standard of Japanese immigrants instead of barring them from the country as is often popularly supposed. The experience of the past few years has proven that the exclusion of Japanese coolies will not necessarily be a check to Japanese immigration. The industrial and economic conditions in Japan are such that thousands of the middle classes-farmers, shopkeepers, and skilled artisans are eager to come to America, where opportunities for success are so great. The gradual increase of Japanese immigrants during the past five years would seem to indicate on the part of the Japanese government a tendency to issue an increasing number of passports to America as long as no determined opposition would make such a course inadvisable. It is also worthy of note that a large proportion of recent Japanese immigration has consisted of women, a fact which is making possible the establishment of families and a further increase of our Japanese population through the birth of children. According to the Japanese-American Yearbook, 3,054 Japanese children were born in the United States in 1914.11

1 The Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1915, classifies the Japanese arrivals during that year according to occupation as follows:

While this attempt to close the door to the Japanese has resulted in at least a partial failure, there is no evidence of a change of heart on the part of the American people. The public opinion of practically the whole nation demands the restriction of Asiatic immigration, whether it be from Japan or China or India.

In 1909 Mr. Roosevelt gave expression in the following words to an opinion which is now shared even by many of those most favorably disposed toward the Japanese:

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. Wherever there is settlement in mass - that is, whenever there is a large immigration of urban or agricultural laborers, or of people engaged in small local business of any kind - there is sure to be friction. It is against the interests of both nations that such unrestricted immigration or settlement in mass should be allowed as regards either nation. This is the cardinal fact in the situation; it should be freely recognized by both countries and can be accepted by each not only without the slightest loss of self-respect, but with the certainty that its acceptance will tend to preserve mutual respect and friendliness.1

1 Roosevelt, Theodore, "The Japanese Question," the Outlook, 92: 61.

The necessity of our placing restrictions upon oriental immigration is no longer questioned even by the Japanese. Our present injustice in their opinion consists in our discrimination against them, our closing the door to their people while holding it open to laborers from all the countries of Europe.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM FROM THE JAPANESE VIEWPOINT

◄HE opposition shown to the Japanese immigrants

THE

in America has stirred the Japanese nation profoundly, and has aroused such deep feelings of resentment among the people that at times war has seemed almost inevitable. The Japanese government itself, while maintaining its attitude of friendliness toward America, has, in its efforts to adjust the difficulty by diplomacy, followed a firm and aggressive policy that plainly recognizes the seriousness of the questions at issue. The more frank and outspoken among the Japanese have not hesitated to express their indignation against America in words of open defiance.

During the progress of the negotiations in 1906 to restrict Japanese immigration, Marquis Okuma, then not officially connected with the government, voiced the feelings of many of his countrymen in a telegram to the New York World which read in part as follows:

Any repetition of the injustices against Japanese will seriously impair our warm feelings toward America, and our traditional friendship will be weakened thereby. Fair and just treatment is essential to maintain friendship. Repeated outrageous acts will not only damage American interests, but also disgrace American civilization. . . . . America has no enemy at present, and it will be a thoughtless policy if America purposely makes an

enemy by inflaming public opinion against Japan. The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, but it has not sufficient defense in the Pacific if the two nations are to come to hostilities.

There is nothing more dreadful than crazy persons. The Japanese are a crazy nation in fighting, and will display their madness as in the late war. The Japanese are always ready to throw away their lives for their nation; they regard their lives as lightly as they do the weather. On the other hand, Americans and Europeans attach the chief importance to money. Those who love money love their lives. Suppose the two nations, whose ideas toward death are fundamentally different, should fight. The final result is easily seen, and the understanding of this fact seems to be the cause of America trying to expand the navy on a great scale.1

Another Japanese, Mr. Adachi Kinnosuke, in an article in the Independent in 1907 on "The Attitude of Japan toward the United States," expressed himself even more frankly to the American public:

Is the Japanese government a special institution established for the sole purpose of comforting an unreasonable whim of American labor unions, at the expense of the material interests of say 200,000 Japanese laboring class who may manage to come into this country within the coming ten years? Why not the same undaunted front which we had turned upon our friends, the Russians, a few years ago? It is the pleasure of the Californian to place us on the same plane with the Chinese and with the extinct race called the Korean. And we ask for an exclusion convention and beg for the sweet humiliation before anybody suggests it.

1 Quoted in Lawton, L., The Empires of the Far East, vol. 1, pp. 362-64.