Jews and their culture are by far one of the most minor ethnic and religious groups in Japan, presently consisting of only about 300[1] to 2,000 people or approximately 0.0016% to 0.0002% of Japan's total population. Almost all of them are not Japanese citizens and almost all of them are foreigner short-term residents.[3]
In 1586, the community, then consisting of at least three permanent families, was displaced by the Shimazu forces. The Jews of Settsu absorbed some of them into its own community (at the time, a population of over 130 Jews), while a minority left or died.[citation needed]
In 1861, Pogrom refugees from Russia and Poland moved to the port of Nagasaki; these were the first Jews in Nagasaki since around 1584.[citation needed]
Towards the end of the Edo period, with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry following the Convention of Kanagawa and the end of Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy, Jewish families again began to settle in Japan. The first recorded Jewish settlers arrived at Yokohama in 1861. By 1895, this community, which by then consisted of about 50 families, established the first synagogue in Meiji Japan.[5] Part of this community would later move to Kobe after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923.
Another early Jewish settlement was established in the 1880s in Nagasaki, a large Japanese port city opened to foreign trade by the Portuguese. This community was larger than the one in Yokohama, consisting of more than 100 families. It was here that the Beth Israel Synagogue was created in 1894. The settlement would continually grow and remain active until it eventually declined by the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century. The community's Torah scroll would eventually be passed down to the Jews of Kobe, a group formed of freed Russian Jewish war prisoners that had participated in the Czar's army and the Russian Revolution of 1905.
From the mid-1920s until the 1950s, the Kobe Jewish community was the largest Jewish community in Japan, formed by hundreds of Jews arriving from Russia (originating from the Manchurian city of Harbin), the Middle East (mainly from Iraq and Syria), as well as from Central and Eastern European countries (primarily Germany). It had both an Ashkenazi and a Sephardic synagogue.[6] During this time, Tokyo's Jewish community (now Japan's largest) was slowly growing with the arrival of Jews from the United States, Western Europe and Russia.
In 1905, at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, the community of Nagasaki went extinct. While the Iraqi community is formed in Kobe (about 40 families in 1941) Following Russia's 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, antisemitism exploded in Japan, with many blaming Jews as being the "nature" of the revolution.[7]
Some Japanese leaders, such as Captain Inuzuka Koreshige (犬塚 惟重), Colonel Yasue Norihiro (安江 仙弘) and industrialist Aikawa Yoshisuke (鮎川 義介), came to believe that Jewish economic and political power could be harnessed by Japan through controlled immigration and that such a policy would also ensure favor from the United States through the influence of American Jewry. Although efforts were made to attract Jewish investment and immigrants, the plan was limited by the government's desire not to interfere with its alliance with Nazi Germany. Ultimately, it was left up to the world Jewish community to fund the settlements and to supply settlers and the plan failed to attract a significant long-term population or create the strategic benefits for Japan that had been expected by its originators. In 1937, Japan invaded China, with the Japanese ambassador to France telling the ruling Japanese that "English, American, and French Jewish plutocrats" were leading opposition to the invasion.[7]
On December 6, 1938, Five ministers council (Prime MinisterFumimaro Konoe, Army MinisterSeishirō Itagaki, Navy MinisterMitsumasa Yonai, Foreign MinisterHachirō Arita and Finance MinisterShigeaki Ikeda), which was the highest decision-making council, made a decision of prohibiting the expulsion of the Jews in Japan.[8][9] With the signing of the German-Japanese Anti-COMINTERN Pact in 1936 and the Tripartite Treaty of September 1940, however, antisemitism gained a more formal footing in some of Tokyo's ruling circles.[7] Meanwhile, the Japanese public was exposed to a campaign of defamation that created a popular image known as the Yudayaka, or the "Jewish peril."[7]
During World War II, Japan was regarded by some as a safe refuge from the Holocaust, despite being a part of the Axis and an ally of Germany. Jews trying to escape German-occupied Poland could not pass the blockades near the Soviet Union and the Mediterranean Sea and were forced to go through the neutral country of Lithuania (which was occupied by belligerents in June 1940, starting with the Soviet Union, then Germany and then the Soviet Union again). Of those who arrived, many (around 5,000) were sent to the Dutch West Indies with so-called Curaçao visas issued by the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk,[10] and Japanese visas issued by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania. Zwartendijk went against Dutch consular guidelines, and Sugihara ignored his orders and gave thousands of Jews entry visas to Japan, risking his career. Together, both consuls saved more than 6,000 lives.
Sugihara is said to have cooperated with Polish intelligence, as part of a bigger Japanese-Polish cooperative plan.[11] They managed to flee across the vast territory of Russia by train to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe in Japan. The refugees– 2,185 in number– arrived in Japan from August 1940 to June 1941. Tadeusz Romer, the Polish ambassador in Tokyo, had managed to get transit visas in Japan; asylum visas to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Burma; immigration certificates to Palestine; and immigrant visas to the United States and some Latin American countries.
Most Jews were permitted and encouraged to move on from Japan to the Shanghai Ghetto, China, under Japanese occupation for the duration of World War II. Finally, Tadeusz Romer arrived in Shanghai on November 1, 1941, to continue the action for Jewish refugees.[12] Among those saved in the Shanghai Ghetto were leaders and students of Mir yeshiva, the only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust. They– some 400 in number– fled from Mir to Vilna with the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and then to Keidan, Lithuania. In late 1940, they obtained visas from Chiune Sugihara, to travel from Keidan (then Lithuanian SSR) via Siberia and Vladivostok to Kobe, Japan.[13] By November 1941, the Japanese moved this group and most of others on to the Shanghai Ghetto in order to consolidate the Jews under their control.[14]
The secretary of the Manchurian Legation in Berlin Wang Tifu (王, 替夫. 1911–) also issued visas to 12,000 refugees, including Jews, from June 1939 to May 1940.[15][16]
Throughout the war, the Japanese government continually rejected some requests from the German government to establish antisemitic policies. However, some Jews who resided in Japanese-occupied territories were interned in detention camps in Malaysia and the Netherlands East Indies.[7] Jews in the Philippines also faced accusations of being involved in black market operations, price manipulation, and espionage.[7] Towards the end, Nazi representatives pressured the Japanese army to devise a plan to exterminate Shanghai's Jewish population and this pressure eventually became known to the Jewish community's leadership. However, the Japanese had no intention of further provoking the anger of the Allies and thus delayed the German request for a time, eventually rejecting it entirely. One Orthodox Jewish institution saved in this manner was the LithuanianHarediMir yeshiva. The Japanese government and people offered the Jews temporary shelter, medical services, food, transportation, and gifts, but preferred that they move on to reside in Japanese-occupied Shanghai.[citation needed]
The decision to declare the Shanghai Ghetto in February 1943 was influenced by the police attaché of the German embassy in Tokyo, Josef Meisinger. In autumn 1942, he had lengthy discussions with the Japanese Home Ministry. Because the Japanese were mostly not antisemitic, he used their espionage fear to provoke actions against the Jewish community. To the Japanese he declared, that he was ordered from Berlin to provide them all names of "anti-Nazis" among the German residents. Then he claimed that "anti-Nazis" were always "anti-Japanese" and added that "anti-Nazis" were primarily German Jews, of whom 20,000 had emigrated to Shanghai. Meisinger's antisemitic intrigue worked. In response to his statements, the Japanese demanded from Meisinger a list of all "anti-Nazis". This list was, as Meisinger's personal secretary later confirmed, already prepared. After consulting General Müller, Meisinger handed the list over to the Japanese Home Ministry and the Kenpeitai at the end of 1942. The list contained i. a. the names of all Jews with a German passport in Japan. Karl Hamel, the interpreter of Meisinger, who was present at the discussions with the Japanese authorities, later testified that this intervention led to a "real chasing of anti-Nazis" and to the "internment of quite a lot of people". He added that "this thesis may be regarded as the basic explanation of Mr. Meisinger’s activities in Japan with regard to the splitting up of the German Community into Nazis and anti-Nazis." This testimony of Karl Hamel to Allied interrogation specialists was kept strictly confidential for a long time. During lawsuits for compensation of inmates of the Shanghai Ghetto in the 1950s, former German diplomats were able to convince the judges, that the proclamation of the ghetto was a sovereign act of the Japanese and not related to German authorities.[17]
At war's end, about half of the Jews who had been in Japanese-controlled territories later moved on to the Western hemisphere (such as the United States and Canada) and the remainder moved to other parts of the world, mainly to Israel.
Of the few Jews who remained in Japan after World War II, a large number left, many going to what would become Israel. Some others married locals and were assimilated into Japanese society.
Presently, there are several hundred Jewish families living in Tokyo, and a small number of Jewish families in and around Kobe. A small number of Jewish expatriates of other countries live throughout Japan, temporarily, for business, research, a gap year, or a variety of other purposes.
There are always Jewish members of the United States Armed Forces serving on Okinawa and in the other American military bases throughout Japan. Camp Foster in Okinawa has a dedicated Jewish Chapel where the Jewish Community of Okinawa has been worshipping since the 1980s. Okinawa has had a continuous presence of Rabbis, serving as military Chaplains, for the past 4 decades.
There are community centers serving Jewish communities in Tokyo[19] and Kobe.[20] The Chabad-Lubavitch organization has two official centers in Tokyo and in Kobe[21] and there is an additional Chabad house run by Rabbi Yehezkel Binyomin Edery.[22]
In the cultural domain, each year, hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews visit the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Museum located in Yaotsu, Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan. Chiune Sugihara's grave in Kamakura is the place where Jewish visitors pay their respect. Sugihara's actions of issuing valid transit visas are thought to have saved the lives of around 6,000 Jews, who fled across Russia to Vladivostok and then Japan to escape the concentration camps.[23] In the same prefecture, many Jews also visit Takayama city.
Rabbis
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2010)
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. During the Second World War, Sugihara helped thousands of Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his job and the lives of his family. The fleeing Jews were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania.
Shortly prior to and during World War II, and coinciding with the Second Sino-Japanese War, tens of thousands of Jewish refugees were resettled in the Japanese Empire. The onset of the European war by Nazi Germany involved the lethal mass persecutions and genocide of Jews, later known as the Holocaust, resulting in thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing east. Most ended up in Japanese-occupied China.
Jan Zwartendijk was a Dutch businessman and diplomat. As director of the Philips factories in Lithuania and part-time acting consul of the Dutch government-in-exile, he supervised the writing of 2,345 visas for Curaçao to save Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. In 1997, Yad Vashem recognised him as Righteous Among the Nations.
Antisemitism in Japan has developed over the years despite the presence of a relatively small and obscure Jewish population. Japan had no traditional antisemitism until nationalist ideology and propaganda began to spread on the eve of World War II. Before and during the war, Nazi Germany, an ally to the Japanese, encouraged Japan to adopt antisemitic policies. In the post-war period, extremist groups and ideologues have promoted conspiracy theories.
Rabbi Menachem Shmuel David Raichik was an Orthodox rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and the pioneer of Chabad's activities in Los Angeles, California. Raichik served as a shaliach for the sixth and seventh Lubavitcher Rebbes.
The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile (2.6 km2) in the Hongkou district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Shanghai was notable for a long period as the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews escaping from the Nazis. After the Japanese occupied all of Shanghai in 1941, the Japanese army forced about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees to be restricted or relocated to the Shanghai Ghetto from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, surrounded the ghetto with barbed wire, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave. By 21 August 1941, the Japanese government closed Shanghai to Jewish immigration.
Zorach or Zorah Wahrhaftig, also known as Zerach Warhaftig, was an Israeli rabbi, lawyer, and politician. He was a signatory of Israel's Declaration of Independence.
The Mirrer Yeshiva Central Institute, commonly known as the Mir Yeshiva or the Mirrer Yeshiva, is a Haredi yeshiva located in Brooklyn, New York.
The Mir Yeshiva, commonly known as the Mirrer Yeshiva or The Mir, was a Lithuanian yeshiva located in the town of Mir, Russian Empire. After relocating a number of times during World War II, it has evolved into three yeshivas: one in Jerusalem and two in Brooklyn, New York: the Mir Yeshiva, and Bais Hatalmud.
On three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust which helped the Jews escape some concentration camps.
The history of the Jews in Kobe, Japan, is recorded from the 19th century onwards.
Abraham Setsuzō Kotsuji was a Japanese Orientalist, and the son of a Shinto priest who descended from a long line of Shinto priests. During the Holocaust he helped Jewish refugees to escape the Nazis, arranging for them to stay first in Kobe and later in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. He also fought against Nazi-inspired anti-Jewish propaganda. A book about how he helped Jewish refugees was written by Japanese actor Jundai Yamada and published in April 2013 by NHK Shuppan.
Dr. Abraham Josevich Kaufman was a Russian-born medical doctor, community organizer and Zionist who helped protect some tens of thousands of Jews seeking safe-haven in East Asia from Nazi atrocities during World War II.
Josef Albert Meisinger, also known as the "Butcher of Warsaw", was an SS functionary in Nazi Germany. He held a position in the Gestapo and was a member of the Nazi Party. During the early phases of World War II Meisinger served as commander of Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland. From 1941 to 1945 he worked as liaison for the Gestapo at the German embassy in Tokyo. He was arrested in Japan in 1945, convicted of war crimes and was executed in Warsaw, Poland.
Tatsuo Osako, of Chiba, Japan was a citizen of the Japanese Empire during World War II who is most notable for transporting Jews to safety. He worked as a clerk for the tourism bureau in Tsuruga, a port city in Japan. His role involved aiding refugees, particularly Jewish and other Europeans, who were traveling from Vladivostok, Russia's Pacific port, to Japan before the Pearl Harbor bombing. In his capacity as the ship's escort and clerk, he distributed funds provided by Jewish organizations to assist the refugees.
The history of the Jews in Curaçao can be traced back to the mid-17th century, when the first Jewish immigrants began to arrive. The first Jews in Curaçao were Sephardi Jewish immigrants from the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. These immigrants founded Congregation Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, the oldest continuously used synagogue in the Americas. The first Jew to settle in Curaçao was a Dutch-Jewish interpreter named Samuel Cohen, who arrived on board a Dutch fleet in 1634. By the mid-1700s, the community was the most prosperous in the Americas and many of the Jewish communities in Latin America, primarily in Colombia and Venezuela, resulted from the influx of Curaçaoan Jews.
Menachem Zeev ("Wolf") Greenglass was a Polish-Canadian rabbi associated with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
Persona Non Grata is a 2015 Japanese biographical drama film directed by Cellin Gluck. It depicts the life of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara who was appointed a vice-consul and later a consul in Lithuania and served there from 1939 to 1940 and who saved lives of some 6,000 Jewish refugees by issuing transit visas to the Japanese Empire.
After the German invasion of Poland in World War II and the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union, many yeshivas that had previously been part of Poland found themselves under Soviet communist rule, which did not tolerate religious institutions. The yeshivas therefore escaped to Vilnius in Lithuania on the advice of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. In Lithuania, the yeshivas were able to function fully for over a year and many of the students survived the Holocaust because of their taking refuge there, either because they managed to escape from there or because they were ultimately deported to other areas of Russia that the Nazis did not reach. Many students, however, did not manage to escape and were killed by the Nazis or their Lithuanian collaborators.
Although Japan was a member of the Axis, and therefore an ally of Nazi Germany, it did not actively participate in the Holocaust. Anti-semitic attitudes were insignificant in Japan during World War II and there was little interest in the Jewish question, which was seen as a European issue. Furthermore, Nazi Germany did not pressure Japan on the issue.
References
1 2 Golub, Jennifer, JAPANESE ATTITUDES TOWARD JEWS. PACIFIC RIM INSTITUTE OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
↑ Kerr, George. Okinawa: The History of an Island People. Revised Edition. Tuttle Publishing, 2000. pp279-340.; Okinawa rekishi jinmei jiten 沖縄歴史人名事典. Okinawa bunkasha, 2002. p69.
↑ Jochem, Clemens: Der Fall Foerster: Die deutsch-japanische Maschinenfabrik in Tokio und das Jüdische Hilfskomitee Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2017, pp. 82–90 and pp. 229–233, ISBN978-3-95565-225-8.
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