No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Debate Over Japanese Immigration: The View from France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Extract
The story of the Issei — the 100,000 Japanese immigrants who traveled to Hawaii and the United States during the turn of the 20th century — is an epic of survival amid hardship. Through the efforts of labor contractors backed by the Japanese consulate, the majority of the newcomers were recruited to undertake heavy labor on Hawaiian plantations. Others settled on the mainland, predominantly on the nation's Pacific Coast, where they worked as farmers, fishermen, railroad workers, and agricultural laborers. Smaller contingents of students, artists, and professionals also crossed the ocean and scattered through the United States. As the immigrants became established, many brought over “picture bride” wives and started families. Through careful saving of wages and communal self-help, numerous immigrant laborers bought farms and established small businesses, churches, and community institutions. At the same time, they were victimized by widespread racial prejudice and discriminatory legislation. Like other Asian immigrants, they were barred from naturalization by federal law, and therefore from voting, and in many states the Issei were forbidden to marry whites or to practice certain professions. In Hawaii, the white planter class limited educational opportunity and kept Issei in menial labor positions. On the West Coast, white laborers and political leaders, who rigidly excluded Asian workers from unions, organized movements to exclude the Issei from residence on the grounds that they depressed wage scales through their willingness to work for lower pay. Following the “Gentlemen's Agreement” of 1907–8, the entry of Japanese laborers into the country was largely restricted. Shortly thereafter, in response to demands by white farmers enraged by competition from their Issei counterparts, California and neighboring states enacted alien land acts, which forbade all Japanese and other “immigrants ineligible to citizenship” from owning agricultural land. As a result, the Issei were forced to take short-term leases on land or to put their holdings in the names of white colleagues or of their own children, the Nisei (American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry). Exclusionist pressure, founded on nativist opposition to the alleged racial danger posed by the Issei to the American population, flared up again following World War I and climaxed in the Immigration Act of 1924, which outlawed all Japanese immigration to the United States.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005
References
* While Hawaiian planters had deliberately alternated mass imports of Chinese and Japanese laborers in the last two decades of the 19th century in order to keep the labor force divided along national lines, the annexation of Hawaii by the United States in 1898 led to the enforcement in the Islands of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which had barred immigration by laborers from China [translator's note].
** English in the original [translator's note].
1. 1854 – 13,100; 1869 – 12,874: 1870 – 15,740;1873 – 20,292;1874 – 13,776;1875 – 16,437; 1876 – 22,781;1877 – 10,504; 1881 – 11,890; 1882 – 39579.
2. decoration [In Australia, in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, it is also in the furniture industry that the Chinese have become the most powerful competitors of urban laborers. In 1880, there were 66 Chinese carpenters and woodworkers in Melbourne; in 1889, 45 Chinese furniture makers employed 584 workers. The first Chinese who worked in wood in Australia sold boxes to their compatriots to send gold to China; they then began to make chairs, then vanity tables, then other furniture; they copied European models and manufactured very presentable and cheap pieces of furniture that Europeans happily bought. In order to stop this trade, there was a plan to require all such furniture to be stamped with a Chinese design. Yet a merchant declared, “If there is a difference of 5% the customer will still take the Chinese article … it is the price that counts … as for patriotism, that has nothing to do with the furniture trade which is more a matter of pocketism [sic].” The competition of the Chinese has reduced the Europeans in the same trade to starvation wages, and several Europeans have been forced to begin working for the Chinese: the Chinese employee has thus absorbed the European Capitalist.” Cf. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 56, 01 1905 WashingtonGoogle Scholar].
+ English in the original.
++ English in the original.
+++ English in the original.
++++ English in the original.
3. It is believed that the number of Japanese employees who are cooks, or waiters in boarding houses [sic], restaurants or saloons is about 3,000. They work from 10 to 14 hours per day seven days a week; the white man only works six days a week and eight hours per day. Yet while white cooks earn 15 to 25 dollars per week, waiters 12 to 15 dollars, and helpers from 8 to 10 dollars, the Japanese earn salaries of 40 to 50 percent less (Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, January 1, 1907). In a recent investigation, 286 Japanese shoe stores and cobblers were counted in San Francisco. Approximately 25 stores have opened since. Each store has its own boss and an apprentice, sometimes two or three; they can be seen working at 6 am and are still at work at 10 pm. They pay their help as well as they can, except when they are too close to a white competitor. Then the prices are cut in half until the competition ceases — Hayes Report, House of Representatives, March 13, 1906.
4. Hayes Report, House of Representatives, March 13,1906.
5. Tokyo Keizai Zasshi (Tokyo Economic Review), 10 20, 1906Google Scholar.
6. In 1907, Japanese workers, protesting the restriction of Japanese immigration to the United States, demanded that their government restrict Chinese workers from immigrating to Japan. Both cases feature the same effort by workers to defend their pay against less demanding competition. In fact, the 5,000 Japanese in California upset the American labor market much more than the competition furnished by a few hundred Chinese does in Japan. Still, the Japanese government has agreed to pay its nationals working in railroad construction twice what it pays the Chinese. Like the American government, it believes it worthwhile to protect its workers on its own territory.
∞ English in the original.
7. Hayes, House of Representatives, January 23, 1907. In fact, the law protects American workers from all direct recruitment of foreign competition. Yet most of the Japanese are contract laborers. They were pushed to immigrate to the United States by offers of employment, oral or written contracts, express or implicit, in order to perform a specific job.
8. Hokubei no Shin Nihon (The New Japan of North America), by Abe Iso, professor at Waseda University, one of the strongest partisans of Japanese emigration to the United States.
9. To block Chinese competition, Australia has imposed a tight watch on their shops, and a maximum workweek of 48 hours. It has been decided that any place in which one or more Chinese makes products to be sold shall be considered a factory, and thereby subject to factory laws. Moreover, the fine furniture makers work at a minimum wage determined by a state committee. But the Chinese have managed to get around the snares of these work laws. They continue to work “during forbidden hours and for salaries lower than those set.” Another inspector declares that it is “impossible to stop it except by appointing an inspector for each man.” Yet another, “No methods have yet been found to effectively control the Chinese and force them to obey the factory and health laws. The lone worker stuck in the furniture studio or laundry breaks the law with a calm assurance; even the occasional trial does not make him respect it. Result: all laws passed to assist the white worker end up increasing the effectiveness of the Chinese competition, since in social legislation the white man always forgets that the Chinese do not have the same desire he does to rest and enjoy life. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 56, Washington.
10. Races and Immigration in America, New York, Chautauqua Press, 1907, p. 209Google Scholar.
11. Abbott, p. 12.
12. Park, Robert E., The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 301Google Scholar.
13. Gulick, Sidney, The American Japanese Problem, p. 100Google Scholar.
14. Park, Robert E., The Immigrant Press and Its Control, p. 5Google Scholar.
15. Kawakami, K. K., Asia at the Door, p. 233Google Scholar.
16. Oakland (California) Tribune, October 1920. (Dr. Kano, son of a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, is a professor at the University of California. He is opposed to Japanese policy in America.)
17. The American Japanese Problem.
18. Japan and the California Problem, p. 186.
19. Reports of the Immigration Commission, 24, 18.
20. California and the Oriental, p. 118; Steiner, , The Japanese Invasion, p. 137Google Scholar.
21. Oakland Tribune, October 1920.
22. Abbot, op. cit., pp. 12–13.
23. pp. 155–62.
24. pp. 149–174.
25. Vol. 2, pp. 761–763.
26. pp. 156–57.
27. American-Japanese Relations, pp. 157–58.
28. Park, Robert E., “Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups,” American Journal of Sociology), 19, 610Google Scholar.
36 * The law was actually passed in 1882.
** The proposal was to segregate Japanese American children in oriental schools, not, as this passage implies, to exclude them from school altogether.
+ English in the original.
* English in the original.
29. Those Japanese living in the United States nevertheless had for several years the ability to bring over wives whom they had married by arrangement, of whom they knew nothing but a photograph. This practice gave rise to numerous complaints, and the Japanese government thus decided on its own on March 1920 to abolish it.
30. In 1907 the anti-Japanese movement that had grown up in British Columbia inspired the Canadian government to ask the government of Japan to limit immigration to the Dominion. Mr. Rodolphe Lemieux, Canadian minister of labour, traveled to Tokyo to conduct these delicate negotiations. He did not obtain complete satisfaction, but in a note dated December 23, 1907, the Japanese foreign minister, Mr. Tadasu Hayashi, confirmed the intention of the Japanese government to meet the wishes of the Canadian government through measures taken on its own initiative. After having reminded Lemieux that “[t]he existing treaty between Canada and Japan guaranteed absolutely to all Japanese subjects the right to enter, travel, and reside in all parts of the Dominion,” the note added that “it was not at all the desire of the Imperial government to demand the full enjoyment of the rights and privileges secured by treaty when special circumstances arose in Canada that hindered its complete execution. It is in this spirit and in consideration of the recent events in Canada that the Imperial government has resolved to take effective measures to limit immigration to Canada.” He reserved the right to make such limitations according to circumstances and taking account of the local situation in Canada. Thus, even before the conclusion of the Gentleman's Agreement, the Japanese government had already revealed its intention to bow before the desires and even the prejudices of the North American countries in the matter of Japanese immigration, albeit in a matter compatible with dignity; the Japanese even offered, in order to remove from such measures their hurtful quality, to take upon themselves the responsibility of enforcement.
** English in the original.
* In fact, the Supreme Court ruling in Ozawa v. United States, decided on November 13, 1922, that Japanese immigrants were not, in fact, eligible for citizenship. It subsequently ruled in Terrrace v. Thompson and Porterfield v. Webb, both decided on November 12,1923, that laws which forbade “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning land were constitutional.
** In a previous issue.
+ The Washington Naval Conference of 1921 had represented a watershed in Japanese internationalism and U.S.–Japanese relations. In exchange for American promises to halt naval construction and not to fortify its Pacific island possessions, Japan had agreed to cancel its naval alliance with Great Britain, to withdraw its claims in China. and to limit its total tonnage in heavy cruisers to 60% of the American and British fleets.
+++ The original English text of this portion of Hughes's letter is from Griswold, A. Whitney, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1938, p. 371Google Scholar. The “recent earthquake disaster” is a reference to the Tokyo Earthquake of 1923, which destroyed a significant percentage of the city.
* English text in footnote in original.
31. Mitsui is composed of three branches: Mitsui Bussan (capital of 100 million yen), Mitsui Gômei (capital of 200 million yen), and Mitsui Kôgyû (capital of 100 million yen).
32. Tokyo Asahi, July 19, 1925.
33. Barthelemy, , Revue générale de droit Internationale publiqu (International Review of Public Law), t. XIV, pp. 640–641.Google Scholar
34. See The Outlook, January 10, 1923.
35. See la Revue des sciences politiques (Review of Political Science) (Paris), 1907, «Chronique des États-Unis».
* English in the original.
36. See La Revue de Paris, October 15,1924, «États-Unis et Japon.»