Chapter 6 "Go East, Young Man!"
1. Nevertheless, significant emigration outside of Japan was absent. This meant that urban growth represented ''in essence" Japan's natural increase in population between 1872 and 1955 (Wilkinson, Urbanization of Japanese Labor , 39-40 and 52). See my chapter 3, note 12, for numerical chart of key areas of Japanese emigration.
2. Shimanuki Hyodayu * , Shintobeiho[ *] (New passport regulations for crossing to America) (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1911), 51-55.
3. Ibid., 38.
4. Ichioka, The Issei , 11-12.
5. Various forms of netsu (fever; craze) prevailed in the mid-Meiji period, pronouncedly so after the Russo-Japanese War. Seiko netsu, tokai netsu (city fever), Tokyo[ *] netsu, jitsugyo[ *] netsu (business fever), and kigyo[ *] netsu (enterprise fever), among others, were, in Gluck's interpretation, ideologically motivated descriptions of social upheaval and problems (Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths , 157-63). Tokyo * netsu took hold in conjunction with youth migration to Tokyo and the phenomenal increase in the establishment of middle, higher, and vocational schools and colleges during the last decade of the nineteenth century. However, in 1901 more than one-third of the youth who went to Tokyo did not gain entry into an educational institution ( Tokyo[ *] hyakunenshi 3:310-14).
6. Amerika 12:6 (June 1908), 25.
7. Seiko[ *] 19:1 (1 September 1910), 31-34.
8. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 76.
9. Seiko[ *] 5:3 (1 September 1904), 36. See also, Shimanuki Hyodayu * , Saikin tobeisaku (Recent notes on crossing to America) (Tokyo: Nippon Rikikokai, 1904), 68-69.
10. In preparing for the immigration authorities' examinations, the Japanese were warned to be physically fit. They should not have trachoma; their eyes should be clear; a venereal disease would prevent their landing; and they had to get rid of pimples and make sure their teeth were in good condition. Finally, Western clothing impressed immigration officials. To avoid becoming an object of ridicule, it was important to practice wearing Western clothes before leaving Japan (Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 85). See also Katayama Sen, Tobei no hiketsu (Secrets of crossing to America) (Tokyo: Shuppankyokai, 1906), 8-9.
11. Shimanuki Hyodayu * , Saikin seikaku tobei annai (Newest authentic introduction to crossing to America) (Tokyo: Chuyodo, 1901), 118-19.
12. Amerika 12:6 (June 1908), 30-31.
13. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 33.
14. Shimanuki, Saikin seikaku tobei annai , 114; Seiko[ *] 5:3 (1 September 1904), 36.
15. Amerika 12:6 (June 1908), 31.
16. After the Russo-Japanese War, Great Britain raised its legation in Japan to the level of embassy, a policy followed by the major European powers and the United States. Diplomatic practice up to World War I prescribed that the exchange of embassies and ambassadors be mutual only between the great powers, a fact not ignored by the Japanese. Oka, "Generational Conflict," 202, n.11.
17. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 32-34.
18. Amerika 12:6 (June 1908), 30.
19. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 49.
20. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:10 (15 October 1908), 9-10.
21. Seiko[ *] 10:3 (1 November 1906), 16.
22. Seiko[ *] 5:3 (1 September 1904), 36; Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:10 (15 October 1908), 11.
23. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:9 (15 September 1908), 5 and 25-26.
24. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 34.
25. Ibid., 35.
26. Shimanuki Hyodayu * , Rikikokai[ *] towa nanzoya (What is the Rikikokai?), ed. Aizawa Genshichi (Tokyo: Hobundo, 1980; originally published 1911).
27. In 1904 entering middle-school students numbered 20,000, of which 10 percent would enter universities and 26 percent, junior colleges. See John W. Bennett, Herbert Passin, and Robert McKnight, In Search of Identity: The Overseas Scholar in America and Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), 33.
28. The name was taken from the Chinese phrase meaning "studying under adversity. and exerting strenuous effort." Rikiko[ *] is Romanized as Rikko * in some works today, but according to the kana reading in Shimanuki's writings, he chose the former.
29. Kinmonth, Self-made Man, 245.
30. Shimanuki Hyodayu * , Seikono[ *] hiketsu (Sendai: Kogando, 1892); Shimanuki, ed., Jitchi tobei (Tokyo: Rikikokai, 1905). Some personal stories of Rikikokai * members are included in Kazuo Ito, Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America (Seattle: Executive Committee for Publication of Issei , 1973).
31. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 6-7.
32. The annual wage in 1904 of a Tokyo municipal employee (including the mayor) was 332 yen, less than one yen per day. Tokyoshi[ *] tokei[ *] nenpyo[ *] (Annual statistics of the city of Tokyo), 1909. In 1914 the monthly salary. of a low-level company employee in Tokyo was twenty-five yen, of which, for a family of three, 53 percent was needed for food (Ishizuka, Tokyo[ *] no shakaikeizaishi , 260).
33. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 6-7.
34. Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983) 6:95-96, 140; 7:86, 99.
35. Shimanuki informs us that "Dr. Harris," "father to the Japanese in the United States," dedicated his life to "ridding the world of evil" after the Civil War ( Tobei shimpo[ *] 1:1 [May 1907], 3). Merriman Colbert Harris (1846-1921) and his wife were Methodist missionaries in Hokkaido and Tokyo. In 1886 they were transferred to work with the Japanese on the Pacific Coast and Hawaii and organized the Pacific Japanese Mission. They returned to Tokyo in 1905 when Harris was appointed bishop of Japan and Korea; he became bishop emeritus in 1916. He was awarded an imperial decoration and lived in Tokyo until his death. Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946-58), 4:316-17.
36. Tobei shimpo[ *] 2:1 (15 September 1907), 41-44.
38. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:10 (15 October 1908).
39. Shimanuki, Shintobeibo[ *] , 85ff.
40. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:9 (15 September 1908).
41. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 45.
42. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:9 (15 September 1908).
43. Tobei shimpo[ *] 1:1 (May 1907) and 2:1 (15 September 1907). The Kanda district was fast-developing as Tokyo's secondhand bookstore area and remains so today.
44 . Tobei shimpo[ *] 1:1 (15 May 1907), 23-26. Nitobe Inazo * (1862-1933) can be considered an archetypal Japanese Christian of this period. He attended Tokyo Imperial University and Johns Hopkins University and later studied in Germany. Under the influence of the Methodist "Dr. Harris," he became a Christian and married a Philadelphia Quaker. He is noted as the leading Christian educator of the Meiji-Taisho period, founder of Tokyo Woman's Christian College (later University), Japanese representative to international conferences, and the only non-Caucasian to hold the high office of undersecretary at the League of Nations. He was author of a number of works on Japan in English, including his famous book on bushido[ *] ( Kodansha Encyclopedia 6:21-22).
45. Tobei shimpo[ *] 6:9 (15 September 1908), 5.
46. Shimanuki, Shintobeiho[ *] , 13-14.
47. Sharon L. Sievers, Flowers in Salt: The Beginnings of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983), 104. A higher girls' school law calling for one institution in each prefecture was passed in 1899 (Passin, Society and Education , 98). However, it was not until 1911 that an accredited women's college was established. By 1928 there were only 37 colleges for women, as opposed to 222 for men (Hane, Modern Japan , 214).
48. However, Japan was not without demonstrations of opposition. The most notable occurred in February 1891, when the Christian pacifist Uchimura Kanzo * (1861-1930), a faculty member at the First Higher School in Tokyo, refused to show appropriate obeisance before the document. For some of Uchimura's writings see Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, comps., Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 2:340-50.
49. Tokyo[ *] hyakunenshi 3:358-60; Gluck, Japan's Modern Myths , 132-35.
50. Hane, Modern Japan , 177.
51. Katayama Sen, Jiden (Autobiography) (Tokyo: Kaizosha, 1922), 196-255; Sumiya Mikio, Katayama Sen (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1977), 9-19; Hyman Kublin, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Katayama Sen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 47-87.
52. Kublin, Asian Revolutionary , 51.
53. Katayama, Jiden , 232-34; 250-51.
54. From an 1897 article by Katayama, quoted in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 15. Katayama wrote in 1896 that strikes were an important "weapon of the working class" but added that "they did not help workers and inflicted great damage." In 1897 he wrote: "The solution to the labor situation lies in workers' education through organizing"; "progress can then be made gradually, and strikes will no longer be necessary" (Sumiya, 48, 50-51).
55. From an 1897 article in a Christian newspaper, quoted in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 40.
56. Katayama Sen, Tobei annai , 7. According to Sumiya Mikio, two editions of Tobei annai were published: Gakusei tobei annai (Students' introduction to America) in 1901 and Tobei annai in 1903. The difference between the two was that the latter edition included a seven-page chapter on Katayama's student days in the United States. The edition I refer to is the latter, even though the publication date is listed as 1901 in the National Diet Library catalog. The catalog also includes two books by Katayama, one on English conversation and composition and the other on business English, letters, and forms, both published in 1897.
57. Quoted in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 137.
58. Ibid., 137; Katayama, Tobei no hiketsu , 1.
59. Katayama Sen, Zoku tobei annai (Tokyo: Tobei kyokai, 1902).
60. Tobei zasshi eventually became Amerika .
61. Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 143.
62. Ibid., 211-12. He claimed in 1896 to have taken the name Joseph because the Japanese ideographs Jo-se-fu meant "the man who saves the world."
63. When Rodosekai[ *] began publication in 1897, Katayama served as secretary of the newly founded Iron Workers' Union, helping to unionize railroad engineers, firemen, plasterers, printers, cargo boat workers, cooks, and furniture makers, among others. He traveled endlessly throughout Japan giving speeches and attending public meetings and conferences. In 1904 he attended the national convention of the American Socialist Party in Chicago and the Sixth Congress of the Second International, Amsterdam, representing the socialists of Japan. See Katayama Sen, The Labor Movement in Japan (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1918), 38-84.
64. For instance, Shimanuki's works; Ishizuka Iozo * , Genkon tobei annai (Introducing contemporary America) (1903); Yamane Goichi, ed., Saikin tobei annai (Introducing America today) (Tokyo: Tobei zasshisha, 1906); Kato * Joshiro * , Zaibeidobo[ *] hattenshi (The history of our compatriots in America) (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1908); Tabata Kisaburo * , Zaibeisha seikono[ *] tomo (Friend of our successful countrymen in America) (Tokyo: Shimizu shoten, 1908); Watanabe Kanjiro * , Kaigai dekasegi annai (Guide for workers going abroad) (Tokyo: Tokyo naigai shuppankyokai, 1902); Hirata Eishi, Tobei annai (Kobe: n.p., 1916); and Iijima Eitaro * , Beikoku toko[ *] annai (Guide to crossing to America) (Tokyo, 1902).
65. Katayama, Zoku tobei annai , 3-5.
66. Ibid., 4; Katayama, Tobei annai , 6-7.
67. Katayama, Zoku tobei annai , 5.
68. Katayama, Tobei annai , 9.
69. Ibid., 6-7.
70. Ibid., I.
71. Cited in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 141, from Katayama's article of 1902 on population increase and labor.
72. Katayama, Tobei annai , 14. The picture is of a farmer with the hem of his work kimono shoved up into his sash, thus exposing his loincloth without shame.
73. For instance, "Hints for Those Going to America" paved the way for proper behavior: Be back in the hotel before midnight; no noise; don't go out of your room in nightclothes; draw your blinds; no spitting; keep the buttons on your pants closed; be on time—Americans hate lateness; on visits cut your nails and comb your hair; and so on (Hirata, Tobei annai , 49-50).
74. Katayama, Jiden , 262.
75. Katayama, Tobei annai , 41.
76. Ibid., 21-24.
77. Katayama, Jiden , 234-36.
78. Katayama, Tobei annai , 24-36.
79. The 33rd Fruit Growers' Convention Proceedings of 1907 described Asians as "well-adapted to that particular form of labor to which so many white men object" (Fisher, Harvest Labor Market , 16). Sacramento rice farmer and state senator John P. Irish wrote about the harvest of "low growing field crops" and fruit: "[They] call for reliable labor, resistant to climatic conditions and able to sustain the stopping posture. . .. [T]he short-backed, short-legged Asiatics have proved reliable in all this squat work which must be performed in a temperature of 100 to 110 degrees" (Irish, "Reasons for Encouraging Japanese Immigration," The Annals 34 [September 1909]).
80. Katayama, Tobei no hiketsu , 5-13.
81. Cited in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 140-41.
82. William Jewitt Tucker (1839-1926) was professor of sacred rhetoric at Andover from 1880. His particular concern was with the social responsibilities of the church, in connection with which he developed courses in sociology. and founded Andover House, a settlement that influenced Katayama deeply. Tucker's participation in the publishing of the Andover Review attracted the attention of the conservative wing of Congregationalism, and he and four other professors were tried and acquitted before a board of the seminary. In 1893 he became president of Dartmouth College ( Dictionary of American Biography , 10:41-42).
83. On Katayama's description of Northfield and Moody see Jiden , 238-42. Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899) began his evangelistic career when he organized a sabbath school over a city market in Chicago. He eventually devoted his life to evangelical and philanthropic work, working with soldiers during the Civil War, then traveled throughout the British Isles, the United States, and Canada, using Northfield, Massachusetts, as his base of operation. His first conference for male college students, in 1886, was so well-attended that he decided to hold it annually. Similar conferences for women occurred beginning in 1893 ( Dictionary of American Biography , 7:103-6).
84. Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 20-23; Kublin, Asian Revolutionary , 75-82.
85. Katayama, Jiden , 251-72. Katayama described Glasgow, with its razed slums, city-run tenements, city-owned water system, and rent for workers at 20 percent of their wages, as a "supreme model" of city, reform.
86. Katayama wrote in his autobiography many years later that Maryville was a "fourth or fifth-rate institution" built for blacks and poor whites. Blacks could be enrolled, although "unenthusiastically," and were not treated equally ( Jiden , 216).
87. Katayama, Tobei annai , 60; Jiden , 196.
88. Katayama, Tobei annai , 49. Niishima Jo * (1843-1890), one of the earliest Christian leaders, left Japan on an American whaling ship before the seclusion laws were lifted. Befriended by the captain, who took him to New England, he attended Amherst College and Andover Theological Seminary. After returning to Japan, he became a Congregational minister and founded Do * shisha English Language School (later University) in Kyoto in 1875, the first Christian institution founded by a Japanese. See Chitoshi Yanaga, Japan Since Perry (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1949), 34 and 126.
89. Tabata, Zaibeisha seiko * no tomo , 30.
90. Kinmonth, Self-made Man , 191-92.
91. The Russo-Japanese War and the Japanese government's suppression of the antiwar and social-democratic Heimin shimbun (Commoners' newspaper) in 1905 directly influenced Kotoku's * conversion to anarchism. Until then he was a pacifist and believed in socialism through electoral action. In 1910 he was arrested as the leader of a plot to assassinate the emperor, tried secretly, and executed the following year with eleven others, including his lover, Kanno Suga, the first woman to be executed as a political prisoner in Meiji Japan. See Masamichi Asukai, "Kotoku * Shusui * and His Socialism and Pacifism," in Nobuya Bamba and John F. Howes, eds., Pacifism in Japan (Tokyo: Minerva Press, 1978), 123-41; and Tokyo[ *] hyakunenshi , 3:1194-1202. For a biography of Kotoku * see Fred Notehelfer, Kotoku Shusui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971). On Kanno Suga see Sievers, Flowers in Salt , chapter 7, and Mikiso Hane, ed. and trans., Reflections on the Way to the Gallows: Rebel Women in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), chapter 3.
92. "At the time propaganda for a pure and simple trade union movement was more and more severely dealt with by the authorities, our labor politics and Socialist agitation had comparative freedom and was rather popular among the people" (Katayama, The Labor Movement in Japan , 62-63).
93. Raising rice in Texas interested Katayama as early as 1902. He wrote in Zoku tobei annai that production and profits were high and that "because there are many uneducated black wretches . . . loathed by whites, Japanese workers would be welcome" (Katayama, Zoku tobei annai , 6).
94. Quoted in Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 154-55, from Kawakami Kiyoshi, "Japanese on American Farms," The Independent , 26 October 1905.
95. Japanese-American Commercial Weekly , 26 May 1906. The news item stated that Okazaki Jokichi * , Katayama's partner, raised 200,000 yen with the "wealthy merchant" Iwasaki and planned to establish an agricultural company and promote Texas agriculture for those with 1,000 yen or more as capital. Katayama was not mentioned. On the Texas enterprise, see also Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 152-58, and Kublin, Asian Revolutionary , 193-94. Sumiya, referring to a San Francisco Japanese newspaperman's account, wrote that the partner appeared in San Francisco with "twenty-some-odd agricultural workers," but the San Francisco immigration officials, suspecting that they were contract laborers, refused to let them proceed to Texas. Kublin, quoting from the same account, wrote that Katayama's partner engaged in a "fraudulent scheme" of promising but not providing Japanese immigrant laborers and ran off with the money. In any case, the venture was fraught with conflict and trouble.
96. Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 54, citing Katayama's 1898 article, "To Capitalists."
97. Documents made public in 1963 proved this to be part of an official conspiracy to ban the activities of socialists, anarchists, and social reformers (Asukai, "Kotoku * Shusui * ," 123 ).
98. Watanabe Haruo, Katayama Sen to tomoni [ith Katayama Sen] (Tokyo: Wakosha, 1955), 17-84, centers on the writer's friendship with Katayama, socialism, and Japanese socialists in New York City.
99. Kublin, Asian Revolutionary , 46.
100. Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 224.
101. Ibid., 237.
102. Katayama, Tobei annai , 2-3.
103. Ibid., 4-5.
104. Sumiya, Katayama Sen , 139.
105. Tobei shimpo * 1:1 (May 1907), 2.
106. Ishizuka, Genkon tobei annai , 5-6.
107. Nihonteikoku tokei[ *] nenkan (Annual statistics of the empire of Japan), 1907.
108. Seiko * 4:6 (1 June 1904), 31.
109. Mark R. Peattie, "Introduction," in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire , 1895-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 13-15.
110. Kato * Jushiro * , Zaibeidobo[ *] hattenshi, 21-22.
111. Masuji Miyakawa, Life of Japan (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1907), 300-1.
112. Miyakawa Setsuro * , Beikoku no uraomote (America inside and outside) (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1920), 124-27.
113. In its article on Japan's imperialist expansionism, Seiko portrayed pre-Sino-Japanese War attitudes toward China and its culture as deference, for it was "our mother country which we followed as our model." However, after the war an ideological turnabout occurred, and "what we had called Chukajin[ *] [people of the middle kingdom] became chanchan bozu[ *] [an offensive term comparable to "Chinaman"] or went so far as to refer to them as tonbikan [pigtail Chinese ]." Japan had won victory in the "competition for power." See Seiko 4:6 (1 June 1904), 30.