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Japan and Islam
By: Hajji Mustafa Fujio Komura
(1) Religious concept of Japanese people today
As is well known, Japanese Shinto from ancient times and Buddhism that had been transferred from India, China and Korea a thousand and some hundred years ago, had been widely spread among the Japanese people who had earnestly embraced these faiths. In the middle ages, missionaries brought Christianity from Europe to Kyushu or West Japan; however, the Tokugawa government (17th AC - 1868) banned it in those days. Later the Meiji Government (1868 - 1912) admitted the freedom of religion and allowed Christianity to spread again.
After the Japaneese defeat of World War II in 1945, the Shinto religion, which had been the spiritual pillar of the nation, rapidly declined. Buddhism was also isolated from the real world because its doctrine was deep and difficult. Under these circumstances and the age of spiritual vacuum, many new waves of religion erupted to propagate doctrines which people could easily understand.
What happened with Islam, which is the topic of this paper? Generally speaking, most of the Japanese have been indifferent, ignorant, or not interested in Islam. Going back in history, some pioneers have broken ground concerning Islam in the middle of the Meiji period, i.e. about 90 years ago. However, since their preaching power was week only a limited number of people worshiped.
After the outbreak of the Chinese-Japanese incident and the Greater East Asian War, it was discovered that a few hundreds of millions of Muslims resided in many areas of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, which aroused the interest of some scholars in Islam. As a result, some people converted to Islam and a number of Islamic books, which had never before been seen started appearing on store selves. After the defeat in the war which caused shortage in food, clothes, or accommodation many people had become occupied with daily necessities and worldly matters and showed no interest in Islam.
Since 1955, Pakistan missionaries of Tabliq started visiting Japan every year to propagate Islam all over Japan. At the end of 1973, the first Oil Shock erupted and threatened poeple’s daily lives. They realized that oil, which is indispensable for man’s daily life, is produced by Islamic nations in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia. Then people suddenly showed a strong interest in Islam.
Taking advantage of this golden opportunity, Dr. Saleh Samarrai who had studied in Japan since 1960, came back to Japan to establish the present Islamic Center and initiated systematic Islamic Dawah activities. This was an innovative incident in the history of Islam in Japan. It is no exaggeration to say that this became the driving force for various movements, which made the Japanese Islamic circle recognized among Japanese people. Of course, the road ahead is quite far; there are still many commitments, which the Islamic Center, Japan has to fulfill.
(2) What do Japanese people think of Islam?
How do Japanese people accept and recognize Islam, a foreign religion, which has been comparatively recently introduced to Japan? It is sad to say that until recently, 90% of Japanese people used to misunderstand Islam as a barbaric, aggressive and inferior religion which came from barren deserts of Arabia. They only know of polygamy, prohibitions on alcohol, pork and the once a month fast. Preconceived ideas that Islam is extremely strict in commandments or rules, clog the brains of Japanese people and stereotype their thoughts.
These misunderstandings or falsifications were somehow brought back by those students who had been dispatched to learn the advanced culture of Western nations, later had accepted Christianity, and had been brainwashed ideologically. Even after they returned to Japan after their study, they were misguided by Christians to believe that Islam was a barbaric or vulgar religion. In fact these brilliant elites wrote many textbooks and books to be spread widely.
This is the reality of the prejudice carried since the beginning of the Meiji Era to the present time in Japan. It has been the general tendency other than a few exceptions.
The second reason for this prejudice is that most nations in the Middle East, Asia and Africa had been colonized by the Western Powers and subordinated under their control. The majority of them left themselves to the exploitation of the Western nations or were not fully independent. Therefore, other nations jumped to the conclusion that the religion that was worshiped by those underdeveloped people who were culturally or economically inferior must be an uncivilized and backward religion also. They despised Islam from the beginning. In other words, they concluded that since the Christian civilization is superior to the Islamic civilization, in their opinions, the former religion was also much superior to the latter.
It is one of the major reasons why they could not spiritually afford to contemplate Islam calmly or deeply. This unfavorable trend has been corrected along with change and progress of time, but it will still take a long time for people to respect it as one of the three major religions in the world.
Historical Background of the Mosque Site
On the present lot of the mosque to be constructed, there used to be a mosque completed in 1937 and it served the Muslims until 1985 at which time it was closed due to the dangers it presented and it was demolished in February 1986.
In 1988 the same lot was donated to the treasury Department of the Republic of Turkey by the Tokyo Turkish Society on condition that a mosque be build on it.
It is for this reason that the ownership of the lot belongs to the Turkish Government.
The history of the demolished mosque is as follows:
After the Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union some Turks who refused to live in the Communist regime had to emigrate from their homelands to several countries and some of them chose to live in Japan.
Those Turks who emigrated from the Soviet Union and settled in Tokyo first formed a society called Mahalle-i Islamiye (islamic neighbourhood) then bought themselves a site to build a school and a mosque.
In 1934 the construction of the (old) mosque was started and completed and opened for services in 1937. Thus we must say that the history of the present site of the mosque goes back to those immigrants from the Soviet Union.
A famous traveller Abdurrashid Ibrahim from Siberya and Abdulhay Kurban Ali Kazan were the two forerunners in the unswerving efforts to obtain the site. Of these two, Abdurrashid serverd as the Imam in that mosque for some time. Abdulhay Kurban Ali served even a longer time as the Imam of the mosque.
In addition to thair own efforts in this matter, other Muslims also from India, Japan, Kazan and other countries did not refrain from rendering their help morally and financially towards the erection of the mosque.
In the process of obtaining the site and building the mosque and the community school on it, an Indian businessman Turab Alizade Vali Muhammed is especially to be noted here for his generosity and noteworthy efforts. As a result we can say that the old mosque (now demolished) and the school nearby were build with the help and cooperation of the Muslims of all walks and races. We hope the project will be realized in the same manner.
Despide the fact that Islam as a religion was officially recognised by the government of Japan in 1939 prior to the official recognition, Japanese Governments had been tolerant towards Islam. The assistance and tolerance of this government should be noted in building the old mosque and the community school.
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.
Islam was first known to Japanese people in 1877 as a part of Western religious thought. Around the same time the life of prophet Muhammad (SAW) was translated into Japanese. This helped Islam to find a place in the intellectual image of the Japanese people, but only as 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 as introducing Muslims and Japanese people to each other. This naval vessel called “Ertugrul” capsized on its way home and sank with 609 people aboard, drowning 540 of them.
The first Muslim Japanese ever, known as 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.
The 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 around Japan 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 (which is the only remaining mosque in Japan nowadays) 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 played the role of Imam of any of the mosques.
During World War II, an “Islamic Boom” was set in Japan by the military government through organizations and research centers 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 organizations or research centers were in no way controlled or run by the Muslims nor was their purpose the propagation of Islam whatsoever. The mere purpose was to let the military be better equipped with the necessary knowledge about Islam and Muslims since there were large Muslim communities in the areas occupied by the Japanese army in China and Southeast Asia. As a result, with the end of the war in 1945, these organizations and research centers disappeared rapidly.
Another “Islamic Boom” was set in motion this time in the shade of “Arab Boom” after the “oil shock” in 1973. The Japanese mass media has given great publicity to the Muslim World in general and the Arab World in particular after realizing the importance of these countries for 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 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 of conversions which took place during those days. However, with the end of the effect of the oil boom, 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.
Mori, who studied theology and general Islamic studies in Makkah, is one of the recent five: He confirms their responsibilities.” Islam is a religion of knowledge and we cannot stand well without learning. I think the efforts and activities made in this respect in Japan remain very minor up to this day.”
Mori’s pronouncement also refers to another problem in Japan: there have been few who can teach Islam to the indigenous people in their own language. The history of Dawa in Japan for the past forty years has basically been that of efforts by foreign Muslims who happened to stay here in this mainly Buddhist country.
The Turks have been the biggest Muslim community in Japan until recently. Pre-war Japan was well-known for its sympathy and favors 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(SWT)”, 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 his word 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.
A comparison of Japanese attitudes towards Christianity is interesting. Christianity has spread in Japan over the last hundred and twenty years as part of its Westernization and is greatly respected even by those who do not adhere to its creeds. The population of Japanese Christians is one million, which constitutes less than one percent of the total population. Many of them, however, belong to the middle class and to intellectual circles, as demonstrated by the fact that the present Minister of Culture is a Christian writer, so their influence is much greater than their numerical strength may suggest. The spread of Christianity can be ascribed, not only to western influence but also to the long history of its presence in Japan, having arrived more than five hundred years ago. The spread of Islam went eastwards, from India to Malaysia and Indonesia, and was blocked after reaching the southern Philippines by the Spanish colonization of the North. From there, Spanish missionaries were able to carry their message to Japan.
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 established in 1953, the first Japanese Muslim organization, the Japan Muslim Association under the leadership of the late Sadiq Imaizumi. Its members, numbering sixty-five at the time of its inauguration, increased two-fold before this devoted man passed away six years later.
The second president of the association was the late Umar Mita, a very dedicated man. Mita was typical of the old generation, who learned Islam in the territories occupied by the Japanese Empire. He was working for the Manshu Railway Company, which virtually controlled the Japanese territory in the northeastern province of China at that time. Through his contacts with Chinese Muslims, he was convinced of its truth, and became a Muslim in Peking. When he returned to Japan, after the war, he made Hajj, the first Japanese in the post-war period to do so. He also made a Japanese translation of the meaning of the Qur’an from a Muslim perspective for the first time.
Thus, 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 organizations were established since the 1900s, each of them has only a few active members.
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. There exists a difference in orientation between the old and new generations. For the old generation, Islam is equated with a religion of Malaysia, Indonesia, or China etc. But for the new generation, these East Asian countries are not very appealing, because of their western orientation, and so they are more influenced by Islam in the Arab countries.
“The old generation has lived closely connected with non-Japanese Muslims,” points out Nur Ad-Din .” It is an excellent act in the spirit of brotherhood. But on the other hand, we cannot deny its side effect, that is, this way of life could not prevent other Japanese from thinking of Islam as something foreign. How to overcome this barrier is a problem to be solved. It is a task for us, the younger generation.”
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.
DA’WAH IN JAPAN
The history of Islam in Japan reveals therefore some random waves of conversions. In fact, religious campaigns are no more successful for other divine revelations or “new religions”. The statistics indicate that some 80% of the total population believes in either Buddhism or Shintoism while as few as 0.7% are Christians. The latest results of a poll conducted by a Japanese monthly opinion magazine imply however an important caveat. Only one out of four Japanese effectively believes in any particular religion. The lack of faith is even more pronounced for Japanese youth in their 20s with an alarming rate of atheism as high as 85%.
The potential direct agents of da’wah represented by the Muslim community in Japan with its estimated one hundred thousand believers is itself extremely small compared with the total population of more than one hundred and twenty million citizens. Students together with various kinds of workers in precarious conditions constitute a large segment of the community. They are concentrated in big urban cities such as Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo but are seldom organized into established units in order to conduct effective programs of da’wah. In fact, the Muslim students associations, as well as some local societies, organize periodical camps and gatherings in an effort to improve the understanding of Islamic teachings and for the sake of strengthening brotherhood relations among Muslims.
There is a continuous need for Muslims to withstand pressures to conform to the prevailing modern lifestyle, which appeals to the passionate element of the soul. Further difficulties are faced by Muslims with respect to communication, housing, child education or the availability of halal food and Islamic literature, and these constitute additional factors hindering the course of da’wah in this country.
The duty of da’wah is frequently perceived as the single obligation on Muslims to preach Islam to non-Muslims. However, important calls for reform (islaah) and renewal (tajdeed) constitute also distinct forms of da’wah to Muslims. A betterment of the level of Islamic knowledge and living conditions of the Muslim community is therefore, by itself, the very da’wah needed in Japan. One should bear in mind however, that unless the attitudes of indifference and passivity of Muslim residents in Japan with respect to Islamic issues of congregational aspects are changed, the risk of the community being uprooted and diluted through severe distortions of the Islamic belief will indeed grow higher. This likelihood is in fact pertaining to the permanent exposure of Muslims to the influence of many Japanese customs and traditional practices such as deep bowing as a form of greeting and collective participation in religious festivities and temple visits.
The problem is perhaps being felt in more acute terms for Muslim children who, in the absence of any Muslim kindergartens or schools, constitute indeed easy targets for the transmission and cultivation of unIslamic cultural and social habits. The remarkable lack of educational institutions of Islamic character is also reflected by the existence all over Japan, of a single mosque which, with fadhl from Allah(SWT) (SWT), resisted the great Hanshin earthquake that nearly destroyed the city of Kobe on the wake of January 17 of this year. There are permanent efforts to build or transform housing units into masajids in many other cities and with the help of the Almighty, such good enterprises are expected to bear fruit in the very near future Insha’Allah(SWT).
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 Qur’an into the 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 that the knowledge of ordinary Japanese about Islam is modestly confined to few terms related to polygamy, Sunnah and Shia, Ramadhan, Makkah, Allah(SWT) 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-organized fashion. There are indeed strong hopes that the future of Islam and Muslims will be better than their past Insha’Allah(SWT) as we believe that if Allah(SWT) (SWT.) helps us, none can overcome us.
References:
1. Islam in Japan: It’s past, present and future. Islamic Centre Japan, 1980.
2. Arabia, vol.5, no.54. February 1986/Jamad al-Awal 1406.Prepared by:
Br. Nabil ibn Muhammad El-Maghrabi, Osaka-Japan
Br. Muhammad Ahmed Soliman, Kyoto-Japan
Br. Mehmet Arif Adli, Nagoya-Japan
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