Japanese Americans

“ On the battlefield and at home, Japanese-Americans — names like Hamada, Mitsumori, Marimoto, Noguchi, Yamasaki, Kido, Munemori and Miyamura — have been and continue to be written in our history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and security of this, our common Nation. ”

“ Should Japan become any more attractive than it now is, the Japanese might feel forced to pass exclusion laws. If they were to do so I hope they would not discriminate against people of any one race. I hope they would bar out everybody—not Americans alone. Because if they were to bar us out and at the same time allow the riffraff of Europe to come in, that might hurt our feelings. It isn't so hard to hurt our feelings, either. We are a proud and sensitive race, you know. Yes, indeed! It is largely because we are so proud and sensitive that we treat the Japanese with such scant courtesy. ”

“ Such conduct represents that nadir of underbreeding and folly. The Japanese are one of the great nations of the world, entitled to stand, and standing, on a footing of full equality with any nation of Europe or America. I have the heartiest admiration for them. They can teach us much. Their civilization is in some respects higher than our own. It is eminently undesirable that Japanese and Americans should attempt to live together in masses ”

“ The public manners of the Japanese are not good. In all my solitary walks about Myanoshita I met with no single peasant who passed the time of day, and in the streets of Tokio English people were being jostled and stared at and treated without respect. It was a moment when Americans were unpopular, and the theory was broached that for fear of missing the chance to be rude to an American the Japanese became rude to all outlanders indiscriminately. One indeed gathered the impression that, except in Kyoto, which is a backwater, foreigners are no longer wanted. ”

“ The great Japanese steamship companies, the Toyo Kisen Kaisha and Nippon Yusen Kaisha, are energetic in seeking passenger business. Journalists, authors, men of affairs and others likely to have influence at home, are especially encouraged to visit Japan. The feeling of the Japanese is that there exists in the United States a prejudice against them, and that the best way to overcome this is to show Japan to Americans and let them form their own conclusions. They are proud of their country and they believe that those who become acquainted with it will think well of it. ”

“ I have observed the Japanese fad in America for years, and it has not yet reached its culmination. Each month the books on Japan are placed before the public. It is verily sad even to cut their edges. (The practical Americans prove themselves unpractical in leaving the leaves of books uncut.) I say that our Japan is entitled to regard for worthier things than geisha girls or a fashion in bowing. We should decline your love, Americans, if it is rooted merely in your fancy for our paper lanterns. I have frequently come to conclude that Americans are eminently the freakish nation. ”

“ Unlike the Chinese, they manifested a readiness to conform to American customs and an eagerness to learn the language and to adopt American dress. The racial gulf, however, is not bridged by a similarity in externals. The Japanese possess all the deep and subtle contrasts of mentality and ideality which differentiate the Orient from the Occident. A few are not averse to adopting Christianity; many more are free-thinkers ”

“ The Japanese, profoundly and with all the strength of their being, long to preserve their own culture and to avoid becoming like Europeans or Americans; and in this I think we ought to sympathize with them. The colour prejudice is even more intense among Americans than among Europeans; the Japanese are determined to prove that the yellow man may be the equal of the white man. ”

“ The Japanese certainly object to Americans acquiring land in Japan at least as much as the Americans of the far Western States object to the Japanese acquiring land on our soil. The Americans who go to Japan and the Japanese who come to America should be of the same general class—that is, they should be travelers, students, teachers, scientific investigators, men engaged in international business, men sojourning in the land for pleasure or study. As long as the emigration from each side is limited to classes such as these, there will be no settlement in mass, and therefore no difficulty. ”

“ In Tokyo and other cities I attended many luncheons and dinners organized for the purpose of discussing relations between the United States and Japan, and promoting a friendly understanding between the two nations, but though Japanese statesmen and men of affairs spoke at these gatherings in fluent and even polished English, I never met with one American who was equipped to return the compliment in kind. The Americans, even those who had lived for years in Japan, always spoke in English, whereafter a Japanese interpreter who had taken notes on the speech would arise and render a translation. ”

“ I wish that our American people had many of these qualities. Japanese and American students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in international trade, and the like can meet on terms of entire equality and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other. But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the business of the land. ”

“ They usually do not speak the Japanese language. They are inclined to look down upon its institutions, and admire those of America. Hence the real Japanese element both dislikes them, and does not employ them because of the language barrier. On the other hand, the American does not accept them as Americans, and they cannot be employed easily alongside of and in competition with white natives of the United States. The second-generation Oriental is practically a man without a country. ”

“ Before that time the Japanese could neither read nor write. They are thus the youngest among modern great nations. The Americans and Australians were colonists, the vigorous heirs of an older civilization; the Japanese have grown from the childhood—almost from the infancy—of barbarism within the sight, within reach of the study, of our older races. ”

“ Fortunately, in spite of all unfavorable influence and environment created for them, the native-born Japanese show very hopeful signs of realizing perfect Americanization. Here again we do not wish to dogmatize, in apparent lack of scientific data, and assert that we need feel no apprehension. Yet the few data gathered on the subject from observation strongly point to the hopeful conclusion that as greater numbers of them approach mature age they are gradually becoming Americans by the accepted standard. ”

“ Such a programme necessitated adoption of the common costume of the Western nations, and if we do not [97] accuse German, French, English, and Americans of being imitators, who for similar reasons adopt a uniform society habit, why should the Japanese be imitators when doing the very same thing? Let the world not deceive itself,—there is something more serious than copying in the development of the Japanese nationality. Borrowers they have undoubtedly been, and that on a grand scale. ”

“ Americans sacrifice life to get a living: Japanese, by simply living, enjoy life.
And this leads to another impression and characterization of the Japanese people as merry, lighthearted, and vivacious. Careless, even to an extreme; free from worry and anxiety, because easily satisfied with little, and because inclined to be excessively fatalistic,—they not only are faithful disciples of the Epicurean philosophy, that happiness or pleasure80 is the summum bonum of life, but they succeed in being happy without much exertion. ”

“ The qualities in which the Japanese excel are the very qualities in which so many Americans are deficient. Personal courage and loyalty are the traits which Professor Scherer, a distinguished expert, regards as the fundamental traits of the Japanese character. ”

“ A still further reason for the impression that the Japanese are especially fond of their children is the slight amount of punishment and reprimand which they administer. The children seem to have nearly everything their own way. Playing on the streets, they are always in evidence and are given the right of way.
That Japanese show much affection for their children is clear. The question of importance, however, is whether they have it in a marked degree, more, for instance, than Americans? ”

“ The persistent aggressiveness of the Japanese, their cunning, their aptitude in taking advantage of critical circumstances in making bargains, have by contrast partially restored to popular favor the patient, reliable Chinaman. ”

“ It should be clear, however, that for our good and the good of the Japanese, no further immigrants of their labouring class should ever enter the United States. And it should be equally clear that in such a statement there is no cause for offence.
The United States does not invariably act wisely. Neither does Japan. But the American heart is in the right place, and so is the Japanese heart. ”

“ The root of his discomfort and your enchantment is a profoundly narrow patriotism. Viewed from without, this brave and alert nation, courteous to strangers and glad to excite admiration, retaining so much that is picturesque and unique, yet capable of appropriating the external panoply of Western civilisation, might seem more companionable than any other; viewed from within, it is evidently a close corporation, intolerant of rivalry, diligent to protect itself, and determined to restrict at all costs “Japan to the Japanese.” ”

“ Without doubt, much of the display and pretended knowledge and wisdom that were presented to the Japanese visitors by the senators, representatives, and great men of our nation, were offensive to them; and perhaps they looked upon the inhabitants of the United States as a poor, miserable, degraded, abominable people, not fit to live upon the earth. Pass from Japan to China, then to India, then westerly across Asia, and probably those people view our nation in much the same light. ”

“ Indeed, America called Japan the yellow peril; and with her own prejudices to maintain, her institutions of graft and exploitation to fatten her luxury-loving lords and her laborers to appease, she was in mortal terror of the simple efficiency of the Japanese people who had taken the laws of Nature into their own hands and shaped human evolution by human reason. ”

“ Despite gigantic success up to the present in assimilative processes—due to English institutions inherited and Americanized, and to the prevalence among the children of our community of the common English tongue over all other idioms—America doubts her power to digest and assimilate the strong national and racial characteristics which distinguish the Japanese, which are the secret of much of their success, and which, if I am not mistaken, would constitute them continually a solid homogeneous body, essentially and unchangingly foreign. ”

“ It is at once the centre of business, and the scene of uproar, riot, and confusion. In the comparative nakedness of the women, in the noise and violence of the shopkeepers, in the litter of the streets, there is nothing to suggest the delicate culture of Japan. The modesty, cleanliness, and politeness, so characteristic of the Japanese, are conspicuously absent in their settlements in this country. ”

“ 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 can not 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. ”

“ In 1853, when the American Pan-Angle Admiral Perry forced foreign commerce on Japan, the land was a feudal area given over to devastating civil wars. The privileges that the white races after 1853 exacted have been gradually and entirely taken back. Japan now stands as a world power. Its people are increasing rapidly. It builds its own ships. The three fastest merchant steamers on the Pacific to-day are Japanese. ”

“ The Japanese people think a lot of America for they recognize the fact that to America they owe more than to any other nation. Their friendship for us is real too, if one can judge anything by mingling with the people. ”

“ A strong disposition to exclude them has displayed itself in the United States of America, in Australasia and in British Columbia, and it is evident that, since one nation cannot force its society on another at the point of the sword, this anti-Asiatic prejudice will have to be respected, though it has its origin in nothing more respectable than the jealousy of the labouring classes. One result is an increase in the number of Japanese emigrating to Korea, Manchuria and S. America. ”

“ They began to look beyond the wisdom of the pulpit orators who preached about the wonderful growth of culture in Japan, and to recognize that if the United States did not succeed in conquering Japan and driving the enemy out of the country, the victorious Japanese would not hesitate a moment to take the next step and knock loudly and peremptorily at Europe's door, and this would put an end once and for all to every single European colonial empire. ”

“ But notwithstanding proximity and propinquity, over which diplomatic letter-writers labor hard, when the Chinese and the Japanese and the Hawaiian come together, the Hawaiian "vanishes like dewdrops by the roadside," the Chinese jogs along, and the Japanese runs motor-cars and raises children. The Japanese obtrudes himself much more upon the life of the community than the other two races, but with no more relinquishment of his own ways. He drives the cars and he drives white men to more activity than they really enjoy. ”