Some Japanese Muslim intellectuals like Mujahid Yohei Matsuyama, as in the article I present here are cultivating intellectual soil for the future in order to nurture Islamic scholarship in Japan. It was only with the Japanese Empire’s advance into mainland China during the Manchurian Incident that more significant focus was given to the Muslims of Manchuria and northern China, and specifically their usefulness as an anti-Han and anti-communist force. Although such developments may have contributed somewhat to the growth of Oriental studies in Japan, it is highly doubtful that they contributed intellectually or spiritually to a nascent Japanese Muslim community. However, these stemmed from small-scale and sporadic, individualized efforts. From the Meiji and Taisho eras onwards, we find scattered mention of certain Muslim groups, mainly by the Japanese Army. Japan’s pre-war relations with Muslim countries generally followed its foreign policy towards East and Southeast Asia (especially its colonial policy toward neighboring countries), and these interactions were largely based on political interests. In the modern era, the history of an Islamic presence in Japan can be largely divided into a pre-World War II period that began in the nineteenth century and a post-World War II period. When considering the pre-modern reach of Islam, one can safely say that Japan is one of the countries that had extremely limited interaction with Islamic civilizations, in contrast with many neighboring nations and peoples. It is quite challenging to translate Islamic principles into Japanese, which has a very distinct grammatical structure from Arabic, along with a religious, cultural, and political background that is completely different from that of the Islamic world. What I present here is my English translation of his article published in Genron Website.

Mujahid Matsuyama, one of Japan’s leading experts in Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Matusyma Yohei writes essays on Islam in Japan for Genron (Views), a major Japanese discursive website. This article is an introduction to the debate over the Japanese translation of the word “Allah” used by Dr.

Japanese kami pestilence