Just a little correction.

It’s not called Camii Mosque but Tokyo Mosque or Tokyo Camii

Camii is the turkish word for mosque.

Blast me and my hasty urges to post w/o proper research! You obviously discuss that in the previous post.. apologies!

Rommell: Interesting issue that we’ve alluded to in other posts by Chirol and myself, is that Turkey is promoting a more moderate and modern international Islam, and a great alternative to Saudi nuttery. (And the US should encourage this.) The Tokyo Camii Mosque (thanks for the correction, Bo18) was first a ramshackle building converted into a Mosque by Turkic peoples from Russia fleeing the Soviets in the 1930s. The Turks funded the modern structure, and the resident holy man is a Turkish man fluent in Japanese—much preferable to some Saudi-funded Whabbist!

I have some more photos of that mosque on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redjoe/tags/mosque/

A beautiful place indeed.

Did some research on this mosque and people behind it about 13years ago.Some interesting facts and episodes.

The founders of the mosques were Tartars and Bashkirs to be exact,who came to Japan mostly as fabric traders in numbers of few hundred from Tartar community in Manchuria.
The army wanted to use them for presumably espionage purposes.And the leader of the Tartars in Japan,Kulvangaryev(could be a misspell)demanded the mosque and islamic schools to start new Tartar community in Tokyo in return.
And thus born the Tokyo Mosque.the first of it’s kind in Tokyo.The estate was donated by zaibatsu with the help of the　Toyama Mitsuru of ultranationalist group,the Amur Society.
Kulbangaryev had advocated the support of the Japanese government for the independence of the Tartarstan and the pan Turkish movement in the Soviet central asia.Met a lot of
political big shots of the 30’s like Inukai and Okuma.But lost his power by defeated in the internal conflict and deported back to Manchuria by the Kempeitai as persona non grata.Died in Siberia after the war.

After the war, in 50’s the Tartars and Bashkirs in Tokyo had obtained the Turkish citizenships.When the Turkish expeditionary were sent to the Korean peninsula during the Korean war,the casualities were hospitalized in Tokyo’s Red cross hospital and the wives and daughters of the Tartar community,at the time in the status of statelessness ,had visited casualties as volunteer service.The Turkish ambassador was moved by these acts and guaranteed everyone who wanted to be a Turkish national,a citizenship.

When I went for the research in 94.The old mosque was already demolished and what was only left of was the wooden building which used to be islamic school, later used as a community hall.I sneaked inside the building(the door was open)and went up to the second floor.There was a gigantic picture of Ataturk on the wall.showing their political identity belong to the Turkish nationalism or perhaps Turanism.

It was an interesting experience.

Shibuya.