1. The Imperial Edict of 1871 restructured the 76 former feudal domains of the Tokugawa period into 46 prefectures, of which three were fu —Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, named after the three major cities.

2. Ryokenkafu shutsugan ni yosuru * zaigaikokan * hakkyu * kakushu shomeishokofu * jinmeihyo * (List of persons issued official certificates by overseas consular offices for passport application), Nyuyoku * no bu (New York section), 2 vols., 1912-1924, RG 3.8.2.283, DFMJ.

3. I will treat the development of the hi-imin/imin passport categories in Chapter 3.

4. Shozo * Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi (History of the Japanese in New York), 2 vols. (Tokyo: PMC Publishing Co., 1984; New York: Japanese Association of New York, 1921), 1:356-58.

5. Ibid., 1:400.

6. Ibid., 1:358-59.

7. Ibid., 2:617-20; Amerika 11:7 (July 1907), 49-51.

8. Kuroki "just loved" American women. They were "lovely, gracious, graceful, self-reliant, yet tactful, healthy yet dainty, and—and—he liked brunettes the best." New York Times, 17 May 1907.

9. Okamoto Yonezo * , Nyuyokushi * naigaino jisho (Property in the New York City area) (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1912).

10. For instance, Amerika 11:6 (June 1907), 11:10-12 (October-December 1907), and 12:7-8 (July-August 1908); Tobei shimpo * (News on crossing to America) 6:11 (15 November 1908); Seiko * (Success) 10:3 (1 November 1906); Kato * Jushiro * , Z aibeidobo * hattenshi (The history of our compatriots in America) (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1908), 39-61.

11. On conditions in New York see David C. Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1982), especially chapters 2 and 3; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2d ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963; New York: Atheneum, 1975); Bayrd Still, Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by, Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 1956), chapters 8 and 9; Jacob A Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890; New York: Dover Publications, 1971).

12. Amerika 11:11 (November 1907), 26-30.

13. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:411.

14. Jokichi * Takamine (1854-1922), chemist, entrepreneur, and publicist, received his early training in physics and chemistry in Japan. In 1881 the Japanese government commissioned him to study and apprentice in England for three years under the sponsorship of a leading trading firm. Upon his return he applied his scientific knowledge to improve Japan's indigenous industries and initiate the artificial fertilizer industry. He made a number of trips to the United States during the course of his scientific work and in 1887 married a southern woman, Caroline Hitch. The marriage coincided with an invitation from her father to engage in research at a distillery company in Chicago. His research resulted in the shortening of the six-month distillery process to forty-eight hours through the use of an artificial fungus culture. In 1897 he established the Takamine Research Center in Clifton, New Jersey, where he perfected a digestive medicine, "Taka-Diastase." A permanent resident of the United States, he built an elaborate home on Riverside Drive in New York City. Originally, each of its five floors was to represent a school of Japanese art. However, the plan proved impractical, and only the first two of the five stories had Japanese motifs. Takamine devoted the rest of his life to promoting Japanese-American friendship by helping to establish the Nippon Club in 1905 and a Japanese news bureau in 1908 "to disseminate authentic information about Japan." He served as vice president of the Japan Society in 1907 and was a founding member and four-term president of the Japanese Association of New York. K.K. Kawakami, Jokichi Takamine: A Record of His American Achievements (New York: William Edwin Rudge, 1928), and Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:413-19 and 2:733-53.

15. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:4.

16. The other two are Ryoichiro * Arai, considered founder of the Japanese-American silk trade, and Yasukata Murai, driving force behind Morimura Bros. and Co., a leading wholesaler and importer. Both came to New York in the 1870s. In 1893 Arai and the Morimura brothers joined to form a trading company that extended to China, Italy, and France, and by 1908 dominated Japanese silk imports to the United States. On the early Japanese traders in New York, see Miyakawa, "Early New York Issei."

17. On early anti-Japanese prejudice and agitation in the western states see Ichioka, The Issei ; Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice; Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau with Eve Pall, "The Japanese," in To Serve the Devil: A Documentary Analysis (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 2:166-250; Chuman, The Bamboo People; Yamato Ichihashi, "Anti-Japanese Agitation," in Roger Daniels and Spencer C. Olin, eds., Racism in California (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 105-15; Donald R. Hata, "Undesireables'': Early Immigrants and the Anti-Japanese Movement in San Francisco, 1892-93 (New York: Arno Press, 1978); Daniels, "Japanese Immigrants on a Western Frontier: The Issei in California, 1890-1940," in Conroy and Miyakawa, eds., East Across the Pacific, 76-9l; and Daniels, ed., The Asian Experience, which includes primary sources describing contemporary anti-Japanese events and writings.

18. Japanese-American Commercial Weekly (New York), 2 June 1906.

19. Tobei shimpo * 1:2 (10 June 1907), 15.

20. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:358.

21. Ibid., 1:359-60. The Japanese population of New York was 3,000 in 1909 and 4,652 in 1921. Ibid., 364-65.

22. When Japanese firms first came to New York in 1876, Japan's foreign trade was controlled by resident Westerners in Japan. There was no trans-Pacific cable (communication had to be directed via Europe and Asia), and Japanese firms negotiated for capital funds through the consulate in New York, because U.S. banks did not give credit to Japanese. By 1896 the situation had changed considerably. The Yokohama Specie Bank had established a New York office in 1880, Japan and the United States were linked with a telegraph service and a passenger liner, and a number of Japanese firms (including Mitsui Company and Nippon Yusen * Kaisha [NYK], the shipping firm) had New York branches. See Miyakawa, "Early New York Issei," 167, 175-76; also Zaibei nihonjinshi (History of the Japanese in America) (San Francisco: Japanese Association of America, 1940), 1054-55. The Japanese-American Commercial Weekly proudly noted that Japanese shipping was the fifth largest in the world in 1908 and that ninety-five NYK vessels were scheduled to come to New York via the Suez Canal starting in November (22 August 1908).

23. Toyohiko Campbell Takami, The Shining Stars: The Autobiography of Dr. Toyohiko Campbell Takami, ed. Masahiko Ralph Takami (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: n.p., 1945). I am indebted to Mitsuye Ohori * Katagiri for making this work available to me.

24. Through Takami's initiative the Japanese Mutual Aid Society, precursor to the Japanese Association of New York (1914), was formed as an independent organization in Brooklyn in 1907 ( Japanese-American Commercial Weekly, 1 June 1907). Takami later wrote that during his medical studies, he came across the body of a young Japanese man "who probably came to this country, just as I did, full of ambition and hope." After opening his medical practice, Takami enlisted support to establish the society as his first community welfare action. Its purpose was to assure "that no Japanese person would die a pauper's death or need to fear illness or adversity." In 1912 the organization purchased a 2,500-square-foot plot at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Long Island. The society also conducted lectures and entertainment programs. Its membership was 400 in 1912 (Takami, Shining Stars, 41 and 45; Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 2:438-43).

25. Takami, Shining Stars, 8.

26. Ibid., 13.

27. Ibid., 15.

28. From Cushing Academy, Takami transferred to Lawrenceville School, New Jersey, then enrolled as a premed student at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He entered Columbia University and transferred to Cornell University Medical College, from which he graduated in 1906 (Ibid., 22-42). He advertised two offices during his first three months of practice: South Elliot Place, Brooklyn, within walking distance of the Navy Yard, and a Japanese boardinghouse on East 27th Street in Manhattan ( Japanese-American Commercial Weekly, 14 July 1906).

29. It was Takami's "privilege to support . . . Miss Campbell" until her death in 1907 (Takami, Shining Stars, 43-44). Campbell's obituary stated that she was an aunt of Alexander Graham Bell, of "English aristocratic blood," and began ministering to Chinese immigrants beginning in 1882, when she was fifty-seven years old ( Japanese-American Commercial Weekly, 12 January 1907).

30. Plans of the U.S. Navy Yard, New York, Showing Improvements up to July 1, 1894; Map of the Enlarged City of Brooklyn (New York: J. B. Beers and Co., 1894).

31. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:396.

32. Ibid., 1:364.

33. Ibid., 1:396-97. The earliest boardinghouse for Japanese seamen was established on Gold Street in 1886. Subsequently, in the 1890s, more Japaneserun houses began to appear in Brooklyn, including one run by two women from Hyogo-ken * , which catered mainly to Japanese businessmen.

34. Ibid., 1:397. Later, in 1915, responding to the Bricklayers' Association complaint regarding subway-building labor, a New York state law was passed stating that citizens be given preference over aliens as workers in the construction of public works. See Beikoku ni okeru hainichimondai zakken. Nyuyokushu * hainichi kankei (Miscellaneous documents concerning the anti-Japanese problem in the United States: New York state), 1915, RG 3.8.2.288, DFMJ.

35. See Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States, chapter 8. In a survey in 1927, the Japanese consul estimated that 53.4 percent of the gainfully employed in Los Angeles were domestic servants (Ibid., 112). In the Western states, Asian men, mainly Chinese, provided the bulk of domestic servants up to the turn of the century. (David M. Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America [New York: Oxford University Press, 1978], 45, 221-22). On Pacific Coast domestic workers, see Ichioka, The Issei, 24-28; and Evelyn Nakano Glenn, "The Dialectics of Wage Work: Japanese-American Women and Domestic Service, 1905-1940," Feminist Studies 6:3 (Fall 1980), 432-71, an analysis of the relationship between issei women's family life and domestic work as employment.

   36. "The Life Story of a Japanese Servant," in Hamilton Holt, ed., The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves, 2d ed., New York Young People's Missionary Movement (New York: J. Pott and Co., 1906; reprint, New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1990), 159-73. Hamilton Bowen Holt (1872-1951), progressive reform activist and internationalist, helped found the Japan Society as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the World Federation League, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the American Scandinavian Foundation.

37. Ibid., 160-61.

38. Ibid., 164. He is referring to Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1852, about a young man who fell in love with two women, one of whom was his guardian, Lady Castlemond.

39. Ibid., 171-72.

40. Ibid., 172.

41. Shibuta Ichiro * , "Nyuyoku * ni okeru nihonjin no shokugyo * " (Employment for Japanese in New York), in Yamane Goichi, ed., Saikin tobei annai (Introducing contemporary America) (Tokyo: Tobei zasshisha, 1906), 52-59. The various essays in Saikin tobei annai include topics such as the wealth of the United States, the shoemakers union in San Francisco, travel from Yokohama to New York, industrial education, management of business, university life, agriculture and mining in Colorado, and a vocabulary of useful English words.

42. Ibid., 53-54.

43. Ibid., 56.

44. Ibid., 56-57. Other publications had varying figures. In 1907 housework in New York was said to have paid Japanese $20 to $25 a month; Tobei shimpo * 1:2 (10 June 1907), 16; Tobei shimpo * 6:11 (15 November 1908), 6. In Chicago weekly wages for all domestic workers averaged $5.77, or about $24 a month (Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 310).

45. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:380.

46. Ibid., 1:381.

47. Japanese-American Commercial Weekly, 14 July 1906.

48. Ichioka, The Issei, 24.

49. Takami, Shining Stars, 29.

50. Ibid., 26.

51. In 1880 more than half of the New York City working population was foreign-born. See Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 48 and fn 8. Jews dominated the clothing industry until the 1890s, when the Italians began to move in (Ibid., 69).

52. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:381-82.

53. Ibid., 1:390.

54. Ibid., 1:391-92.

55. Ibid., 1:408.

56. Ibid., 1:408-11. Japanese newspapers published in New York prior to World War II are nonexistent in both U.S. and Japanese libraries and archives. The only exceptions are the Nyuyoku * shimpo * (1940-41) at the Library of Congress and random copies of the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly (1905-08) at the Research Library, New York Public Library.

57. Takami, Shining Stars, 19-20; Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 2:477.

58. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 2:470.

59. E.A. Ohori * , Hopes and Achievements (New York: Women's Board of Domestic Missions of Reformed Church in America, n.d.); Reformed Church in America, Board of Domestic Missions, Women's Executive Committee, Annual Reports, 1909-19; Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 473-75. On churches see also Alfred Saburo Akamatsu, "The Function and Type of Program of a Japanese Minority Church in New York City: A Proposal for the Establishment of the Japanese American United Church of Christ in New York" (Ed. D. dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1948), 50-52.

60. Kamide Masataka, Kuwayama Senzo-o * monogatari (The story of the venerable Kuwayama Senzo * ) (Kyoto: Tanko shinsha, 1963). This biography, the result of interviews and discussions the writer had with Kuwayama twice a week, is written as if it were an autobiography. I am indebted to Kuwayama's son, Yeiichi, for making the work available to me.

61. Ibid., 76-77.

62. Ibid., 79.

63. Ibid., 81.

64. Ibid., 118-20.

65. Takami, Shining Stars, 45.

66. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:388.

67. This "rolling ball game" proved to be a successful venture for Japanese for a considerable period of time, for in addition to Mizutani's history, at least three tobei publications covering a span of thirteen years mentioned it: Tobei shimpo * 1:2 (10 June 1907), 16; Harada Toichiro * , Nyuyoku * (Tokyo: Seikyosha, 1914), 257; Miyakawa Setsuro * , Beikoku no uraomote (The U.S. inside and out) (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1920), 81.

68. Mizutani, Nyuyoku * nihonjin hattenshi, 1:388-89.

69. Ibid., 1:398-99. For accounts of Coney Island at the turn of the century, see John F. Kasson, Amusing the Millions (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978); Oliver Pilat and Jo Ransom, Sodom by the Sea (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1941); and Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), especially chapter 5.

70. Nagai Kafu * , Amerika monogatari (Stories from America). Vol. 3 of Nagai Kafu * zenshu * (Complete works of Nagai Kafu * ) (Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1949; first published, 1908), 211-33.

71. Ibid., 211-12. This description is similar to that of Coney Island's Luna Park by Maxim Gorki in 1907:250,000 electric lights transformed the Park into "a fantastic city . . . [with] shapely towers of miraculous castles, palaces and temples" (cited in Pilat and Ranson, Sodom, 148). One Japanese author sneered at this display, deeming it a waste of electricity for disreputable amusement purposes, but obviously was impressed by the illumination, which was "not unlike walking into fire." He dubbed it a product of the "capitalism of insanity." (Harada, Nyuyoku * , 256-58).

72. Kafu * , Amerika monogatari, 212. Kafu's * observation evokes another, which described the irresistible attraction to the "graceful romantic curves of the Oriental" and characterized Luna Park as an exotic fantasyland for Coney Island visitors. Cited in Kasson, Amusing the Millions, 63.

73. Kafu * , Amerika monogatari, 212-13.

74. Ibid., 215.

75. Haru Kishi, interviews by author, New York, 21 November 1981 and 7 August 1985. See also New York Nichibei, 2 May-23 May 1985. Transcriptions of interviews with four New York issei conducted by Yasuko Nakanishi appeared in the Japanese section of the weekly New York Nichibei, 28 March-18 July 1985.

76. The interviews were conducted in Japanese, but Haru occasionally interspersed English words or phrases.

77. Much later, just before the outbreak of World War II, Haru had a chance to leave her husband and return to Japan, but since they had stuck it out for so long she decided to stay in New York. ("Anyway, I was used to life in America by then.")

78. Haru Kishi is healthy and active today and lives with one of her sons in Manhattan. ("This is the happiest time of my life," she says) She visits her other children occasionally. When I spoke to her last, she was going to California to attend the wedding of one of her grandchildren.

79. New York Nichibei, 28 March 1985. The conditions for men on the West Coast tend to be idealized. The number of married Japanese women in the whole United States was as follows:

The interviewee's statement that Japanese could buy property in California is misleading, for the Alien Land Laws were passed in 1913 and 1920 in California and in 1921 in Washington state prohibiting Japanese from owning, leasing, or farming under cropping contracts. The laws were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1921 (Ichioka, The Issei, 226-43).

80. Some marriages were not registered. For instance, Eikichi Kishi never registered with the Japanese consulate as Japanese nationals were required to do. Haru explained that he preferred to "be independent" and did not even join the Japanese Association.

81. Based on the U.S. census figures, if all the married Japanese women were married to Japanese males, the percentage of married Japanese males in the United States would have been 1.7 percent in 1900; 8.8 percent in 1910; and 30 percent in 1920. However, the accuracy of census figures is questionable. For instance, in the period 1890-1920, 45 percent of births in the United States were not officially registered (Hyman Alterman, Counting People: The Census in History [Harcourt Brace, 1969], 314).

82. New York Nichibei, 20 June-11 July 1985.

83. Sona Oguri came to the United States in 1905 and married Takami in 1909.

84. Mrs. Francis J. Swayze, Finding the Way in a New Land (New York: Reformed Church in America, Women's Board of Domestic Missions, n.d.), 10.

85. Takami was thirty-four; Takamine, thirty-three; Ohori * , thirty; and Iwamoto, thirty-five.

86. Kafu * , Amerika monogatari, 319-29.

87. Ibid., 325. Kafu's * writing reflected the widespread anti-Chinese bias prevalent among Japanese.

88. Amerika 11:10 (October 1907), 658-62.

89. Kafu * also wrote about an evening in a bar "four or five blocks up along Third Avenue where the 'el' runs to Chatham Square. Jewishtown is to the left. Chinatown to the right, next to Italian town. . .. an area which is called 'the Bowery'" (Kafu * , "Yahan no sakaba" [A night-time bar], 271-80).

90. "Dark-skinned Japanese" connotes laborers or imin who worked in the sun. In the passport records at the Foreign Ministry Diplomatic Record Office in Tokyo, Katagiri was listed as "hi-imin."