Oil, Nationalism, and Japan's Diplomacy in the Middle East

This book investigates the untold story of how private Japanese entrepreneurs shaped the country’s post-war Middle East diplomacy through independent oil ventures. Moving beyond traditional narratives that focus solely on state-led resource security, it highlights the role of “national oil capital”, specifically the activities of business leaders Idemitsu Sazō, Yamashita Tarō, Tanaka Seigen and Sugimoto Shigeru.Tracing Japan’s re-engagement with the Islamic world from the 1950s through to the 1973 Oil Crisis, the book reveals how these entrepreneurs, driven by a unique blend of pre-war Pan-Asianist ideology and anti-Western resource nationalism, forged direct energy ties with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. By analysing rare primary sources, including the Tanaka Seigen documents and corporate archives, the book demonstrates that these non-state actors did not merely secure oil; they reconstructed Japan’s geopolitical identity, acting as an informal bridge between the Japanese state and the rising nationalism of the Middle East.Drawing on Japanese, English and Turkish sources, the book challenges dominant narratives of Japan’s passivity in the Islamic world and offers a compelling reinterpretation of the post-war international order from a non-Western perspective. As such, this is a timely contribution to the fields of international history, Asian studies, Middle Eastern studies and energy geopolitics.

About the Author

Sinan Levent is an Associate Professor at Ankara University, specializing in International Relations. His research focuses on East Asia, particularly Japanese foreign policy, Japan-Middle East relations, Eurasian geopolitics and modern political and diplomatic history. He is the author of Sekiyu to Nashonarizumu (Oil and Nationalism) , published in Japanese in 2022, a work that earned him the 35th Asia-Pacific Special Award in 2023, jointly presented by the Mainichi Shimbun and the Asian Affairs Research Council in Japan.