Japanese immigrations

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“Early in the twentieth century, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and various countries in Central America and the Caribbean joined the United States in severely restricting immigration from Japan. This shifted the stream of Japanese emigrants toward South America, where they were initially welcomed by countries with much undeveloped land and few people willing or able to develop it. However, by the mid to late 1930s, South American countries also began to restrict immigration from Japan.”

Thomas Sowell. Migrations and Cultures. p. 106

The Japanese have a reputation for being very intelligent, polite, honest, modest, dependable, hard working, resourceful, frugal, orderly, law abiding people. There are a great many cultures in this world that cannot be described with such a list of complimentary adjectives. It is the Japanese culture — the Japanese cultural stamp — a cultural stamp that is, as all cultural stamps are, all about attitudes, outlooks, inner values. One would think that this would be the kind of people any country would want. Why would Canada, Australia, South Africa, various countries in Central America and the Caribbean, countries of South America, and the United States severely restrict immigration from Japan? What happened here? Why did so many people in all of those countries complain about them to the extent that the governments restricted their immigration?

The following is from Thomas Sowell. Migrations and Cultures. Chapter 3, Japanese Around the World.

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Before the coming of Western science and technology, Japan was a poor country—and remained so for many years, even after its military power became impressive in the late nineteenth century. It has also been, historically, an isolated country. Just as Britain was once isolated by being off the mainland of Europe, Japan’s historic development has taken place off the mainland of Asia—but several times farther off. Although Chinese cultural influences penetrated and transformed Japan more than a thousand years ago, Japan remained an isolated nation, developing, adapting, and modifying the Chinese cultural contributions in its own way. Until the development of ocean-going commerce in recent centuries, Japan had only the most intermittent contact even with Korea and China, much less with the world at large. There has been virtually no significant immigration into Japan, and the non-Japanese peoples in the country amount to less than 1 percent of its population.

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Some of the prominent and enduring traits of the Japanese people seem to reflect the peculiar circumstances of their environment and history. Their enormous capacity for sustained and meticulous work is readily understandable in a people whose food has had to be produced from relatively small amounts of not very fertile land, intensely cultivated and irrigated. The large irrigation systems on which their survival depended required much cooperation among people in a given area and subordination of individual interests and idiosyncracies to the common good. Their meager produce and thin margin of subsistence required an ability to live on little and put aside reserves for contingencies. The natural disasters to which Japan was particularly subject —earthquakes, typhoons, and volcanic eruptions—were reflected in a stoicism and tenacity that have marked the Japanese facing adversities of many kinds, from war to hostile peoples in other lands.

Japan's rise to become one of the leading industrial nations of the world by the second half of the twentieth century need not obscure the technological backwardness from which this rise began in the nineteenth century. Trains were unknown to the Japanese when Commodore Perry presented one as a present to an awe-struck group of Japanese dignitaries. Yet, a century later, Japan's trains outstripped anything produced in the United States. Large, ocean-going ships had not been built in Japan during the long era when foreign travel was forbidden, and the first steel ship was built in Japan in the 1890s, with the quality of Japanese workmanship being inferior to that of European and American producers, but by 1960 Japan was the world's leading shipbuilder, and by 1969 it was producing half the world's tonnage. A similarly dramatic rise of Japanese products took place in the automobile industry. Although the United States produced more than ten times the number of passenger cars produced in Japan as late as 1965, by 1983 Japanese production exceeded American production, and by 1990 Japan's output of passenger cars was more than 50 percent higher than that of the United States. In photography, it was much the same story. As of 1990, the United States imported more than ten times as much photographic products from Japan as from any other country. Yet the road to these pinnacles was far from smooth, and generations of painful efforts were behind these achievements.

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United States

At the turn of the century, there were 85,000 Japanese in the United States, nearly two-thirds in Hawaii. By 1920, there were more than 220,000 Japanese, just over half living on the mainland.

Both on the mainland and in Hawaii, Japanese relations with the larger society were to some extent shaped by the fact that they followed in the wake of the Chinese. In both places, the Chinese had begun as unskilled laborers and many had worked their way up to become small businessmen—and were hated for their advancement and their competition. The Japanese were initially welcomed as substitutes for the Chinese as coolie labor, but then they too became increasingly resented, as they advanced to small farming and small business enterprise. Soon they were lumped together with the Chinese as "the yellow peril" threatening the living standards of American workers, businessmen, and American society in general. This reaction was more pronounced on the mainland than in Hawaii, but it was present in both places. Laws were passed in Hawaii to block the movement of the Japanese into skilled occupations, and on the mainland to stop their purchase of land in California.

Despite discriminatory laws and practices, the Japanese continued to advance economically. Among first-generation Japanese American family heads living on the mainland, a majority began either as farm laborers or as domestic servants, with less than 4 percent owning or managing farms, and less than 4 percent owning or managing businesses. But three-fifths of this generation of Japanese men eventually became owners or managers of either farms or businesses before World War II. The largest number became farmers and more than two-thirds of these could speak only broken English or no English at all. They also had to overcome the handicap of Alien Land Laws, which made it illegal for "aliens ineligible for citizenship" (Asians) to own land in California, where most mainland Japanese lived. Similar laws were passed in other states. A variety of evasions developed, followed by a tightening of the legal loopholes, followed by more evasions. However, time was on the side of the Japanese, as their American-born children were automatically citizens of the United States, to whom the land laws could not apply under the U.S. Constitution. In the decade of the 1930s, the land owned by Japanese Americans in California more than doubled.A majority of employed Japanese males still worked in farming as late as 1940, and they produced about one-third of the commercial truck farming crops sold in California.

The Japanese gained their initial foothold in agriculture by working as agricultural laborers for lower wages than whites, and then acquired farms by paying more than whites for the land. Once established, they became formidable competitors. Where agricultural laborers were paid by piece-rate, as about half were, the Japanese earned substantially more than whites, through greater diligence and longer hours. As their reputation as hard workers spread, their hourly pay rose and eventually overtook that of whites.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, set the stage for a traumatic landmark in the history of Japanese Americans. In the shock and anger that followed this treacherous attack, which occurred in the midst of negotiations ostensibly aimed at peace, anti-Japanese feelings ran high, especially on the mainland. In Hawaii, where the attack occurred (killing many Japanese Americans, among others"), fewer than 1,500 Japanese Americans were taken into custody as enemy aliens, but on the mainland more than 100,000 were interned. The economic impact was as devastating as the social trauma. Businesses built up over many years had to be liquidated.

The wartime internment had lasting economic after-effects, reflected in occupational declines among Japanese Americans after the war. The proportion of first-generation Japanese Americans on the mainland who owned their own businesses or farms in the postwar years was only about half what it had been in the prewar years. The proportion of this generation who became house servants more than doubled the prewar level. Those who became farm laborers in the postwar years was more than triple the prewar percentage. The number who were professionals also declined. But while these disastrous economic retrogressions struck the first-generation Japanese Americans (Issei), the second generation (Nisei) forged ahead at an accelerated rate. American citizens, American educated—with more years of schooling than whites—the Nisei sought lucrative professions. In colleges and universities, they seldom majored in liberal arts. By 1959, Japanese Americans as a group had reached the family income of whites and by 1969 they exceeded the national average in family income by 32 percent. This trend has continued, with the 1990 census showing the median family income of Japanese Americans to be 45 percent higher than the median family income of native-born, non-Asian Americans. Along with this economic progress came acculturation and social acceptance, including rising rates of intermarriage. By 1980, three-quarters of all Japanese Americans spoke only English.

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Canada

At the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese immigration to Canada resumed—and on a larger scale. In less than three years, another 7,000 Japanese arrived in Canada. Partly this reflected the newly enacted American restrictions on Japanese settling on the U.S. mainland from Hawaii.

The rapidly increasing numbers of the Japanese, and their geographic and occupational concentrations, caused them to be seen as a serious competitive threat, despite their relatively modest numbers on a national scale. Moreover, almost all of the Japanese immigrants were young single men, so that their proportion of the visible work force was much higher than their proportion in the general population, which of course included women and children. The Japanese also worked harder and for lower pay than whites, displacing them in many cases, and thereby becoming one of the most hated groups in the province. As early as 1901, the Japanese constituted 22 percent of the work force in the seven largest mills in the Vancouver area.

Canadian labor unions organized the first anti-Japanese rally in Canada, in August 1907. Weeks of anti-Japanese agitation in Vancouver culminated in a riot in which a mob of whites attacked the city's Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods. The mob rampaged through the Chinatown area but were turned back by the determined resistance of the Japanese. This crisis led to an international "gentleman's agreement" between Canada and Japan, the net result of which was a restriction of Japanese immigration to Canada. Again, as in the American situation, the Japanese government's demonstrated strength during the war with Russia gave it the prestige and leverage to salvage some concessions for their people overseas.

Unlike the overwhelmingly male Chinese community in Canada, the Japanese young men were not left stranded without women when Asian immigration was curbed. As in the United States, wives could be brought from Japan to Canada, including the "picture brides" selected for them by their families overseas. After the so-called "gentleman's agreement," more females than males immigrated from Japan to Canada. Over the years, the initially larger Chinese population of Canada declined, as the Chinese men died off or returned to China, without being replaced by children. The Japanese community, however, continued to grow rapidly, composed as it was of young couples in the prime childbearing years. Their birthrate was more than double that of British Columbia as a whole. However, this rapid increase moderated as the young Japanese population grew older.

In the early years, the Japanese immigrants were concentrated in half a dozen laboring occupations, but by the 1930s they were represented in almost every occupation or sub-occupation listed by the Canadian census. This occurred in the face of determined attempts by whites to prevent it. As early as 1902, a Royal Commission reported that the Japanese, living in shacks along the water, were able to undersell whites in boat-building. Employers, especially in the canneries, preferred the Japanese both as laborers and as fishermen, because of their skills and work habits. By 1921, the Japanese held more than 40 percent of the fishing licenses in the province—more than either whites or aboriginal Indians. In the sawmills, Japanese workers competed so well by working for less that at least one mill refused to hire whites. The Japanese even undercut the wages of Chinese workers, who had arrived earlier in Canada and had become established in this industry.

The political counterattack against the Japanese began early in the fishing industry, where they were especially successful. In 1920, the Vancouver authorities began reducing the number of licenses issued to the Japanese. After several years of continuing reductions, the Japanese appealed to the courts and in 1928 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the government could not discriminate in this way. But the years that passed before this decision saw a decline in Japanese fisherman, and the status quo ante was not restored. In 1933, the Japanese held 28 percent fewer fishing licenses than in 1922, while whites and Indians each doubled their previous shares.

In the lumbering industry, a different approach was used against the Japanese. Here the Japanese immigrants were typically very low-paid workers, so a minimum-wage law was used for the explicit purpose of pricing them out of jobs. This minimum-wage law was passed in British Columbia in 1925, when 45 percent of the lumbering workers were Orientals. A year later, more than a thousand white workers had been added and more than 400 Orientals eliminated. Like the displaced Japanese in the fishing industry, some of these workers returned to Japan. In a number of occupations, government regulation, contracts, or franchises permitted local politicians to impose restriction prohibitions on the hiring of Japanese. Even where these efforts were subsequently overruled by higher national authorities, this took time and the Japanese were excluded until the legal processes ran their course. Subcontractors for the provincial Department of Public Works, for example, were explicitly forbidden to hire Asians "directly or indirectly, upon, about or in connection with the works.

Discrimination against the Japanese as employees led many into self-employment, notably in agriculture, but also in urban small businesses as well. Among berry growers in British Columbia, Asians held 29 percent of the acreage in 1920, rising to 45 percent by 1934. Because the Japanese cultivated much more intensively than the whites, their share of all the berries grown in the province was even larger than their share of the land, and reached an estimated 85 percent in 1934. Urban Japanese likewise sought self-employment,. As of 1931, 20 percent of the barbers' licenses granted in Vancouver went to the Japanese, as did nearly half the licenses for fish dealers and more than half the licenses as dressmakers. By the mid-1930s, there were about 860 businesses run by the Japanese in Vancouver. Just over half the Japanese working in that city remained laborers at this point, however.

With the rise of the Japanese into the business class, the organized political opposition to them also rose from the working class to the businessmen. Whereas there was little anti-Japanese activity or feeling among white businessmen in British Columbia in 1913, by 1919 the British Columbia Retail Merchants Association had organized a massive anti-Japanese letter-writing campaign, directed at elected officials. They also tried to get stricter enforcement of retail store-closing laws, charging that the Japanese were gaining customers by staying open longer, or even by making sales on Sunday. These efforts largely failed in the long run. From 1927 to 1937, the number of Japanese candy and fruit merchants in Vancouver increased from 58 to 80, and the number of grocers from 56 to 110. By 1937, the Japanese held 20 percent of all the grocers’ licenses in Vancouver and 91 percent of all greengrocers’ licenses.

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World War II proved to be an even bigger disaster for the Japanese in Canada than in the United States. More than a thousand Japanese-owned fishing vessels were impounded. Japanese-language newspapers were closed. Then Japanese employees began to be fired, and political pressure groups in British Columbia began to demand that the Japanese be interned. Neither the Canadian military authorities nor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police saw any danger from the Japanese in Canada, and in fact none of them was ever convicted of any espionage or sabotage during the war. Nevertheless, the political pressures from British Columbia caused the central government to give in to their demands.

Already regarded as security risks before Pearl Harbor, and registered and required to have papers on_, them at all times in Canada, the Japanese Canadians were now rounded up and interned. By this time, 60 percent of all Japanese in Canada were native born. Three quarters of those removed from the west coast of Canada were either Canadian-born citizens or naturalized citizens. As in the United States, a sudden internment meant hasty sales of businesses and homes that represented a lifetime of work and savings. They typically sold for less than one-fourth their value. Most of the Japanese-owned businesses were bought by members of other middleman minorities—Chinese, Greeks, and Jews.

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The postwar economic recovery of the Japanese in Canada has been at least as spectacular as that in the United States. The younger generation encountered less discrimination when scattered across parts of Canada with no history of organized anti-Japanese activity. While less than 1 percent of Japanese Canadians were in professional occupations in 1935, by 1971 more than one-third of the Nisei in Toronto were professionals. Japanese Canadians as a whole earned 16 percent higher income than the Canadian national average. The average family income of the second-generation Japanese in Toronto was nearly twice the Canadian national average. The Japanese were not only more dispersed nationally—with Toronto now superseding Vancouver as the main concentration—but were also so widely dispersed within the city that it was rare to find two Japanese living in the same block. More than half the marriages of the third generation were intermarriages—compared to just 1 percent in 1941. Yet the Japanese rose economically and were eventually accepted socially without ever having held a major elective office in Canada. As in other countries and with other groups, political power has had little correlation with the economic success of Japanese in the Western Hemisphere.

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Peru

Despite the relatively small size of the Japanese community in Peru, it had by 1930 become the most prominent foreign element, in a country that received relatively little immigration. Their economic presence was especially notable as they moved from agricultural labor to urban occupations as artisans and small businessmen. Even as agricultural laborers, the Japanese were resented, for their work habits caused them to be sufficiently in demand to be paid more than Peruvian workers.

Many of the Japanese moved from agricultural labor to jobs as urban domestic servants, a role which, among other things, aided their learning the Spanish language. Others became small shopkeepers, factory workers, or took miscellaneous other jobs that allowed them to move slowly but steadily up the economic ladder. Although most Japanese came to Peru as agricultural workers, most soon found their way to the capital city of Lima and its environs. As of 1909, there were 441 Japanese factory workers in the vicinity of Lima, along with 257 domestics and cooks, 35 carpenters, and 59 small merchants and peddlers. The number of Japanese-owned barbershops in Lima rose from one in 1904 to 130 twenty years later—nearly three-quarters of all barbershops in the city in 1924. A Japanese Chamber of Commerce was formed in Lima in 1915, with 27 members. Four years later, it had more than a hundred members. The number of Japanese grocery stores increased from 28 to about 200. Often the Japanese bought out Italian or Chinese shopkeepers.

The Peruvian press attacked the growing range and competitive success of Japanese businesses. Attempts to promote boycotts of these businesses proved ineffective, however, for the Japanese typically charged lower prices. Partly these reflected smaller profit margins and partly lower overhead costs, as the Japanese small businessman and/or his clerk's often lived on the premises. Unlike their Hispanic competitors, even prosperous Japanese businessmen seldom lived ostentatiously. As in Canada, the Japanese reputation for fulfilling business obligations wits high, leading to high credit ratings. The Japanese also took more interest in educating their children than did other Peruvians, building a foundation for their continued advancement.

In the city, as in the countryside, Japanese workers acquired a reputation for being more painstaking and conscientious than Peruvian workers. The Japanese thus became prominent among skilled workers and came to own nearly one-fourth of the mechanical and watch-repair trade in Lima. They created the tire-repair trade in Peru, and dominated it for years.

While economic boycotts against the Japanese did not prove to be viable, political action did. A law was passed requiring at least 80 percent of all employees to be Peruvians. Immigration from Japan was severely restricted in the mid-1930s. In May 1940, a Peruvian mob attack on the Japanese and their property in the cities of Lima and Callao also expressed the rising anti-Japanese feeling. The coming of World War II heightened anti-Japanese feelings and policies in Peru. More than 1,700 Japanese were identified as potentially dangerous enemy aliens, with the aid of the American F. B. I. and were shipped to the United States for wartime internment.

The prosperity of the Japanese in postwar Peru was more striking than anywhere else in Latin America, except Brazil. Historic popular resentment and political discrimination proved to be incapable of stopping their rise. Moreover, the history of Japanese economic success in Peru has also been a history of Japanese contributions to the Peruvian economy. These include contributions in agriculture, where the Japanese produced 25 percent of the cotton crop in the late 1930s, to the urban commercial sector, where they introduced modern merchandising methods, more ethical business practices, and greater cleanliness in food processing. As in other countries, the Japanese in Peru acquired a reputation for hard work, reliability, and honesty. While anti-Japanese snobbishness persisted on into the 1990s in some exclusive upper-class social clubs, the general society increasingly accepted them. One sign of that greater social acceptance was that a little-known businessman of Japanese ancestry was elected president in 1990, defeating a world-famous Hispanic Peruvian writer. In 1995, he was re-elected in a landslide, defeating another famous Hispanic Peruvian who had been Secretary General of the United Nations. As in the United States, however, this political success followed economic success, and was neither a cause nor even a contributing factor.

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The rise of the Japanese in country after country, from their initial role as low-paid, unskilled laborers to middle-class occupations in the second and later generations, has implications which reach well beyond the remarkable history of this remarkable group of emigrants. The methods and nature of their rise challenge widely held beliefs as to the historical causes or contemporary prospects for advancing poorer racial or ethnic minorities. Neither political activities nor biological assimilation played significant roles in the rise of the Japanese, though both political success and substantial racial intermarriage occurred after their socioeconomic rise.

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Initially, the Japanese encountered not only nativist opposition but even increasing opposition, as their competition with the local populations pitted them first against other laborers and then against other farmers and businessmen, as they rose into these occupational strata. Eventually, however, over a period of generations, their success in the economy and their social patterns as a group with low incidences crime, violence, and other social pathologies made them more acceptable, both in the economy and socially. The Japanese as a group acquired a reputation for honesty and reliability, whether in Brazil, the United States, or Peru.

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22 Apr 2024