their authority. The masses were constantly excluded from the process and, consequently, even up to recent times, never acquired a sense of modern citizenship. Even the Constitutional Revolution [in 1932] was in essence a court revolution, for the reform of the polity it brought failed to alter fundamentally the relationship between ruler and ruled. For the vast majority of the Thai people, it was no more than an exchange of royal absolutism or an oligarchy of princes for military oligarchy.

"In these circumstances, Thai nationalism lacked the dynamics to reject the privileged ruling class that was traditionally its bearer. Ultimately, the People's Party which toppled the absolute monarchy had to seek political legitimacy in recognition by the king. This situation, moreover, has been repeated after each of the coups d'etats in the series that reaches to the present day."

So what does Ishii think of the bilateral relationship between his homeland and his adopted second home, both of which are now indispensable partners in the global economic arena? After laughing when he recalled his Chula classmates expressing surprise at Japan's ability to manufacture watches and cars, Ishii pointed out that tuk-tuks were adapted from Japanese delivery trucks! Also, he reckoned that it must be extremely difficult to find a taxi in Thailand that is not of Japanese make.

And how about Thailand exerting influence on Japan?

"The term tom yum gung has now entered the Japanese lexicon!" was Ishii's succinct reply.

The Japanese scholar raised concerns, though, about putting too much emphasis on the economics over everything else. Quite diplomatically, Ishii declined to comment on the controversy over the Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership agreement, saying he has not been following the issue, but said that friendship and trust between individuals in one nation and those in another must be the bedrock of true "international exchange". After all, he said, underneath the differences, all of us are humans who should try to understand one another.

Source : Thursday February 28, 2008