Japanese and the Muslims

The Japanese had limited contact with Islam throughout their history until the last days compared to other religions of foreign origin such as Buddhism or Christianity Buddhism as their national religion a longtime ago, and even witnessed a Christian uprising against the shogunate. It’s like asking people outside of Japan what others think about Shinto they don’t have a clear idea. The Japanese learn a little about Islam, so in high school, they learned 2-3 pages of world history textbooks, the Japanese may know God, the Bible, the Prophet, and possibly a holy place, but not much more.

Japanese are mostly free of prejudice, favoritism, or hatred, as there have not been interactions between the Islamic world in their history. Ancient history books are used to describe world history in middle age from a Western perspective, so older people may have a partial opinion that middle-aged people of Islam were not like that.

It was interesting for me to talk to a Muslim, as he had his first opportunity at the age of 39, happy that now there are Muslim employees and students working in the company. He learned that in some places in the city there are mosques that he had not known for 39 years. It is still very rare for the average Japanese to meet a Muslim in person in their life. More than 100, 000 Muslims are said to live in Japan, but this is still a small fraction of Japan’s population of 127 million.