Foreword by Prof. Malcolm R. Mackley  

The Java Essay written by Toshi Iguchi is a synthesis of his own initial interest and then total fascination with Indonesia. His scientific training and curiosity set him on a path to discover something about this country whose history has not been particularly well studied in the past. He became intrigued by the ancient architecture, which in turn resulted in proving the origins of earlier Indonesian cultures.

    On reading the essays I was surprised to learn that so little was known about the history of such an important country. Using his scientific background and command of many different languages, Toshi delves into Indonesia’s past and bravely tries to understand some of the links between different people, places and remaining monuments. There are uncertainties in some of his conjectures; however, his writing forms a basis for discussion and perhaps a starting point for future generations to prove him right or wrong.

    Toshi was trained as a scientist and became a historian of Indonesia. His interest in the country is profound and he has studied its history as an academic, as an enthusiast, as a scientist and above all as someone with a passion that developed from spending time living in the country.

    The first chapter of the Java Essay is a resume of the history of Java and this provides useful information on the way different dynasties have ruled different parts of the island for the last two thousand years. The next two chapters concern themselves with the birth of Jagatara and the subsequent emergence of Jakarta as we know it today. This is not told in a simple, factual way, but by means of a number of stories or essays relating to facts and legends surrounding the city and its life. A quite different chapter then follows the uncovering of ancient monuments throughout Java and here it is obvious that Toshi Iguchi has a particular mission in trying to understand just by who and why many of these monuments were built. Subsequent chapters examine the spiritual life, myths, poetry and even theatre of Indonesia in an attempt to paint a picture of the country in the past.

    The stories are both illuminating and informative. The book contains many illustrations and this gives vitality to these essays. As a scientist Toshi is familiar with telling scientific stories with the aid of figures and diagrams. As a historian of Indonesia he uses a multitude of past drawings, pictures and scripts to help the reader appreciate the story he is telling.

    Our first meeting was in 1996 when he masterminded a “Green Polymer Workshop” centred at Bandung and this was also my first exposure to Indonesia. Subsequently a friendship that initially centred around our common scientific interest in polymers developed and then broadened to an appreciation of his profound interest in the importance of history and in particular his fascination with all things Indonesian. The Java Essay is a central part of Toshi’s life and I very much hope readers will enjoy learning about the history of Indonesia from his unique approach, style and passion for this subject.

Malcolm R. Mackley

Cambridge, United Kingdom

May 2014

Preface by the author  

Java is an island that is a little smaller than Great Britain or two-thirds of Japan’s Honshū, located a little south towards the equator in Southeast Asia. It was thirty years ago when I, the present writer, who had put himself in a corner of natural science and worked for a governmental research institution, visited there for the first time. Although it was an official trip of only one week, the world looked to have two-dimensionally developed, as really was, for a person who before then had only been to Europe and North America of the same mid-latitude. It was not only because I saw the rich, tropical nature, but also because I met warm-hearted people of the southern country and touched their indigenous culture. After that, I was seconded to Bandung to stay there for two years, probably by the will of god. When retiring age arrived, I received a fellowship and worked for three years in a research laboratory in Bogor. After returning home, although I was given some opportunities to stay in domestic and overseas universities, I was absorbed, during the last ten years, in the study of the dramatic history and the beautiful culture of Java by which I was moved during my stay there, leaving polymer science of my own accord. Time favoured an outsider to access knowledge of different disciplines with the advance of the Internet. Besides giving secondary knowledge on its own articles, the Internet enabled me to find all sorts of new and antique books stocked in bookstores from all over the world and order them online. By means of email, I was able to contact at any time friends in Indonesia and Europe to ask for their help with linguistic problems. Having retired, I had freedom to visit historical sites and to learn directly from experts in Indonesia. I am especially indebted to Raden Ayu Mrs E. Sundari, M.A., Senior Curator of the National Museum of Indonesia, who kindly gave her precious knowledge about the history and culture of Java, which was not available from books and documents.

    My first task was to bring the English translation of Marquis Tokugawa’s famous travelogue, Jagatara Kikou (originally published from Kyōdo-shuppansha, Nagoya, Japan in 1931), into publication, as:

Marquis Tokugawa (translated by M. Iguchi, Journeys to Java, ITB Press, Bandung 2004, IBSN 979-3507-25-x

    The original English text was drafted earlier, when I had participated in the preparation of an international scientific meeting held in Bandung in 1996, and printed as a private book of the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation, entitled Travels around Java in the 1920s, to be distributed as reference material for introducing Java to the participants from abroad. For publishing it as a proper book, the text was thoroughly revised, more footnotes were added and an album of contemporary images collected from other sources were appended, receiving full support from the Owaari-Tokugawa family. The book’s Indonesian version was published two years later, translated by my young friends, as:

    Marquis Tokugawa (diterjemahkan oleh Ririn Anggraeni dan Apriyanty Isanasai), Perjalanan menoejoe Djawa, Penerbit ITB, Bandung 2006, IBSN 979-3507-87-x

    A number of colleagues of mine who read Tokugawa’s book told me of their admiration for the broad knowledge and deep insight of the original author who was a nobleman, historian and scientist, and appreciated the apparatuses (the introduction, notes, etc.) provided by the translator, and gave me an order to write my own essay in the future. In fact, I had felt not quite satisfied with the books on Java available at that time.

    Before the Second World War, a number of fine books on Java, which were friendly to common readers, were published (e.g. A Book of Southern Countries by Yosaburo Takekoshi (1910) and I Saw the Dutch East-Indies Like This by Ichizo Kobayashi (1941), as well as the Marquis Tokugawa’s book in Japan, and Java and the East Indies by Frank G. Carpenter (1928), Monumental Java by J. F. Scheltema (1928), etc. in English, but the contents of those books were inevitably obsolete and the books themselves were only available on the antique book market. Nowadays, a number of academic books on specific subjects are certainly available, but reading many of them and comprehending the history of Java in the brains of ordinary readers is not an easy task. In books authored by non-professionals, facts and events are rarely referred to authentic sources, on occasion, leading the readers into prejudices and misunderstandings. As a travel guide, a series of famous books, entitled An Official Guide to Eastern Asia: Trans-continental connections between Europe and Asia (five volumes), was edited and published 1913–27 by the Ministry of Railways, Japan. While the books are now sold on the world book market at extraordinary premiums, the good tradition is gone in Japan, as many guidebooks produced and sold today are such kinds as if the spaces between fancy colour pictures arranged over pages are filled with letters of descriptions that are copies of copies from unknown sources. Among them was such a strange one that made me doubtful about the sense of the publisher, titled Bali and Indonesia, despite the fact that Bali is a mere province of the Republic of Indonesia. There are numerous guidebooks also in the world, but one needs effort to find good ones.

    Nevertheless, I have to admit that this book, Java Essay, is nothing more than a collection of essays written on arbitrarily chosen topics in a rather unsystematic manner, gathering my knowledge obtained from my experience of living in Java, numerous books and documents, the results of visiting historical places, and the conversations with friends in Indonesia and their former suzerain, the Netherlands. Although a short introduction to the history of Java, as well as the etymology of the word Java, was provided for the convenience of readers, I had no intention of preparing a textbook by complementing and dilating the introduction or of authoring an academic book with no formal qualification to write something authoritative on the history and culture. (The contents of the following chapters are listed at the end of the Introduction.) That notwithstanding, references to literature were made as much as possible and my own interpretation on some facts and events were given, due to the habits of a person who used to engage in a sort of research in a different area. The insertion of pictures was deliberately limited because it was the author’s wish that the readers would get to know the content primarily from the text.

   This book may be classified not in such common genres as a monograph, textbook, travelogue or travel guide, but as a kind of essay, as the book title says. Because of the character of this book as such, the present writer wishes that this book can be read by a wide range of readers, from sightseers, who either have visited or will visit Java, to students and academics of relevant research areas, and, at the same time, desires that any criticisms and comments are kindly communicated to me.

    This essay has been drafted simultaneously in the Japanese language and the manuscript has been published earlier in 2013 from Maruzen Planet, a division of Maruzen Publishing Co. Ltd., Tokyo. Several new passages added in this English edition are indicated in their respective footnotes.

Acknowledgements

For the preparation of the manuscript, the author owes much to Prof. Malcolm R. Mackley, Cambridge, UK, who kindly helped him with perusing and editing the text of more than 130,000 words to be at least readable as English. Thanks are also due to Raden Ayu Mrs. Ekowati Sundari, M.A., the National Museum of Indonesia, Jakarta, Mr. Yoshitaka Tokugawa, the president of the Tokugawa Reimeikai Foundation and Tokugawa Art Museum, Tokyo, and all friends of his who kindly gave advice and supported this work. For the publication of this book, the author expresses his special thanks to Mr. Jeremy Thompson, Managing Director, Troubador Publishing, and his team members, especially Miss Lauren Lewis, Editorial Manager, who elaborately re-edited the whole text, for valuing the manuscript and bringing it into publication from the prestigious publisher.

Masatoshi Iguchi

Tokyo, Japan

May 2014

About the author

Dr. Masatoshi Iguchi, born in 1938 in Nagoya, Japan, received his final education in the graduate school of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1966 and received a PhD in Textile Engineering. He worked most of the time until 1999 for the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan, and engaged in the area of polymer science. During his career, he had experiences of staying abroad as a post-doctoral fellow in Essex University, UK, as a leader of the ASEAN-Japan Cooperation Polymer Project in Bandung, Indonesia, and as a visitor to the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. After the end of his formal employment in the government, he spent some years in Bogor Research Station for Rubber Technology, Indonesia, as a visiting fellow, in Yamagata University, Japan, as a visiting professor, etc., but during the last ten years concentrated on the study of the history and culture of Java. He was awarded prizes from the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (1977), the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry (1998), etc., and conferred a small medal (The Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette) from the Imperial House (2008).

Notes on the Japanese edition

The bibliographic data of the Japanese edition is as follows.

Title:             ジャワ探究―南の国の歴史と文化 (Java Tankyū–Minami no kuni

                       no rekishi to bunka)

Author:          井口正俊 (Masatoshi Iguchi)

Publisher:      丸善プラネット株式会社, 東京 (Maruzen Planet Co. Ltd., Tokyo)

Sales Office:  丸善出版株式会社, 東京 (Maruzen Co. Ltd., Tokyo)

Date of issue:  2013年10月10日/初版 (10 October 2013/First edition)

ISBN:              978-4-86345-174-2 C0022

The spelling of local languages

In Indonesian words, viz. proper nouns, the vowels ‘o’ and ‘a’ are occasionally exchanged. Although ‘o’ and ‘a’ are generally preferred in Java and Sunda, respectively, as in the cases of Purwokerto (a town in Central Java) and Purwaterta (a town in West Java), Arjuno and Arjuna (the name of a god), Joyoboyo and Jajabaya (the name of an ancient king), etc., the rule is not universal. In this book, the spelling of some words with these vowels obeys the cited literature.

    The Javanese and Sundanese languages, both derived from the Sanskrit, have distinction in the consonants ‘ℓ’ and ‘r’, unlike in some East Asian languages, but some exceptions seem to exist, as the old female’s honourable title, Loro (e.g. for the legendary Princess Jonggrang) is alternatively spelled as Rara, Roro, etc. In this book, they are used as they appeared in the referred literature.

    Prior to the coordination of Indonesian and Malaysian languages, both based on the Low Malay, in the 1970s, Dutch-style spellings were common in Indonesia for both vowels and consonants. They have been changed thus: ‘oe’ → ‘u’, ‘dj’ → ‘j’, ‘tj’ → ‘c’ and ‘j’ → ‘y’. Thus, old spellings are found in old literature and personal names of elderly people.

    As to Chinese Characters, variant characters with fewer strokes, if available, were adopted for education in Japan after the war and are widely used today. In mainland China, the so-called simplified characters were invented to replace complicated characters in the 1960s and became common (See examples in the table). Nevertheless, traditional characters are adopted in this book as they appeared in referred literature.

Front cover illustration:

One of the Ramayana reliefs on the corridor wall of Siva Temple in Prambanan in which Rama shoots an arrow in the contest to elect the bridegroom of Princess Sita, a daughter of King Djanaka of Widehas. Reproduced from: W. F. Stutterheim, Pictorial history of civilization in Java. Translated by Mrs. A. C. de Winter-Keen, The Java Institute and G. Kolff & Co., Weltevreden, 1926. Due to corrosion, the sharpness of the carvings as seen in this photograph has been lost today.

Rear cover illustration:

Wayang dupara puppets of Sultan Agung and Jan Pieterszoon Coen. Photographed by M. Iguchi at Jakarta History Museum, September 2006.

Inside cover illustration:

Gunungan (a motif of Mount Semeru) or Kayon (tree of life), a puppet displayed at the beginning of wayang kulit shadow play. Designed after: http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t254123.html.