An Inventory of the First Muslim Journal in Japan

The Islamic Fraternity (1910-12) and Its Successors

抄録

This article aims at providing an inventory of the available source material concerning the Islamic Fraternity, the first journal in Japan that was published by Muslims and dealt predominantly with Islamic topics. The journal was founded in 1910 in Tokyo by the Bhopali Indian Muhammad Barakatullah and the Egyptian Ahmad Fadli, in all probability with the assistance of the Japanese military. Although the journal’s publication was suppressed by the Japanese government in 1912, during the two and a half years of its existence it managed to attract a considerable degree of attention across the globe. Up to now, however, only two issues of the journal were known to researchers, and most information had to be drawn from British-Indian colonial documents. This article points to a number of further surviving issues that can be located in different archives, surviving issues of its short-lived successor journals, as well as various traces that the Islamic Fraternity has left in the press of its time. Taken together, these are valuable resources to develop a better understanding of early twentieth century exchanges between Japan and Muslim communities in Asia as well as the history of Islam in Japan.