YUZO ITAGAKI AND HIS SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS FROM AN IRAQI POINT OF VIEW

Abstract

The current study is an attempt to trace the efforts of Professor Yuzo Itagaki in the field of Arab Islamic and Middle Eastern studies according to the Iraqi understanding. The study of these efforts contributes in one way or another to understanding the academic of status Itagaki and his scientific achievements. Historian Yuzo Itagaki focused his first study on the development of the British labor movement through its original documents, based on its local sources and in the British archives at the University of Tokyo in Japan, then he turned to the study of modern Arab history. He devoted special attention to the Arab culture, where he spent many years in the Arab countries and wrote solid scientific studies on the history of the Middle East, intertwined with the theory of modernity and Islam, the development of Arab societies and correcting the concept of the Japanese people about Arabs and Islam Which have been
transported through Western Orientalism since the era of the enlightened emperor Meiji. He supervised a large number of important translations published by Edward Wadie’ Said on orientalism, and he monitored of the impact of external colonialism in hindering the development of Arab societies and imprisoning them in the context of the continuing underdevelopment; hence the modernity
in many Arab and Islamic countries has turned into alienation and plundering rather than to a sound modernity which protect heritage and drives the society to a true contemporaneity in order to be able to face the challenges of globalization and to take advantage of its many positive aspects instead of the constant fear of its innumerable disadvantages.