Umar Mitsutaro Yamaoka: The First Hajji from Japan

Umar-Yamaoka-first-Japanese-Hajji

Mitsutaro Yamaoka Kotaro is an unusual historic figure, born in 1880 in Fukuyama, a city in the Hiroshima prefecture. He studied Russian at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (now the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) and joined the army as a volunteer soldier after the Russo-Japanese Conflict broke out, “in the year of his…...