Chapter 3
Culprits and Gentlemen
The Legitimation of Class Differences in Meiji Emigration Policy, 1891-1908

In April 1891 two ships, the Remus and Pemptos, arrived on the Pacific shores of the United States carrying, respectively, fifty-three and twenty-two "low class and densely ignorant" Japanese men and women. The Japanese consulate in San Francisco, alarmed at the adverse publicity and embarrassed by accusations that the Japanese were not adhering to the congressional contract labor laws of 1885, sent two offensive clippings from U.S. newspapers to the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and exhorted the government to act quickly and decisively to limit emigration to the United States.^[1] The U.S. government had strengthened contract labor laws in March 1891 by authorizing special Treasury Department agents to patrol coastal cities and turn back the onslaught of what the U.S. press called "dirty Japanese."^[2] The American legal advisor to the Japanese legation in Washington warned that the Remus and Pemptos had brought a different class of Japanese to the United States "in comparatively large numbers . . . induced to leave Japan by hope of improving their condition . . . not from open port . . . but from remote parts of the interior."^[3] He demanded that immediate action be taken against persons who "lure Japanese away under false promises" and that the punishment should be "prompt and severe."

A year later the San Francisco consulate, still besieged by "loud . . . adverse comments" in the U.S. press and not getting satisfactory results from the Tokyo government, sent a telegram begging that strict restrictions be placed on the number of laborers emigrating to the United States.^[4] The government sent copies of the consulate's communication to the governor of each ken and fu and dispatched special confidential

letters to the governors of Hiroshima-, Wakayama-, and Kumamoto-ken, the three southwestern ken supplying the most emigrants.^[5] The correspondence called upon the vigorous enforcement of emigration restrictions. Year after year, reports, instructions, and requests for advice made their way back and forth across the Pacific, together with clippings from U.S. newspapers condemning the "slave trade," "prostitution," and "contract laborers" as well as consular reports on anti-Japanese harangues by U.S. labor leaders, "Oriental" exclusion advocates, and their fellow travelers.

Scholars of Japanese-U.S. relations at the turn of the century have concentrated on the anti-Japanese climate in California, American racism, Theodore Roosevelt's role as a maker of foreign policy, and the details of the U.S.-Japanese diplomatic correspondence of 1907-1908 leading to the Gentlemen's Agreement.^[6] In explaining Japan's role, these scholars devoted more attention to governmental leadership and the development of foreign policy than to the domestic measures that augmented foreign policy—measures that belie the widespread assumption that the United States "victimized" Japan. In the context of foreign relations, Japan indeed could be considered the victim, but in the context of its political, military, and industrial aspirations, its actions concerning emigration to the continental United States also signified a keen sense of independence and timing, a wish to convey a positive self-image to the West. Its emigration policy represented more than mere acquiescence to U.S. demands.

From 1891 to 1924, the period of Japanese immigration to the United States prior to World War II, the correspondence among agencies of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and local governments as well as with U.S. federal, state, and city governments continued to express the tone established in the early 1890s. The Japanese were earnest and conciliatory with the Americans, insistent, querulous, and arbitrary with each other; the Americans were complaining but tolerant and paternal toward the Japanese. The Japanese government acted in response to U.S. actions. The focus of both governments' attention was the meager number of Japanese nationals who disembarked in the port cities or made their way to the western United States. Indeed, whereas close to 30 million people came from Europe between the Civil War and 1924, the Japanese immigrant population at its height constituted a mere 0.1 percent of the U.S. population.^[7]

In analyzing Japanese immigration it is important to bear in mind the world roles of the United States and Japan, particularly in East

Asia—always in the background, always behind the official pronouncements and statements on immigration. Japanese immigration to the United States was unique during this period in that the relationship between the two countries, ranging from amity to anxiety, played a major part in defining exactly who was an immigrant. The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907-1908 and the National Origins Act of 1924—the former a promise by Japan to restrict emigration, the latter an exclusion by the U.S. government—were culminations of the immigration controversy. They not only explicitly dictated government actions toward Japanese immigrants but also implicitly illustrated the power relationship between the two countries. Immigration was merely an issue, a tool used by both the United States and Japan to clarify their stands in the world and with each other until its termination in 1924. Although the countries' hierarchical relationship to each other remained the same, their positions with respect to the rest of the world went through qualitative change.

In 1891, when the Remus and Pemptos arrived, the United States and Japan were still young nations in the world of modern imperialistic belligerence, keenly cognizant of areas outside of their borders. The United States had manifested its destiny in the Caribbean and the Pacific and made secure its territory in North America; Japan prepared for an embroilment on the Asian continent in as early as 1873, when the Satsuma fanatics sought to invade Korea (the same year the government established conscription), and attacked Taiwan in 1874. As industrializing countries, both sought to forge empires, take advantage of advancements in technology, establish markets for their goods, secure raw materials for their factories, offer credit to their friends, and assert power over the weak. By the time World War I broke out, both countries had already experienced victories and acquired new territories and were on the threshold of assuming new roles in relation to the established powers, which were to emerge from the war debilitated and in debt.^[8] These developments defined the parameters of foreign policy relations between the two nations as exemplified by the stance each took in the famous immigration controversy at the turn of the century.

Seeking to participate as an equal in the Western capitalist world, between 1891 and 1909 Japan took measures to regulate emigration to the continental United States, whether directly or via Hawaii, Canada, or Mexico. The government determined that only people worthy of representing a growing, imperial East Asian nation be approved for travel to the United States. They should not be "low class" or "densely

ignorant." Japan eventually settled on a policy in 1908 that officially separated Japanese travelers into two specific passport categories: hi-imin (nonmigrant) and imin (migrant).^[9] The manner in which the nation devised the hi-imin/imin policy sheds light on a neglected yet highly significant dimension of U.S.-Japanese relations.

Hi-imin was a new term designating a person who neither was a laborer nor intended to engage in labor once in the United States. The label served to differentiate students, professionals, merchants, clerks—people with ostensibly respectable class background, education, and status—from imin, the laborers. Although theoretically hi-imin did not intend to settle permanently in the United States, there were hi-imin who became permanent settlers and therefore could be considered emigrants. The literal translation of the terms into English creates confusion as to the specificity of the categories, for they were not cut and dried and gave rise to some ambiguities. The attempts by the Japanese government to issue passports only to hi-imin proved unworkable in the long run, for human ingenuity and error overrode any rules and regulations. In addition, there was no guarantee that hi-imin who were not employed by a Japanese firm or the government or enrolled in an American educational institution would engage only in nonlaboring occupations, become students, or remain temporarily in the United States. Prejudice in the United States, anxiety, and discouragement effectively diminished their original intentions and status.

The concept of hi-imin began evolving in the last decade of the nineteenth century, when Japanese laborers first entered the United States. It can be traced to the Chinese, who utilized it beginning in 1882, when the United States passed its first exclusion act against Chinese laborers.^[10] Thereafter the U.S. government allowed entry only to Chinese whom the Chinese government certified as "other than laborers." The Japanese government, acutely aware that the United States could subject its citizens to the same treatment, worked to initiate its own restrictive action and avoid being subject to the exclusionary actions of a foreign power. Convinced and satisfied that its military, industrial, and political capacities surpassed China's, Japan made it known to U.S. officials that individuals who received passports to go to the United States were not of the "lowly Chinese" type—they were citizens of a rising competitor nation.^[11] Furthermore, from the Japanese government's standpoint, the wave of emigration to the United States never assumed the major economic and political importance of the imperialist push into East Asia.^[12] Japan's main object in its relationship with the United States was to maintain friendliness while carrying out that push.

In order to live up to its new world role and to guarantee that its citizens properly represented it as a modern nation, the Japanese government issued a series of laws to regulate the emigration of individuals to the United States. Publications for emigrants to the United States consistently stressed that only solid and honest individuals who believed in "family," who could call their wives and children to join them and thereby help foster good Japanese-U.S. relations, should be encouraged to go.^[13] They should not exhibit the behavior of the earlier, "animal-like" emigrants to the United States, who "picked their teeth, picked their noses, scratched their heads, and undressed in public."^[14] These were the habits of the "lazy" residents from the provinces, who "work one day and take off three, work three days and take off a week."^[15] Emigrants must be prepared to behave in a "Western" manner and strive to "fit into American society."

We must seek to avoid clashes with customs. By striving to assimilate with white people social relationships can be moderated. If our compatriots desire individual success, they must forget that they are Japanese. . .. [I]f not, we will be treated as the Hawaiian Japanese immigrant and have to endure the shame of being called "Jap" from morning to night.^[16]

The government's first statutory step regarding emigrants was the Imin hogokisoku (Emigrant protection ordinance) of 1894, a measure that, with minor changes, became the Imin hogoho^[*] (Emigrant protection law) of 1896.^[17] Earlier, all travel had been subject to the Kaigai ryokenkisoku (Overseas passport ordinance) of 1878, which vested authority over passport applications in the Foreign Ministry and in government officials at the separately administered open-treaty ports.^[18] A year after enactment of the Imin hogoho^[*] , a revised overseas passport ordinance transferred that responsibility to the ken and fu administrators, who were directed to review the travel requests of "those who go abroad (other than to China and Korea) for the purpose of labor."^[19] The language in the Imin hogoho^[*] regulated the actions of emigrant agents, or imin toriatsukainin, who were defined as all "individuals and businesses who engaged in the recruiting of and securing passage for laborers to go abroad." U.S. immigration reports complained that the imin toriatsukainin had sent laborers as "steerage passengers" to the United States.^[20] In addition, they had operated loosely and in some cases fraudulently by providing passports and promises of employment in the United States to Japanese agricultural laborers, convincing many "to sell everything they had in the world to pay their passage across the Pacific."^[21]

The new law required agents to have a license from the local ken or fu administrative office, which also had to approve all agreements with imin. An agent had to deposit 10,000 yen to guard against nonfulfillment of the agreement or to provide return passage or financial aid in the United States if needed.^[22] Agents' fees were not to exceed amounts established by the government, and they were prohibited from receiving gifts of money or goods. The local administrators were responsible for limiting the activities and number of emigrant agents and companies as well as preventing abuses of the law.

Though issued for the purpose of "emigrant protection" and not specifically forbidding laborers from emigrating, the law established financial requirements for those wishing to go abroad. The requirements frequently went unobserved, however. Ironically, it was the detailed nature of the law that made infractions possible.^[23] In fact, an emigration publication of 1902 advised would-be imin that passport practices differed in the forty-three ken and three fu, prompting some ingenious individuals to move to another area or to change their honseki to ken where their applications would be approved more readily.^[24] Others achieved the same goal by entering into marriages of convenience with people already holding required passports, changing names, forging documents, stealing, or acquiring travel papers from relatives, friends, acquaintances, or middlemen who provided them for a fee. It is significant that the number of emigration companies increased considerably following the promulgation of the Imin hogoho^[*] .^[25] Innkeepers, sailors, captains of ships, outfitters, ticket agents, labor recruiters, and a wide array of imin toriatsukainin were ready to accept handouts in exchange for passage (or, in many cases, empty promises), even though the law specifically forbade bribes. Unsuspecting victims would be swindled into paying exorbitant sums for passports or passage, traveling to Kobe or Yokohama to wait in boardinghouses they could ill afford for boats that never came. Horror stories abounded of scalpers and cheats accumulating money from imin. The sums that could be gained through such infractions tended to make trivial the most punitive article in the Imin hogoho^[*] .

The current of imin and profits flowed back and forth across the Pacific.^[26] In early 1900 the foreign minister apprised his officers in the Commerce Section that the Northern Railway Company and the Oriental Trading Company had negotiated an agreement to import 2,500 Japanese laborers into the United States.^[27] Transmigration from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland, denounced and partially cut off by the

United States in 1907, provided another source of imin, and others came via British Columbia and Mexico.^[28] Another group of emigrants, loosely called jiyu-imin^[*] (free emigrants) to differentiate them from imin under contract, also journeyed to America, sometimes with the help of the emigration companies but more often by accumulating financial means independently.^[29] With newly scheduled routes to Seattle and San Francisco, the Nippon Yusen^[*] Kaisha (NYK) and the Toyo^[*] Kisen Kaisha became formidable competitors of the U.S.-owned Pacific Mail Steamship Line, Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company, and Northern Pacific Steamship Company. NYK made an auspicious start by monopolizing (ironically, with Japanese government sanction) emigrant transportation rights to Hawaii and became the leading trans-Pacific passenger line.^[30] Third-class fare to San Francisco, which was $46 in 1895, dropped to $25 in 1903 and increased only slightly to $30 in 1906.^[31] Everywhere along the way, from the towns and villages the imin left to the farms and work camps in the United States, intermediaries of every conceivable variety made a few dollars, some a few hundred dollars or more.^[32] The number of passports issued for travel to the mainland United States steadily increased, from 1,764 in 1896 to 10,562 in 1900. Laborers constituted 62 percent of the total in 1896 and 84 percent in 1900.^[33] Thus, while officialdom attempted to curb the emigrant trade, economic factors spurred it to expand.

Alarmed that the "right kind of people" were not going to the United States, the Japanese government ordered on August 2, 1900, that "a total ban on the travel of all imin to North America and Canada be enforced temporarily."^[34] Periodically it communicated with ken and fu officials to reiterate the ban and directed its consuls in the United States and Canada to "exercise strict control" over individuals who "emigrated with the intent of engaging in labor" or who assumed "designations other than laborers."^[35] In order to frustrate imin attempts to move to ken where passport applications could be approved more easily, the government limited the issuance of travel permissions to persons who had lived in a particular ken or fu for more than six months. As a consequence, the emigration figures for laborers to the United States shrank considerably. In 1901 the government issued only 1,986 passports, less than 19 percent of the 10,562 it had issued in 1900.^[36] During the next half-decade laborers received only 6 to 7 percent of all passports issued to Japanese individuals destined for the United States. Then a reversal set in, with the ratio of laborers rising dramatically to 20 percent in 1905 and steadily climbing until 1908.^[37] The government

realized that unless it explicitly defined who qualified for the category of "other than laborers," imin would continue to obtain passports for travel to the United States.

In July 1904 Foreign Affairs Vice Minister Chinda Sutemi sent a confidential communication to the governor of Hokkaido^[*] , the chief of the Tokyo metropolitan police, and the ken and fu governors.^[38] Citing the August 1900 ban on the travel of laborers, he criticized its "unintentional effect" on "authentic merchants, students, and other useful nonlaborers," which impeded "the promotion of overseas trade." In order for merchants and students to have flexibility, the government would have to establish and strictly control criteria for travel. According to Chinda, there were four categories of legitimate nonlaborers, or hirodosha^[*] : those engaged in commerce; students; individuals wishing to go to the United States to study its commerce, industry, and agriculture; and those with "special authorization" from the government. All travelers had to have sufficient funds, at least eleven years of education or appropriate technical training, employment prospects as clerks or technicians in commercial houses, and fluency in English.^[39] Wives and minor children of imin already in the United States were included among those allowed to emigrate.

Although the definitions seemed explicit enough, they were still subject to interpretation. Japan needed a degree of flexibility so it could send people abroad to acquire skills, technical information, and business know-how and to gain experience in negotiating, selling, buying, and living in the West. Numerous inspection teams, including representatives from a variety of governmental bureaus, trade associations, business firms, manufacturing concerns, scientific groups, educational institutions, dairy farm associations, and transportation agencies, journeyed across the Pacific to learn firsthand the basis of U.S. wealth and prestige. Knowledge acquired through foreign travel would help prepare Japanese nationals to assume the positions of the many highly paid foreign technicians in Japan. As a result, laborers continued to acquire passports to the United States simply by stating that their objectives for travel were business or education. In November 1905 Chinda circulated another memorandum regarding student applicants and warned that officials were being too lax;^[40] they must verify that applicants attesting to having ample educational funds used those funds, "without question, for the pursuit of knowledge." However, Chinda emphasized that all bona fide students be given every "convenience and accommodation" in keeping with the concept of unrestricted travel for "civilized" individuals and scholars.

Chinda's memos revealed the government's dilemma. It had no objection to the restriction of imin emigration. The problem was how to devise a foolproof method of differentiating between imin and hi-imin. Who would be responsible for implementing the policy—Japan or a foreign government? In the case of the latter, Japanese leaders were determined not to undergo the humiliation of the Chinese, who had to abide by "incredibly elastic" U.S.-defined barriers.^[41] Pride and necessity dictated that the decision and action rest with Japan, not the United States. The Americans were aware of this, for as early as 1892 a U.S. diplomat to Japan told his superiors that the Japanese feared exclusion laws and would "seek to keep their laborers from going where they [were] not welcome."^[42] In 1899 the commissioner of immigration in San Francisco wrote approvingly of the Japanese government's intention to investigate the character of the emigrants because they were "an index of the nation at home."^[43]

Another significant factor in Japan's thinking was strategic. Given the political drama unfolding in East Asia, it was important that good relations be maintained with the United States. The Russo-Japanese War cost significantly more than the Sino-Japanese War, and the nation was faced with increasing military expenses, territorial acquisitions to develop, and a worrisome balance-of-payment problem. Foreign borrowing was considerable and used primarily to buy materials and equipment for industry and armaments.^[44] Japan needed time and was in no position to defy the United States. It therefore sought to restrict imin emigration.

In February 1907 Japan took the initiative to remove "the feeling of irritation" and advised U.S. officials that it desired to enter into "some arrangement on the subject."^[45] It was clear that the government's main concern was to curb imin emigration. In November U.S. Ambassador Thomas J. O'Brien proposed that all Japanese in the United States be required to register at the nearest Japanese consular office within one year of their arrival or be deported.^[46] Reflecting the "precise attitude" of the secretary of state, the communication directed the Japanese government to keep tabs on its citizens in the United States and to ensure that they did not engage in labor.

A month later the Japanese government responded, calling the U.S. proposal impractical and unfair.^[47] Excluding Hawaii, Foreign Minister Hayashi Tadasu pointed out, there were more than 100,000 Japanese scattered in consular districts covering "several hundred miles" in the United States, and the consular offices had little knowledge of their whereabouts. A large number of them surely would fail to register on

time. Legal and peaceful residents, he protested, must not be subjected to "indignity and humiliation" and an "intolerable amount of injustice" comparable to the "rigorous measures of personal examination and vexatious identification as on the occasion of entry." He characterized the ineffectiveness of the Japanese ban on laborers as "partial," suggesting that it was "not so complete a failure" as the U.S. ambassador claimed. Mistakes, which were "natural and inevitable," were attributable to "inexperience . . . not to wilful dereliction of duty."

This situation had to be remedied, of course, but Hayashi denied that American laborers on the Pacific Coast had suffered because of unfair Japanese competition. In fact, Americans received wages "nowhere higher than there." Hayashi pointed out that even when the Japanese immigration figures were at their highest, the U.S. figures were overblown, surpassing those of Japan, which included laborers going in the "guise of merchants or students." In fact, he said, the annual number of Japanese immigrants "never, at its greatest flood, equalled . . . the number of immigrants who frequently enter in one day at the port of New York." As for anti-Japanese attacks by U.S. citizens, Hayashi stated: "The domestic control and restriction of emigrants are purely administrative functions, and confer no power upon the Japanese government to agree in advance that the evasion of such control and restriction at home, or in violation of similar laws or registration abroad, shall deprive the culprit of the protection guaranteed to him by treaty." Hayashi was not about to ignore any U.S. infringement of the international agreement. It was the responsibility of the U.S. government to give fair and equal treatment to "culprits."

Hayashi's oversolicitous regard for Japanese subjects in the United States served notice that Japan was a newly emergent and independent power in East Asia. The tone of the communication was not apologetic but straightforward, asserting that Japan sought a solution to the problem of imin emigration and that U.S. suggestions of Japan's failure were exaggerated. However, Hayashi also took care to express the nation's willingness to listen to U.S. demands, a position that skillfully juggled two contradictory stances. It was both assertive and acquiescent. More important, his use of the word "culprits" to indicate imin indicated that the Japanese government shared the U.S. prejudice against laborers as less than equal members of society and had no qualms about unequivocally eliminating their travel. Viewed in this light, Hayashi's altruistic defense of his citizens becomes an empty gesture. The imin issue was merely a tool used in achieving broader foreign policy goals.

Reinforcing such a view was the Japanese government's internal correspondence, which, in comparison to its correspondence with the United States, displayed a notable lack of regard for imin. Reports, correspondence, orders, memoranda—all insisted that labor emigrants be barred from leaving for the United States. Japanese representatives in the United States pleaded with the Foreign Ministry to stop the flow, and the Foreign Office issued to its consular officials numerous orders that were strikingly similar in content. The officials were "not to grant passports" and "not to recognize valid passports" and should "detail an official to the Mexican-U.S. border." However, no measure was comprehensive enough, and imin continued to make their way to the United States.

On February 18, 1908, one year after Hayashi's initial letter stating that Japan wished to come to "some arrangement" on the subject of imin, Hayashi acceded to the U.S. demand for registration of Japanese citizens, although here again his tone was conciliatory but authoritative, cooperative but somewhat conditional.

[T]he Imperial Government . . . are averse to adding to the obligations already incumbent on such Japanese subjects another obligation, which might under easily supposable circumstances work unmerited hardship. At the same time they fully realize the value of frank and harmonious cooperation . . . [and] will establish a system of registration as soon as practicable. . .. [W]hile no effort will be spared to make the registration as complete as possible, the Imperial Government will not consider that the absence of registration constitutes a reason for the forfeiture of residential rights.^[48]

He agreed to the United States's demands for registration of Japanese citizens because it seemed "one of the most effective means of preventing fraud" and "the strongest safeguard of the rights" of merchants or students who were forced to resort to labor "through some unanticipated misfortune." Hayashi's decision reflected Japan's desire to avoid rupturing the "traditional friendship" between the two nations. A year earlier the Berlin press had forecast an international crisis between Japan and the United States, and in 1907 talk of war had begun to circulate freely in U.S. newspapers. Sources of the rumors were placed variously in Germany, France, and the White House.^[49] In mid-1907 the White House had announced the forthcoming cruise of the U.S. Pacific fleet in Asian waters. Japanese reactions were many, but pragmatic considerations limited the government's options. Japan was not in a position to

confront the United States militarily, and in March 1908 it extended an invitation to the fleet as a gesture of friendship.^[50]

In this atmosphere, the registration system was formally established by law in May 1909, a little over a year after Hayashi's initial agreement to the U.S. proposal.^[51] Theoretically, the Japanese government now had the means to oversee and make an official accounting of its citizens in the United States. New arrivals had to register at the Japanese consulate within seven days. A passport, or koseki (household registry), and one or more witnesses were needed to verify identification. Registration entitled individuals to a certificate of residency. Those failing to register could be denied a certificate, though the consequences of not having one were not specified. Citizens already resident had to register by September of the following year.

Before the system was established, the Japanese government calculated the number of emigrants to the United States from the number of passports issued. Persons not leaving Japan within six months after being issued a passport had to return it.^[52] Once abroad, each citizen had to reregister with the consular office every ten years, although available evidence does not indicate that this was done with regularity. The system was most effective in recording those who left and later returned to Japan. It did not provide a rigorous means of accounting for citizens in the United States.^[53]

As Hayashi had predicted in his memorandum, the registration system proved difficult to implement. The government sent detailed instructions to its consulates in the United States and Canada regarding the system's execution: recording information on cards for each individual; filing according to honseki; color-coding for males and females; writing names in Japanese and Roman characters; providing space for changes of address.^[54] The consulates wrote the Foreign Ministry requesting advice on various significant questions as well as matters of bureaucratic detail: "What happens to those who are away or busy and cannot register?"; "Aren't Japanese nationals being denied nationality if a certificate is not issued to nonregistrants?"; "Please authorize the consular office to purchase additional filing cabinets." The New York consul complained that Japanese citizens could not be located and that Japanese steamship companies should be asked to provide information on ticket sales. The San Francisco consul sent a clipping from a local Japanese-language newspaper criticizing the process, noting that the only people registering were those desiring to travel again and those of draft age who could avoid conscription in Japan by going abroad and

registering annually.^[55] The article also denounced the Japanese Association of America (which was organized in part to aid the government in the registration drive), claiming that one emigrant was denied a certificate unless he paid a fee to the association.^[56] Because the regulations stipulated that an organization "designated by the Consulate" could serve as a witness for registrants, membership in the association became an unstated prerequisite for any applicant. Nonmembers had to be sponsored by two association-appointed witnesses. From the available evidence it is impossible to determine the success of the registration process or the percentage of registered individuals, but doubtless it was a thankless task for officials and a bothersome one for citizens.

After almost eighteen years, the Japanese government brought the imin issue to a resolution, or so it thought, with a final set of instructions to local administrative offices regarding the issuance of passports.^[57] In November 1908, nine months after Hayashi informed the United States that Japan was instituting the registration system, the term hi-imin was introduced for the first time to define explicitly people other than imin. This category was to end the many "divergences" and misinterpretations of earlier years by "more strictly supervis[ing] travel to the United States and Canada." With the imin and hi-imin designations, the Japanese government differentiated "culprits" from "gentlemen"—those whom it considered laborers, both skilled and unskilled, "who have less opportunity for cultivation," from those of the "educated classes," who theoretically did not intend to settle permanently in the United States.

The imin/hi-imin concept had been articulated by U.S. Ambassador O'Brien three months before, at a gala dinner held by the Japan Society, in New York in August 1908. He spoke briefly about the immigration controversy: "[I]t becomes a serious question to determine where the line between laborer and the gentleman must be drawn."^[58] The critical issue was the "line." Earlier in the year O'Brien had apprised Hayashi of the U.S. definitions of skilled and unskilled laborers, listing a number of "essentially physical" and "less physical" or "neither manual nor mechanical" occupations.^[59] Hayashi had replied to O'Brien that the Japanese government found nothing "inapplicable" in these definitions.^[60] However, in the instructions of November 1908 to local administrators, the government did not define imin by occupation. Rather, it identified specific groups of people whose passport applications should be rejected: imin who returned to Japan and stayed longer than six months; women suspected of intending to commit "illegal acts such as

prostitution"; women married to imin and registered in the koseki less than six months; children older than seventeen; and adopted female children who were legally part of the imin's family and less than five years old. Adopted male children who were considered legitimate family heirs were not mentioned. Thus, even though the categories of imin and hi-imin were established, their definitions did not specify occupations and were so vague as to allow for misinterpretation, misunderstanding, or error.

A lengthy section of the instructions on imin covered what the Americans had claimed was a much abused category: "settled agriculturalist," a person who operated "under the ownership or leasehold of a joint investment enterprise and thus had considerable financial means."^[61] Much to the embarrassment of the Japanese government, farm laborers had been hired by "settled agriculturalists" and brought from Japan. The November 1908 instructions directed local Japanese authorities to investigate the financial condition and personal histories of those identified as "settled agriculturalists" and enforce the "strictest and most minute restrictions." Significantly, with the new instructions the Japanese government subjected its emigrant passport applicants to the same "indignity and humiliation" for which they had criticized the United States earlier.

This investigative technique also became the approved method in determining the legality of hi-imin passport applications. On the assumption that persons "other than imin" were numerous, diverse, and "impossible to specify by law," local officials were to submit reports to the Foreign Ministry on an applicant's background, conduct, and financial standing. Administrators were warned to use the "utmost vigilance" and "common sense," empowering them with sweeping authority to elicit information in judging a passport applicant's truthfulness. By delving into an individual's life and motives, the government determined whether an applicant could be considered hi-imin.

The general rule was that, to qualify as hi-imin, applicants had to have proof of adequate financial means and at least a middle school education or similar training. In the case of students, it was imperative that the authorities differentiate between "truthful and fraudulent" applicants. They should ignore the misconception that only children of upper-class families studied abroad, for less well-to-do students often duped government officials into believing that they were "gentlemen." Students preferring a U.S. education over a European one had to present convincing arguments for their choice, for not only was the former

costlier than the latter, but educational standards were "higher" and the facilities "more comprehensive" in Europe than in the United States. Furthermore, the cost of living in the United States exceeded the cost of living in England, France, or Germany.

Merchants and individuals wishing to engage in commerce had to have "direct connections" with a business concern in their area of destination, have a thriving trade, prove their practical business background, and possess capital. To bring employees from Japan, the branch office abroad had to verify its "clear and unequivocal" need to hire, and employees had to possess "considerable business experience" and education. Persons who desired to go on inspection tours of industry, agriculture, or finance needed to have "extensive educational backgrounds" or provide proof of outstanding experience in their field. Entrepreneurs had to have reliable financial backing. Those with only a middle school or similar education could not be expected "even remotely" to carry out the responsibilities relating to mature businesses and therefore were to be rejected.

Under these instructions local administrators held substantial discretionary power to gather information on an applicant's finances, education, experience, and conduct. The result was that the competence, tact, and opinion of an individual government administrator determined whether one was granted a passport or not. Officials' decisions could be based on nothing more than inference, hearsay, or reputation. Most significant, the instructions sanctioned the separating of travelers into two categories and the assignment of labels that followed emigrants to the United States. This system legitimized class differences emerging in capitalist Japan. According to the Japanese constitution of 1889, society consisted of commoners and nobility, but the government's definition of the imin/hi-imin categories implied that there were more desirable and less desirable commoners. All laborers, whether skilled or unskilled, were imin and thus denigrated. Students, merchants, and professionals were hi-imin, people whose superior class background permitted their traveling to the United States. However, regarding their settling permanently in the United States, hi-imin found themselves in a precarious and ambiguous position.^[62] On legal Japanese records they were hi-imin, but in the United States they were simply "Orientals"; their hi-imin status did not give them immunity from racist affronts or discrimination. In fact, to Americans the distinction between imin and hi-imin was nonexistent.

The imin/hi-imin system devised by Japan during the years from

1891 to 1909 did not arise in a vacuum. Born of the imin controversy, nurtured by political trends in Japan and the United States, and mirroring the class image of modern capitalist society, it reflected the Japanese government's desire to assert its pride, independence, and integrity, to counteract U.S. actions that diminished its status in the world of power politics, and to maintain control over its citizens. Nevertheless, Japan's system of passport designations turned out to be only a stopgap measure. Japanese officials were erratic at best in categorizing citizens. The standards and definitions seemed unambiguous but in practice were impossible to apply consistently. There were always gray areas. Despite the Japanese government's efforts, beginning with the Imin hogoho^[*] in 1896, the temporary restriction of imin emigration to the United States in 1900, Chinda's memos of 1904 and 1905, Hayashi's agreeing to establish a registration system in February 1908, and the Japanese government's instructions to local governors in November 1908, it was clear that the banning of laborers could be achieved only by banning all Japanese immigrants. The only way a part of the people could be excluded was by excluding all. The United States took that most extreme of actions in 1924, removing from Japan the responsibility for keeping "undesirable" citizens from emigrating.