Esperanto in Japan (日本のエスペラント) dates back to the 19th century.
History
Esperantists briefly increased in Japan in the 1880s, along with the interest in the planned language Volapük, but most scholars think it was 1906 that the Japanese esperanto movement really started, which was during the Russo Japanese war. One of the early learners of esperanto was Japanese novelist Futabatei Shimei.Kuroita Katsumi, and Osugi Sakae(anarchist).An influential student group known as the Shinjinkai(新人会). hosted debates with fellow Korean and Chinese students in esperanto, and the Bahai mission headed by Vasili Eroshenko and Agnes Baldwin Alexander, was influential in spreading Esperanto along with Christian missions.Esperanto chants were shouted during the visit of Indian nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to Japan. Japan had its second boom in Esperanto from the 1920s to 1940s, with every esperanto speaker in Japan beginning to publish their own esperanto material. Esperanto was used by both leftwing and right wing movements, but the leftwing faced a significant decline in the 1930s.[1] The Japanese esperanto association was founded in 1919.