On September 12, 2022, a scientific meeting was held at the Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Institute of History and Ethnology with a Japanese researcher, director of the Center for Slavic-Eurasian Studies at Hokkaido University – Uyamo Tomohiko.

Japanese researcher Tomohiko Uyama has been a professor at the Center for Slavic-Eurasian Studies since 2006, President of the Japanese Society for Central Asian Studies, and an associate member of the Scientific Council of Japan.

The researcher was educated in 1991 at the Russian Department of the Faculty of General Education of the University of Tokyo. In 1993 he graduated from the postgraduate course of this educational institution, in 1993-1996 he studied for a doctorate.

The professor was one of the first in Japan to conduct research on the Central Asian region, including its history and politics. In 1995-1996, the researcher worked in Kazakhstan as a visiting scientist at the R.B. Suleimenov Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Now he is the president of the Society for the Study of Central Asia.

In 2017, K.M. Murzakhodjaev, a Ph.D. student, was appointed foreign scientific supervisor of the researcher of the Department of Historical Demography and APK of the Institute on the topic «Cultural and educational activities of the Jadids in Kazakhstan in the late XIX – early XX centuries.».

During the scientific meeting, the Japanese scientist gave a lecture to the staff of the Institute, as well as the scientific community in the format of a ZOOM conference, sharing the results of his many years of research on the Alash party. He reported interesting information about direct contacts, bypassing the government of the Supreme Ruler of Russia A.V. Kolchak, in 1919 during the civil war, activists of the Kazakh party – Rayymzhan Marsekov, Alimkhan Ermekov, with representatives of the Japanese command with a request for assistance with armament to the cavalry regiments formed by the government of Alash-Orda. These facts were stated by the professor on the basis of documents identified in Japanese archives, in particular in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. According to Uyamo Tomohiko, there are other documents related to the negotiations between the Japanese side and representatives of the Alash party.

After the lecture, the scientists present at the meeting asked Uyamo Tomohiko their questions concerning the translation of his scientific works into Kazakh, further scientific plans, as well as clarifying questions on some aspects of the activities of the Alash party during the Civil War, the influence of its leaders’ ties with the Japanese on their further tragic fate during the “great terror” in the USSR in the late 1930s, etc.

At the end of the lecture, the director of the Institute Z.E. Kabuldinov presented the books of the Institute to the guest, expressed gratitude and appreciation for his contribution to the study of the history of the Kazakhs, and also noted that in the future he wants to maintain close scientific ties, strengthening relationships.