During the proceedings of the fourth seminar of the dialogues among civilizations between Japan and the Islamic world held in Tunis 13-14 of January 2006, Mr. Hasan ALMASABI a member of the Almansour Foundation was pleased to sit down with Professor Yuzo ITAGAKI and get his thoughts and reflections on the seminar and dialogues in general.

Prof. Yuzo is a professor at Tokyo University and he is one of the major conveners of these seminars. He has been involved since the beginning when this initiative was first announced in Bahrain back in 2001.

Prof. ITAGAKI emphasized the importance of overcoming the limitations that may face participants during these talks. He believes that we can’t change the world in two days, but this seminar should be a good stepping stone for future meetings.

Although, he believes that this seminar hasn’t achieved all its objectives, but the enthusiastic and stimulated discussions at this seminar, is a testament of its success.

Prof. ITAGAKI has made it clear in his remarks that the Islamic world need to have a new orientation and attitude toward east. He recognizes that looking west is important. However, the Islamic world should adopt a look East attitude as well.

He pointed out that in Japan they have thousands of young and talented specialists in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies that are eager to learn more about the Islamic world. Unfortunately, he can’t find that many scholars or specialists in the Islamic world that study Japan, the situation is rather imbalanced.

He adds “to overcome obstacles to successful dialogues we need to encourage these kinds of gatherings and discussions”. “Continuing dialogue is the key to our success” he concluded.