The Japanese invasion; a study in the psychology of inter-racial contacts

Preface

THOUGHTFUL students of our immigration problem are more and more turning their attention to the immigrant invasion from the Orient, now small in volume but impelled by powerful forces that may some day be beyond our control. The overwhelming numbers of the Asiatics, the social and economic discontent of the people, and the aggressive nationalism of the Japanese are danger signals that are arousing us from our complacent feelings of security. Vast possibilities for both good and evil are bound up in the rapidly developing Orient. It is of the highest importance that our Government work out an Oriental policy based upon a thorough understanding of the Far Eastern situation and designed to conserve the best interests of all concerned.

This book is an attempt to study one phase of this Oriental problem — the racial aspects of the Japanese immigration. Its interest is psychological rather than historical or economic. Emphasis is laid on the changing mental attitudes of the Japanese immigrants and on their reaction to the race prejudice they are compelled to face.

The writer tries to show that the problem is deeper than that of social assimilation. The fundamental difficulty is a difference of color and physical charactervi Preface

istics so marked that the Japanese cannot merge themselves unnoticed into American life. This makes inevitable the establishment of a color line between the East and the West, no less real than that between the White and the Black.

Nothing is gained by ignoring the racial aspects of the question as is now the tendency in some quarters. A frank statement of facts is one step toward a better mutual understanding and lays the basis for a more satisfactory solution of the Oriental immigration problem.

The author's first interest in this problem arose during his seven years' residence in Japan as a teacher in a mission college in Sendai. Without the background gained by this long contact with the Japanese people, this study could not have been carried out.

Among the many friends, both Japanese and American, who have furnished data of various kinds, special mention should be made of Dr. William G. Seiple, of Sendai, Japan, who has been at great pains to keep the author in close touch with public opinion in Japan. The author wishes especially to acknowledge his great indebtedness to Dr. Robert E. Park, of the University of Chicago, under whose patient and stimulating supervision this book was written.

J. F. Steiner

Chicago, January, i^iy

Introduction

THERE is a conviction, widespread in America at the present time, that one of the most fruitful sources of international wars are racial prejudice and national egotism. This conviction is the nerve of much present day pacifism. It has been the inspiration of such unofficial diplomacy, for example, as that of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in its effort to bring about a better understanding between the Japanese and America. This book is an attempt to study this phenomenon of race prejudice and national egotism, so far as it reveals itself in the relations of the Japanese and the Americans in this country, and to estimate the role it is likely to play in the future relations of the two countries.

So far as I know, an investigation of precisely this nature has not hitherto been made. One reason for this is, perhaps, that not until very recent times did the problem present itself in precisely this form. So long as the nations lived in practical isolation, carrying on their intercourse through the medium of professional diplomats, and knowing each other mainly through the products they exchanged, census reports, and the discreet observations of polite travellers, racial prejudice did not disturb international relations. With the extension of international commerce, the increase of

vii viii Introduction immigration, and the interpenetration of peoples, the scene changes. The railway, the steamship, and the telegraph are rapidly mobilizing the peoples of the earth. The nations are coming out of their isolation, and distances which separated the different races are rapidly giving way before the extension of communication.

The same human motives, which have led men to spread a network of trade-communication over the whole earth, in order to bring about an exchange of commodities, are now bringing about a new distribution of populations. When these populations become as mobile as the commodities of commerce there will be practically no limits — except those artificial barriers, like the customs and immigration restrictions, maintained by individual states — to a world wide economic and personal competition. Furthermore, when the natural barriers are broken down, artificial barriers will be maintained with increasing difficulty.

Some conception of the extent of the changes which are taking place in the world under the influence of these forces may be gathered from the fact that in 1870 the cost of transporting a bushel of grain in Europe was so great as to prohibit its sale beyond a radius of two hundred miles from a primary market. By 1883 the importation of grains from the virgin soil of the Western prairies in the United States had brought about an agricultural crisis in every country in Western Europe.

One may illustrate, but it is scarcely possible to esti-

Introduction ix mate the economic changes which have been brought about by the enormous increase in ocean transportation. In 1840 the first Cunard liner, of 740 horsepower with a speed of 8.5 knots per hour, was launched. In 1907, when the Lusitania was built, ocean-going vessels had attained a speed of 25 knots an hour and were drawn by engines of 70,000 horsepower.

It is difficult to estimate the economic changes which have been brought about by the changes in ocean transportation represented by these figures. It is still less possible to predict the political effects of the steadily increasing mobility of the peoples of the earth. At the present time this mobility has already reached a point at which it is often easier and cheaper to transport the world's population to the sources of raw materials than to carry the world's manufactures to the established seats of population.

With the progressive rapidity, ease, and security of transportation, and the increase in communication, there follows an increasing detachment of the population from the soil, and a concurrent concentration in great cities. These cities, in time, become the centers of vast numbers of uprooted individuals, casual and seasonal laborers, tenement and apartment house dwellers, sophisticated and emancipated urbanites, who are bound together neither by local attachment nor by ties of family, clan, religion, or nationality. Under such conditions it is reasonable to expect that the same economic motive which leads every trader to sell in the

Introduction highest market and to buy in the lowest will steadily increase and intensify the tendency, which has already reached enormous proportions of the population in overcrowded regions, with diminished resources, to seek their fortunes, either permanently or temporarily, in the new countries of undeveloped resources.

Already the extension of commerce and the increase of immigration have brought about an international and interracial situation that has strained the inherited political order of the United States. It is this same expansive movement of population and of commerce, together with the racial and national rivalries that have sprung from them, which first destroyed the traditional scheme of international control which rested on it. Whatever may have been the immediate causes of the world war, the more remote sources of the conflict must undoubtedly be sought in the great cosmic forces which have broken down the barriers which formerly separated the races and nationalities of the world, and forced them into new intimacies and new forms of competition, rivalry, and conflict.

Since 1870 the conditions which I have attempted to sketch have steadily forced upon America and the nations of Europe the problem of assimilating their heterogeneous populations. What we call the race problem is an incident of this process of assimilation, and is an evidence of its failure.

The present volume touches but does not deal with the general situation which I have briefly sketched. It is, as its title suggests, a study in "racial contacts," and

Introduction xi is an attempt to distinguish and trace to their sources the attitudes and the sentiments — that is to say, mutual prejudices — which have been and still are a source of mutual irritation and misunderstanding between the Japanese and American peoples.

Fundamentally, prejudice against the Japanese in the United States is merely the prejudice which attaches to every alien and immigrant people. The immigrant from Europe, like the immigrant from Asia, comes to this country because he finds here a freedom of individual action and an economic opportunity which he did not find at home. It is an instance of the general tendency of populations to move from an area of relatively closed to one of relatively open resources. The movement is as inevitable and, in the long run, as resistless as that which draws water from its mountain sources to the sea. It is one way of redressing the economic balance and bringing about an economic equilibrium.

The very circumstances under which this modern movement of population has arisen implies then that the standard of living, if not the cultural level, of the immigrant is lower than that of the native population. The consequence is that immigration brings with it a new and disturbing form of competition, the competition, namely, of peoples of a lower and of a higher standard of living. The effect of this competition, where it is free and unrestricted, is either to lower the living standards of the native population; to expel them from the vocations in which the immigrants are xii Introduction able or permitted to compete; or what may, perhaps, be regarded as a more sinister consequence, to induce such a restriction of the birth rate of the native population as to insure its ultimate extinction. The latter is, in fact, what seems to be happening in the New England manufacturing towns where the birth rate in the native population for some years past has fallen below the death rate, so that the native stock has long since ceased to reproduce itself. The foreign peoples, on the other hand, are rapidly replacing the native stocks, not merely by the influence of new immigration but because of a relatively high excess of births over deaths.

It has been assumed that the prejudice which blinds the people of one race to the virtues of another, and leads them to exaggerate that other's faults, is in the nature of a misunderstanding which further knowledge will dispel. This is so far from true that it would be more exact to say that our racial misunderstandings are merely the expression of our racial antipathies. Behind these antipathies are deep-seated, vital, and instinctive impulses. These antipathies represent collision of invisible forces, the clash of interests, dimly felt but not yet clearly perceived. They are present in every situation where the fundamental interests of races and peoples are not yet regulated by some law, custom, or any other modus vivendi which commands the assent and the mutual support of both parties. We hate people because we fear them; because our interests, as we understand them at anv rate, run counter

Introduction xiii to theirs. On the other hand, good will is founded in the long run upon cooperation. The extension of our socalled altruistic sentiments is made possible only by the organization of our otherwise conflicting interests and by the extension of the machinery of cooperation and social control.

Race prejudice may be regarded as a spontaneous, more or less instinctive defense-reaction, the practical effect of which is to restrict free competition between races. Its importance as a social function is due to the fact that free competition, particularly between people with different standards of living, seems to be, if not the original source, at least the stimulus to which race prejudice is the response.

From this point of view we may regard caste, or even slavery, as one of those accommodations through which the race problem found a natural solution. Caste, by relegating the subject race to an inferior status, gives to each race at any rate a monopoly of its own tasks. When this status is accepted by the subject people, as is the case where the caste or slavery systems become fully established, racial competition ceases and racial animosity tends to disappear. That is the explanation of the intimate and friendly relations which so often existed in slavery between master and servant. It is for this reason that we hear it said today that "the Negro is all right in his place." In his place he is a convenience and not a competitor. Each race being in its place, no obstacle to racial cooperation exists.

xiv Introduction

The fact that race prejudice is due to, or is in some sense dependent upon, race competition is further manifest by a fact which Mr. Steiner has emphasized, namely, that prejudice against the Japanese is nowhere uniform throughout the United States. It is only where Japanese are present in sufficient numbers to actually disturb the economic status of the white population that prejudice has manifested itself to such a degree as to demand serious consideration. It is an interesting fact, also, that prejudice against the Japanese is now more intense than it is against any other oriental people. The reason for this, as Mr. Steiner has pointed out, is that the Japanese are more aggressive, more disposed to test the sincerity of that statement of the Declaration of Independence which declares that all men are equally entitled to ''life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — a statement, by the way, which is merely a forensic assertion of the laissezfaire doctrine of free and unrestricted competition as applied to the relations of individual men.

The Japanese, the Chinese, they too would be all right in their place, no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste system and to stay in his place. The Japanese are an organized and morally efficient nation. They have the national pride and the national egotism which rests on the consciousness

Introduction xv of this efficiency. In fact it is not too much to say that national egotism, if one pleases to call it such, is essential to national efficiency, just as a certain irascibility of temper seems to be essential to a good fighter.

Another difficulty is that caste and the limitation of free competition is economically unsound, even though it be politically desirable. A national policy of national efficiency demands that every individual have not merely the opportunity but the preparation necessary to perform that particular service for the community for which his natural disposition and aptitude fit him, irrespective of race or "previous condition."

Finally, caste and the limitation of economic opportunity is contrary, if not to our traditions, at least to our political principles. That means that there will always be an active minority opposed on grounds of political sentiment to any settlement based on the caste system as applied to either the black or the brown man. This minority will be small in parts of the country immediately adversely affected by the competition of the invading race. It will be larger in regions which are not greatly affected. It will be increased if immigration is so rapid as to make the competition more acute. We must look to other measures for the solution of the Japanese problem, if it should prove true, as seems probable, that we are not able or, for various reasons, do not care to hold back permanently the rising tide of the oriental invasion.

I have said that fundamentally and in principle prejuxvi Introduction dice against the Japanese in America today was identical with the prejudice which attaches to any immigrant people. There is, as Mr. Steiner has pointed out, a difference. This is due to the existence in the human mind of a mechanism by which we inevitably and automatically classify every individual human being we meet. When a race bears an external mark by which every individual member of it can infallibly be identified, that race is by that fact set apart and segregated. Japanese, Chinese, and Negroes cannot move among us with the same freedom as the members of other races because they bear marks which identify them as members of their race. This fact isolates them. In the end, the effect of this isolation, both in its effects upon the Japanese themselves, and upon the human environment in which they live, is profound. Isolation is at once a cause and an effect of race prejudice. It is a vicious circle — isolation, prejudice; prejudice, isolation. Were there no other reasons which urge us to consider the case of the Japanese and the oriental peoples in a category different from that of the European immigrant, this fact, that he is bound to live in the American community a more or less isolated life, would impel us to do so.

I have called what I have here written an introduction. It is perhaps less an introduction than an interpretation. As such, however, it may serve its purpose, which has been to add, if possible, something to the significance of this study by a review of the larger situation, in which its special problem lies.

Introduction xvii

In conclusion, I may perhaps say in a word what seems to me the practical bearing of Mr. Steiner's book. Race prejudice is a mechanism of the group mind which acts reflexly and automatically in response to its proper stimulus. That stimulus seems to be, in the cases where I have met it, unrestricted competition of peoples with different standards of living. Racial animosities and the socalled racial misunderstandings that grow out of them cannot be explained or argued away. They can only be affected when there has been a readjustment of relations and an organization of interests in such a way as to bring about a larger measure of cooperation and a less amount of friction and conflict. This demands something more than a diplomacy of kind words. It demands a national policy based on an unflinching examination of the facts.

Robert E. Park.

The University of Chicago, January 25, i^iy

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Our First Acquaintance with the Japanese i

II The Japanese Attitude Toward the West . i6

Chapter I Our First Acquaintance With The Japanese

^T^HE first Japanese to set foot upon the American -*■ continent came to Mexico early in the seventeenth century as guests of Spanish colonists who then were the only Europeans residing on the western coast of America. The same aggressiveness and organizing ability and capacity for leadership, which have been such prominent factors in the recent development of Japan, were also characteristic of the Japanese of that day.

Under the leadership of ambitious rulers a Japanese mercantile fleet was organized and trade routes were established to such distant points as India and Java. Their three-masted, square-rigged vessels, very little smaller than those used by European sailors, were well adapted for long ocean voyages, and under the direction of skilled Japanese navigators, became familiar objects in every far eastern port. Japanese colonists took advantage of this opportunity to go abroad in large numbers. Over 15,000 Japanese, it is said, were residing in the Philippines during the sixteenth century.

The Japanese were quick to see the advantages of foreign trade so eagerly sought by the progressive nations of Europe, and were developing a policy of

I expansion that seemed destined to make them leaders of the Orient. Spanish vessels plying between Spain's far eastern possessions and Mexico were urged to call at the ports of Japan. Japanese sailors employed on these Spanish ships learned the route across the Pacific and brought back glowing reports of the New World. In 1610 and 161 3 two Japanese embassies proceeded in Spanish ships to Acapulco, Mexico, where they remained a few months studying the conditions of trade in New Spain. The desire of the Spaniards to promote friendly relations between the two countries led them to extend a cordial welcome to their visitors, who were given every opportunity for observation and travel.^

Whatever may have been the plans of the Japanese for securing a foothold on the American continent, they were destined not to be carried out, for soon after the return of these embassies to Japan the foreign policy of the country was so radically changed that further foreign intercourse became impossible. The desire of the Japanese rulers to profit by foreign trade was outweighed by their fear of foreign aggression. The Roman Catholic missionaries residing in Japan were no longer regarded as mere religious propagandists but as political agents of their home governments, whose real purpose was to undermine the loyalty of their converts.^ In the minds of the Japanese authori-

1 Nuttall, Z., Earliest Historical Relations Between Mexico and Japan, Univ. of Calif. Publications of Arch. & Eth., iv, 1-47, 1906.

2 Murdoch, J., A History of Japan During Century of Early Foreign Intercourse, Kobe, Japan, pp. 45-48.

ties, the safety of their country lay only in seclusion. To accomplish this end all foreigners were banished and Japanese subjects were forbidden to go abroad. In 1636 during the shogunate of Tokugawa lyemitsu all intercourse with Mexico was cut off and thus ended what might have been the beginning of Japanese expansion in the West. If it had not been for this change in Japan's foreign policy, aggressive Japanese traders and colonists might have explored our whole western coast and established settlements in California long before the arrival of the people of the white race. It is of course futile to discuss what might have been, but it takes no great stretch of the imagination to picture the changed conditions that would now prevail on our western coast if Japan had not lost her chance to gain the mastery of the Pacific in the seventeenth century.^

For more than two hundred years Japan maintained this policy of seclusion so rigidly that very few Japanese managed to get abroad. Occasionally, Japanese fishing junks, driven far out to sea by sudden storms, were carried by the Black Current across the Pacific and finally stranded on the western coast of America and its outlying islands, a fact which some writers have used to support the theory that the Japanese are the ancestors of the American Indians.^

As early as 1840, American vessels crossing the

1 Kennan, George, " How Japan Lost Her Chance in the Pacific," the Outlook, June 27, 1914, pp. 488-93.

2 Davis, H., "Japanese Wrecks in American Waters," the Overland Monthly, Sept., 1872, pp. 353-60.

Pacific rescued shipwrecked Japanese fishermen and brought them to America. One of the first of these rescued Japanese to stay for any length of time in America was Nakahama Manjiro, a boy of fifteen, who was taken to Fair Haven, Massachusetts, where he attended school for six years. Upon his return to Japan in 1849 he was treated harshly by the Japanese authorities because he had broken the laws which forbade any Japanese to go abroad. Fortunately he escaped severe punishment, and when Commodore Perry arrived in Japan in 1853, Nakahama acted as one of the interpreters and helped to convince the Japanese of the friendliness of America.^

1 Hawks, F. L., Narrative of the Expedition of Perry to Japan. D. Appleton & Co., p. 60.

I. Nitobe. The Intercourse Between the United States and Japan, gives the following account of one of these Japanese fishermen:

" Sentaro — better known by his American nickname, Sam Patch — 'was one of seventeen unfortunates who, while manning a junk, were blown out to sea, rescued by an American vessel and taken to San Francisco. Sam Patch accompanied the Perry squadron. All the while they sailed, he was apprehending that some ill would befall his neck and was constantly repeating 'shimpai, shimpai ' (Japanese word for troubled in mind), showing with what fear and trembling he came once more to take a glance at his native land. He was asked by the Japanese officials to stay in the country and engage in building ' black ships ' ; but nothing could free him of his * shimpai ' which became almost a part of his constitution insomuch as it gave him the sobriquet of * Sam Patch.' He was placed under the care of Mr. J. Goble, who took him to Hamilton, New York, where the poor heathen was dubbed a Christian by being dipped into water. In i860, when Goble came to Japan as a missionary, he took Sam with him ; but at that time when a scrappy knowledge of English might be turned to very good account, Sam lacked Yankee pluck and he lived and died a poor house servant." (p. 157.)

It was not, however, until i860 that America received an important visit from the Japanese. In that year a special embassy was sent to Washington by the Japanese government to exchange the ratifications of the treaty of 1858. Through the efforts of our representative in Japan, Townsend Harris, the Embassy was given passage in American naval vessels and was received as guests of the American government. This Embassy consisted of a Chief Ambassador and a Vice- Ambassador, who were princes of the highest rank in the Empire, a Censor and a Vice-Governor, who were also of high rank, and a retinue of officers, interpreters, physicians, and servants, the whole party numbering seventy-one persons.

The reception of the Embassy at San Francisco was very enthusiastic. Twenty thousand dollars was appropriated from the city treasury to provide for their entertainment. The city authorities and leading citizens showed the Japanese every possible consideration and did all in their power to make their stay in the city pleasant. Under the auspices of the state and city authorities, a public reception was given the Embassy in the largest hall in the city, which was attended by an immense crowd of people.^

The trip from San Francisco to the eastern states was made by way of Panama, the Embassy arriving in Washington on May 13, i860. The Government had made thorough preparation for the reception of the Japanese visitors and treated them with the dis-

1 Harper's Weekly, April 28, i860.

tinction and courtesy befitting their rank. They were granted interviews by the President and chief officers of state, receptions and banquets were held in their honor, and facilities were given them to visit the places of interest in the city and become acquainted with American institutions.^ The newspapers of that day devoted a large amount of space to the movements of the Embassy and published much information about Japan and things Japanese. The friendly tone of the newspaper press can be seen in the following quotation from an editorial :

This Japanese Embassy is a matter of the highest national and commercial importance. The Japanese are the British of Asia. Like our ancestors of the British Isles, they are of insular origin and full of insular virtues and insular prejudices. They despise foreigners; but they know how to take care of themselves. Many of their customs seem absurd to us ; but they are honest in their adoption and thorough in their observance. Their country produces a number of commodities which would find a sale here, and they consume many articles which we produce. Satisfy them that commercial intercourse with us would be beneficial to them, and a valuable trade will be created

Independently, however, of immediate commercial benefits, the establishment of friendly relations with the Japanese cannot fail to be of marked advantage to our Pacific States. The State of Oregon and the future State of Washington will necessarily become intimately connected with their nearest neighbors over the water. Of those neighbors, Japan is the one best worth cultivating. ... By and by there will necessarily grow up an

1 Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, June 2, i860.

interchange not only of commodities but of men between our Pacific States and the Empire of Japan. Our people will go to Japan and will endeavor to show the Japanese the best side of the American character. On the other hand, the Japanese — if good relations be established between the two countries — will send out some of their people to plant Japanese colonies in our territory. Of this interchange, the benefit will be obvious and mutual. Civilized as we boast of being, we can learn much of the Japanese; if nothing more, we can learn the duty of obeying the laws. In every point of view the visit of the Japanese is an important event, and we fervently trust that all classes of people will combine to do them honor.^

During their six weeks' visit in the eastern states, great excitement prevailed wherever they appeared. Every city they visited strove to outdo its rival in providing entertainment for the distinguished guests of the nation. Record-breaking crowds assembled in the streets to see them pass by. The climax of their American visit was the Grand Ball given at the Metropolitan Hotel by the city of New York on June 25. On this occasion it is asserted that more than ten thousand of the leading citizens of New York and neighboring cities were present. No money or pains were spared in the effort to make it a brilliant affair. A contemporary writer states that " the whole thing was arranged on a scale of unsurpassed splendor, prodigality, and magnificence. It was a scene of festivity altogether unparalleled in the history of New York." The arrival of the Japanese guests at the reception is thus described :