Islam in Japan; a Land of Ancient Time
By Bob Michael
LAPD Police Detective Capt. (Ret)
LAPD Police Detective Capt. (Ret)
When Walid, Ted, and Keith stayed in our home for a few days we had a great time covering a myriad of subjects with Christ in the middle. Ted’s love of Church history and mine of a broader nature were obvious. I read with interest Ted’s exposition of Church history as it relates to Islam.
My historical interests and study have been mostly related to the Soviet Union and the Empires of Russia and Japan. The differences of the three are significant and particularly to Islam – historically and contemporaneously.
As a few might know, Japan for the most part early in its history was besieged by ‘barbarian’ Japanese and others, and Japan also had territory on the Korean peninsula. In fact, the first emperor of Japan was a Korean named Jimmu. Jimmu reigned in the 7th century BC and was sixty-nine generations removed from the most famous Japanese emperor, Hirohito of WWII rule of Japan.
Emperor Jimmu
Overall, emperors have been Shinto’s, which are worshippers of the ghosts of ancestors. Around 600 AD, Buddhism from China was brought to Japan. When the first Catholic missionaries came to Japan from China in the mid 8th century they were soon executed by the Buddhist Empress Koken.
Shinto shrine/ mausoleum honoring Empress Koken.
In the late 14th century, the southern Emperor rejected Buddhism and returned to Shintoism. Japan had been a relatively closed country, at least to the West, until the Portuguese began arriving in significant numbers in the mid-16th century. In 1549, the Jesuit Xavier arrived and a couple years later, he requested an audience with the Emperor which was denied. No Westerner for three hundred years saw the Emperor. But the Portuguese brought firearms to Japan which forever changed it.
A decade later, political Buddhists were roasted on spits. However, leniency was granted to Christian converts, who now numbered 15,000, and there were 200 churches in the Kyoto area. This was because the Emperor’s advisers saw their Spartan life as holiness and agreeable to the Shintoists.
Christians and Buddhists had garrison armies and fought for Japan in the 1590s war with China. The Chinese – with more than a million troops – suffered heavy losses and agreed to a draw. For many reasons not important here, in the first decade of the 17th century it was decided to drive white supremacy and Christianity from Japan.
Will Adams, an Englishman from Kent, the captain of a Dutch ship, and a Protestant Christian castaway not allowed to leave Japan, had gained favor with the government and convinced them to evict the Jesuits, but not the Protestants. This, however, was soon to change. In 1597 six Spanish squires and twenty converts were executed “Christian style” (crucifixion). In 1635, 6,000 Christians were executed by crucifixion, many of them upside down as Saint Peter is believed by some to have been.
The emperor saw Christians as a danger as they were ready to die for their faith; many had been were well-trained soldiers with firearms who rejected the Shinto ghost religion. They had come to represent two percent of the Japanese population. By Japanese custom, they were ordered to commit suicide. As a Biblical imperative they refused. They were then martyred by beheading, and as a result the total Japanese population had great admiration for the honesty of their faith.
The shoguns enforcing the eradication found their job difficult. Six clans, a significant number, were Christians. The shoguns chose to prohibit new missionaries and to harass the old missionaries who were protected by the clans. The clandestine mission work of Japanese priests caused ‘subversive’ runaway Christianity to spread.
As a result of anti-Christianity by the government, a half million Christians were required to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. And many built their own crosses and awaited their demise. Hundreds were crucified as examples and thousands were imprisoned. As terror spread, hundreds more were crucified as examples.
An entire Christian community of 37,000 in Kyushu suffered the murder of every last man, woman, and child. The Church went underground and several congregations finally resurfaced in Kyushu and Honshu 235 years later. There are various estimates of a million to two million Christians today in Japan.
Russian Orthodox Church in Tokyo.
And what has Islam been doing? It arrived in Japan in 1901 and there are 10,000 there today not by marriage. Nearly all are employees of foreign companies. Japan does not give citizenship to any Muslim. Nor do they give permanent residency to Muslims except by marriage. Out of a population of 127,000,000, conversion to Islam is estimated at 200-300.
Japan forbids exhorting people to adopt the religion of Islam (Dawah), and any Muslim who actively encourages conversion to Islam is seen as proselytizing to a foreign and undesirable culture. Few Japanese academic institutions teach the Arabic language. It is very difficult to import the Qur’an to Japan, and Muslims who come to Japan have a difficult time.
Japanese companies seeking foreign workers specifically note that they are not interested in Muslim workers. And any Muslim who does manage to enter Japan will find it very difficult to rent an apartment. Anywhere a Muslim lives, the neighbors become uneasy. Japan forbids the establishment of Islamic organizations, so setting up Islamic institutions such as mosques and schools is almost impossible. In Japan there is only one Japanese imam.
Imam Abdullah Taqy
In contrast with what is happening in Europe, very few Japanese are drawn to Islam. If a Japanese woman marries a Muslim, she will be considered an outcast by her social and familial environment. There is no application of Shari’a law in Japan.
The Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam. Islam is simply, for the Japanese, antithetical to all that is Japanese.
Japan is teaching the whole world an interesting lesson: there is a direct correlation between national heritage and permission to immigrate; a people that has a solid and clear national heritage and identity will not allow the unemployed of the world to enter its country; and a people whose cultural heritage and national identity is weak and fragile, has no defense mechanisms to prevent a foreign culture from penetrating into its country and its land.
The portion herein relative to modern Japan and Islam is by Mordechai Kedar.
Mordechai Kedar (Ph.D. Bar-Ilan U.) Served for 25 years in IDF Military Intelligence specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena. A lecturer in Arabic at Bar-Ilan U., he is also an expert on Israeli Arabs.
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