11 - Japanese alienation and imperial ambition

Summary

Japanese settlers in California: ‘incapable of assimilation’

In 1913, Yamato Ichihasi, a lecturer in history at Stanford University, published a study entitled Japanese Immigration: Its Status in California. It provided a comprehensive summary of information about the local Japanese community, culled from the United States census, State government reports and statistics collected by Japanese organisations. In doing so, he sought to counter the torrent of negative propaganda unleashed by local politicians and newspapers. Ichihasi was a path-breaking Japanese scholar in the United States. He had migrated to California in 1894, at the age of sixteen, attended public school in San Francisco, graduated with Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Stanford and enrolled for a PhD degree in Economics at Harvard, where he wrote his dissertation on Japanese immigration.

He opened his study with reference to the Gentleman's Agreement of 1907, which had followed the Schools' Crisis. Ichihasi observed that while the administration of the agreement had been ‘most effective’, agitation against the Japanese had not ceased. It was ‘vigorous as ever, if not more so than it was before the restriction was put in place’.

Japanese migration had peaked in 1907, with over 10,000 arrivals, but rapidly fell away with the application of passport controls, declining to 2,700 in 1910. In fact, more Japanese departed the Californian ports than arrived each year between 1909 and 1913.