Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Prof. Dr. Yakup Çoştu, who has guided me from the very beginning of this process and supported me without allowing me to give up whenever I lost my belief in myself.
I am also grateful to the members of my thesis monitoring committee, Prof. Dr. Metin Uçar and Prof. Dr. Macid Yılmaz, who contributed to the thesis with their views and suggestions.
I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Celalettin Çelik and Prof. Dr. Hiroki Wakamatsu, who served as examiners for my thesis defence.
Special thanks to Dr. Özden Kanter, Dr. Feyza Ceyhan Çoştu, Dr. Fatma Nur Özdemir, and Dr. Dila Baran, who reviewed the thesis, provided corrections and suggestions, and offered both academic and moral support.
I would also like to thank Muhammed Raşid Alas, Social Affairs Counsellor at the Turkish Embassy in Tokyo, and Muhammet Rıfat Çinar, Imam of Tokyo Mosque, for their support during the nearly two-and-a-half years I lived in Tokyo (15 months between September 2016 and December 2017, and 12 months between February 2019 and January 2020), allowing me to conduct research and work at the Tokyo Mosque and Turkish Cultural Center.
I am grateful to Shigeru Shimoyama, a staff member at the Tokyo Mosque and Turkish Cultural Center, who provided great help in my communication with Japanese Muslims and in shaping my interview questions.
Thanks to the late Higuchi Mimasaka, the former president of the Japanese Muslim Association, who opened the doors of the association to me and supported my access to Japanese Muslims and the association’s resources, as well as other staff members of the association.
I extend my thanks to Prof. Dr. Hirofumi Tanada, who followed and evaluated my research while I was a visiting researcher at Waseda University.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of TUBITAK, which funded the 12-month period of my fieldwork between February 2019 and January 2020 through the 2214A International Doctoral Research Fellowship.
Finally, I offer my endless gratitude to my family, Semiha Kocalan, Zekeriyya Kocalan and Salih Ergün, who continued to believe in me even when I lost faith in myself, who lifted me up whenever I fell, and gave me strength when I was tired.
My deepest thanks also go to all the Japanese Muslims who, whether they chose to participate in the research or not, trusted me and shared their worlds with me.
Dr. Elif Büşra Kocalan
Tokyo, 2025