GIVING HEARTS A NEW CHANCE
1
Casual, impermanent, or broken as these unions hitherto have been, their
cyclonic process of attraction and repulsion has created a suction
drawing in both good and evil. The white sailor and vagabond who
ravished the brown maiden never intended to father the consequences. But
gradually, as communication increased and mutual interests developed,
greater stability entered into the relations of the races. Marital
contracts became necessary and, from the point of view of property and
other acquisitions, even desirable. Readjustment of conceptions of sex
grew urgent. This entailed the complement, divorce.
From all corners of the world came people whose notions of man's
relations with woman were as divergent as the seas. The Japanese and
Chinese brought their Oriental attitude toward women; the American his
Occidental. Besides, with the passing of native control, European
nations superimposed European regulations upon the islands. We have,
then, the introduction of legalism into the casual affairs of the
tropics, and the vanishing of primitive license. We have the Japanese
woman, subject to the control of her husband, finding herself protected
by the laws of another race. These raise her status and her
self-respect. She rebels against unpleasant sex-unions. Divorce in these
conglomerate regions, therefore, means the idealization of sex, raising
it above the stage of animal possession and material interest; based
upon the sense of justice to woman, it recreates marriage, makes decent
unions possible.
Hence, in the wake of queer marriages we see even more queer divorces,
as though hearts, having become self-conscious, seek a new chance. As
age mellows racial associations, we find that men's hearts the world
over beat as one, and relationships which are at all compatible seek
permanency, if not "normalcy."
It was easy enough for a wanderer or a few hundred traders and romancers
to leave their imprint on the native races. It is another matter when
the native races are overwhelmed by a hundred thousand aliens of
twenty-odd races, and the work of amalgamation falls to the lot of the
white man. An altogether new problem manifests itself,--not only that of
bringing them together in a legal and permanent manner, but of
separating such types and individuals as cannot work for the betterment
of the new race.
Throughout the Pacific already reviewed, the mixture is as yet
essentially accidental and occasional. But in no spot in the Pacific has
the problem assumed such serious proportions as in Hawaii, where, added
to the great diversity of conglomerations, comes the factor of white and
Asiatic superiority in number. As we have seen, the infusion of this
flood of foreign blood into the thin native element has fairly swamped
it. This jungle of humanity seems at first sight utterly beyond cultural
purification. The streets throb with such multiplicity of little ways
that one feels bewildered. One has to snatch a sample of the life and
place it beneath the magnifying-glass of tradition and code to be able
to separate it from the whole. And that I did one day in Honolulu.
The sun was pouring down in veritable splutters of softness and
mellowness. It was warm in an all-embracing tenderness of warmth. To be
in the shade with another human being was here as unifying in spirit as
sitting before an open fire is on a blizzardy day in the North. And on
such a day I entered the court-room of Honolulu. The dusty tread of
people from every land has sounded across this court-house floor and
all the simple tragedies of life with their hoarse warnings have been
enacted within its walls. Hundreds of disappointed men and women have
come into that room hoping to have their lives straightened out, their
affections given a new chance.
When I entered, the court-room was empty. A massive Hawaiian looked in,
and walked away. Then a thin white man approached and, when he learned
what brought me, he sat down on one of the wooden benches to talk to me.
It was Judge William L. Whitney, who died in New York just recently.
Presently, an emaciated-looking Chinese entered and sat down to wait. A
small, wrinkled, sallow little woman from the Celestial Republic,
accompanied by a compatriot, came in after him, and seated herself a
little distance away. Then came the fat Hawaiian again who had peered in
earlier, and with that everything seemed in order. Judge Whitney left
me, approached the bench, and, though he wore only his ordinary street
clothes, he was forthwith crowned with the halo of his office.
The proceedings began. Proceedings in this case meant great round eyes
rolling in tremendous sockets, a tongue free with the dialects and
linguistics of every mixture, and a temperament free from ambition or
guile. The judge could speak no Chinese, the respondents could speak no
English, the witnesses (of whom two strayed in later) could speak
neither English nor Chinese,--and so among them the Hawaiian interpreter
had all the fun to himself. He was in reality the dispenser of justice.
The case was rehearsed. The Chinese was suing his wife for divorce.
"Where were you when you saw this man kiss your wife?" asked the judge.
The interpreter took up the question in Chinese as though the language
were part of his inheritance, and after the Chinese spoke, back came
the reply through the lips of the Hawaiian, but in the first person.
"I was in the garden. When I looked up into our bedroom I saw this man
kiss my wife."
The evidence was vague. To John Chinaman it meant more than a few facts,
for his wife had borne him no offspring. What a timid-daring attempt to
reach out for new life! At home he would just have dismissed her, but
here it was different. Yet from their appearance it was doubtful that
either of them would ever have the courage to try to live life over.
This was only one of the many entangled lives that came to be
straightened out in Hawaii. There are more than forty-seven different
combinations of races there, such as American and American, German
and German, Korean and Korean, Russian and Russian, Spanish-Marshall
and English, Half-Hawaiian and Chinese-Hawaiian, Hawaiian and
Chinese-Hawaiian, Hawaiian and Hawaiian-Portuguese, Chinese and
Chinese, Hawaiian and Hawaiian, Portuguese and Portuguese, Spanish
and Spanish, Spanish-Hawaiian and Spanish-Hawaiian, Portuguese and
Creole-Spanish-Portuguese, Chinese and Irish, American and
Half-Hawaiian, Portuguese and Pole, Half-Hawaiian and Half-Hawaiian,
American and Hawaiian-Chinese, English and Half-Hawaiian, Japanese and
American, American-Japanese and Japanese, Half-Hawaiian and German,
Portuguese and Hawaiian, German and Irish, Hawaiian-Chinese and
Spanish-Italian, Portuguese and Hawaiian-Chinese, Half-Hawaiian
and Spanish, Porto-Rican and Porto-Rican, Oginawa and Oginawa,
French-Porto-Rican and Porto-Rican, Swede and Portuguese, English and
English, Hawaiian and Chinese, American and French-Spanish, Portuguese
and Japanese, American-Portuguese and German-Irish, Portuguese-Hawaiian
and Portuguese, Portuguese and German-Irish, Portuguese-Hawaiian and
Portuguese, Portuguese-Irish and Hawaiian, Hawaiian and American-Negro,
Portuguese-Hawaiian-Chinese and Chinese. And I am certain that I can add
another, that of my New Zealand acquaintance and his Maori wife.
They are but one phase of the whole problem of the mixture of races and
the melting of their silvers and bronzes down to the human essence
within them. For there were in Judge Whitney's time on an average of two
hundred and thirty couples divorced under that ceiling every year.
Figures make human facts seem so remote that I hate to use them. As soon
as figures are quoted the individuals lose their identity. That which is
living and real becomes, as it were, an astronomical calculation and one
might as well talk of stars. But the figures of the divorces in Hawaii
are in themselves a living thing, as they interpret the life there more
than words could do; so I'll risk giving a few of the figures Judge
Whitney published while I was in Honolulu.
The Japanese contributed 49% of the divorces in Hawaii, though they
comprise only 34% of the population; the Americans, 7%, though they were
8% of the population. The rest were distributed among the other
nationalities. This is how those statistics compared with divorce
statistics in other countries. There were in England out of every
hundred thousand inhabitants, two divorces per year; in Austria, one; in
Norway, six; in Sweden, eight; in Italy, three; in Denmark, seventeen;
in Germany, twenty-three; and in France, the same; in the United States,
seventy-three; and in the island of Oahu (Honolulu), four hundred.
Hundreds of little folk, a host of children, have passed out of that
room either fatherless or motherless. Back in the lands which they might
have called home it would not have happened in just this way, or having
happened so, it would not have had the same tragic meaning. For in
Oriental countries fathers frequently put the mothers of their children
aside. Yet, somehow the tragedies do not fret and strut in such
distorted ways in lands where distortion is much more common, as in the
East. In most Oriental countries it is enough for a man to say his wife
talks too much and declare her divorced, but when he comes to the
half-way house, Hawaii, he must be cruel, extremely cruel to his wife
before the law will grant him a divorce. So he is "cruel" in a way he
may be sure will secure his freedom.
2
What the results of all these mixtures will be, no one can as yet tell,
but the consensus of opinion gives the Chinese-Hawaiian the prize for
superiority. However promiscuous other races may be, the Japanese seldom
stoops to conquer in that way. The maiden of Japan shares with the white
woman an aversion for these strangers in Hawaii, though the number of
Japanese women who marry white men is far greater than that of white
women marrying into any of the races in the Pacific.
One of the most prolific causes of divorce in Hawaii has been the
so-called "picture bride." Because of the exclusion of Asiatic laborers,
few Japanese and Chinese women have been born in the island. But because
of their preference for their own women, Japanese sent home for wives.
To get round the exclusion laws, they stretched the home process a bit,
selected by photograph the girls they wished, had themselves married by
proxy (a method recognized in Japan as legal), and then simply sent for
their "wives." Aside from the subsequent divorces which very frequently
ensued, there have been cases not without their humorous sides.
One story was told that must be accepted with caution.
Mr. Goto, who just a short while ago was Goto San, wants a wife. He sees
a go-between who secures for him the pictures of some girls of his own
district. He makes his selection and the process of marriage is
accomplished. With something little short of glee, he waits the maid's
arrival.
She comes. But alas, not alone! Mr. Goto waits with others at the pier.
Everybody is blessed but him. Chagrin and impatience battle in his
heart. Nearly everybody has been supplied with a wife. There are only
two women left. Neither seems to be the one he married. Goto
thinks,--thinks rapidly. Who will ever know the difference? He claims
the prettier; she accepts him, and off they dash on their honeymoon, à
la Occident, a two-day trip round the island of Oahu in a motor-car. And
never were nuptials more satisfactory.
In the meantime Fujimoto San comes rushing up pell-mell. His garage
business has kept him. He finds a lone girl, but she does not tally with
the reproduction he married. "Not so nice," is the first thought that
flashes across his brain. "Little too broad in the nose, lips thicker
than those on the photograph. Can I mistake?" But she is the only one
left. He bows at least a half-dozen times, bows clean over, half-way to
the ground, but alas! every time his head bobs up he sees the same
disheartening face, a face he never ordered, a face he cannot accept. He
must clear up the mystery. He calls the agent. Investigations reveal
that Goto was there ahead of him; so Fujimoto sets out on a chase after
the honeymoon pair. It ends in Honolulu two days later, and another
divorce case comes up in court.
The "picture bride" is now a thing of the past, as the Japanese
Government has agreed to deny her a passport in accordance with the
spirit of our treaty with Japan. From the point of view of immigration,
this may be a solution; but there is a phase of the problem of the
mixture of races in Hawaii I have never yet seen discussed,--that is,
the woman. In the case of the Japanese woman, much more than in that of
the man, entrance to Hawaii or America is freedom such as has never been
known before. At home she has been taught obedience and deference to
her husband. There are many others ready to accept that burden if she is
unwilling. But in Hawaii, where there are so many Japanese seeking wives
and where she moves among peoples whose standards are an inversion of
everything she has been taught to regard as virtuous and feminine, she
finds herself in an altogether different position. On the streets she
sees many white women treated with courtesy; in the courts women receive
even more sympathy than men,--to her an unheard-of thing. And so we find
that when all the divorces in the Hawaiian Islands have been tabulated,
these little timid creatures of Japan have been emboldened to the extent
of deserting their husbands in veritable shoals, making up 90% of the
entire number of Japanese divorces. It is a scramble for readjustment of
conjugal relations based on something nearer emotional equality.
But where do the Hawaiians come in? will be asked in all reason. They
are virtually no more. Of the entire race which at the time of their
discovery by Captain Cook numbered some 130,000 to 300,000, only a few
thousand are left. At the time of the annexation of Hawaii by America
(1898) there were some 31,000 Hawaiians of pure blood, or about 28% of
the population. Of Orientals there was about 42% of the population, with
24,400 Japanese and 21,600 Chinese. Then there were 15,191 Portuguese,
2,250 Britons, 1,437 Germans, 8,400 Americans, 1,479 Norwegians, French
and others combined. Already there were 8,400 part-Hawaiian. From the
rulers down there was a free mixture, even the queen had a white spouse.
Some of the best types of Hawaiian women had been married by men of fine
caliber, unlike almost any other place in the Pacific. The relationships
were of a permanent nature, for, as the governmental report in
connection with annexation stated:
The Hawaiians are not Africans, but Polynesians. They are brown,
not black. There has never been and there is not any color line in
Hawaii as against native Hawaiian, and they participate fully and
on an equality with the white people in affairs, political,
social, religious, and charitable. The two races freely intermarry
one with the other, the results being shown in a population of some
7,000 of mixed blood. They are a race which will in the future, as
they have in the past, easily and rapidly assimilate with and adopt
American ways and methods.
3
In defiance of prejudice, intermarriage between the races in the Pacific
is taking place. What the result is to be, no one as yet knows
definitely. The number of white men legalizing their relations with
native women is large. The tropics are veritable whispering-galleries
sounding the stories of men who have returned to keep their promises
even after they have been despatched from the islands under the
influence of the cup so as to prevent their marrying. In the
mid-Pacific, in the South Seas, in the Far East, white men are marrying
native women, even in cases where these have been their mistresses for
years.
In Japan, many leading white men have married Japanese women, among whom
the most celebrated has been Lafcadio Hearn. The list is long. In the
ports, many foreigners have married Japanese women, and though there is
a strong feeling against it socially, discrimination is not universal.
The French and the British are not nearly so fastidious in these matters
as are the Americans and the Japanese. Wherever there is outward
opposition, it comes from the Japanese side as well as from the white.
Japanese complain against discrimination here, but we are received with
no more open arms by them in Japan.
The girl from Japan coming to the West is by virtue of her immigration
alone to some extent emancipated; but to the white woman turning her
steps east there is only the emancipation, in part, from drudgery by
means of ample servants. To the white woman who goes a step farther and
links herself in marriage with a Japanese or Chinese there is in the
majority of cases only sorrow, soreness of heart, isolation, and regret.
It is not that she might not be happy with the individual Oriental, but
in the East she becomes part of a vicious family system that strangles
her individuality. Though the maid of Japan is not over-welcome in the
West, as the wife of a white man she comes into a higher plane of life.
By no means is that true in the case of the white woman in the East.
There are too many cases, still warm with regret, to be named in proof
of the statement. I have come across several cases of American girls who
had married Japanese and returned with them to Japan. They were content
enough with their husbands, but their position in the Japanese home was
intolerable. I remember the loneliness of a New York girl who had gone
to live in Kyoto. The contemptuous way in which some notable Japanese
looked at their countryman's white wife was only comparable to the
treatment she would have received here. The children, born in the same
labor, are not respected as are either "pure" Japanese or white. The
Eurasian is frequently disqualified. The white father regrets that his
children are not Aryan as did Lafcadio Hearn.
This is no attempt to make out a case for the mixture of natives and
white in the Pacific. There are not enough facts at hand. Unfortunately,
for the next few hundred years the differences between the peoples
living on the borders of the Pacific will continue to irritate, and
experiments in blood-mixture will probably be tried externally. I have
only mobilized such incidents as have come within my own personal
observation that will take the problem out of the cold, statistical
plane. It is with human flesh and blood, human hearts and affections,
human gropings and aspirations that we are dealing,--not with the
conflicts of imaginary hordes and with terrifying invasions.
To me, the human elements in Honolulu and throughout the Pacific remain
a memory of one perpetual stirring of sounds, colors, and desires. The
whole is not confusing, for it is outside one's consciousness. In a
sense it is an inverted world consciousness. Instead of nationals
thinking outward, they have come together and are thinking inward,
recognizing themselves as part of some whole. Eventually, after all the
races in the Pacific have been mixed more or less, or have proved
mixture impossible, they will find some way in which they can dwell at
one another's elbows without nudging. The mixture may even assume an
appearance of unity. The color scheme, like a thorough blending of all
the colors of the spectrum, may yet become white.