For Japanese people, Turkey is a distant country, yet it is surprisingly easy to form a fairly concrete image of it.
When travel comes up, Istanbul and Cappadocia may come to mind. When food comes up, kebab and Turkish ice cream are familiar. People interested in history may think of Troy.
There is no single way through which Japanese people come to know Turkey.
Geographically, Turkey is also distinctive. In Japan, it is often described as “a country between Europe and Asia.” Istanbul, stretching across both sides of the Bosphorus, reinforces that image, as do landmarks such as the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.
There are also more everyday points of contact.
Kebab shops can now be seen in Japanese cities and at festivals. Turkish ice cream is also well known, not only because of its stretchy texture, but because of the performance in which the seller repeatedly pretends to hand over the cone and then pulls it away.
Turkish cuisine is also sometimes introduced in Japan as “one of the world’s three great cuisines.” Even so, many Japanese people know only a small part of it, often starting with kebab and Turkish ice cream.
There is another “Turkey” that is extremely familiar in Japan.
The Turkish March.
Many people know not only the title but also the famous melody by Mozart. It is commonly heard through school music classes and piano lessons.
But knowing the Turkish March is not the same thing as knowing modern Turkey.
Japanese people have encountered the word “Turkey” in many different places for a long time, yet those fragments do not always connect neatly into one picture of the country.
Another important part of the Japanese image of Turkey is the idea that it is a “pro-Japan country.”
Of course, this does not mean that every Turkish person likes Japan. Still, two events are often mentioned in Japan when people talk about friendship between the two countries.
The first is the Ertuğrul, an Ottoman naval ship that was wrecked off the coast of Wakayama. Local residents rescued survivors and helped search for the victims.
Then, about 95 years later, during the Iran-Iraq War, Turkish Airlines evacuated Japanese citizens who were stranded in Tehran.
In Japan, these two events are often remembered together as one connected story:
“Long ago, Japanese people helped Turkish people, and later Turkey helped Japanese people.”
The 1985 evacuation cannot be explained simply as an act of repayment. Even so, the way these two events are remembered together has helped strengthen a positive image of Turkey in Japan.
At the same time, Japanese knowledge of Turkey is uneven.
Cappadocia is famous, but many people could not point to it precisely on a map. People may know the name Troy without immediately connecting it to present-day Turkey. They may know that Turkey is part of the Muslim world while knowing much less about modern Turkish society itself.
These pieces of knowledge do not always connect into a single coherent picture.
Even so, when they overlap, they create a surprisingly clear image of Turkey for a country so far from Japan.
For Japanese people, Turkey can feel surprisingly familiar for such a distant country, because they encounter pieces of it in many different parts of everyday life and general knowledge.
Those pieces do not always connect neatly, but together they give Turkey a surprisingly clear presence in the Japanese imagination.
References
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Basic Data on the Republic of Türkiye” and “Japan-Türkiye Relations”
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and Wakayama Prefecture materials on the Ertuğrul disaster
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan materials on the evacuation of Japanese citizens during the Iran-Iraq War
- UNESCO, “Historic Areas of Istanbul”
- UNESCO, “Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia”
- UNESCO, “Archaeological Site of Troy”
- Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism materials
