ATTEMPTS AT EMIGRATION: RESULTS
The history of Japanese emigration began only a few decades ago.
Immediately after the conclusion of treaties with the Western Powers many
Japanese youths were sent abroad to acquire advanced Occidental knowledge.
A number of adventurous persons and travelers also knocked at the doors of
western countries, but they were not immigrants. Real immigration movement
did not start until the facts of other countries became more or less
known; until the colossal task of economic and social "revolutions" was
well started; until the influence of European imperialism began to take
root in the empire. Then came a brief period of "emigration fever" towards
the end of the eighties, lasting some twenty years. What follows is a
brief history of the various attempts made by Japanese to emigrate into
different countries, and the results of the experiment.
Australia.
Because of the geographical proximity and alluring temptations that the
vast uncultivated lands and rich natural resources presented, Australia
was the place which early attracted the Japanese. A few hundreds of them
began to migrate to several colonies, chiefly to Queensland, New South
Wales, and Victoria. But they soon found the conditions exceedingly
uncomfortable, owing to the hostile feeling already prevalent there
against the Asiatics. The Australian fear of an influx of Asiatic races
was early aroused by Chinese immigrants, who, as early as 1848, attained a
sufficient number to cause agitation and race riots in several colonies.
These colonies subsequently enacted rigorous anti-Asiatic immigration laws
restricting the number of immigrants admitted per annum to a few hundred.
Since then, filled with the fear, real or imaginary, of a menace of
Asiatic inundation from across the equator, where one-half of the planet's
population live congested on one-tenth of the total area of the earth, the
great task of Australia during the last sixty years has been to keep the
country clear of Asiatics.
The immigration policy of the Commonwealth of Australia presents perhaps
the most clear-cut and radical example of racial discrimination. While, on
the one side, she spares neither effort nor money to attract and welcome
white settlers, on the other side she leaves no stone unturned to exclude
all Asiatic immigrants. With an immensely large area--about 50,000 square
miles more extensive than that of the United States--yet almost untouched,
and a population less than that of the City of New York, Australia really
needs farmers, artisans, and all other classes of people. It is the
function of the Commonwealth Department of Home and Territories to
advertise in Europe, through lectures, films, exhibitions, and posters,
for the purpose of inviting laborers and settlers to Australia. Each State
of the Commonwealth has extended assistance in money and privilege to
hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. The cause for lamentation by
the government is that with all this effort and sacrifice she has not been
successful in getting any considerable number of people as settlers.
Unsuccessful in attracting white settlers, she has been most successful in
repelling the yellow race. She has an immigration law which requires
immigrants to pass a dictation test--a test in writing of not less than
fifty words of a European language--which is dictated to them by an
officer. Examination in a European language for the Asiatics! And what is
more, the Europeans are exempt from it. The law provides, furthermore,
that Asiatic immigrants may be required to pass a test at any time within
two years after they have entered the Commonwealth. Even for the
reception of those Asiatics who have been lawfully admitted, some of the
States, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, and Tasmania in
particular, do not allow them the right of owning or leasing land, under
the pretext that they are not eligible to citizenship. The Commonwealth of
Australia does not extend the right of naturalization to Asiatics. No
wonder, then, that there is only a handful of Orientals in that vast
country--35,000 Chinese and some 5000 Japanese.
Canada.
Until recent years, no record was kept of the number of Japanese
immigrants arriving in Canada and consequently the development of the
movement cannot be accurately traced. The Canadian census of 1901 shows
that 4674 persons born in Japan were in the Dominion at that time; 4415
were in the Province of British Columbia, the rest being scattered in the
Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. After that year the
number of Japanese immigrants coming to Canada gradually increased, and
when the United States placed restrictions on the influx of Japanese from
Hawaii, and the latter began to seek entrance into Canada, the number grew
considerably and soon caused serious concern to the people of Western
Canada. It was estimated that in 1907 the Japanese domiciled in Canada
had reached eight thousand. Determined opposition soon arose among the
western provinces, and protests were sent by the Canadian Government to
Hawaii and Tokyo requesting them to control the sudden immigration tide.
An agreement was reached in 1908 between Japan and Canada by which the
number of passports to be granted in any one year to Japanese emigrating
to Canada was limited to four hundred. In this way the question was
satisfactorily settled.
Canada's treatment of the Asiatic races lawfully admitted has been marked
by leniency. She has extended to the Orientals the privilege of
naturalization and of securing homesteads. Even in British Columbia, the
center of anti-Oriental agitation, the Japanese and Chinese are permitted
to conduct business and cultivate land on an equal basis with British
subjects in Canada. They may own land, both urban and rural, and in
provinces other than British Columbia they are entitled to voting
privileges when naturalized; only in that province the Orientals are not
allowed to cast ballots, though free to become citizens. It is reported
that there are 13,823 Japanese residing in Canada to-day, engaged in
fishing and logging and sawmill industries, as well as in agriculture.
South America.
For some years past a number (about six thousand) of Japanese immigrants
has been sent every year to Brazil in compliance with the request of the
Republic. They have been mostly engaged on coffee plantations in Sao
Paulo. The colonization is still in an experimental stage, and it is a
little premature to forecast its future at this time. Altogether about
twenty thousand Japanese immigrants have gone to the South American
Republic.
The United States.
Perhaps attracted by the wonderful stories of the discovery of gold in the
Sacramento Valley, or possibly cast ashore in boats on the Pacific Coast
of America, there seem to have lived in the early sixties in California
about a hundred Japanese. Early California papers record the story of
quaint-looking Japanese settlers, who were received with great favor.
Although accurate records are lacking, it would seem that the number of
Japanese did not begin to increase until the late eighties, when a few
hundred began to come in every year. The census of 1890 reported the
number of Japanese residents as 2039. From that time on the number of
immigrants steadily increased, reaching the highest mark in 1907, when
about ten thousand of them entered continental America in one year.[5]
The direct incentive for Japanese emigration was furnished by a few large
emigration companies,[6] which were formed with a view to supplying
contract labor to Hawaii and America, where the demand for labor was
insatiable. In the former case, the rapid growth of the sugar plantations
demanded a large supply of cheap labor. In the latter case, the need for
cheap labor was urgent, due to the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Law
in 1882, which soon began to effect a decrease in the number of Chinese
laborers, resulting in a dearth of labor on the farms and in railroad
work. It was in response to the urgent demand of capitalists and
landowners in Hawaii and America for Japanese labor that the emigration
companies sprang into existence with the object of facilitating the
complex process of immigration.
The Japanese coolies so brought in were welcomed and prosperous--at least
for a while. Their industry and frugality won them the confidence of their
employers. In agriculture, in railroad-building, in mining and fishing,
they proved useful hands. They saved money and remitted to their native
country a considerable portion of it. Some of them returned home with a
fortune and a degree of refinement which a superior environment could
bestow upon a laborer. These incidents stimulated the desire of ambitious
Japanese to leave for and work in California and Hawaii, and the number of
applicants for emigration greatly multiplied.
In the meantime, between 1895 and 1900, changes had taken place in the
attitude of the people of California toward the Japanese. For various
reasons the friendly feeling of the Californians was gradually replaced by
a more or less hostile sentiment. It so happened that just about this time
California was the stage for a struggle between organized labor and
capital. It was with a great deal of effort and sacrifice that the
organized labor of California succeeded in excluding the Chinese coolies.
But their hard-won victory was shattered to pieces by the advent of
Japanese laborers, whom capital, taking advantage of their ignorance of
American customs and language, wisely utilized as a powerful weapon to
defeat the unions. To the union men it made no difference whether the
strike-breakers were Chinese or Japanese; whether strike-breaking was
voluntarily or unwittingly performed; they were enemies just the same.
The cry for exclusion was a natural consequence.
Then there also seems to be some truth in the report[7] made in 1908 by W.
L. Mackenzie King, the Deputy Minister of the Government of Canada, which
states that it is suspected that much of the anti-Japanese agitation in
California was deliberately fermented by the interests of the Planters'
Association of Honolulu, who, alarmed by the tendency of Japanese laborers
engaged on the sugar plantations to seek work on the Pacific Coast of
America, where wages were much better, started a campaign to check the
exodus by causing ill feeling toward the Japanese along the Pacific Coast.
The report states in part:
It is believed ... that the members of the Asiatic Exclusion League in
San Francisco were not without contributions from the Association's
incidental expense fund, to assist them in an agitation which by
excluding Japanese from the mainland would confine that class of labor
to the islands, to the greater economic advantage of the members of
the Association.[8]
For these two chief reasons, and perhaps for many other minor ones, there
arose the persistent social movement for Japanese exclusion in
California, which first took definite shape in 1900, when a mass-meeting
held at San Francisco for the express purpose of more rigidly excluding
the Chinese, adopted a resolution urging Congress to take measures for the
total exclusion of Japanese other than members of the Diplomatic Staff.
Following this came the first of the anti-Japanese messages delivered by
the Governor of California, and of the resolutions voted on by the State
Legislature calling upon Congress to extend the Chinese Exclusion Law to
other Asiatics. The climax of the movement was reached when, immediately
after the earthquake, the Board of Education of San Francisco passed the
"separate school order," and Japan protested. A series of diplomatic
negotiations followed, which finally resulted in the repeal of the school
discriminatory order and the conclusion of the "Gentlemen's Agreement,"
whereby Japan pledged herself to restrict the number of immigrants to the
United States.
Leaving to a later chapter the detailed discussion of the result which the
"Gentlemen's Agreement" has brought about in the status of Japanese
immigration, it will suffice to mention here that the agreement has
faithfully and loyally been carried out by Japan, and that since then the
Japanese problem has in fact ceased to be an immigration issue.
Results.
Twenty years of emigration attempts, chief of which we reviewed in this
chapter, have resulted in failure in every case, and Japan's effort to
plant her race in other lands has proved futile. There are many causes for
this failure, for which Japan is partially, but not wholly, responsible.
But this is a matter which we shall more fully discuss in the next
chapter. Excluded and maltreated wherever they went, the Japanese returned
home with shattered hopes and wounded feelings, and the mooted question of
population once more confronted them with intensified severity. Giving up
as entirely hopeless the attempt at settling in places where the white
races held supremacy, they now appear to have made up their minds to
migrate towards the north, where climatic and economic disadvantages,
together with political revolution in Eastern Europe, have freed the land
temporarily from the strong white grip, offering the line of least
resistance for Japanese.