The Impact of Japan’s Victory Ë 59
tians for that matter) in the Caucasus at the time. It is remarkable, however, that hav-
ing gained the admiration of the Ottomans, Japan managed to station a “military at-
taché” in Istanbul from 1907 onward, at a time when Japan and Turkey had not even
established o cial diplomatic relations. Moreover, Japan did have contact with Mus-
lims from Russia. Abdrashid Ibragimov (Abdürreşid Ibrahim, 1857–1944), a Tatar from
Western Siberia had already visited Japan before the Russo-Japanese War, but was ex-
pelled at the Russian government’s demand.²³In the wake of Japan’s victory over Rus-
sia, Ibragimov wrote about Japan and Islam, predicting (more correctly, expressing
his wishful thinking) that the Japanese nation might convert to Islam. In 1908–10 he
visited Japan again, met many in uential Japanese, and praised Japan as a force that
could help the Muslim peoples become liberated from the European yoke.²⁴Japan, in
turn, found Ibragimov and other Muslim activists useful allies for a possible future
war against Russia and provided them nancial support.²⁵
Japan’s courting of Muslims, however, complicated its relations with the Sublime
Porte. Ottoman admiration was tempered by fear that Ottoman hegemony over the
Muslim world might slip into the hands of Japan. In Southeast Asia, for example,
some Muslims came to see Japan as an “alternative savior from Dutch colonialism”:
Japan might even become a “Second Mecca.”²⁶In fact, Japan’s imperialist schemes
ultimately had the opposite eect of undermining its own credibility in Asia.
Even though hidden in the euphoria over its victory, Japan’s imperial ambitions
were evident. The Ottoman Porte and Japan had intended to open formal diplomatic
relations even before the Russo-Japanese War, yet they never succeeded because Japan
insisted on the same privileges (including extraterritoriality) that the Western imperial
forces imposed on the Porte. These claims fundamentally undermined Japan’s trust-
worthiness. The absurdity was evident even to many Japanese diplomats and military
leaders. In 1910, the head of military intelligence, for example, advised strongly that
the Japanese government forge close relations with the Ottomans on equal footing be-
cause the country’s importance to Japan was unmistakable: Japan’s renunciation of
extraterritoriality would win the hearts and minds of “220 millions of Muslims” in the
23 Larisa Usmanova,The Türk-Tatar Diaspora in Northeast Asia. Transformation of Consciousness: A
Historical and Sociological Account between 1898 and the 1950s(Tokyo: Rakudasha, 2007), 7, states
that Ibrahim (Ibragimov) “had close ties with Colonel Motojiro Akashi,” and that Ibrahim’s son Murad, ̄
helped by Akashi and others, studied at Waseda University in Tokyo from 1908 to 1911.
24 See Abdürrechid Ibrahim,Un Tatar au Japon – voyage en Asie (1908–1910), tr. and ed. François
Georgeon (Arles: Actes Sud, 2004.).
25 See the diary entries of the chief of Japan’s military intelligence in 1909 to 1912 discussing Ibrag-
imov:Nihon rikugun to Ajia seisaku: rikugun taisho Utsunomiya Tar ̄ ̄o nikki, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami,
2007), 235–36, 243, 321, and vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2007), 248.
26 Kowner, ed.,The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, 220, 234. More generally on the impact of
Japan’s victory on the Muslims, see Klaus Kreiser, “Der Japanische Sieg über Russland (1905) und sein
Echo unter den Muslimen.”Die Welt des Islams, 21, nos. 1–4 (1981).