Rising anti-immigrant mood in Japan hides a forgotten history of Islamic outreach

Japan’s growing hostility toward non-Japanese residents coincides with a surge in its Muslim population, while the country’s earlier strategic engagement with Islam remains largely unknown.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has intensified in Japan, leading to hostile social-media rhetoric and abusive messages directed at mosques, as the Muslim resident count nearly doubled from 230,000 in 2019 to 420,000 at the close of 2024, largely comprising workers from Southeast and South Asia. Demographic shifts are also evident in the rise of mixed-race children, or “hafu,” whose share of births climbed to 4.66% in 2023 from just 1.3% in 1987, stoking fears of losing a mythic racial homogeneity.

Yet Japan’s relationship with Islam stretches back to the early 1900s, when its victory over Russia sparked admiration among Muslim reformers and gave rise to false rumors that the Japanese emperor would convert to Islam. Japanese military intelligence seized on these rumors, promoting Pan-Asianist ideals and establishing the Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society) to build alliances with Muslim nationalists in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and British-controlled India and Indonesia.

This outreach was formalized in a 1930s “Islam policy” aimed at extending Japan’s influence across Asia, a strategy that collapsed with the 1945 defeat and subsequent U.S. occupation. Today, the forgotten episode underscores the complexity of Japan’s ethnic landscape and challenges current anti-immigration attitudes.