Ibrahim Sawada

Hujjat al-Islam Ibrahim Sawada (Japanese: 澤田達一, Sawada Tatsuichi) is a Japanese Twelver Shia cleric and Qur'an translator, widely described as the first ethnic Japanese to be trained and ordained as a Shia cleric. He is based in Tokyo.

Early life and conversion Sawada was born in Tokyo, reportedly in 1964. His father, Muhammad Sawada, was one of the Japanese who began studying Islam in the early 1970s, when the oil crisis first drew wide attention in Japan to the Muslim world. His father embraced Islam and went on to translate the Qur'an into Japanese, and Ibrahim followed him into the faith as a child. The family's first Qur'an was an English translation by a Shia translator, sent to them from India, and they read it together during Ramadan. His father later served on the General Assembly of the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly and died in January 2012.

Studies in Qom Encouraged by his father and by his own curiosity about Islam, Sawada travelled to Iran and studied at the seminary (hawza) of Qom for about seven years, covering theology, jurisprudence, logic, Qur'anic exegesis and political thought. He returned to Japan in 1998, and Japanese sources describe him as the first Japanese national to become a Shia cleric.

Work in Japan After his return he took charge of the Ahl al-Bayt centre in Tokyo founded by his father, where he teaches Islamic law and Qur'an classes and also teaches Persian. Since at least 2018 he has also given regular Japanese-language lecture series, published online by the Comparative Education Academy in Tokyo, on Islamic philosophy (Allamah Tabataba'i's Bidayat al-Hikma) and on Islamic jurisprudence, covering chapters such as leasing (ijara), deposits, collateral, surety (kafala), settlement (sulh) and bequests. His first translation project was the 30th juz' of the Qur'an, which took him six months. He then completed a full Japanese translation, published in 2013 as "The Holy Qur'an: Japanese Translation" (聖クルアーン 日本語訳). Japan's National Diet Library describes it as the first complete Japanese translation of the Qur'an based on Shia interpretation; in preparing it he drew on Allamah Tabataba'i's Tafsir al-Mizan, Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi's Tafsir-e Nemuneh and Elahi Qomshei's Persian translation. He has spoken about the difficulty of rendering Arabic imperative forms into natural Japanese and about the need for explanatory commentary for Japanese readers unfamiliar with concepts such as the Resurrection.

Sawada has served as head of research and education at the Japan office of Al-Mustafa International University and has been a regular speaker at religious and cultural events in Tokyo, including a symposium on dialogue between Islam and Shinto (2018), commemorations of Imam Khomeini (2020), a seminar on the Iran–Iraq War (2020), lectures on the concept of God in Japanese culture (2021), and Muharram gatherings recounting the story of Imam Husayn (2023).