Turks in Japan - History

History

In the early 20th century, groups of Tatars immigrated from Kazan, Russia, to Japan. The community became led by the Bashkir émigré imam Muhammed-Gabdulkhay Kurbangaliev who had fought on the side of the White movement in the Russian Civil War, and arrived in Japan in 1924; he then set up an organisation to bring together the Tatars living in Tokyo. Tatars in Japan founded their first mosque and school in 1935 in Kobe, and another in Tokyo in 1938, with support from Kurbangaliev's organisation. Another Tatar organisation, the Mohammedan Printing Office in Tokyo, printed the first Qur'an in Japan as well as a Tatar-language magazine in Arabic script, the Japan Intelligencer; it continued publication until the 1940s. Most of the Tatars emigrated after World War II. Those remaining took up Turkish citizenship in the 1950s.

A former Ottoman prince was involved in a plot with the Japanese to enthrone him as monarch of a puppet state in Central Asia during the Kumul Rebellion.

Though the Turkish community has diminished in size, those remaining founded the Tokyo Camii and Turkish Cultural Center in 2000. In the following decade, there was a new wave of migration from Turkey, mostly consisting of people from the Fatsa area.