The Muslims of the Russian Empire in Japan
On the Organization of Life in Emigration
Early 1930s. Leaders of Japanese Nationalists (including future Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and Mitsuru Tōyama) and émigré Turkic-language communities. Kurbangaliev is second from the left, back row.
From the second half of the nineteenth century, newspapers and magazines began to be published in the steppe and Turkestan regions, including some in Kazakh. Some of these publications served as the voice and transmitter of official government ideology, which was first tsarist and then Soviet.
However, this period was also marked by a great surge in intellectual zeal and activity from Kazakh thinkers, which contributed to the emergence of various socio-political, literary, and satirical publications. Qalam invites you to explore snippets from Kazakh publishing culture and history, offering a glimpse into the important issues of the past.
The key events of the national liberation movement in Central Asia—including the 1916 uprising and its brutal suppression, the October Revolution, and the Civil War—forced hundreds of thousands of Muslims from the Russian Empire to leave their homelands in search of safety. At the same time, Muslims from Central Asia, including the Volga-Ural region, Crimea, and the Caucasus, joined this flow of emigration. Some of them settled in Xinjiang or East Turkestan while other groups moved further.
Glimpses of this difficult fate appeared in Yapon Möxbire (Japan Herald in English and Japon Tilshisi in Kazakh), a magazine published in common Turkic from Japan. In its April 1931 issue, it made note of about 500 Muslims who had fled Russian oppression and found refuge in various cities across Japan. The magazine was founded by Muhammed Kurbangaliyev (1889–1972), a Bashkir politician and educator who had emigrated from the Russian Empire. The note was later reprinted in June 1931 in another émigré publication, Jas Türkistan (Young Turkestan in English and Yaş Türkistan in Kazakh), founded by Mustafa Shokay.
Front page of the Yaş Türkistan magazine/From open sources
Muslims in Japan and the Islamic District in Tokyo
There are approximately 500 Muslims in Japan, all of whom are Turks who emigrated first to Manchuria to escape Russian colonialism and then migrated from there to Japan.
Today, they reside in various cities across Japan: 150 in Tokyo, 100 in Kobe, 40 in Nagoya, and around 70–80 in the Korean city of Gwangju. These cities have their own religious associations and neighborhoods. In Tokyo, Kobe, and Gwangju, Muslim children also receive primary education. Muslims also live in southern Japan on Kyushu, on the northern islands of Hokkaido and Sakhalin, and in other cities throughout Japan.
Tokyo mosque was founded in 1938 by Muhammed-Gabdulkhay Kurbangaliev(1879-1972)/Alamy
From 3 to 5 October 1928, a general kurultai [congress] of Muslims in Japan was held in Tokyo. The Muslims residing there also have their own organization—the Union of Muslims of Japan. The purpose of this union is to guide Muslims living in Japan on national and religious matters.
Yaş Türkistan magazine/National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan
One of the key objectives of the Union of Muslims of Japan, which was led by individuals from various regions of the Russian Empire, was education and enlightenment:
The Islamic District in Tokyo is the largest Muslim community in Japan. With official permission from the authorities, the Tokyo Islamic School was established in 1927 in this district to educate Muslim children. The school has six grades and five teachers and operates under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education, enjoying the same legal status as other schools in Japan. Students are taught the fundamentals of religion and their native language, while Russian is introduced in the third grade and English in the fourth grade. Graduates of this school can enter the fourth grade of Russian gymnasiums or the sixth grade of American and French colleges in Japan without entrance exams.
Adjacent to the school is a small printing house called Tokyo Islamic Publishing, which, in addition to textbooks for the school, publishes folk tales, novels, and poetry in Arabic script for the Muslims of the Far East. The printing house also produces the journal Yapon Möxbire (Japan Herald). Established in 1929, it was made possible through the support of the Tokyo Islamic District and Muslims from other cities in Japan, who contributed to bringing printing types from Turkey.
Additionally, the Tokyo city administration allocated a Muslim cemetery in a picturesque location for the Muslim community.
Jas Türkistan (Young Turkestan) was a journal founded by Mustafa Shokay in Paris in December 1929. It focused on the ideas of Turkestan’s independence and was funded by the Prometheus foundation with the support of Polish marshal Józef Piłsudski. By August 1939, a total of 117 issues had been published. The journal featured articles by Mustafa Shokay as well as young authors including Ahmet Naim, Tauekel Batyr, and Ahmetzhan Okay. With the outbreak of the Second World War, its publication was suspended.
The leaders of the political emigration of the Turkic and Caucasian peoples in Poland. Sitting (left to right): Magomed Girei Sunsh, Cafer Seydahmet Kirimer, Gayaz Ishaki, Mehmet Emin Resulzade. Standing (left to right): Mustafa Shokay, Mustafa Vekilli, Tausultan Shakman/Wikimedia Commons