Japan Objects To Racist U.S. Immigration Bill

[Mulboyne]

Well, they did back in 1916. Perhaps the New York Times has been doing this for a while but I've just noticed that the paper is making some early twentieth century archive material available free of charge. Last time I looked, articles were selling for $3.95 and there are many which are still at that price. The full articles come as images of the original page in a PDF file, which is a little inconvenient but does have the small advantage of sometimes showing the context for the piece. Here's one of the first I came across:

April 13th, 1915 -- PERIL IN ALIEN BILL, SAY JAPANESE HERE; Chugo Chira of East and West News Bureau Thinks Its Adoption Will Bring on Crisis. PUTS BLAME ON RADICALS Fears Legalizing of "Gentlemen's Agreement" Will Antagonize Neutral Element in Japan.
The passage of the pending Immigration bill, including the provision practically enacting into law the "gentlemen's agreement" existing between the United States and Japan, against which provision Viscount Chinda, the Japanese Ambassador, has protested to President Wilson, would be a gratuitous and dangerous affront to the Japanese people, in the opinion of Japanese in New York who profess qualifications to speak for their countrymen. Chugo Chira, of the East and West News Bureau, an organization said to represent accurately the sanest thought and feeling of Japan, yesterday depicted the probable effect upon his people of the passage of the offensive measure.

"Leaving the strongly pro-American and sensationally anti-American sentiment of a minority of the Japanese out of consideration," Mr Chira said, "there is left the great majority of neutral Japanese who are desirous of maintaining friendly relations with the United States but who at the same time have a very keen appreciation of the honor of their own country and high national pride...Now these Japanese citizens are willing and eager to take up the so-called 'Japanese question'...And it is important to remember that in entering into the Root-Takahira agreement, commonly called 'the gentlemen's agreement', by which Japan promised to prohibit emigration to America, the Japanese feel that they have gone to their limit, that they can go no further without sacrificing national honor.

"But I fear that the passage of the Immigration bill as it stands will be equivalent to America's asking Japan to go further, to sacrifice her national honor. The bill will enact into law the terms of the agreement and this, to the Japanese in Japan, will be in effect a charge that they have not kept faith in the agreement and an expression on the part of Americans of their lack of faith in the Japanese word of honor...Furthermore, while Japan might voluntarily enter into an agreement to prevent emigration to America without sacrificing her honor, she might not see her way clear to quiet acceptance of a law aimed directly at her and proclaiming the inferiority of her people.

"This is touching Japan in her tenderest spot. Ever since modern Japan became a factor in civilization, she has struggled to gain admission to the family of nations as their equal. Not dreaming, at first, that her people were considered inferior by the Western peoples, Japan's original ambition, when foreign countries knocked at her door some sixty years ago, was to win material equality with other nations. To accomplish this, she opened her doors to Western invention and education, and event sent emissaries to the West to learn the best that the West had to teach.

"Then, suddenly, the Japanese segregation question came up in California and the Japanese realized it was not only the inferiority of material civilization that separated them from the Western peoples, but that deep-rooted religious and racial prejudices constituted a sentimental wall between them. What was known as 'The Yellow Peril' on one side of the Pacific and as 'Race Prejudice' on the other became the real problem, and this problem Japan has sought to solve by coming to understand better the Western people and making herself better understood by them.

"The Japanese feel now that they have reached a stage where, without disturbing other nations, they can ask their equality to be recognized...But what has she attained except recognition as a military power? Instead of improving, the status of Japanese abroad is in certain respects getting worse, as is illustrated in the California land act, the advisability of a 'gentlemen's agreement,' and, now lastly, the probable intention of Congress to exclude Japanese from America by law...Despite the fact that the sane, intelligent public of this country has been bending all effort to bring about a better understanding between the two countries, there seems to be a group of people who are determined to bring about bad feeling between the United States and Japan. And if they are...able to influence their countrymen to such unsympathetic and misunderstanding acts as the proposed immigration bill, there is no doubt that they will manage to get what they want sooner or later.

"The menace of such people..was emphasized by Baron Shibusawa immediately after his return to Japan...[He] said: 'Owing to a lack of understanding on both sides of the Pacific, the two nations are dangerously drifting apart. It is the ardent hope and belief of myself and others...that Baron Chinda's appeal to the President will be effectual and that the offensive clause will be stricken from the immigration bill. We Japanese have confidence in President Wilson and are sure that he will do all in his power to prevent this unnecessary and gratuitous affront to the Japanese people'".

I'm afraid I might be tempted to post a few more articles from this period.

[Charles]

I'm afraid I might be tempted to post a few more articles from this period.

Proceed.

[Mulboyne]

The free part of the NYT archive is any article published between 1850 and 1922. So we can read contemporary accounts of Commodore Perry's Black Ships; life in the foreign concessions; the Meiji restoration; industrialization and modernization; The Russo-Japanese War and peace treaty negotiations; as well as the Great War and Japan's role in the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles. The cut-off point just excludes you from browsing first hand accounts of the Great Kanto earthquake. Fascinating stuff. I can't be bothered to transcribe too many of the articles and don't have an OCR scanner to hand so I'll probably just include a list of links sometime later. Meanwhile here's some paragraphs from one article describing the Japanese population in New York in 1919:

NIPPON IN NEW YORK by Takeo Oka (July 6, 1919)
...The exact number of Japanese in the city remains a mooted question. A conservative estimate places the figure at 5,000 but some maintain there are as many as 7,000, this figure including about 300 Japanese women. There is no "Jap Town" similar to Chinatown, but the somewhat gregarious points are an uptown section near Dyckman Street, East Fifty-Eighth Street, and thereabouts and downtown Brooklyn Bridgehead. By vocation, we could safely classify these as students, businessmen, and wage earners, with the numbers increasing in the order mentioned.

The Captains of industry represent more than fifty large concerns, the majority and more reliable of which are downtown wholesale houses dealing in everything, from expensive silks, the ubiquitous Oriental bric-a-brac, outlandish kimonos, sometimes exorbitant cloisonne, miniature gardens, goldfish, flimsy toys, down to the hardly dispensable popular-priced coffee set. Five employment agencies, high grade according to their assertions, are doing a brisk business sending forth butlers, valets, cooks, waiters, and other domestic workers. The first named have established so good a reputation that they are finding their way into the movie world [Charlie Chaplin famously employed a Japanese manservant] and threatening to displace the proverbial dignified English butler.

...Banks could be counted on the fingers of one hand however boarding houses are of not neglible numbers, coming close to forty. On the other hand, one news organization monopolizes whatever business there might be. Besides, there are eight artists restoring and repairing art wares, six physicians, five photographers, three tailors, two confectioners and one insurance agent.

Dr Jokichi Takamine of the Takamine Industrial Company has broken into the company of "Who's Who". Two Japanese nonresidents are residents here, on screens, namely Mr and Mrs Sessue Hayakawa...Mme Tamaki Miura of "Butterfly" fame is known to all New York music lovers. A few Nippon danseuses, dancers, jugglers, and pedestal acrobats of vaudeville description complete Japan's contribution to New York's footlights.

There are two vernacular newspapers, one weekly and one semi-weekly. Doubtless any subscriber to one of the other New York newspaper could dispense with these without serious danger of backwardness in news. In consequence, their readers hover in the neighbourhood of the unlucrative two thousands. The parlor game, commonly christened "tamaya" among my compatriots, has practically become one of the standard features of Coney Island an dother New York summer resorts. From a mercenary point of view, the business is good and forms the best summer sideline. Really, you need not be an infallible shot to turn a cigarette package target into your coveted prize at 50 cents or by rolling away dollars at the Japanese ball game. Business is business, the Japanese has learned.

This metropolis may boast of no less than a dozen Japanese restaurants. Your casual visit will introduce you to fresh sliced fish taken raw, seasoned bamboo shoots, and lotus root and pickled radish served on the same table with "sukiyaki" palatable at least to the Japanese. "Sukiyaki" a compound word still unauthorized in any standard English dictionary, is the Japanese "quick lunch" eaten while being cooked on a small charcoal table stove.

Beef, onions, cabbage, beancurd, and other vegetable additions, not forgetting Japanese soy, sugar, and a little sake, are ready to be prepared in a shallow pan a la japonaise on the fire. The rest devolves upon you and your company, ladies not honorably excluded! A great time saving it is for the proprietor, this having his guests prepare their own meals! Though a fairly comprehensive menu is obtainable, Geisha girl entertainment, the Japanese equivalent to New York's cabarets, is unobtainable. Rice cakes have risen to a conspicuous place lately, and have usurped a position in the bill of fare of chop suey restaurants. Their taste is the same as in Tokio, but their price is different as any sen-beiya-san (Japan rice-cake man) in New York City can tell you.

At the Nippon Athletic Club, 250 West 108th Street, you may tackle the jiujitsu expert who will initiate you by degrees into the gymnastic complexity of the art, defensive as well as offensive. But American boxing equals the Japanese kenjitsu or swordplay.

How to tell Japs from Chinamen in this melting pot of the world is a hard question to answer. The writer himself recently mistook a citizen from the Celestial Kingdom for a Nipponese: and Americans make more wrong than right guesses at distinguishing the two. These Oriental denizens however carry a very delicate shade of difference in physiological characteristics.

[Mulboyne]

Here's an 1854 account (PDF available for users registered with the NYT) of Perry's arrival in Japan. Among things to note is how much the China experience influenced them such as "HAYASHI, one of the Imperial Council at Yedo, (whom we have called Commisioner Lin, as that is the Chinese character [林] for his name)" and observations like "Another more repulsive fashion among them is that of blackening the teeth, which is done so completely, that when a woman is most pleased and laughs the merriest, she appears the most hideous". Separately, here's a piece (PDF) from a correspondent asking Americans not to believe the optimistic estimates of opening trade with Japan because China has proved to be a poor export market. The writer is concerned that traders will not be patient and will try to push opium as they have done in China.

[Mulboyne]

This article from 1912 poses questions for Japan which you can still see framed in articles almost a hundred years later:

JAPANESE SEARCH FOR MORAL UPLIFT (PDF)

Remarkable Movement for Spiritual Regeneration of the Empire Seems Pending.

OLD DISCIPLINE MAY FAIL

Strange Proposals for a Composite Compulsory Religion Mark the Efforts to Reach New Ideals

Wonderful as has been the transformation of Japan in the last half century in a material sense, changes even more remarkable in a spiritual sense are necessary, if the work of political construction accomplished during the reign of Mutsuhito is not to become barren of results in the time of his immediate successors. This is the substance of a remarkable dispatch from its Tokio correspondent which The Times has summed up by asking: "Japan has solved many surface problems, and, during the past fifty years, has been born anew, but has she found her own soul?"

According to the correspondent, the material evolution of the past will continue into the future, but the spiritual evolution which is accompanying the material transformation of Old into New Japan will form the problem of the new era. It hs been frequently pointed out that Japan's ultimate success or failure will be measured by her ability to retain the best of her old traditions unchanged beneath the innovations she has introduced from Europe and America. In other words, her moral qualities, typified at their highest by the Code of Bushi, must remain the spirit of patriotism, unity, and devotion to the Throne, country, and family.

Hitherto Japan has been to the world the example par excellence of a disciplined nation. With this idea the educational system was laid down - a system which, as President Emeritus Eliot of Harvard recently remarked in the course of his short visit to Japan, endeavors to turn out pupils all alike, regardless of their individual capacities. With this idea the religion of Shintoism has been steadily fostered by the Government - a religion at the head of which stands the Emperor, and the only vital inspiration of which is loyalty.

"Yet it is evident to all observers," says the writer, "that the famous rescript, insisting on the old virtues of benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and filial piety, which was issued more than twenty years ago and read in all the schools throughout the country and committed to memory by most pupils, has failed to be a bulwark of national morality, as the authors intended.

"At the beginning of the present year there was a remarkable manifestation of the anxiety which prevails on this all-important question. Mr Tokonami, the Vice Minister of Home Affairs, a man of open mind, returned from Europe and America deeply impressed by the power which religion yields in the Occident, and equally impressed by the absence of any such spiritual factor in th elif eof Japan. He therefore sought for some remedy, and finally hit upon the idea of convoking a meeting of the representatives of Christianity, Shintoism, and Buddhism, with a view to their co-operation in the work of stimulating a moral sense in the people.

"These representatives duly met and passed resolutions in harmony with the purpose of their meeting. They resolved to appoint committees, and dispersed. Since then we have heard nothing of the conference, and rumours have been afloat that the whole scheme has succumbed to th einfluence of the military authorities and the somewhat reactionary Education Department. But the significance of this novel attempt at a solution of what may be called the spiritual problem of Japan remains."

After pointing out how the Emperor-worship in Shintoism is the most powerful force still operating in Japan, the correspondent continues: "In the Meiji Era, just concluded with the death of Mutsihito, the Emperor was the pivot of the discipline which characterized the old Japan. But even that pivot is now removed. The new Emperor [Yoshihito] is of a very different stamp. He was educated in the learning of the West and taught to speak foreign languages; he went to school with other boys, he has been used to going out among the people without formality, and his face is familiar to thousands. A great palace in the French style has been built fo him, though he has never occupied it, and his conjugal life is modelled on the European Standard.

"It is the characteristic of the changed times that, whereas the only photograph obtainable of the late Emperor was one taken probably twenty years ago, photographs of the new Emperor are many and excellent. And an omen of future changes may perhaps be seen in the present ruler's first innovation in Court etiquette, for he has decided already to break through immemorial custome by driving in the same carriage with his consort on his journeys to and from the imperial palace.

"In brief, the new Emperor does not constitute that link between modern and ancient Japan which was one of the secrets of his father's extraordinary hold upon the veneration of his people - a fact which is widely, if tacitly, recognized by the nation. It is doubtful whether, even if he wished to play the part of a demigod, he could do so. Thus with the death of the Emperor Mutsuhito an era has passed away in fact as well as in name. It is no longer that of "Meiji" or enlightenment, but that of "Taisho" or righteousness.

"It is said that in choosing this appellation no special stress was laid on its meaning, and yet one might be tempted to believe that the Privy Council pondered well before they selected it, for, to all appearances, the battle in the coming era will be for moral righteousness rather than for material enlightenment.

"It is a herculean task which awaits its statesmen - that of building a foundation for strong conviction and high ideals. to the foreign observer there is indeed something pathetic in the present strenuous search in Japan for a moral basis. One sees its sincerity in the very extravagance of some of the proposals solemnly put forth.

"There are those who seem to think it possible to build up a composite religion out of the best elements of all existing creeds, as a man might undertake to build a house composed of the best marbles obtainable in the world. There are those who apparently hold it to b eperfectly feasible to forc ethis down the throats of the populace like a patent pill.

"The discipline of the nation is still wonderful, but it may be doubted whether any modern nation can be disciplined into religion, and, moreover, from the economic standpoint it may be questioned whether, if Japan is to keep pace with the leading powers of the world, she will not have to relax her discipline in order that more scope may be given to individual initiative.

"Japan has surprised the world already by her material transfiguration. It may be that in the coming era she will surprise it by a spiritual transfiguration no less swift and complete. But that there is a bigger task before her than she ever yet attempted, and that she cannot shirk it, needs no demonstration"