Japan's Mobile Mosque to Welcome Muslim Visitors for 2020 Olympics

As Japan is preparing to host summer Olympics in the year 2020 and with the visitors across the world, a Tokyo based sports and cultural events company has come up with a mosque on wheels and hopes that the Muslim visitors will feel at home with the mosque available to them during the Olympics.

Considering the country that has an estimated population of 100,000 to 200,000, the Muslim population don’t have many mosques. Thus with an expected large number of Muslim visitors in 2020, the country prepares itself to host its visitors in the best possible way and make them feel at home while in Japan.

Yasuharu Inoue, the CEO of Yasu Project, which is building the mobile mosques, said, as there are not enough mosques available for the visitors in 2020 they developed the idea and started working on it. He also said that the mobile mosques could travel to different Olympic venues so that they provide Muslim visitors a place of prayer during the Olympic games.

Yasuharu Inoue said, “As an open and hospitable country, we want to share the idea of ‘omotenashi’ (Japanese hospitality) with Muslim people”.

The first mobile mosque was recently unveiled outside Toyota Stadium, which is also a venue for the Olympics in the Toyota City, the headquarters of the car company Toyota.

The mosque is built on a 25-ton truck and is modified in such a way with technology that the 48-square-meter room can easily accommodate 50 people at a time. Some Muslim guests also prayed inside the mosque, which has all the facilities of a mosque, which includes outdoor taps and washing area for pre and post worship cleansing.

The inspiration to develop such a project came to the mind of Yasuharu Inoue, during his trip to Qatar four years ago. Initially, his company thought to develop the plan and target international sporting and other events in Japan and overseas. But with summer Olympics in the country, he implemented the idea here, which also gave him a chance to showcase and thereby establishing itself as an International brand.

Inoue says, “Going forward, I would be so happy if people from Indonesia, Malaysia, Africa, the Middle East and, for example, refugees who are coming from Syria are able to use the mosque as a tool to promote world peace”.

He now believes that the project will do more than just filling a gap in the religious infrastructure of the country, as it also gave a universal identity to Japan for its genuine concern and hospitality towards its guests.