Qayyim Naoki Yamamoto: A Question About Happiness and an Honest Teacher
Qayyim Naoki Yamamoto began a search in the library of Doshisha University in Kyoto without knowing where it would lead. Raised in a Protestant family, he was reading across religious traditions for an assignment, and his image of Islam was still largely confined to the Middle East.
A small book by Khawla Kaori, A Brief Introduction to God, caught his attention. He was struck by the way it explained divine oneness without relying on specialised Islamic vocabulary. He discovered that the author was married to Professor Hasan at his university and asked to meet her. Khawla had died, but Hasan agreed to meet him and became his teacher.
Hasan introduced him to Muslims from Malaysia, Indonesia, England, Syria and Egypt. Yamamoto began to see that one faith could be expressed through many languages and cultures, and that Islamic civilisation was much wider than the geographical image he had carried.
During the summer of his second university year, he travelled with Hasan to Cairo for Arabic study. When his teacher invited him to embrace Islam, Yamamoto asked whether conversion would make him happy. Hasan offered no promise of an easy life. He told him that the road could become harder and would include mistakes, regret and repentance, while living and dying as a Muslim remained what mattered.
Yamamoto later said that the honesty of this answer moved him and met the understanding built through his reading. On that day, around 2009, he embraced Islam inwardly, although he did not make a public declaration at that moment.
Afterward he chose Islamic studies as a way to keep learning and sustain his Muslim identity. His work moved into Ottoman Sufism and translation, linking Japanese practices such as tea, calligraphy and manga with ethical and spiritual themes in Islamic heritage. The path also brought prejudice: one friend responded by associating his conversion with terrorism.
His story carries a quiet lesson. Conviction did not arrive through a promise of instant happiness, but through an accessible book, a teacher who did not disguise difficulty, and encounters that revealed the cultural breadth of Muslim life. The honesty of the question and the answer remained part of the decision.