The life of the Islamologist and first translator from Arabic to Japanese of the Holy Qur’an, Toshihiko Izutsu, will be filmed as a documentary.
The ministry of culture and Islamic guidance’s deputy for Qur’an and Etrat, has expanded the production of Qur’anic programs in the form of computer games and films, “the most prominent of which can be ‘Toshihiko Izutsu’ documentary,” FNA quoted Mohammadreza Heshmati, deputy head of the ministry as saying.
The Islamologist was born in 1914 into a wealthy Tokian family. He had a PhD in English literature and taught at Keio University in Japan. Izutsu mastered over 10 languages including Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Greek.
He authored many books on Islam and other religions, among which are Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an; Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology; God and Man in the Qur’an; Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts; Creation and the Timeless Order of Things: Essays in Islamic Mystical Philosophy.
Lectures
His fervor with the Qur’an made him render its first direct Japanese translation in 1958, while the first “indirect translation” was accomplished a decade earlier by Okawa Shumei. His translation is still renowned for its linguistic accuracy and widely used for scholarly works.
With extensive knowledge on different religions, the scholar travelled to and lectured in different parts of the world including the Iranian institute of Philosophy in Tehran, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he taught philosophy and Islamic philosophy respectively.
The scholar passed away in Japan in 1993.
