Despite the country’s geographical isolation or because of its unique location that served to avoid being colonised by European powers, Japan witnessed a short yet intense era of Islamization during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Accompanied by the trajectories of religious activists fleeing the conflict zone across Eurasia, notably Tatar Muslims, as well as Muslim expatriates from South Asia with commercial interest, Islam finally reached the last stronghold of polytheism in Asia. Due to the sudden influx of these newcomers with Muslim background in the early 1920s, the need was by degrees felt among them to establish a place of worship and fellowship on the Japanese soil. With no previous mosque on the site, Japan accordingly made a unique effort to integrate hitherto unconventional buildings into the urban landscape of two cities — Tokyo and Kobe. By examining one of the earliest Japanese publications on Tokyo Mosque that appeared in Kenchiku Zasshi in 1938, I wish to readdress the following fundamental question: how a mosque could be built in a place where there was no pe-existing tradition of Islamic architecture, notably Japan. Albeit short in length, this publication epitomises conceptual and linguistic challenges confronted by the inhabitants of an island county in Asia Pacific with a distinctive insular mindset.