This paper presents the content of this thematic issue of Diogenes on Asian studies in Turkey. It explains the origins of this set of papers in light of relevant scholarship, relates it to current academic work in the field, and provides a rationale for issuing a volume on Asian scholarship in Turkey.

This paper challenges the idea that there are essential and unbridgeable differences that separate the cultural traditions of China and Europe. The focus is on the belief that there is no transcendence in Chinese thought and the cluster of notions around this thesis, which have often been used in support of the thesis of essential differences. The conclusion is that this thesis is mistaken and that the multifarious traditions of China and Europe share many central features and can also mutually enrich one another. Together, they offer rich resources to a global ethic suited for the needs of our time.

The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) is the probably the earliest prose fiction in the world that still lives today as a masterpiece since the first decade of the 11th century. This 1200-page Japanese classic was written by a noble court woman, Murasaki Shikibu, and it spans almost three quarters of a century. The first part has to do with the life and loves of the nobleman known as “The Shining Genji”, and the final chapters follow the fate and fortunes of the characters that survived after Genji's death.

There have been four English translations of the novel: one partial translation (1882) by a Japanese translator and three other complete translations by different English native speakers in the 20th century.

This paper studies the Turkish translation process of The Tale of Genji from Edward G. Seidensticker's English version. It points out the plentitude of potential translation choices and tries to explore the reasons of translators for their decisions. It compares the translators’ strategies and assesses their impact on the meanings and functions of the allusions and the connections between the adopted strategies.

The three Ōtani Expeditions (1902–1914) constitute the first non-Western attempt to carry out systematic research in Central Asia. The mastermind behind these Japanese enterprises was Ōtani Kōzui, the 22nd lord-abbot of the Western Honganji temple in Kyoto and the patriarch of the Honpa Honganji denomination of the Jōdo Shinshū sect, which was and remains the largest Buddhist community in Japan. Kōzui's position as a monk during the period the expeditions were carried out reveals his religious motivation as the planner and sponsor of these research trips. Inspired by the 7th century traveler-monk Xuanzang, the main purpose of the Ōtani Expeditions was therefore to find the routes through which Buddhism had passed before reaching Japan. This is what makes them unique when compared with other exploration missions.

Is it possible to communicate ethics across cultural borders? Not according to representatives of “the incommensurability thesis”, who claim that values and norms are culturally bounded. This article argues against this thesis. A first problem is that cultures and traditions are seen as comprehensive, delimited, and exclusive. Normally, however, a culture develops from and is in dialogue with other cultures. Further, the inner diversity of cultures and traditions opens the possibility of communication and shared understandings across cultural borders. Finally, the teaching and discussion of cross-cultural ethics provide practical evidence of the possibility of dialogue and mutual understanding.

This article aims to compare the Turkish and Chinese reception of the “human rights” term, which enjoyed wide currency across the globe after the end of the Cold War. During the 1990s, as the global human rights discourse was embraced by dissidents in Turkey and China, the state elites remained skeptical of this concept, which was often perceived as a tool of Western imperialism. Unlike nationalists, Muslim and Confucianist conservatives saw some merit in the term “human rights” and discussed ways to appropriate it in their local contexts. In China and Turkey, “human rights” was often instrumental in promoting collective identities during the 1990s. Although the term's original emphasis on the individual somewhat disappeared in these countries, its embrace by various groups demonstrates that “human rights” discourse resonates with non-Western audiences.

Embracing all humanity as one's own is the core of the modern idea of cosmopolitanism, but the present time with rising tribalism, populism, racism, and narrow-minded nationalism is not propitious for cosmopolitanism. At a time like this, the cosmopolitan effort to see cultures and peoples as close to one another rather than absolutely different becomes all the more important. The comparative study of different cultures and literatures may promote a cosmopolitan stance, and from a comparative perspective, we may draw some ideas from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius for a theory of global ethics.

This paper outlines the development of Asian studies in Turkey from their early years to 2022. A particular focus is put on the development of academic programs at Bogazici University and on the international academic partnerships it entailed. The author argues that the end of the Cold War, the “rise of Asia” in public opinion, the new Asia initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the global attraction due to international employment opportunities, represent multiple factors that have accelerated interest in Asian Studies in Turkey.

Although China adopted in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights largely inspired by her delegate Zhang Pengchun (1892–1957), individual liberty remains a key issue in cultural dialogues between China and Europe. However, culture is an ongoing process with no territorial boundaries, affecting every human being differently. European freedom is becoming increasingly restricted the more it focuses on meeting social and environmental needs. More broadly, the concept of responsibility that expresses solidarity between humans, belongs to all cultures and could provide the common norm of a global ethic.

Regional studies in Turkey have long focused on Europe and the Middle East, with which Turkey has traditionally been associated. East Asian studies seem to remain out of the spotlight. This study claims firstly that different phases of Asian studies scholarship in Turkey have all been geared towards confirmation and validation of the process of Turkish national identity formation. Secondly, this process also reflects the Western-centrism of Turkish academic knowledge production.

This paper presents a periodization of Asian Studies in Turkey in three phases to contextualize and demonstrate these claims. During the first phase of the early republican years, the first Sinology departments were expected to actively contribute to writing Turkish national history. Throughout the second phase of the Cold War years, Turkey found itself in both political and intellectual isolation. In the final phase of post-Cold War globalization, the scope of regional studies scholarship expanded to include East Asia. Despite this development, academic scholarship in Turkey still suffers from Western-centrism and it is not able to directly communicate with East Asia. Knowledge production on East Asia in Turkey is still filtered through the theoretical framework of the Western Anglophone academic world.

This article explores what ancient Chinese philosophies can teach us about understanding emotions and relating to them. It posits that emotions are fundamental and connected to everything in the universe, that much of their value lies in their sincerity, that they need to be cultivated to avoid excess and imbalance, and that, like everything else, they are permeated by a cosmic force that is at once transcendent and immanent.

This article argues that the core value of “humanity” (ren 仁) in the Confucian tradition may serve as a resource for global ethics in the 21st century. After presenting three major questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, it proposes a “reconciliation” between Confucian and Western traditions for a solution to the challenges of the pandemic. Confucian “humanity”, based on the idea of interpenetration between what is inside and what is outside, may pave the way to a true “reconciliation” in our era.

The term “tribute” had a strong presence in Western literature on China, as a result of Sino-European encounters in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. In these studies tribute was examined from the China angle. When views of the neighboring peoples are taken into consideration, it becomes evident that the smaller states in Inner Asia had not adopted the notion of China. A comparison with the practices of the Ottoman empire reveals that they also were using a strategy similar China. The paper suggests examining the practices of the smaller states in their own terms rather than in the shadow of the larger states.

This essay aims to describe and analyse the important contributions of the Chinese philosopher and diplomat P.C. Chang concerning the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the UDHR). After a brief biographical sketch, Chang's main contributions will be presented and discussed. A study of Chang's contributions in this context may also highlight the ethical potential of the UDHR and its great relevance to global ethics and world politics today.

The Tang period (618–907) stands out as one of the most important chapters of the history of early Inner Asia, where bilateral diplomatic interactions on the Chinese – Inner Asian frontier reached a high point. Since its establishment, the Tang pursued close relations with the neighboring Türk Qaghanate and various other Turkic and Mongolic speaking groups in the Inner Asian steppes. These relations, sometimes friendly, other times hostile, were to a great extent recorded in the official histories, a genre of historical writing that was systematized with the establishment of Historiography Office at the Tang court. As political texts written with particular agendas, official histories present certain limitations. Recent archaeological research in both China and Inner Asia provide a different line of evidence for the study of diplomatic relations between China and Inner Asia. This paper aims to discuss the history of Pugu, a Turkic speaking Inner Asian group who had submitted to the Tang in the seventh century, through an analysis of the tomb inscription of Pugu Yitu, then leader of the Pugu, and an army general and court official of the Tang.

This paper does not attempt to breathe a new life into the sociology of literature. The real concern here is limited to making a possible contribution to the work conducted in Japanese language and literature departments by using the sociology of literature as a method. The discussion begins with a summary of the sociology of literature, merely to make clear the basic characteristics of the method developed by well-known intellectuals. Then the novel Botchan is taken as an example for the suggested approach.

Using the translation of Confucian classics as an example, this article discusses the possibility for translations to serve as two-way bridges between two cultures. While translating is often seen as a one-way process, used to export ideas from the source language and culture to those of the recipients, the challenges in translating, and the solutions offered by the translator, may provide valuable insight, even to the benefit of the source culture. This article looks at the Confucian concept of ren (仁), and through its differing translations in different source texts and contexts, suggests that an understanding reached through translation may enrich the intuitive or even analytical understanding of the concept that pre-exists in the Chinese context.

Buddhism in all its expressions is often characterised as a ‘World Religion’. Thus, in principle, it harbours a universal message transcending any ethnicity and national boundaries, and it may be argued that it is historically the most important common ideology for all of South, East and Central Asia. In its canonical literature and religious thinking, Buddhism presents a number of elements easily characterised as global ethics, with an egalitarian and altruistic tone. As such, with its philosophically grounded virtues and morality, Buddhism can represent a reference point and a multifaceted background for an informed discussion of global ethics. The present paper describes in brief a few topics relevant to such a discussion.

Various studies have been made on different aspects of the Turkish and Japanese languages, but comparative studies between the two languages are still limited. The aim of this study is to describe the politeness strategy of these two languages from a cultural perspective within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics. Both Turkish and Japanese are agglutinative languages, and speakers of both languages prefer the subjective construal. So, if the typology of a language might be related to its perception, the conceptualization of ‘polite’ and the perception of politeness in that language may be alike.