As seen from the West, studying Asian cultures is considered as orientalism. Toward the end of the last century, this word “orientalism” has become somewhat derogatory in the so-called politically correct, postcolonial studies. This has never been my standpoint. I stubbornly cling to the mediaeval idea that ex Oriente lux, “from the East (comes) the light” – in those times, it meant for scholasticism that one should study Arab philosophy in order, among others, to rediscover the Greek classics which had been lost in the West, but, in the East, translated into Arabic. 

Things have evolved since the Middle Ages, and as seen from Fukuoka, even the Arab-Islamic world cannot be but Western. And by now, ubi lux?, “where does the light (come from)?”. My answer is that light always shall come from comparisons, and especially from comparing the East to the West, the West to the East. I have always thought that Kipling (*1) was wrong when he wrote the famous judgment “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”.  The East and the West can meet, and they do meet in an endlessly constructive encounter. 

This is the reason why I keep on being an orientalist. Not in the sense that, for me, the West would be obscure, and the East enlightened, or the reverse; but in the sense that darkness and lightness, East and West are relative to each other, and need each other in order to be what they are. And I thank the door to Asia, Fukuoka, for being the place where this has been acknowledged.

(*1)Kipling …Joseph Rudyard Kipling, a British novelist.