MANAGING MUSLIMS: IMPERIAL JAPAN'S ISLAMIC POLICY

1936, female Tatar pupils of the Islamic School in Tokyo pray for the success of the Japanese–German alliance against Bolshevism (The Anti-Commintern Pact)

Imperial Japan drew upon a number of specific sources and models as their interest in Muslims on the mainland deepened after the establishment of Manchukuo in March 1932. For one, they followed familiar precedents for managing minorities in the Japanese empire, including late Meiji policies regarding Korean émigrés to the home islands and the Burakumin. 25 Their handling of the naturalisation of a small Muslim Tatar refugee population who arrived in Japan after fleeing the Bolsheviks also provided Japan with models for incorporating Muslim minorities into the imperial imagination. The Japanese further observed and learned from German and Italian mistakes and successes dealing with Muslim populations in North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East from before the First World War through to the end of the Second World War.

Popular and well-circulated Japanese wartime periodicals such as New Asia (Shin Ajia) regularly carried articles about Italy and Germany. These articles introduced readers to Japan’s allies and provided both historical and geopolitical information to a general reading audience. In 1941, Suzuki Tōmin wrote an in-depth article concerning Germany’s and Italy’s Near East policies and an analysis of how the Axis powers were handling the Muslim populations and fighting the Allies in North Africa and the Middle East. The article outlined the ways in which the Germans and the Italians provided Muslims with hope for independence from British imperialism through the extensive use of propaganda and goodwill gestures. Suzuki stressed the strategic importance of gaining the support of Muslims for German and Italian policies to succeed in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the geopolitical importance of acquiring control of the Red Sea. With this article and others like it, Suzuki was attempting to legitimize Japan’s use and manipulation of Muslims for their own purposes to readers who would have been up-to-date on current events in the Pacific. Driving home to readers that, without the support of Muslims in the Near East, a military victory for the Italians and the Germans would be unlikely, he made clear that the continued victories of the Japanese army would also rely on the support of the large Muslim populations in Southeast and East Asia.

Copy and paste: FB Malaya Historical Group

12.11.2018: 3.36 pm