CONTENTS IV The Problem from the Japanese Viewpoint VI The Isolation of Japanese in America VII The Reaction of the Japanese to American CHAPTER I OUR FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE JAPANESE THE 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 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 1613 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.1 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.2 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 Iyemitsu 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.1 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.2 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. |