>Already starting to promote the ideology of Pan-Asianism, the Japanese began to court the Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman Empire. The Meiji Emperor sent princes of the House of Yamato to visit the Sultan-Caliph, Abdul Hamid II, bearing gifts and proposals for treaties and generating much excitement in the Ottoman press. Abdul Hamid II admired Japan to a certain extent but was fearful of the popular rumors that the Meiji Emperor would convert to Islam and proclaim himself Caliph, thereby displacing the Sultan-Caliph as the object of veneration from all the world's Sunni Muslims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Turkey_relations