Japan and Japanese-American relations ...

Contents

"^ I. Relations of Japan and the United States. David Starr

Jordan, LL.D., President of Stanford University 1

II. Japan Revisited after Thirty Years. Thomas C. Mendenhall, Sc.D., LL.D., late President of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, formerly Professor in the Imperial Univer-

Introduction

Japan and the United States are at present the two foremost powers of the Pacific, and their international relations form one of the most vital factors in the diplomacy of that ocean. Other nations may later challenge this paramount position. China, if successfully reorganized, will do so in the near future; Austraha, New Zealand and British Columbia may, after some decades, make the British Empire as powerful in the Pacific as it is now in the Atlantic and the Indian oceans; while Russia may eventually develop Siberia and extend its conquests in the Far East until it will rival the leaders of today. At present, however, the supremacy of Japan and the United States can hardly be questioned. They are the Pacific powers not because of distant conquests in that ocean, which in time, as Asia develops in strength, must be abandoned, but because their own territory, inhabited by their own people, is situated there. The home land of both is on the Pacific.

Both are young powers in the modern sense. A little over a half century ago the United States did not possess a single foot of undisputed territory on the Pacific Ocean; today it has a greater coasthne than any other nation. Less than a half century ago Japan was a weak, feudalized state with a civilization much resembling that of Europe in the middle ages. Its recent progress, the accomplishment in fifty years of the advance which it took Europe five hundred years to make, is probably the most remarkable national achievement in history. So well did Japan learn its lessons in western civilization that today, in proportion to its resources, it has probably the most efficient governmental organization in the world.

The relations between these two great Pacific powers has always been intimate and, in the main, one of almost romantic friendship. In all Japan there is but one monument to a foreigner, and that is to an American. It marks the

VIII INTRODUCTION

spot where Commodore Perry first landed, the place, to use the language of the Japanese dedication, ''on which the modern civilization of our Japanese Empire had its beginning." In the years immediately following this opening of the country, Americans were the ones who exerted the most powerful influence in helping to develop a new civilization in accord with the standards of western nations. Americans, more than others, brought modern schools, modern medicine and the ideals of Christianity; they were themselves the first modern school teachers and physicians. A large proportion of the leaders of present-day Japan studied under them; while hundreds of other Japanese students completed their education in the schools and universities of the United States.

In more recent times mutual international courtesies have been marked. The United States led the way in the movement to abolish extraterritorial jurisdiction in Japan, and to admit the Empire as a real equal into the family of nations. Probably no people gave Japan a stronger or more enthusiastic moral support during its war with Russia. On the other hand, Japan removed the causes of friction over the immigration question by itself forbidding its laborers to enter the United States; and when the American government negotiated the compulsory arbitration treaty with Great Britain, modified the terms of its aUiance with that country to ob\date even the suspicion of danger that Great Britain might be involved in war with the United States on account of its connection with Japan.

In material respects, also, such as trade, the relations have been close. Japan has bought much from the United States, especially equipment for its new raihoads. The value of these American imports into Japan is still increasing rapidly; the United States is now selHng nearly 100 per cent more than it did even two or three years ago. This country, too, is Japan's best customer, and buys from it more than any other, more even than the entire continent of Europe. Further, the export of silk is regarded by many as the foundation of Japan's foreign trade; and of this, over one-half is purchased by the United States.

INTRODUCTION IX

Commercial intercourse will be increased still further by the opening of the Panama Canal, which will not only bring Japan into direct communication with the Atlantic and Gulf sections of this country, but will make Japanese harbors the ports of call for all American ships passing through the canal in trade with China.

Notwithstanding these intimate ties of friendship and of commerce there arose, soon after the close of the Russian war, a spirit of suspicion and even hostility between certain elements in the population of both the United States and Japan. The immigration question was perhaps the occasion of it; but it was increased by opposition in this country to Japan's poUcy and administration in Manchuria and Korea. The fundamental cause was very probably the sudden awakening of the United States to the fact that Japan was no longer a mere picturesque land of Orientals which it could patronize at will; but was a powerful, proud nation, jealous of its rights and of its new-found position as a world power.

This period of friction, which might easily have passed without any serious result, was continued by the efforts of the jingo elements in both lands. The United States was the chief offender; a section of the press, together with certain politicians, insisted that Japan was secretly planning to wage war against this country. Some of the American papers pubHshed no news from the Far East unless it reflected in some way upon the Japanese government or people, and definitely instructed their reporters to send only accounts unfriendly to Japan. War scares appeared at periods suspiciously convenient for the advocates of an increased American army and navy. So evident were these attempts to arouse mutual suspicion that President Taft declared: "When one considers the real feelings of the two peoples as a whole, when one considers the situation from the standpoint of sanity and real patriotism in each country, it is difficult to characterize in pohte or moderate language the conduct of those who are attempting to promote misunderstanding and ill-feeling between the two countries."

X INTRODUCTION

This anti-Japanese propaganda has without doubt done a certain amount of harm, although it has failed to turn the thinking part of America from its feeling of friendship and admh'ation for the people of Japan.

Especially in view of the danger from such campaigns of international slander as this, it is absolutely necessary for the various countries to correctly understand each other. To bring this about, no agency is better fitted than the university, whose purpose in every field of knowledge is, first, to search for the real truth with an impartial mind; and, second, to do its part in disseminating this truth in the community at large. This has been one of the principal aims of Clark University in founding its annual conference upon international problems, and in publishing its Journal of Race Development. Subjects connected with Japan were presented at the conference of a year ago, where twentyeight experts, twenty-one Americans and seven Japanese, gave addresses or papers on almost every aspect of Japan's national life and of the relations between Japan and the United States. Nearly all of these articles have already appeared in the Journal of Race Development, but, in response to an urgent request, the University is now repubhshing them in book form. Each of the present chapters deals with a distinct topic; together they cover progressively the field of what is both most interesting and most vital in the present national and international situation of Japan.

In bringing together these various papers, the Department wishes to express to each of the authors its grateful appreciation of his kind cooperation. It is, however, under an especial obhgation to Dr. M. Honda, the Editor of the Oriental Review, for constant assistance in arranging the program of the conference upon Japan.

It is our sincere wish that this volume may be of service in making the acts and motives of the Japanese government, as well as the Japanese people themselves, somewhat better understood in this country. There is nothing mysterious about them. Their conduct is perfectly intelligible; it is much what our own would be under similar circumstances. That both nations will always take the same view of every

INTRODUCTION XI

international question, is hardly to be expected; yet an essential preliminary for a peaceful adjustment, when difficulties do arise, and a necessity for the continuance of mutual friendship, is — just as between individuals — a correct and sympathetic appreciation of each other's standpoint and of the best in each other's character.

G. H. Blakeslee.

Clark University, Worcester, Mass., December 20, 1912.

By David Starr Jordan, LL.D., President of Stanford University

It is now nearly sixty years since the modern history of Japan began. The arrival of Commodore Perry at Kurihama, the downfall of the Shogun and the restoration of the Mikado mark the point of transition from feudal Japan to the Japan of today.

In all this period, the Japanese nation has been the subject of intense interest to the cultivated people of America and a warm sympathy has arisen between those people of each nation who have come to understand the character and the ideals of the other. This sympathy has been kept alive by the influence of Japanese students in America on the one hand, and on the other by the interest of those who have gone as missionaries, as teachers or advisors in the affairs of Japan.

In Asia, there has existed for many years, a division of the non-Japanese into two sharply defined parties or one may say, attitudes of mind, thepro-Japaneseandthe anti-Japanese. The disputes of these two types of people have not come to our notice until very lately. Till within the last decade, American influence was almost wholly ranged with the pro- Japanese. Contributory to this fact was our general tendency toward sympathetic interest in a nation which rose to constitutional government through influences from within. The Shimonoseki incident, the visit of General Grant, the aid of the United States in setting aside the obnoxious consular jurisdiction in the treaty ports, all these became expressions of the friendly attitude of America.

The Japanese question, as it is now called, first rose to the horizon in 1899, the year of the abrogation of consular jurisdiction.

The need of cheap labor on the sugar plantations of Hawaii was great and constant. Kalakaua, the king, had

2 DAVID STARR JORDAN

tried to meet this need by ''blackbirding" expeditions among the islands of Polynesia. The steamship companies followed by strenuous efforts among the laborers in the rice fields of the region about the inland Sea of Japan, the districts of Okayama, Hiroshima and Yamaguchi. By their insistence and by offers of real wages their emigration agencies brought to Hawaii many men from the lowest stratum in Japanese life, next to the criminal and the outcast — the unskilled and homeless laborers in the rice fields. These have been called coolies, but their position in Japan was quite different from that of the coohes or half slaves of the continent of Asia.

These laborers were treated essentially as slaves in Hawaii. They carried with them none of the culture of Japan, they received none in their new homes. They did not go as colonists. The Japanese with homes do not willingly leave these homes where ''their own customs fit them like a garment," to form new ones in another region. The Japanese are not spontaneously colonists. They will go to other lands for study or for trade or for higher wages. But they go with the hope to return. The coohes went to Hawaii solely under the incentive of higher wages.

When Hawaii was annexed to the United States, the shackles of their slavery were thrown off, and the same impulse of higher wages carried them on to San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver.

In 1899, Mr. W. W. Scott of Honolulu, a former resident of Japan, warned the Japanese authorities of the dangers involved in this movement of Japanese laborers to California. Their lower standard of living and of wages would make them exploitable. This would bring them in conflict with labor unions. Economic clash would beget race prejudice, and Japan could not afford to be judged by her least attractive and least efficient representatives. Influenced by these and similar considerations the Japanese government in 1899, refused passports to all unskilled laborers, and since that time none have come from Japan direct to the Pacific States.

But in response to the continuous demand of Hawaii they were for a time allowed to go there. Japanese people already constituted the great majority of the population of these islands. Even after passports were refused to laborers going to Hawaii, the immigration of coolies from Hawaii to San Francisco still continued.

There was and is a very great demand for Japanese help among the orchardists of California. No other labor has been adequate and available and it is not easy to see what the fruit interests are to do without Japanese help. In this work, the European laborer has scarcely entered into competition and the prices paid the Japanese are not less than the wages of American labor in the same lines. The demand for Japanese workers in household service and in canning establishments has also been great and unsatisfied.

From the fisheries which the Japanese have almost monopolized in British Columbia and in Hawaii, they have been virtually excluded by statutes limiting the fisheries of California, Oregon and Washington to citizens of these States. Unless born in the United States the Japanese cannot become citizens.

A large portion of the Japanese laborers avoided the orchards and established themselves in the cities where, as laundrymen, restaurant keepers, draymen, carpenters and the like, they entered thus into competition with the Amercan laborers, the most of whom in San Francisco were recent immigrants from Europe.

Their lower scale of living and their peculiarities in other ways soon brought them under the condemnation of the trade unions. Anti-Japanese societies were formed and much effort was spent to the end of the exclusion of Japanese and Korean laborers as the Chinese had already been excluded. The personal violence which accompanied the anti-Chinese campaign of twenty years before was practically absent from this. The Japanese were better able to take care of themselves and also, in spite of much reckless talk and exaggeration of language, there was very little real enmity toward the Japanese with any class of their opponents. Most of the unfriendly talk was for political purposes and the main cause of opposition was economic.

4 DAVID STARE JORDAN

An exclusion act like that directed against the Chinese could not be considered by our government. It would be a needless affront to a friendly nation, and a nation wilhng to do anything we may desire, provided it could be done with dignity. The Chinese exclusion act finds its excuse perhaps in the fact that China is not yet a nation. No absolute monarchy can be a nation, in the proper sense. When China finds herself at last, this exclusion act must wholly change its form.

In this condition of affairs, a definite agreement was made with the Katsura ministry of Japan, that no passports for America were to be issued to Japanese laborers, that the responsibility for discrimination should rest with Japan, and that all holders of Japanese passports should be admitted without question. This agreement has been loyally and rigidly kept by Japan. A bit too rigidly perhaps, for it is growing increasingly difficult for Japanese students to come to America. The diffusion among our American universities of Japanese students, eager, devoted and persistent has been one of the most important factors in maintaining the mutual good will and good understanding of the two nations. For everywhere these Japanese graduates of American universities give a good account of themselves standing high in the estimation of their people at home, while retaining a keen interest and intelUgent sympathy in all American affairs.

The present settlement of the immigration question is the very best possible, so long as restriction of any sort is regarded as necessary. It is in the interest of both nations and of all concerned, and the occasional efforts to supersede it by a general "oriental exclusion" bill are prompted by no consideration of the pubHc weffare.

To be grouped with the inchoate nations of Asia as ''orientals" is particularly offensive to the proud, self-governing Japanese. In their thoughts and ambitions, in their attitude towards peace and justice and toward modern civilization the Japanese are in full harmony with the nations of Europe. It is their mission to bring modern civilization to Asia. This they are Hterally doing in Korea one of the most interesting experiments in the reclamation of a dying nation undertaken in modern times, comparable to om* sanitation of the Canal Zone of Panama. At the same time, the hold of Japan on Korea, like our hold on Panama, rests on an act of arbitrary seizure.

The main justification of the exclusion of Japanese unskilled laborers must be found in the economic conditions on the two sides of the Pacific. It is our theory in America that there should be no permanent class of unskilled laborers, and that it is each man's duty as well as his right to rise to his highest possibility.

In most other nations, a permanent lowest class which must work for the lowest wages and do the menial service of society is taken for granted. This theory is affirmed in the Chinese proverb. "Big fish eat little fish, little fish eat shrimp: shrimp eat mud." It is no part of our policy that shrimps should remain shrimps forever. Cheap labor is exploitable to the injury of labor of a higher grade. There in then justice in the contention for the exclusion of the cheapest and most exploitable type of laborers whatever their race or the country from which they come.

There is also legitimate ground for fear that a wide open door from Asia would crowd our Pacific coast before the natural population of America has found its way there. Such a condition would add to the economic wealth of the coast at the expense of social and poUtical confusion.

Many honest men fear the advent of large numbers of Japanese as likely to provoke racial troubles similar to those which exist in the South. I do not share this opinion. No race is more readily at home in our civihzation than the cultivated Japanese. That the rice-field coolie does not assimilate is mainly because of his crude mentality and his lack of any training either Japanese or American. This is broadly true, though among these people are many of fine instincts and marked capacity. The condition of mutual help and mutual tolerance in Hawaii shows that men of a dozen races can get along together if they try to do so. The problem of the South is the problem of slavery; the problem of the half-white, the man with the diverging

6 DAVID STARR JORDAN

instincts of two races, this status changed in an instant, by force, from the position of a chattel to that of a citizen. It is the problem of the half-white man given political equality when social equality is as far away as ever. No bar sinister of this sort nor of any other kind separates the European from the Japanese.

Social reasons for exclusion have a certain value. The Japanese are the most lovable of people, which fact makes them the most clannish. They have the faults of their virtues, and the uneducated Japanese sometime show these faults in unpleasant fashion.

There are still more urgent reasons why the Japanese themselves should insist on exclusion of their coolie laborers from Canada and the United States. The nation cannot afford to have America know it by its least creditable examples. A hundred Japanese rice-field hands are seen in America, to one Japanese gentleman. Thousands of men who never knew a Japanese merchant or artist or scholar have come in contact with Japanese draymen or laundrymen. They have not always found these good neighbors. The present conditions are not permanent, perhaps, but as matters are today it is to the interest of Japan, even more than to the interest of California that the present agreements should be maintained.

Just after the Russian war, when America's sympathy was almost wholly on the side of Japan because the attitude of Russia was beheved to be that of wanton aggression, a series of anti-Japanese articles were published in various American newspapers. Who wrote these articles and who paid for them I do not know, but their various half-truths and falsehoods had an unfavorable effect on American public opinion.

The school affair in San Francisco was also unfortunate, although in itself of no significance whatever. In the great fire of 1906, the Chinatown of San Francisco was entirely destroyed. After the fire a temporary school house was estabhshed in the neighborhood. There vc ere no Chinese children in this school and the teacher, perhaps fearing loss of position, asked the school board to send the Japanese children in the neighboring region to her. The school board apparently ignorant of possible international results formed of this an ^'Oriental School. " There were no Chinese children concerned nor is it clear that Japanese children would have suffered even had such been present.

Under our treaty with Japan our schools as every other privilege were open to Japanese subjects on the basis of 'Hhe most favored nation." To send Japanese children to an ''Oriental School" was probably a violation of this clause of the treaty. It is not certain that this was a violation but it appears as such on the surface. So far as I know, there has been no judicial decision involving this point. In any case, the remedy lay apparently in an injunction suit, and in a quiet determination of the point at issue. It was a mistake, I believe, to make it a matter of international ' diplomacy. Neither the nation nor the State of California' has the shghtest control over the schools of San Francisco,'' unless an action of the school board shall traverse a national or State law or violate a treaty. A treaty has precedence over all local statutes. But the meaning of a treaty can be demonstrated only through judicial process.

The extravagance of the press m both nations stirred up all the latest partisanship in both races involved. On the one hand the injuries to the Japanese children were grossly exaggerated. On the other hand, gratuitous slanders were invented to justify the action of the school board. This action was finally rescinded at the request of the President of the United States who uttered at the same time a sharp reprimand to the people of California. This again was resented by the State, as only five of its citizens were responsible for the act in question, and the people of the , State as a whole had no part whatever in anti-Japanese ' agitation nor any sympathy with the men temporarily in control of affairs in San Francisco. The net result of the ■: whole affair was to alienate sympathy from Japan. This again was unfair for the Japanese nation as a whole had nr responsibiUty for what, at the worst, was an error of judgment on the part of a few of its immigrants.

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Since this affair was settled I have not heard a word as to the relation of the Japanese to the schools of San Francisco, and, I presume, that this difficulty, like most others has disappeared with time and patience and mutual consideration. It is not likely to be heard from again.

Only a word need be said of other matters which have vexed the international air. War scares are heard the world over. The world over they are set going by wicked men for evil purposes. In general the design of purveyors of international slanders is to promote orders for guns, powder and warships. There are other mischief makers, who hope to fish m troubled waters.

A few years ago it was suggested in America that the Manchurian railways, built on Chinese territory, by the governments of Russia and Japan should be sold to China. To this end China should borrow the money of an international syndicate under whose authority the railways should be managed. This line of action was for various reasons impossible to China. The suggestion itself was very unwelcome to the Japan authorities as well as to the Japanese people to whom the leased land between Port Arthur and Mukden is hallowed ground, holding the graves of a hundred and thirty thousand of the young men of Japan. The suggestion itself was personal only. It was never acted upon, never approved by the American people and no official action was ever based upon it, and it should not be a subject of worry to either Russia or Japan.

The fur seal question has been under discussion for more than twenty years, ever since the wanton kilhng of females at sea first threatened the destruction of the Bering Sea herds. By the pelagic seahng of Canada the number of breeding seals in the Pribilof herd was reduced from about 1,000,000 to about 180,000. The entrance of Japan into Bering Sea, disregarding the regulations of the Paris tribunal for the protection of the herd, inadequate as these were, soon reduced these numbers to about 30,000. Last year, a treaty was concluded, Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States being parties to it, by which the matter was honorably and justly settled and the continuance and restoration of the three herds, American, Russian, and Japanese finally assured. There is not now a single cloud above the official horizon as between the United States and Japan. There have never been any real difficulties and the apparent ones are no greater than must appear wherever great nations border on each other. As the Japanese are fond of saying: The Pacific Ocean unites our nations. It does not separate.

War talk on either side is foolish and criminal. Japan recognizes the United States as her nearest neighbor among western nations, her best customer and most steadfast friend. Her own ambitions and interests He in the restoraof Korea, the safeguarding of her investments in Manchuria and in the part she must play in the unforetold future of China. For her own affairs she needs every yen she can raise by any means for the next half century. For the future greatness of Japan depends on the return of "the old peace with velvet sandalled feet," which made her the nation she is today.

War and war demands have made her, for the time being, relatively weak, she who once was strong in her spirit of progress, her freedom from debt and in the high ambition of her people. Thirteen hundred milhons of dollars in war debt is a burden not lightly carried. Through peace and through peace alone Japan will regain her strength, and none know this better than the men of the wise and patriotic group who now control Japan.

By Thomas C. Mendenhall, Sc.D., LL.D., late President of

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, formerly Professor

in the Imperial University, Tokyo

In 1881 I left Japan after having enjoyed several delightful years of residence there, under conditions favorable to the acquisition of a fairly good knowledge of the character, disposition and spirit of the Japanese people. While at that time nearly all foreigners, including missionaries as well as those engaged in trade or commerce, were restricted as to their residence to localities set apart for them by the government, exception was made in favor of foreign professors employed in the University who were practically free to live and travel where they liked.

In 1911 I returned to Japan for a stay of nearly three months, during every hour of which I was busy in the discovery of evidences of the wonderful transformation that these thirty years have wrought.

Curiously, yet naturally it was not the tall chimneys, the extensive manufacturing establishments, or the big steamships carrying the flag of Japan that first attracted attention and drew forth exclamations of surprise. One was prepared for that sort of thing, by personal knowledge of small beginnings long ago, by uninterrupted correspondence with Japanese friends, and by any one of the scores of books about Japan that have been printed in the past decade, many of the authors of which have, apparently, seen Uttle else. It was the comparatively trivial, especially the things not seen, that caused wonder on first going ashore at Nagasaki. What had become of the ''queue," the "top-knot" or small tuft of tied-up hair that partially covered the shaven top of every Japanese head? Gone, absolutely! Not one was to be seen in Nagasaki, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo or other city, except on the head of an actor and then it was soon discovered to be part of a wig. In the country one or two were found, the insignia of ultra-conservatism! The absence of the queue was made up for by the presence of the hat on the head of nearly every man and boy, where formerly the habit of hat-wearing was so rare that hats were constantly being found where last deposited by the owners, who had gone off without ever '^ missing" them. Shoes of the western model have become nearly as necessary a part of a man's dress as the western hat and the number of men who clothe themselves completely after the western fashion is now so great that they have long since ceased to attract special attention.