The history of Islam in Japan

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim



In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

The history of Islam in Japan

Islam’s relation with Japan is quite recent as compared to those with other countries around the world.




There are no clear records of any contact between Islam and Japan nor any historical traces of Islam’s coming into Japan through religious propagation of any sort except for some isolated cases of contact between individual Japanese and Muslims of other countries before 1868.




First Japanese Muslims




Islam was firstly known to Japanese people in 1877 as a part of Western religious thought. Around the same time the life of prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was translated into Japanese. This helped Islam to find a place in the intellectual image of the Japanese people, but only as a knowledge and a part of the history of cultures.




Another important contact was made in 1890 when Ottoman Turkey dispatched a naval vessel to Japan for the purpose of starting diplomatic relations between the two countries as well introducing Muslims and Japanese people to each other. This naval vessel, called "Ertugrul", was capsized and sank with 609 people aboard, drowning 540 of them, on its return journey.




The first Japanese Muslims ever known are Mitsutaro Takaoka, who converted to Islam in 1909 and took the name Omar Yamaoka after making the pilgrimage to Makkah, and Bumpachiro Ariga, who about the same time went to India for trading purposes and converted to Islam under the influence of local Muslims there and subsequently took the name Ahmad Ariga. However, recent studies have revealed that another Japanese known as Torajiro Yamada was probably the first Japanese Muslim who visited Turkey out of sympathy for those who died in the aftermath of the shipwreck of the "Ertugrul". He converted to Islam there and took the name Abdul Khalil and probably made pilgrimage to Makkah.




Muslim Community




Real Muslim community life however did not start until the arrival of several hundred Turkoman, Uzbek, Tadjik, Kirghiz, Kazakh and other Turko-Tatar Muslim refugees from central Asia and Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution during World War I. These Muslims who were given asylum in Japan settled in several main cities and formed small Muslim communities. A number of Japanese converted to Islam through contact with these Muslims.




With the formation of these small Muslim communities several mosques have been built, the most important of them being the Kobe Mosque built in 1935 and the Tokyo Mosque built in 1938. One thing that should be emphasized is that very little weight of Japanese Muslims was felt in building these mosques and there have been no Japanese so far who have served as Imams of any of the mosques.




During World War II, an "Islamic Boom" was set in Japan by the military government through organisations and research centres on Islam and the Muslim World. It is said that during this period over 100 books and journals on Islam were published in Japan. However, these organisations or research centres were in no way controlled or run by Muslims nor was their purpose the propagation of Islam. The mere purpose was to enable the military to be better equipped with the necessary knowledge about Islam and Muslims since there were large Muslim communities in the areas occupied in China and Southeast Asia by the Japanese army. As a result, with the end of the war in 1945, these organisations and research centres disappeared rapidly.




Another "Islamic Boom" was set in motion this time in the shade of the "Arab Boom" after the "oil shock" in 1973. The Japanese mass media gave a lot of publicity to the Muslim World in general and the Arab World in particular after realizing the importance of these countries to the Japanese economy. With this publicity many Japanese who had no idea about Islam got the chance to see the scene of Hajj in Makkah and hear the call of the Adhan and Quranic recitations. Besides many sincere conversions to Islam, there were also mass conversions which are said to have amounted to several tens of thousands which took place during those days. However, with the end of the effect of the oil shock, most of those who converted to Islam disappeared from the scene.




Towards a new phase




"In the coming few years there should be substantial developments for Islam in Japan,"says Nur Ad-Din Mori."If not, then we cannot really speak of the future of Islam in this country." Mori maintains it is a turning point now because of the relatively recent return of five young Muslims to Japan after completing their studies on Islam in Arab countries. Two graduated from the Umm al-Qura University, Makkah, one from Islamic University, Madinah, one from the Dawa College, Tripoli, and the last from Qatar University. Though the number may not seem very impressive it is a significant increase in the Japanese scene where, before these five, only six students graduated from universities in Arab countries during the last twenty years, with three of them majoring in Arabic, not Islamic, studies.




The Turks have been the biggest Muslim community in Japan until recently.




Pre-war Japan was well-known for its sympathy and favour towards Muslims in central Asia, seeing in them an anti-Soviet ally. In those days some Japanese who worked in intelligence circles had contact with these Muslims. A few opened their eyes to Islam through these contacts, and embraced it after the war ended. There were also those who went to Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia as soldiers during the war. The pilots were instructed to say "La ilaha illa Allah", when they were shot down in these regions, so that their lives would be spared. Actually one of them was shot down and captured by the inhabitants. When he shouted the "magic" words to them, to his astonishment they changed their attitudes and treated him rather kindly.




He has been keeping to those words until this day.




These are the Muslims of "the old generation". They found themselves as a minority group of Japanese Muslims after the war, and lived with already established foreign Muslim communities. Generally, the Japanese in those days had quite strong prejudices against Islam and their knowledge of international society was very limited. For example, in an article published in a magazine in 1958, the five pillars of Islam were described under the title "The strange customs of Mohammedans". The Japanese had a stereotyped image of Islam that it was "a strange religion of underdeveloped countries". Even these days, though modified and corrected in many respects, such an image has not died out. Just a few years ago, a famous writer in social affairs could say in a TV program that Islam is a religion whose followers worship the sun!




The Japanese invasion of China and South East Asian countries during the second world war brought the Japanese in contact with Muslims. Those who embraced Islam through them established in 1953, the first Japanese Muslim organisation, the Japan Muslim Association under the leadership of the late Sadiq Imaizumi. Its members, numbering sixty five at the time of inauguration, increased two-fold before this devoted man passed away six years later.




It was only after the second world war, that what can properly be called "a Japanese Muslim community" came into existence. In spite of the initial success, however, later developments were quite slow in terms of membership. Though many Islamic organisations were established since the 1900s, each of them has only a few active members.




Muslim Population




There is no reliable estimate on the Japanese Muslim population. Claims of thirty thousand are without doubt an exaggeration. Some claim that there are only a few hundred. This probably amounts to the number of Muslims openly practicing Islam. Asked to give an estimate on the actual number of Muslims in Japan, Abu Bakr Morimoto replied, "To say frankly, only one thousand. In the broadest sense, I mean, if we do not exclude those who became Muslims for the sake of, say marriage, and do not practice then the number would be a few thousands." Apparently such a slow development is due partly to external circumstances. Japanese traditional religious atmosphere and highly developed materialistic tendencies must both be taken into consideration. But there are also shortcomings on the part of the Muslims.




When visiting Muslim countries, the remark that Japanese Muslims are the minority religious group always brings a question from the audience, "What percentage of Japan’s total population are Muslims?" The answer at the moment is: One out of a hundred thousand. Nevertheless, the younger generation has aspirations. Perhaps some day it will be said that Islam is a popular religion in Japan.




The misconception of Islamic teachings introduced by the western media stands to be corrected in a more efficient approach that takes into consideration the significant feature of the Japanese society of being one of the world’s most literate countries. Yet, because of poor distribution, even translations of the meanings of the Quran into Japanese language are not publicly available. Islamic literature is virtually absent from bookstores or public libraries to the exception of few english-written essays and books that are sold at relatively high prices.




As a result, it should not be surprising to find out that the knowledge of ordinary Japanese about Islam is modestly confined to few terms related to polygamy, Sunnah and Shia, Ramadhan, Makkah, Allah the God of Muslims and Islam the religion of Muhammad! Will Islam echo louder in Japan? With increasingly significant evidence of a responsible recognition of its duties and rational assessment of its limits and capabilities, the Muslim community is showing stronger commitment to accomplish its task of da’wah in a better organised fashion. There are indeed strong hopes that the future of Islam and Muslims will be better than their past insha’Allah as we believe that if Allah (swt) helps us, none can overcome us.





Prepared by:




• Br. Nabil Bin Mohammed El-Maghrabi, OSAKA - JAPAN




• Br. Mohamed Ahmed Soliman, KYOTO - JAPAN




• Br. Mehmet Arif Adli, NAGOYA - JAPAN



Source

The Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa'sallam said:



"The Muslim is a unique Ummah among the whole of mankind:

Their Land is ONE, their War is ONE, their Peace is ONE,

Their Honour is ONE and their Trust is ONE."

[Ahmad]