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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
A Canadian diplomatic mission led by Rodolphe Lemieux in November 1907 shares an anniversary with the much-maligned Japanese immigration controls, introduced on 20 November 2007. The themes underlying the Lemieux mission - racial profiling, xenophobia, discrimination in immigration, and claims of unassimilability in the host country - resonate deeply with the current political climate in Japan. The anniversary of Lemieux's arrival in Japan 100 years ago serves to remind us how little attitudes have changed in regards to immigration and racialization.
[1] In addition to dozens of letters to the editor, see Kevin Rafferty, “Not so welcome to Japan any longer,” The Japan Times, 1 November 2007.
[2] Jun Hongo, “Hatoyama in hot water over ‘al-Qaida connection’,” The Japan Times, 30 October 2007.
[3] This is reminiscent of the post-9/11 “guilt trip” the Bush Administration played on Canadians. It was “Canada's porous border” that allowed terrorists to enter the United States; it was “Canada's leaky immigration system” that admitted in terrorists who lived next to the United States. Lawrence Martin, “Spin game: the great Canadian guilt trip,” The Globe and Mail, 3 October 2001, p. A15.
[4] For the authoritative interpretation of the Vancouver Riot, see Patricia E. Roy, A White Man's Province: British Columbia politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989), chapter 8.
[5] Masako Iino, “Japan's Reaction to the Vancouver Riot of 1907,” BC Studies 60 (Winter 1983-1984): 36.
[6] Iino, 35-36.
[7] Honorius Lacombe, “La mission Lemieux au Japon (1907-1908).” MA Thesis, University of Ottawa, 1951, 7. Originally quoted from British and Foreign State Papers, 1893-1894, vol. LXXXVI, A.H. Oakes and Maycock, eds. (London: Willoughby, 1904), 40.
[8] The Canadian government, however, had no diplomatic qualms about offending the Chinese, as the head tax attests.
[9] Robert Joseph Gowen, “Canada and the Myth of the Japan Market, 1896-1911,” The Pacific Historical Review 39, no. 1 (Feb. 1970): 72-73.
[10] Letter from Nosse to Laurier, no. 97258, 8 May 1905, Sir Wilfrid Laurier fonds (MG26-G), Library and Archives Canada [LAC].
[11] Three days earlier, there had been an anti-Asian riot in nearby Bellingham, Washington, and there had been a number of anti-Asian riots across the Pacific states in 1907.
[12] Sessional Papers, No. 74b, 165, quoted in Howard Sugimoto, Japanese Immigration, the Vancouver Riots, and Canadian Diplomacy (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 159.
[13] The Governor-General of Canada, Lord Grey, took a keener interest in Canadian affairs than most of his predecessors. In an undated letter sent to Lemieux prior to his departure, Lord Grey, ostensibly speaking on behalf of the British Crown, warned that “The real danger to B.C. and Canada will not come from the officially permitted influx [of] Passport [holding] Japs into the mainland of B.C. – but from the possible occupation by nonofficial Japs of the rich and uninhabited Islands like Queen Charlotte Islands[.] I am much alarmed with possible consequences of a Jap invasion of these unoccupied lands.” Letter from Lord Grey to Lemieux, 140, vol. 3, Rodolphe Lemieux fonds (MG 27 II D10), LAC.
[14] Lemieux notes, 148, vol. 3, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[15] Lemieux notes, 146, vol. 3, Lemieux fonds, LAC. Menial, dirty, and dangerous jobs are the kitsui, kitanai, kiken (the 3Ks) that the Japanese today say they will not do. The McInnes report and comments from British officials can be found at 326-331, 2 October -28 November 1907, F.O. 371/274, Public Record Office. I used British Foreign Office Japan Correspondence, 1906-1929 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1988) to locate the McInnes report.
[16] Lemieux notes, 150, vol. 3, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[17] W.E. McInnes to Frank Oliver, 328, 2 October 1907, F.O. 371/274, Public Record Office.
[18] Lemieux notes, 151, vol. 3, Lemieux fonds, LAC; McInnes to Oliver, 328, 2 October 1907, F.O. 371/274, Public Record Office.
[19] Iino, “Japan's Reaction to the Vancouver Riot,” 35-36.
[20] Precis of interview with Count Hayashi at the Foreign Office, 255, 25 November 1907, vol. 4, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[21] Ibid., 256.
[22] Precis of the meeting held at the Foreign Office at Tokio, 370-372, 2 December 1907, vol. 4, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[23] Around the same time the Lemieux was in Japan, President Theodore Roosevelt's Administration and the Japanese government exchanged a series of notes which effectively ended Japanese emigration to the U.S. (but not, for the moment, to Hawaii). Japanese authorities did not issue passports to people wishing to work in the United States. This became known as the 1907 Gentlemen's Agreement.
[24] Precis of the meeting held at the British Embassy, 406, 4 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[25] Telegram from Lemieux to Laurier, 472, 10 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[26] Telegram from Lemieux to Laurier, 438, 6 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds; Paraphrase of telegram from Sir C. MacDonald to Sir E. Grey, 421, 5 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[27] Telegram from Laurier to Lemieux, 441, 8 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[28] The Japanese public had been led to believe that Japan would get all of its demands at the Portsmouth Treaty negotiations, which officially ended the Russo-Japanese War, when in fact the Japanese government's position was not as strong as it or the press claimed. When the disappointing terms were announced, a mass rally was held in Tokyo on 5 September 1905 against the Japanese government for concluding the Treaty. The next day, the day the Treaty was signed, riots broke out across Tokyo and over 350 buildings were destroyed, including the official residence of the Home Minister. In dealing with the Canadian immigration question, the Japanese government refused to present a document to the public outlining restrictions imposed on its subjects. They feared similar violence if the terms were announced. For an analysis of the 1905 Hibiya Riot, see Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).
[29] Telegram from Lemieux to Laurier, 468-470, 10 December 1907, vol. 5, Lemieux fonds, LAC. About a week later, Lemieux sent Laurier another cable explaining how Japanese feelings of maintaining racial dignity were at the core of their refusal to include numerical limits in any negotiated proposal. He wrote: “Japanese Government offer to insert in confidential letter to [British] Ambassador expression of their confident expectation that united immigration domestic and farm hands will not exceed four hundred annually. While in opinion of Ambassador and myself they are perfectly sincere in this and in their fixed purpose voluntarily to restrict immigration within limit acceptable to us, they cannot possibly give any written assurance of numerical limitation. Any limiting of treaty rights would mean their defeat and perhaps lead to serious trouble. Feeling very high.” Telegram from Lemieux to Laurier, 622, 19 December 1907, vol. 6, Lemieux fonds, LAC.
[30] Roy, A White Man's Province, 211-213.
[31] Ibid., 211.
[32] See for example the following recent reports: “OB-GYN career shunned by med students,” Japan Times, 16 November 2007; “Coping with the doctor shortage,” Japan Times, 1 October 2007; “Japan physician shortage serious: OECD,” Japan Times, 26 July 2007.
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