There is no doubt but that there was something romantic and attractive about old Japan. Its quaint customs and elaborate politeness and artistic fame gained added glamour through distance and unfamiliarity. Above all there was no commercial or industrial rivalry to cause unpleasantness, and the Japanese very courteously assumed the subordinate rôle which the West assigned them. In 1860 the Japanese were merely a newly discovered people whose strange costumes and novel appearance piqued our curiosity. Our reaction toward them was instinctive, spontaneous, and unreflecting. We never stopped to consider what our association with them would involve. Now the situation has entirely changed. The Japanese no longer flatter our pride by showing astonishment at our greatness, but have become our competitors in the industrial and political world. Human nature being as it is, old Japan with its works of art and teachable people would naturally be more popular than modern Japan with its battleships and aggressive nationalism determined to compete with us in every field of human endeavor. Says Professor W. I. Thomas:

The Japanese for fifty years have been diligently acquiring our habits, with the view of equaling our activities, and in the degree that they showed ability equal to ours along our own lines, we began to have a fellow feeling for them and even a very warm admiration. They looked charming to us in their own country, and we were progressing toward social, political, commercial, and matrimonial alliances with them when the genial currents of our soul were frozen by the discovery that

they were dangerous. In our own country they are better fruit growers and farmers than we are and their standard of living is lower. They are therefore a menace, and there begins to be a reinstatement of the hate attitude, especially on our western coast.1

The beginning of our awakening to the fact that Japan was to become a serious rival of western nations dates back to 1894-5, when Japan waged a successful war against China and clearly demonstrated her military prowess. After this unexpected display of Japan's fighting power, it was no longer possible to regard her ambitions and national policies with indifference. For more than a generation the Japanese had been made to feel that they were almost hopelessly outdistanced in their efforts to catch up with western progress, but now the goal of equal treatment and recognition as a world power seemed about to be realized. Under these circumstances their old pride of race naturally reasserted itself. Their military successes inflamed the masses of the people and gave them inflated ideas of their own importance. In the eyes of many Japanese their adaptation of western civilization was regarded as a greater achievement than all the scientific discoveries of the West. It began to be asserted that in Japan would be developed a blend of oriental and occidental civilizations far superior to anything the world had ever seen. Their nation was to produce the universal religion and become such a center of

1 Thomas, W. I., "The Significance of the Orient for the Occident," Amer. Journ. Soc., 13: 732.

knowledge that western scholars would some time come and sit at their feet.1

This development of national pride and selfconsciousness was reflected in the Japanese emigrants who went abroad and also in the attitude of the government which jealously watched over their interests. The Japanese, who, after their war with China, began to arrive in America in rapidly increasing numbers, were filled with a new sense of dignity and pride. They did not come as humble immigrants from a decadent land, but as representatives of a victorious and progressive nation. While temporarily, by virtue of necessity, they might be willing to occupy a servile position as did the Chinese, this was regarded only as a steppingstone to something better. They possessed the ambition to rise out of the ranks of unskilled laborers and took advantage of every opportunity to do so. It was this laudable ambition, together with a bold assertion of their rights, that first marked them out as different from the Chinese, who had always meekly accepted a subordinate place. It was also their possession of these same characteristics that helped to make inevitable the rise of the Japanese problem.

As early as 1884 Japanese peasants and coolies began to arrive on our Pacific coast, but their numbers were too small to attract much attention. For more than a quarter of a century it had been the Chinese who constituted our oriental problem. The people in the western states believed that the Chinese invasion 1 Evolution of the Japanese, pp. 137-40.

was the great menace to their welfare. In their eyes all the vices of the Orient were summed up in the Chinese coolies, who were coming in such increasing numbers that it was felt their absolute exclusion was imperative. The few Japanese who came to America either were looked upon with indifference or were regarded with favor, for they seemed to possess the virtues, but not the vices of the Chinese. A writer in Bradstreet's in 1884, commenting on the arrival of 200 Japanese peasants in San Francisco, said:

It appears that emigration to the United States has at last commenced in Japan. . . America is to be congratulated on these adjuncts to western industry. The Japanese peasants are as industrious as they are frugal, temperate, and skilled in agriculture.1

As far as can be gathered from the few references to the Japanese in the press of that day, this seems to have been the general attitude of the American public. Because of the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion law, employers were hard pressed to find enough laborers to carry on their work. To supply this need they looked to the new Japanese immigrants who were regarded as more capable and efficient workmen.

In the early nineties, however, when the tide of Japanese immigration began rapidly to increase, the Japanese became unpopular in those communities in which they had congregated, and suffered the same 1 Bradstreet's, Oct. 25, 1884, p. 268.

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odium that had formerly attached to the Chinese. Yoshio Markino gives the following vivid picture of the feeling then existing against the Japanese in San Francisco:

The next day I went to the Golden Gate Park with another Japanese. Whenever we passed before the crowds, they shouted "Jap" and "Sukebei” (the latter word is too rude to translate). Then some of them even spat on us. When we came out to the corner of Geary Street, pebbles were showered on us. This was my first and very last visit to the Golden Gate Park.

By the experiences day by day I had learnt that there was nothing but domestic work left for my livelihood, because the Californians didn't recognize us as the humans and they wouldn't accept any of our brain work.

Once while I was passing the spare ground on the corner of Fillmore Street and Geary Street some big fellow threw a large stone at me. It struck my head. My hat was broken and my head got hurt. I never took any notice but walked on.

A young lady was walking on the opposite side. She came to me and said, "Why don't you get a policeman to prison him?" I said, "No ma'am, it is quite useless, maʼam. I tried it once or twice before, but police don't take any notice of us Japanese.'

At this time the Japanese were arriving on the Pacific coast at the rate of about 1,500 a year. By the year 1895 there were less than ten thousand Japanese in the United States. The fact that in spite of the

1 Markino, Yoshio, When I Was a Child, pp. 215-27.