Islam in Japan
Some elements of Islamic philosophy were also distilled as far as back as the Heian period through Chinese and Southeast Asian sources.
[5] The earliest Muslim records of Japan can be found in the works of the Persian cartographer Ibn Khordadbeh, who has been understood by Michael Jan de Goeje to mention Japan as the "lands of Waqwaq" twice: "East of China are the lands of Waqwaq, which are so rich in gold that the inhabitants make the chains for their dogs and the collars for their monkeys of this metal.
"[8] Mahmud Kashgari's 11th century atlas indicates the land routes of the Silk Road and Japan in the map's easternmost extent.
[9][10] The Persian historian Rashid al-Din Hamadani mentioned Japan twice in his historical work Jami' al-tawarikh as Jimingu and described it having many cities and mines.
According to Chinese sources, Lan Yu owned 10,000 Katana, Hongwu Emperor was displeased with the general's links with Kyoto and more than 15,000 people were implicated for alleged treason and executed.
In the 13th century, a manuscript written by Persians from Quanzhou in China for the Japanese monk Keisei was brought back to Japan.
[13] The Iranian Shaykh Ahmad fought and defeated Japanese merchants who attempted a coup against the Thai king in 1611.
[16] In the 17th century text Safine-ye Solaymani, Shia writer Mohammad Ibrahim described Japan and its culture, economy, recent political upheavals and their relationship with foreign merchants.
[citation needed] Another important contact was made in 1890 when Sultan and Caliph Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire dispatched a naval vessel to Japan for the purpose of saluting the visit of Japanese Prince Komatsu Akihito to the capital of Constantinople several years earlier.
[5] In the wake of the October Revolution, several hundred Tatar Muslim refugees from Central Asia and Russia were given asylum in Japan, settling in several main cities and formed small communities.
His official reason for traveling was to seek the Ottoman Sultan and Caliph's approval for building a mosque in Tokyo.
In the late Meiji period, close relations were forged between Japanese military elites with an Asianist agenda and Muslims to find a common cause with those suffering under the yoke of Western hegemony.
[23] Nationalistic organizations like the Ajia Gikai were instrumental in petitioning the Japanese government on matters such as officially recognizing Islam, along with Shintoism, Christianity and Buddhism as a religion in Japan, and in providing funding and training to Muslim resistance movements in Southeast Asia, such as the Hizbullah, a resistance group funded by Japan in the Dutch Indies.
Japanese and Muslim academia in their common aims of defeating Western colonialism had been forging ties since the early twentieth century, and with the destruction of the last remaining Muslim power, the Ottoman Empire, the advent of hostilities in World War II and the possibility of the same fate awaiting Japan, these academic and political exchanges and the alliances created reached a head.
Shūmei Ōkawa, by far the highest-placed and most prominent figure in both Japanese government and academia in the matter of Japanese-Islamic exchange and studies, managed to complete his translation of the Qur'an in prison, while being prosecuted as an alleged class-A war criminal by the victorious Allied forces for being an 'organ of propaganda'.
He was working for the South Manchuria Railway, which virtually controlled the Japanese territory in the northeastern province of China at that time.
Conversion is more prominent among young ethnic Japanese married women, as claimed by The Modern Religion as early as the 1990s.
[1][39] While Japanese law does not ban ground burials, the decision to establish cemeteries is left to local governments.
[41] The project of construction of new Muslim cemetery have faced great opposition from community leaders and local residence, sometimes due to public health, sanitary concern.
