Hawai'i at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan Before the Pacific War

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War Jon Thares Davidann Editor

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2008 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 09 08

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hawai‘i at the crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War / Jon Thares Davidann, editor. p. cm. Based on papers from a conference held in 2001 at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8248-3225-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Hawaii—Relations—Japan—Congresses.  2. Hawaii—Relations—United States— Congresses.  3. Japan—Relations—Hawaii—Congresses.  4. United States—Relations— Hawaii—Congresses.  5. United States—Foreign relations—Japan—Congresses. 6. Japan—Foreign relations—United States—Congresses.  7. United States—Foreign relations—1933–1945—Congresses.  8. Japanese—Hawaii—History—20th century— Congresses.  9. Intercultural communication—Hawaii—History—20th century— Congresses.  10. Internationalism—Japan—History—20th century—Congresses. I. Davidann, Jon Thares. DU627.5.H39  2008 327.969073—dc22 2008009091

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Contents



Dedication and Acknowledgments



Jon Davidann, Paul F. Hooper, Eileen H. Tamura

Introduction

vii

1

Section I

Cooperation and Conflict in U.S.–Japanese Relations in Hawai‘i Paul F. Hooper

1. From the Center to the Periphery: Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community Tomoko Akami

13

2. “Colossal Illusions”: The Institute of Pacific Relations in U.S.–Japanese Relations, 1919–1938 Jon Davidann

42

3. The Japanese Institute of Pacific Relations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact: The Activities and Limitations of Private Diplomacy Michiko Ito

68

4. Hawai‘i, the IPR, and the Japanese Immigration Problem: A Focus on the First and Second IPR Conferences of 1925 and 1927 Nobuo Katagiri

96

S e c t i o n II The Politics of Americanization from Japanese Immigrant Perspectives Eileen H. Tamura

5. Americanizing Hawai‘i’s Japanese: A Transnational Partnership and the Politics of Racial Harmony during the 1920s Hiromi Monobe

119

vi

Contents

6. Social, Cultural, and Spiritual Struggles of the Japanese in Hawai‘i: The Case of Okumura Takie and Imamura Yemyo and Americanization 146 Shimada Noriko 7. In Search of a New Identity: Shiga Shigetaka’s Recommendations for Japanese in Hawai‘i Masako Gavin

171

8. Buddhism at the Crossroads of the Pacific: Imamura Yemyō and Buddhist Social Ethics Moriya Tomoe

192

9.

In the Strong Wind of the Americanization Movement: The Japanese-Language School Litigation Controversy and Okumura’s Educational Campaign



List of Contributors Index

217

Mariko Takagi-Kitayama

241 243

Dedication and Acknowledgments

We dedicate this volume to Dr. Sharon Minichiello. Without her leadership, this book would never have been produced or published. Sharon initiated this project as director of the Center for Japanese Studies by organizing a conference at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa called “Crossroads Hawai‘i” in 2001. She also contacted the University of Hawai‘i Press about publishing the papers from that conference and began turning these conference papers into a book. But Sharon did much more than just organize the conference that produced this book. She was a friend, a superb mentor, and a great teacher. She was a wonderful colleague. Tireless and committed, Sharon gave of her time selflessly. Our deepest thanks to her. u Acknowledgments go to several people who were instrumental in the publication of this volume. Our thanks to Director of University of Hawai‘i Press William Hamilton, who was very supportive and professional. He ensured fairness in the review process. We are grateful to the University of Hawai‘i Center for Japanese Studies for its support of this project. Director of the Center for Japanese Studies Dr. Robert Huey stuck with this project through all its hills and valleys. A special thanks to the Crossroads project steering committee, composed of Jim Cartwright, Dr. Paul Hooper, Dr. Sharon Minichiello, Dr. George Oshiro, Chieko Tachihata, and Dr. Eileen Tamura. The determination of this group helped make the publication of this book a reality. We are saddened to report Dr. Oshiro’s passing in December 2007. George was particularly instrumental in the creation of this volume; in addition to serving on the steering committee, George encouraged the younger scholars in the project and always gave helpful feedback. He was a great colleague and mentor to us all and we will miss him. u An earlier version of “Colossal Illusions”: The Institute Of Pacific Relations In U.S.– Japanese Relations, 1919–1938, appeared in Journal of World History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 2001); permission for reprinting was received from the Journal of World History on April 7, 2005.

Introduction Jon Davidann, Paul F. Hooper, and Eileen H. Tamura

Hawai‘i has been a Pacific crossroads for centuries.1 Good winds and skilled navigators brought Marquesans and Tahitians to Hawai‘i long ago. In the period of contact with westerners Hawai‘i became an economic crossroads. Beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing into the next, Europeans and Americans engaged in fur trader and whaler reprovisioning, and traders arrived for sandalwood, selling it to China until the forests were gone.2 Thereafter, in what would become the most profitable of all these enterprises, they grew sugarcane and sold it in the huge American market. By the mid-nineteenth century, Hawai‘i’s location in the middle of the Pacific had made it a strategic crossroads for nations seeking global power. As the Native Hawaiian population declined, American expatriates involved in Hawai‘i’s plantation economy exerted increasingly greater economic and political influence. In 1893, with the help of U.S. Marines, they overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, an illegal act that was followed five years later by another, when the U.S. government annexed the islands.3 In 1900, two years after annexation, the U.S. Congress passed the Organic Act, which created an American territorial government. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hawai‘i became a crossroads in other ways. The growing sugar industry led recruiters to search worldwide for plantation laborers. First to arrive were the Chinese, then the Portuguese, followed by the Japanese, Puerto Ricans, Koreans, Spaniards, and Filipinos. As a result of this large migration of workers who arrived during a period of seven decades, Hawai‘i has been a place in which non-Europeans constitute a majority. Today it is the only U.S. state with an Asian-Polynesian majority. Within this unique mix, the Nikkei—ethnic Japanese, including immigrants and their children—had emerged by the early years of the twentieth century as the largest single ethnic group. Taking advantage of existing opportunities, in particular public education and the relative absence of rigid class barriers, they overcame most of the usual limitations on immigrant groups and formed the core of



Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

what would become the Islands’ middle class. In turn, their entry into the middle class served as the foundation for the rise of the Nisei—second-generation Japanese Americans—to political, professional, and socioeconomic prominence in the years after World War II. As Japan’s largest and most significant emigrant group, Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans provided Japan, which had become an important international power after World War I, with a welcome opportunity to expand international and intercultural contacts during the 1920s and 1930s, a time of far fewer such options than the present. For these reasons the Crossroads Conference, which focused on Hawai‘i’s role in the emergence of Japanese cultural and political internationalism during the interwar period, was conceived and held. The roots of this conference involved the convergence of several different activities. Most important, the University of Hawai‘i’s Center for Japanese Studies, as part of its ongoing search for new information and interpretations, under the direction of Sharon Minichiello and her predecessors, developed a tradition of organizing and funding (with the support of various outside sources) academic conferences concerning Japan. By chance, she happened on a discussion in 1999 with Paul Hooper of the University’s Department of American Studies and George Oshiro of Tokyo’s Oberin University, then a Visiting Colleague in the Department of American Studies, who were collaborating on a book concerning the Institute of Pacific Relations and Japanese–American relations. The idea of a related conference emerged from this discussion. As a result, they formed a steering committee composed of Jim Cartwright, Paul Hooper, Sharon Minichiello, George Oshiro, Chieko Tachihata, and Eileen Tamura that met regularly to develop the conceptual framework for the conference under Center sponsorship. Subsequent publicity generated scholarly interest from many parts of the Pacific Region and, following the submission and review of proposed papers, the conference was held on August 8–10, 2001, with Professor Minichiello serving as chair and numerous observers as well as participants and discussants in attendance. After the conference, the Center approved a subvention for the publication of the proceedings and the University of Hawai‘i Press expressed interest in publishing the manuscript. Robert Huey, Minichiello’s successor as Center director, continued the pledge of institutional support for the publication of the conference proceedings, and Jon Davidann of Hawaii Pacific University assumed the editorial duties. The result is the present volume, a partnership of a diverse range of scholars. Paul Hooper and Jon Davidann are the only contributors who are not of Japanese ethnicity. The majority of the contributors live outside the United States. Most live in Japan, while others reside in Australia, and a few live in Hawai‘i. The very strong international flavor of the project has resulted in a book that has a broad perspective on events taking place in the Islands.



Introduction



u Some additional historical background is necessary in order to clarify the context for the chapters that follow. The key development in this regard came in the middle of the nineteenth century after the demise of the sandalwood trade and the fur and whaling reprovisioning service and the subsequent search for new sources of income. Its roots were in the American Civil War. This struggle ended Southern sugar exports to the rest of the nation and sparked the growth of Island sugar production, an activity that had been of some earlier importance. With the development of large plantations on all of the major islands, the building of an impressive irrigation system to water the crop, the establishment of an array of milling and supply companies, and the creation of mainland transportation and refining arrangements, the industry grew to substantial export proportions. The new industry received a crucial boost in the 1870s with the signing of a reciprocity treaty with the United States, which allowed duty-free trade between the two countries and thus guaranteed Hawaiian sugar a highly favorable place in the vast American market, and also with the simultaneous entrance into the local sugar industry of Claus Spreckels, an entrepreneur who brought experience in the Euro-American sugar industries and substantial capital investment to the local industry.4 The end result was the growth of an industry that came to dominate the local economy—and to a large extent society—until well into the second half of the next century. The importance of the development of the sugar industry with respect to connections between Japan and Hawai‘i centers on the need for field and mill labor and the subsequent recruitment of large numbers of Japanese workers. Initially, Native Hawaiians had provided the labor, but epidemics of infectious diseases to which they had little or no immunity killed thousands. As noted earlier, laborers from a number of countries were recruited to fill the plantations’ labor needs. Among them, the Japanese were the most numerous. There are good reasons for the success of the recruitment of Japanese laborers, and they begin with the changes that came in 1868 with Japan’s Meiji Restoration. As part of their effort to transform Japan from a feudal agricultural society into a modern industrial economy, Japan’s leaders imposed a new tax system on farmers that brought financial ruin to many of them and made emigration an attractive option.5 An initial attempt in 1868 to bring laborers from Japan—known as gannenmono or “first-year men,” as they came during the first year of the Meiji era—was not successful, but the confluence of interests in the 1880s led to the subsequent arrival in the next four decades of some 180,000 men and women, until the 1924 Immigration Act put an end to all Japanese migration. While many of these sojourners returned to Japan and others migrated to the West Coast of the United States,



Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

with the net effect that less than half of the original arrivals eventually settled in Hawai‘i,6 nonetheless by 1900 the Japanese had become the largest ethnic group in the Islands. Augmented by a substantial birth rate, they grew to constitute over 40 percent of Hawai‘i’s total population by the second decade of the twentieth century and remained the numerically dominant group until well after World War II. As Japan’s largest emigrant community, they were also of special interest and concern to Tokyo. Most, but not all, Japanese sojourners arrived in the Islands contractually tied to three years’ labor at a designated sugar plantation until annexation prohibited the practice, and most subsequent migrants arrived with generally similar obligations. However, a significant part of these arrangements was the freedom to leave the designated employer once the contract had been fulfilled, and over the years, growing numbers did so. Among those who did leave the plantation but remained in Hawai‘i, some resettled in rural areas, while others moved to the towns. Eager to improve their economic conditions, the immigrants embarked on a variety of occupations. They grew vegetables and flowers, or became rice or coffee farmers, fishermen, mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, or shopkeepers. In the towns, they joined the few Japanese doctors, ministers, and other professionals who had migrated outside of the contract system. As there was a relatively small middle class in Hawai‘i at the time, the Japanese faced fewer barriers than most immigrant groups elsewhere and were thus able to establish themselves in their new occupations rather quickly. Their offspring, the Nisei, who were American citizens by birth, took enthusiastic advantage of their right to public education and prepared themselves in a variety of fields. In the years before World War II, some became dentists, doctors, and nurses, and a few were able to push through hiring barriers to become engineers and lawyers; but most who sought professional employment went into teaching. Unlike the situation on the U.S. West Coast, the public school system in Hawai‘i willingly hired Japanese Americans, and it was primarily through the teaching profession that the Nisei during this period found a channel into the middle class.7 None of this is to suggest that the route to economic improvement was free of difficulties for the Nikkei. Racial discrimination existed in various forms: unequal wages, the effort to abolish Japanese-language schools, obstacles to becoming American citizens, notions of Asian inferiority and the “yellow peril” and, however well-intentioned, a rather pervasive paternalism among those more friendly toward the group. Given that the Nikkei comprised Hawai‘i’s largest and most visible ethnic group, the dominant force in the Islands’ emerging middle class, and Japan’s most important overseas community at the same time that Japan itself was emerging as an increasingly nationalistic and sensitive world power, it is no surprise that



Introduction



the Hawai‘i–Japan connection grew ever stronger during the early years of the twentieth century. Japan was concerned from the outset of the Meiji era involvement with global affairs that its image abroad not be sullied by poor treatment of its emigrants, as had been—and continued to be—the case with China, and was concerned that the emigrants themselves bring their homeland no dishonor. These are the reasons Japan sought formal oversight of the immigrants via treaty at the end of the nineteenth century (a unique occurrence in the history of Hawaiian and American immigration),8 maintained a major Counsel General presence in Hawai‘i from the outset of the immigration era, encouraged the establishment of both Buddhist and Christian temples and churches, and supported the development of Japanese-language schools. In turn, the Nikkei community, especially the Issei—first generation—looked to Japan’s remarkable achievements with growing pride. The relationship became troubled after the turn of the century due to tensions relative to such developments as strident anti-Japanese sentiment on the U.S. West Coast and the subsequent Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907–8, the failure of the Paris Peace Conference (at Versailles) to adopt a racial equality statement, the inferior position accorded Japan at the 1921–22 Washington Disarmament Conference, the drives toward Americanization in Hawai‘i and on the mainland, the total ban on Japanese immigration to the United States in 1924, and the subsequent military buildup by both countries in the Pacific. Adding to these tensions, at least from Japan’s perspective, was the fact the United States appeared not to treat these issues as seriously as did Japan, seeming only to be concerned with what they took to be Japanese aggression in Asia. The Japanese argued that its expansion was essentially a matter of gaining access to the resources required by any major power and thus not that different from the practices of the other industrial powers. Compounding these divisions, there were few options outside of formal diplomatic channels for exploring possible settlements, and these declined to nearly none with Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1933. Hence, in Japan in particular, fear of a conflict threatening all post-Meiji progress grew. Under these circumstances, Japan welcomed the opportunities Hawai‘i presented for expanded contacts, and Hawai‘i, home to a large and mostly sympathetic Nikkei community as well as then in the midst of a substantial internationalist movement and rather more understanding of Japanese concerns than the remainder of the country, was similarly responsive. Local educational institutions such as the University of Hawai‘i and Mid-Pacific Institute had become involved with Asia and also provided an audience and outlet as well as an interchange mechanism. Private international activism was at an all-time high through such organizations as the YMCA, the Pan-Pacific Union, the Pan-Pacific Women’s Association, and the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).9 Through its influential international



Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

conferences, the last group was conducting an ongoing private diplomacy program—“conference diplomacy” to use its term—that was arguably the only informal diplomatic channel of consequence left to Japan following its withdrawal from the League. Nor were contacts limited to the relatively small number of elite figures who participated in these institutional activities. Businessmen traveled between Japan and Hawai‘i conducting a substantial trade. College students from each locale began studying in the other. Hence, Hawai‘i proffered the best opportunity for Japan to explain itself to America generally, as Hawai‘i was the American community truly concerned with maintaining good Japanese relations, something many from throughout the Islands endeavored to promote up to the time of the outbreak of hostilities at Pearl Harbor. Needless to say, these hopes were shattered on December 7, 1941, but the Japan–Hawai‘i connection that underlaid them remains important, informative, and above all compelling. Its further exploration is the rationale for the Crossroads Conference and this book of proceedings.10

Notes 1. Historians of the American West have explored a concept similar to the crossroads concept used in this book. They have studied the problems of boundaries and borderlands in the context of the American government’s wars against Native Americans and also the expansion of pioneers to the West. They have exposed the clash of cultures and a middle ground in Indian–white relations, which are in some ways similar to the concept of a Pacific Community discussed in this volume. See Richard White, The Middle Ground (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Patricia Limerick’s The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987) explores the intersections of race, Indian–white relations, gender, and American government’s role in the West. 2. As an example of the lesser-known activity of fur-trader reprovisioning, see Paul F. Hooper, “Why Owyhee? Notes on the Origin of a Name,” Owyhee Outpost: Journal of the Owyhee County Historical Society 7 (June 1979): 1–7. 3. The overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 and the subsequent annexation in 1898 violated treaties between the United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom and therefore violated international law on treaties and the U.S. Constitution, which states in Article VI that all treaties are the “Supreme Law of the Land.” In 1993 Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed PL 103-150, which admitted that the U.S. government had illegally invaded and occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii. See Francis A. Boyle, “Restoration of the Independent Nation State of Hawaii under International Law,” St. Thomas Law Review 7 (1994–95): 727–38. 4. The Reciprocity Treaty was renewed in 1887, with the added provision that the Hawaiian Kingdom would permit the United States to use Pearl Harbor as a naval base.



Introduction



King Kalākaua was forced to sign the treaty, having lost most of his power as a result of what is called the Bayonet Constitution. 5. Alan T. Moriyama, “The Causes of Emigration: The Background of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii, 1885 to 1894,” in Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II, ed. Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 248–76; and Alan T. Moriyama, Imingaisha: Japanese Immigration Companies and Hawaii, 1894–1908 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1985). 6. Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press), 27. 7. For graphs showing proportional representation of Japanese and other ethnic groups in various professional occupations, see Tamura, Americanization, 211–34. 8. Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953), 62–70. 9. Paul F. Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The Internationalist Movement in Modern Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawai‘i, 1980), 65–136. 10. The exception is Jon Davidann’s essay, “‘Colossal Illusions,’” which was published previously in Journal of World History. It is included because of its relevance to the theme of this volume.

Section I Cooperation and Conflict in U.S.–Japanese Relations in Hawai‘i Paul F. Hooper

U.S.–Japanese relations in the early years of the interwar era were reasonably amicable despite the tensions generated by a number of conflicts dating back to Perry’s rather brusque mid-nineteenth-century establishment of relations between the two countries. They were firmly enough grounded to have weathered such difficulties as Japan’s discomfort over the 1907–8 Gentlemen’s Agreement with the United States, the refusal of the United States and the other major powers to include a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations, U.S. insistence upon a lesser naval status for Japan at the 1921–22 Washington Disarmament Conference, and U.S. pressure upon Japan to withdraw from Siberia and the Russian civil war in 1922. However, and as obvious, the goodwill underlying this relationship dissipated over the next two decades amid such events as America’s 1924 ban on all further Japanese immigration, the impact of the global depression of the 1930s, the rise of Japanese militarism and the related invasions of Manchuria and China proper, the U.S. embargoes on exports of key raw materials to Japan, and, finally, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The essays in this section explore different aspects of this shift from essential concord to deadly antipathy, in most instances paying attention to Hawai‘i’s sometimes central and at other times peripheral role in the process. Tomoko Akami’s broadly conceived essay is largely concerned with the role of Hawai‘i and the Institute of Pacific Relations in the initial development of a sense of community throughout the Pacific region during the 1920s and early 1930s, and

10

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

the concomitant challenge that it posed to the world’s long-dominant Eurocentric perspective. While she notes that mounting U.S.–Japanese tensions would eventually wreak havoc throughout the area, her emphasis is upon Hawai‘i’s function as an oceanic crossroads and early promoter of regional cooperation and how these factors produced the Institute, a number of similar organizations, and eventually a germinal version of Pacific regionalism. She concludes with a discussion of the fading of this new concept in the face of nationalism and militarism during the latter 1930s. In thought-provoking contrast to the other essays in this section, Jon Davidann’s article is sharply critical of the generally sympathetic manner in which many scholars—in all probability, including the others in this section— have characterized the contributions of private organizations such as the Institute and the YMCA to better relations between the United States and Japan during the interwar period. Rejecting the idea that these groups were generally composed of well-informed internationalists whose efforts might have reduced the major tensions in the relationship had they been paid more serious attention, he argues that the failure to surmount these barriers is primarily an illustration of the inability to close a deep cross-cultural understanding gap that separated the two sides from the outset. More specifically, he finds that the American perspective was essentially the product of “orientalist” stereotypes and Wilsonian idealism, while the Japanese outlook was rooted in cultural nationalism and diplomatic realism, and, despite oft-expressed hopes to the contrary, both sides were always far from any meaningful mutual understanding. This challenge to prevailing interpretations can itself be challenged, but it cannot be ignored. As such, it constitutes a significant contribution to scholarship on the era. Michiko Ito’s impressively researched and documented essay on the Institute’s Japanese Council summarizes the story of the group’s origins and then concentrates upon its efforts to promote the adoption of a proposed but never concluded Japanese–American arbitration treaty, encourage a proposal put before the Institute’s second international conference in 1927 that influenced the negotiation and adoption of the Kellogg-Briand Pact during the following year, and persuade a skeptical Japanese government and public to accept the antiwar pact following its initial signing. In the process, she also provides insight to the contradictory mix of essentially pacifist and overtly nationalist sentiments that characterized the Japanese branch of the Institute (and, perhaps, a substantial portion of Japanese society in general) during these years, while illustrating the significant degree of influence that the Institute, at least momentarily, was able to exercise in Japan. The final essay in this section is Nobuo Katagiri’s detailed explanation of the corrosive impact of America’s 1924 ban on Japanese immigration upon relations



Cooperation and Conflict in U.S.–Japanese Relations

11

between the two nations and the connection of this development to the creation of the Institute. He summarizes the origins of the group with emphasis upon the founders’ concern to alleviate tensions created by the ban and then describes its pioneering contribution to the concept of nongovernmental organizational activity in the Pacific and, more specifically, to better regional understanding through its conference and research publication programs. His primary aim, however, is to describe in detail the Japanese group’s arguments against the 1924 ban at the Institute’s 1925 and 1927 international conferences. In recounting the details of this discussion, the magnitude of the insult Japan felt is made clear, and the initial beat of war drums can be discerned. Further Reading Those interested in further reading on these topics and issues will find myriad sources, both scholarly and popular, dealing in whole or part with U.S–Japanese relations during the interwar period. However, when the focus is narrowed to cultural relations, and even more specifically to the Institute and the activities of similar nongovernmental groups, the reading list is radically diminished. Moving from the general to the specific, the following studies are of primary interest in this regard. Akira Iriye. Cultural Internationalism and World Order. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Walter Lafeber. The Clash: U.S.–Japanese Relations throughout History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Jon Thares Davidann. A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890– 1930. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1998. Paul F. Hooper. Elusive Destiny. The Internationalist Movement in Modern Hawaii. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawai‘i, 1980. Tomoko Akami. Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–45. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Paul F. Hooper, ed. Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland. Tokyo: Ryukei Shyosha, 1995. John N. Thomas. The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1974.

C hap t e r 1

From the Center to the Periphery Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community Tomoko Akami

While the term “the Asia-Pacific region” has become more common in recent years, the region has been called the Pacific until recently. In North America, the term “Pacific” meant not only the Pacific Ocean, but also the Pacific Rim, or transPacific relations. The notion of a Pacific Community, on which this chapter focuses, derives from this concept of the Pacific. It was an imagined community, centered in the crossroads of Hawai‘i and focused on trans-Pacific relations in the 1920s. It was also an expression of an American regional order, and through this vision, a group of American elites tried to institutionalize a multilateral and nonofficial mechanism to smooth trans-Pacific relations. In the 1920s, U.S. Republican administrations replaced Woodrow Wilson’s “globalism” (or commitment to Europe) with what some scholars call “independent internationalism.”1 It was independent from European politics and the League of Nations, while it pursued active leadership in the regions that were regarded as U.S. spheres of influence—the Pacific region (Asia and the Pacific islands) and the Americas. The Washington Conference of 1921–22 embodied this regional initiative, which produced a U.S.-led multilateral framework of general cooperation and naval arms control.2 The United States used it to check the rise of Japanese power and maintained a superior military position in the Pacific. Nevertheless, the Japanese government responded to this American initiative positively, and some Japanese understood that Japan emerged as a significant partner of the United States— not quite equal, but nevertheless a partner of a kind. The partnership, however, was shaken significantly when the U.S. Congress passed an immigration act in 1924 that excluded Japanese immigrants along with other Asian immigrants. This diplomatic crisis prompted the formation of the Institute of Pacific Relations, or the IPR.3 The move can be understood as a part of what Izumi Hirobe has called “private diplomacy.”4 It was an unofficial attempt by a small yet influential group of regionally concerned elite (academics, religious, and business leaders) around Pacific Rim countries to ease this tension and institutionalize a multilateral

14

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

framework of trans-Pacific cooperation. Here, the concept of the Pacific Community was crucial. Although Americans led the way, the IPR would not have been established if there had been no enthusiastic support among counterparts in Pacific Rim countries: Japan, China, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.5 Together they organized an international conference in Honolulu in 1925 to discuss trans-Pacific problems, which led to the establishment of a permanent multilateral organization, the IPR. Participants founded national branches back in their own countries, and soon the IPR’s membership expanded from the above-mentioned original national councils to new ones; Britain joined the IPR in 1927, and was followed by the USSR, France, and the Dutch East Indies in 1933, with India and Thailand joining in 1942. Honolulu was the center of these IPR operations in an initial period. It was the site of the first two conferences and that of the IPR’s headquarters, the International Secretariat of the IPR (ISIPR) until the mid-1930s. By focusing on the IPR, this chapter explores what Hawai‘i (and Honolulu as its center) and this Pacific Community meant not only in U.S.–Japan relations but also in a wider realm of international relations in the 1920s and 1930s. First, the dominant image of Hawai‘i among some naval strategists in the United States and Japan is contrasted with the image of Hawai‘i that was held among IPR members in both countries. While IPR members were as concerned about the prospect of a war as these naval strategists were, their conception of Hawai‘i demonstrates that their solution was not force, but cooperation and discussion. They had confidence in human nature, and significantly, while they believed in American power, guidance, and benevolence, they were often self-reflective rather than self-righteous. Second, the meaning of Hawai‘i as the center of the IPR operations will be explored. The chapter suggests that alternative ideas of international politics of the day were incorporated in IPR members’ vision of the Pacific Community. In hindsight, these ideas were limited, but nonetheless significant. Some IPR members argued for retaining Hawai‘i’s unique position to lead the Pacific Community when they feared that Hawai‘i would be marginalized in IPR operations during the 1930s. I have argued elsewhere why and how this decline in Hawai‘i’s centrality occurred.6 This marginalization, in turn, meant a decline of the original vision of the Pacific Community. Finally, the chapter ponders current implications of the idea of this Pacific Community of the 1920s. It suggests that the IPR’s case demonstrates Hawai‘i’s significance in the region, not solely because of its strategic importance for the United States, but also its unique potential to materialize this visionary Pacific Community, both in an international and intranational sense. It suggests that within that framework, voices from the periphery, not only of the Pacific Rim but also within the Pacific, are heard and discussed in a more equal and inclusive manner.



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community

15

Symbol of Conflict: Hawai‘i for Naval Strategists in the United States and Japan Alfred T. Mahan and Hawai‘i For many, Hawai‘i still represents a conflict in trans-Pacific, or U.S.–Japan relations. The image of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 remains powerful in American minds, as demonstrated by the links suggested by politicians and the media between Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attacks. In 1941, the Pearl Harbor attack indicated Hawai‘i’s significance to U.S. security, and this significance grew after World War II. Currently the Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC), is located in Hawai‘i. It is the central base for American navy, air, and army operations in Asia and the Pacific islands.7 The size of the Pacific Command indicates the importance of the region in the U.S. strategic plan as a whole.8 The Pacific, however, has not always been regarded as significant for U.S. naval strategic thinking: before World War II priority was usually given to the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. The recognition of the importance of the Pacific was slow in coming, and the strategic significance of Hawai‘i corresponded to this gradual recognition in Washington. Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred T. Mahan, naval strategist and Roosevelt’s confidant, played a key role in this development.9 From the early 1890s, Mahan argued that the Pacific was most important for U.S. security; the United States was a sea power and a great civilization, and it would inevitably clash with “Asiatic” civilizations, especially Japan, over hegemony of the Pacific; Hawai‘i should be the United States’ central fortress if this fight occurred. Mahan, therefore, argued for an annexation of Hawai‘i from the time of the revolution in 1893. The United States eventually annexed Hawai‘i in 1898, and it became a U.S. territory in 1900.10 Significantly, the threat of Japan to U.S. security was a key factor in the thinking that stressed the strategic significance of the Pacific and of Hawai‘i. Accordingly, just one year before the annexation, in 1897, Japan appeared in the U.S. naval strategic plan for the first time. This plan envisaged a fight between Japan and the United States for hegemony over Hawai‘i.11 The thinking was driven by a belief in the manifest destiny of the American empire and by an intense fear of the Japanese empire. American IPR members in the 1920s who envisaged the Pacific Community shared this pride in their own empire and the concerns of Japan. What distinguishes Mahan and his followers from the IPR members of the 1920s, however, is the former group’s profoundly pessimistic view of human nature and a sense of distrust or even paranoia. These dark views were not peculiar to naval strategists. They also reflected as well as influenced popular sentiment in the North America of the time. Mahan’s

16

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

ideas impressed a young assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who was to become president from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt feared Japan because he respected it, and the Japanese victory over Russia (1905) during his presidency alarmed him. A similar sentiment was evident among the public, especially on the Pacific Coast, where serious disputes over Japanese immigration occurred in 1906–7, soon after the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Mahan, who was also a popular writer, inflamed this hysteria. He argued that not only would Japanese immigrants fail to assimilate to the United States but also they would colonize the Pacific Coast. Other popular writers, such as Jack London and Homer Lea, also contributed to this hysteria. Their books were embedded in the racist discourse of the time, and they created a sensational image of the “Yellow Peril.”12 In turn, this hysteria presented a great opportunity for the Navy to expand its power. At its peak, War Plan Orange, a war plan that targeted Japan, was formulated. Asada Sadao argues that Mahan’s idea shaped the plan’s basic formula, which remained largely intact until the Pacific War.13 Reflecting this general atmosphere, in the summer of 1907, Roosevelt launched the Great Atlantic Fleet, often called the Great White Fleet, to demonstrate American sea power to the world.14 The popular name of the fleet invoked a sense of American leadership in defense of “white” nations against Japan. Mahan thought a war with Japan was imminent, and argued for an urgent buildup of naval capabilities in the Pacific. Roosevelt took up his ideas, and so did Congress, resulting in the fortification of Pearl Harbor during his presidency. The process, however, was modest and slow.15 Top U.S. Navy officials continued to regard the Atlantic and the Caribbean as their priority, and they did not even contemplate locating a great portion of the Navy on the Pacific Coast, let alone within the Pacific.16 While Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson aimed to build a first-class naval base at Pearl Harbor in the 1910s, its scale remained modest even when it was completed in 1919. The 1920s saw no remarkable development of U.S. Navy facilities in the Pacific. Rather, Republican administrations emphasized U.S. regional leadership in the economy, and Congress supported disarmament and naval budget cuts. The Washington Conference of 1921–22 produced a multilateral framework of general cooperation and naval arms control in the Pacific. It stipulated that the main U.S. military base would not advance west of Hawai‘i. A serious fortification of Pearl Harbor, therefore, had to wait for Franklin Roosevelt’s administration (1933–45) and the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937.17 Despite this great expansion, however, some naval officers still felt the development was insufficient and questioned the U.S. defense commitment to the Pacific even on the eve of the Pacific War.18



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community

17

Mahan’s Followers in Japan Mahan’s thinking was influential among some naval strategists in the United States and represented a dark image of Hawai‘i in trans-Pacific relations at a popular and policy-making level. Significantly, his idea also influenced Japanese naval strategists’ thinking. As in the United States, however, this view did not become dominant at the top of the Japanese Navy until the mid- to late 1930s. Mahan’s work on sea-lanes and sea power was translated into Japanese soon after it was published, and it became a naval strategy textbook. His influence was strong and lasted long after his death in 1914. Accordingly, naval strategists who were influenced by Mahan saw Hawai‘i as a site of a future U.S.–Japanese conflict. Katō Kanji, a devout follower of Mahan, was a leading figure among these naval officers. He was convinced that the United States and Japan would clash over the hegemony of the Pacific, and saw the U.S. Hawai‘i base as a major threat to Japanese security.19 As president of the Naval Academy, Katō cultivated this idea among future generations of naval officers, and in the 1920s and 1930s he led formidable opposition to naval disarmament and cooperative diplomacy.20 U.S.–Japan Relations in the 1920s In the 1920s in Japan, as in the United States, however, the views of these naval officers did not dominate foreign policy. Already during World War I, Hara Takashi, prime minister in 1918–21, emphasized multilateral, as well as bilateral, cooperation with the Euro-American powers, and regarded the United States as a significant partner. Shidehara Kijūrō, foreign minister in 1924–27 and 1929–31, promoted this cooperative diplomacy (kyōchō gaikō). Accordingly the Japanese government responded positively to the American proposal to hold the Washington Conference in 1921–22, and Shidehara led the Japanese delegation. The conference produced a U.S.-led multinational treaty framework, the Five Power Treaty on naval arms control, the Nine Power Treaty on China, and the Four Power Treaty on the Pacific. The last replaced the Anglo-Japanese alliance that had been in force since 1902. Japanese governments, dominated by political parties, maintained this cooperative policy throughout the 1920s. Despite strong opposition within the navy, its leadership also followed the government line in the 1920s and regarded the Washington Naval Treaty as largely beneficial for Japanese security and prosperity.21 One document, written in 1923, the (Japanese) Imperial Defense Policy (Teikoku kokubō hōshin), however, identified the United States as the number one potential enemy and stressed the inevitability of war between the two countries. This probably reflected a general hysteria over the immigration debate in California in this period. As it happened in 1906–7, the popular press sensationalized

18

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

a clash between yellow and white races, as it had soon after the Russo-Japanese War both in Japan and the United States.22 The Japanese Navy utilized this scaremongering hysteria to stop budget cuts, increase funding, and gain more power in policy making.23 Top officials of the Japanese Navy, however, resisted this hysteria, and as late as 1928 they viewed the Washington treaties positively and felt it best to avoid war with the United States.24 This pro-Washington treaty faction in Japan began to lose dominance in the mid-1930s, and the opposition, led by Katō Kanji and others, became stronger.25 Among them, Hawai‘i was a site for an imminent trans-Pacific war. Hawai‘i: Center of the Pacific Community Unlike Mahan and some Japanese Navy officers, American IPR members saw Hawai‘i as a harmonious synthesis of the civilizations of the “East” and “West” in the mid-1920s. This did not mean that IPR members were blind to the possibility of a conflict. Rather, they sensed an acute danger of the conflict over Japanese immigration to the United States and felt they needed to ease the tension. While the issue had been a source of U.S.–Japan diplomatic conflict since the 1900s, it had reached a new intensity at the time when the U.S. Congress passed a new immigration law that banned Japanese immigration. If Mahan had been alive, he would have seized on this as yet another opportunity to argue for further naval buildup in the Pacific. On the contrary, those who were to become IPR’s founders stressed a need for a review of their attitudes toward “Oriental” powers, and for good discussion among various parties on the Pacific Rim.26 Significantly, they regarded the problem of Japanese immigration to the United States as representative of deeper problems of trans-Pacific relations. IPR leaders envisaged the Pacific Community as a framework within which problems in the Pacific such as U.S–Japan tensions could be solved. This community was initially proposed as a part of Pan-Pacific conferences that were held in Honolulu in the early 1920s. This specific Pan-Pacific conference was to discuss various trans-Pacific relations, including “Asiatic” immigration. Most significantly, from the very beginning, Honolulu was suggested as a natural conference site. As immigration debates intensified in the United States, trans-Pacific relations became not only an issue on the Pacific Coast but a national issue. Concerned American professionals took up the idea of a conference proposal. They gathered at the Yale Club in New York City in February 1925 and confirmed the plan to have an unofficial conference in Honolulu in July of that year. The conference evolved into a permanent institution, the IPR. In this process, there was no dispute over the site of its headquarters; the International Secretariat of the IPR (ISIPR) was set up in Honolulu soon after the first conference.



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community

19

How did Hawai‘i become a “natural” center of the envisaged regional community and IPR operations? Strong local leadership is probably one significant factor. Along with John Mott, the inspirational YMCA leader of the International Student Volunteer Movement and later head of the American YMCA, the Honolulu YMCA, especially under the leadership of Frank Atherton, wealthy businessman and philanthropist, took a leading role in conference organization.27 By then, the Honolulu YMCA had ­successfully co-organized a number of Pan-Pacific conferences along with the Pan-Pacific Union (founded in Honolulu in 1917). These activities of the Pan-Pacific Union, with which the Honolulu YMCA worked closely, were another major reason for Honolulu to be considered as a natural center of the Pacific Community, and its inspiration came from several important sources: big American capital in Hawai‘i; Hawai‘i’s internationalist movements since the mid-nineteenth century; Pan-Americanism since the late nineteenth century; and the formation of the League of Nations. Alexander Hume Ford had come to Hawai‘i in 1907, started a monthly bulletin, the Mid-Pacific Magazine, in 1910, and founded the Pan-Pacific Union in 1917. He aspired to become a part of the local genteel society, in which the Honolulu YMCA leadership was central. This community also represented American capital based in Hawai‘i and backed Ford’s Pan-Pacific Union for a few reasons. The union deployed a smart advertising campaign that promoted Hawai‘i as an idyllic isle of beauty and racial harmony. This was most beneficial to the local tourist industry. Owners of plantations and factories also needed cheap “colored” labor. The image of Hawai‘i as a model of racial harmony served their business interests well, although the reality was far less ideal.28 The idealized image of Hawai‘i as a “melting pot” of the Pacific, however, was not Ford’s invention. Previous regimes of Hawai‘i promoted a similar image as well as that of a tropical paradise.29 Paul Hooper terms this outward and dynamic movement Hawai‘i’s internationalism. It had an undercurrent of imperial ambition for Hawai‘i to establish its hegemony in Polynesia. The idea was often entertained not only by local royalties but also by opportunistic Europeans, North Americans, and Australians who came to the islands. They claimed that Hawai‘i had a special mission in the Pacific (or more precisely in Polynesia) and possessed a superior culture and environment to achieve this goal.30 They at times even argued for the independence of Pacific islands from European powers; Hawai‘i would lead this confederation of independent Polynesian states.31 Ford joined a troop of these opportunistic Euro-Americans and was endorsed by the territorial government to promote Hawai‘i’s interests in the region. Ford was also initially driven by Pan-Americanism; the United States had a mission to extend its unique and superior civilization to regions around the United States and to lead the region and create a peaceful and mutually beneficial regional com-

20

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

munity. Although Pan-Americanism focused mainly on the American continents, Ford thought its scope should be extended to the Pacific. He implemented this idea by establishing the Pan-Pacific Union in Honolulu in 1917, which he modeled after the Pan-American Union.32 It was an Americanization project, but it was not a blatant assertion of the American hegemony in the Pacific; rather, it emphasized the cooperation among Pacific powers on a relatively equal ground. On this point, another source of inspiration, the newly formed League of Nations, became important. In the 1920s, the impact of the League was strong, and its related international official and unofficial organizations flourished. Although many activities and institutions were centered in Europe, North Americans were equally active. They were particularly strong in the Pacific region. Reflecting the internationalist mood, Ford’s ambition became grander than a Pacific version of Pan-Americanism: he wanted the Pan-Pacific Union to become the base for a Pacific League of Nations. This meant that Ford’s internationalism was significantly different from the previous internationalism in Hawai‘i on a few points. First, his interests were the Pacific Rim powers, not neighboring Polynesian islands. Second, an anti-imperial tone needed to be dropped. He loved to rub shoulders with notables from powerful countries. While some thought Ford’s motivation rather dubious, others, including prominent political figures, such as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of the United States and the Australian Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, endorsed his idea of a Pacific League of Nations.33 Pan-Pacific conferences were organized by Ford’s Pan-Pacific Union in this spirit in the 1920s. They included the Pan-Pacific Science Congress (1920), the Pan-Pacific Educational, Press, and Commercial Conference (1921), the Pan-Pacific Food Conservation Conference (1924), and the PanPacific Surgical Conference (1928). Attendees were largely from Pacific Rim countries, not the Pacific islands. These Pan-Pacific conferences were distinct from many other League-related private or official conferences in one significant aspect. While they remained largely Euro-centered, Ford’s Pan-Pacific conferences disseminated a Pacificcentered worldview and cultivated a sense of a regional community among the elite in Pacific Rim countries. Inspired and excited, they formed Pan-Pacific clubs in their home countries, such as Japan and Australia.34 Ford’s Pan-Pacific conferences also prompted chambers of commerce, Rotary clubs, the Red Cross, chambers of industry, and trade unions to hold their own Pan-Pacific conferences. All these events prepared many public figures in Pacific Rim countries to accept Honolulu as a natural site for trans-Pacific and multinational conferences and organization. By the time the trans-Pacific conference that was to lead to the formation of the IPR was discussed in concrete terms, therefore, Honolulu seemed a “natural” place to hold it. At the first and second IPR conferences in Honolulu in 1925 and 1927, par-



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 21

ticipants reflected a similar idea of Hawai‘i as that promoted by the Pan-Pacific Union—Hawai‘i as a model place of harmonious relations among different races and civilizations. In the welcoming speech at the first IPR conference in Honolulu in 1925, the governor of Hawai‘i, Wallace R. Farrington, argued: “Since their people [in Hawai‘i] were stirred by the spiritual awakening following new contacts with modern western civilization, these Islands have been a proving ground of friendship. Immigrants following the course of industry and commerce have centered here from widely divergent points of the Pacific area. Here they have founded homes, reared children and became a part of our community life.”35 As did Ford, this first IPR conference shifted the emphasis from an infusion among Pacific islanders to that of “West” and “East.” Farrington referred to “new contacts” and new dynamics in the Pacific instigated by Western countries. Furthermore, his “different areas of the Pacific” meant not only Pacific islands, but also China, Japan, Russia, and the Philippines.36 Like Ford, Farrington saw the significance of Hawai‘i not only as a passing point or crossroads of various peoples in the Pacific, but also as a successful case of a community that contained diverse backgrounds. Significantly, he projected it as a model for a broader regional community. While he noted some “mistakes” in this community, probably referring to certain incidents of racial discrimination in the islands or the United States, he stressed that Hawai‘i had created an environment largely free from racial prejudice. While Farrington pointed out Hawai‘i’s “traditional spirit of friendliness” as the main secret of the success of this community, as an American governor of Hawai‘i, he did not forget to stress the harmonizing and educating influence of the United States since 1898.37 Hawai‘i symbolized a successful synthesis of “clashing civilizations of the East and the West” under American control. More significantly, he also suggested that this could present a model for a broader regional community, describing Hawai‘i as a “forerunner of the future cosmopolitan citizenship of the Pacific area.”38 Arthur Dean, president of the University of Hawai‘i and an organizer of the first IPR conference, also stressed a mutually beneficial infusion of the “East” and the “West”: “The dynamic civilization of the West with its emphasis on things which often deteriorates into mere materialism and restlessness might gain by being tempered by the more serene and spiritual life of the East. And on the other hand, the contemplating genius of the Orient with its passiveness and apparent disregard of the welfare of human beings might gain through some infusion of the belief in the value of effort and possibility of progress” (emphasis in original).39 This statement is a typical expression of Orientalism. The “East” and “West” were presented as distinct and opposing forces. Like Farrington, Dean could not escape paternalism, either. His vision for the region was a community of welleducated elite, with the United States as a dominant and guiding force. Yet in his statement a sense of power hierarchy is less obvious, and there is little self-

22

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

righteousness. “Knowledge is the first step, and a long one, toward wisdom. With such knowledge in hand . . . we must endeavor to find out the best steps to reach the ends we have set before us, namely, to avoid conflicts over the present issues between us, to promote sympathetic understanding, to cultivate tolerance, goodwill and appreciation, and to contribute to the evolution of a finer life in the countries in the Pacific.”40 The message here is of mutual benefit by learning from each other, and the possibility of “fusion.” Dean’s view was backed by his belief in human rationality and science—a stark contrast to Mahan’s darker understanding of human nature and the future of the region.41 The Pacific Community: An American Regional Order and Anti-Eurocentricism A similar notion of the Pacific as an American sphere of influence had existed already at the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Then terms such as the “Pacific Age” were used in a positive manner. The Pacific Community of the 1920s was also an assertion of American-led regional order, in which American moral superiority and its benevolence were assumed. Yet it aimed for a synthesis of the “East” and “West,” not by domination by force, but by cooperation and discussion on a relatively equal footing. It also stressed that the United States needed to learn from the “East.” The IPR’s Pacific Community, therefore, indicated not only a subtle imperial framework, but also a new consensus of the 1920s. Although the existence of colonies of the European imperial powers was not challenged, the League of Nations nonetheless brought a new assumption that new imperial aggression was morally wrong. The IPR’s Pacific Community was also a growing concept after the Washington Conference. It stressed “partnership among political equals.” Multilateral consultation, not coercion by force, became the norm. Herbert Croly, editor of The New Republic, saw the IPR’s experiment as very significant in marking new practices of international politics. Attending the second IPR conference in Honolulu in 1927, he defined the Pacific Community that he saw the IPR promoting: The Washington Conference treated the Pacific, for the first time, as a somewhat independent political and economic area. It even outlined a sketch of a Pacific regional community, which, if it could be realized and developed, would neutralize the Pacific highway as an instrument of predatory politics. . . . The peoples of the Pacific are particularly protected in theory against any further aggression, and in this sense they are by way of forming a community of political equals that are obligated to consult one another about their common political and economic difficulties and policies.42



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 23

Although most IPR members could not articulate the precise implications as Croly did, they still understood the basic idea of the Pacific Community and welcomed it. This was also the case for Japanese IPR members. After coming back from the second IPR conference, Saitō Sōichi (1886–1960), secretary of the Tokyo YMCA and an executive member of the Japanese Council of the IPR (JCIPR), wrote an article entitled “The Arrival of the Pacific Age.” While quoting the words of John Hay, Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Saitō understood the Pacific Age not as a period of American domination, but rather an era of a U.S.-led regional order based on a “partnership” with other Pacific powers, including Japan.43 Other JCIPR members, though also favorable toward U.S. regional leadership, emphasized a joint effort of the Japanese empire to maintain order.44 This Pacific Community reflected a new Pacific-centered view, which was symbolized by the centrality of Hawai‘i (see Map 1). In the 1920s or even in the 1930s, most maps were centered on the Atlantic. To European empires, East Asia was the “Far” East, located at the very edge of their world. In contrast, the Pacific Community envisaged a new perspective: the Pacific became a center of world affairs and world affairs could be seen from a Pacific perspective. This paradigm shift was significant in two ways. First, it challenged the dominant Eurocentric view of the world. IPR members in the United States and Japan condemned this view, which they saw evident in various international mechanisms, especially the League of Nations and its related agencies.45 JCIPR members remained critical of the League partly because of its handling of the race equality debate in 1919.46 Second, despite its strong appeal among leaders in Asia, this antiEurocentricism among IPR members was not based on criticism by people in Asia or the Pacific islands. Rather, it originated in the United States and reflected the confidence and sense of power among many Americans. American IPR founders asserted this new vision of the region, in which they argued for a more equal relationship with Asian powers than European powers had managed to implement so far.47 These new views and attitudes were based on U.S. confidence in their power and ideals. In 1928, John Tilley, British ambassador to Japan in 1926–30, recorded: “at San Francisco I found, to my surprise, that the subject in the air was panPacific relations. . . . There were three American speeches . . . pointing out that the Pacific was now the crucial region, so to speak, of the world. . . . I heard talk of a Pacific civilization and philosophy, which was something superior to its European counterpart. I believed this was a myth.”48 Here, the notion of the Pacific is contrasted to that of Europe, and Americans stressed its superiority to Europe. The Pacific Community, centered on Hawai‘i, represented a challenge to the dominant Eurocentric view of the world. It did not, however, reject the colonial status quo or American superiority, and it mainly fo-

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads of the Pacific. From the Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, 1922.



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 25

cused on the powers, not colonies. Within these limits, it acknowledged a serious problem, and rather than advocating the inevitability of war or stirring up fear and insecurity, it proposed a solution: a discussion and relatively equal relationship in order to reduce grievances that were caused by the imbalance of power between the “Western” and “Oriental” powers. Hawai‘i: Critical Perspective to the State-centered Discourse Nonofficial Status Honolulu symbolized another aspect of the Pacific Community that was critical to the dominant discourse of international politics at the time: its nonofficial status. In the aftermath of the diplomatic tension over the new immigration law, the IPR was an unofficial attempt to restore positive trans-Pacific relations. Hawai‘i, far away from political centers and located in a tropical environment, was presented as the example of a successful interaction of people from diverse backgrounds. Problematic aspects in domestic politics such as racial tensions in Hawai‘i were largely ignored, and the naval base at Pearl Harbor was hardly mentioned. Yet, as Croly suggested, for many regional experts on the U.S. mainland, the idea of the Pacific Community was more a by-product of the Washington Conference. He noted that it was not an alternative to an official regional vision, but a complementary one. IPR founders felt that the U.S. immigration law of 1924 undermined the official framework defined by the Washington Treaty: it caused serious diplomatic tension, and stirred fear of war between the United States and Japan. The IPR was proposed to “restore” the Washington framework. At the same time, the unofficial nature of the IPR was not only rhetorical. Its meaning was profound. This “unofficial” status derived partially from its origin, which was proposed as a YMCA Pan-Pacific conference. It was also a result of the strong opposition of the U.S. government, especially the State Department, to the proposed conference of 1925. For the government, the immigration law of 1924, the main topic of the proposed conference, was a settled matter. Unofficial discussion would only reopen a sticky problem for the American government. American regional experts, who gathered at the Yale Club in February 1925 to discuss the proposed Pan-Pacific conference, however, responded to this government rejection of endorsement enthusiastically rather than disappointedly. They embraced the “unofficial” status of the conference and stressed its advantage. They noted the great merit of unofficial discussion, criticizing the limits and danger of state-centered discourses in international politics. They argued that they could understand problems of trans-Pacific relations much better by getting impartial information through “scientific” research and frank discussion, without the constraints of official views and policies. Backed up with their belief in “science,” the

26

Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

Yale Club meeting demonstrated its participants’ pride and confidence in their autonomy from the state and their almost “superior” position to it. Whether the government approved or not, the conference would enhance the “knowledge” of significant trans-Pacific issues and would enlighten the public as well as concerned governments in the long run.49 These professionals probably saw having a conference in Hawai‘i, far away from Washington, D.C., as an advantage. At the second conference in Honolulu in 1927, Croly praised the nonofficial nature of the IPR. Nation-states were bound by their treaty agreements and policies. He argued not for an opposition to but complete independence from state policies.50 Even in this early stage, however, Croly detected that some participants were already seduced by power and influence. He warned that this tendency was a dangerous one, and would eventually erode the significance of the IPR’s groundbreaking role as a nonofficial and impartial scientific research organization. JCIPR members did not attach great significance to the location of Honolulu as the IPR’s center, nor to its unofficial status. In this sense, they differed from those who gathered at the Yale Club and stressed the advantage of nonofficial status. They also differed from some other IPR members in Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i who regarded Honolulu as a symbol of the Pacific-centered view of the world. These members argued strongly against the move to shift the center of IPR operations away from Honolulu.51 A different attitude of the Japanese government toward IPR conferences and its relationship with JCIPR members can explain this relative lack of acknowledgment of the IPR’s unofficial status and Honolulu’s significance among JCIPR members. Unlike the U.S. government, the Japanese government, especially Foreign Minister Shidehara, felt that the proposed conference in 1925 was important. Japan had nothing to lose, and if the conference was to awaken the consciousness of the United States and enlighten American public opinion, this might influence U.S. government thinking. Shidehara was enthusiastic and officially encouraged Japanese participants to organize, prepare, and travel to the conference. In turn, JCIPR members were also acutely aware of their mission as a national elite. They willingly played a role in promoting the “right” image of liberal Japan, and hoped that this would soften American public opinion about Japan in a time of crisis between the two countries.52 Trade, Not Security The IPR members’ view of Hawai‘i presented a strong alternative to that of the naval strategists, and it was complementary to the government policies in the United States and Japan in the 1920s. Economics, not defense, dominated their thinking. This emphasis appealed to big business in the United States and Japan. As a result, big business was strongly represented in the IPR membership in both countries. For American shipping companies, trading houses, banks, and invest-



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 27

ment companies, Japan was a secure market and an important trade partner in the 1920s. Along with pro-Japan lawyers and religious leaders, these business people lobbied against the U.S. anti-Japanese immigration law in 1924. Many later joined the IPR, including Wallace Alexander, chairperson of the Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, Julius Rosenbald, a philanthropic Chicago businessman, and Thomas Lamont, a partner of the J. P. Morgan Bank.53 Similarly, in Japan, big business comprised the largest group within the JCIPR in 1927.54 Firms such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Asano were represented. Many had important trading interests with the United States and had joined their American counterparts to lobby against the anti-Japanese immigration movement in the early 1920s. They backed the U.S. Republican administration’s policy of good economic relations and disarmament, as well as that of the Japanese government. Significant geopolitical issues, such as Chinese extraterritoriality, Manchurian problems, and diplomatic and security machinery in the Pacific, never escaped the serious attention of IPR conferences. Issues of immigration, race, and culture also had significant political implications.55 Nevertheless, economics, trade, and commerce, not politics and defense, were the main focus of the IPR conferences, at least until the mid-1930s.56 This was true for the topics of ISIPR’s international research projects. Chaired and organized by the first research secretary at the ISIPR, John Condliffe, a New Zealand economist, international research topics focused on land utilization and living standards in the region. This also meant that regional experts regarded economic issues as the most significant threats to the stability of the region in this period. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in mid-1937, however, the IPR’s international research projects were focused on the war; and after 1939 the orthodox security issues of defense and strategy came to the fore at IPR conferences. While this narrow sense of security preoccupied naval strategists’ minds, it failed to become either a dominant focus or an important topic at IPR conferences until the late 1930s. Despite an enthusiastic proposal for a discussion of Pacific regional security, a majority at the 1929 and 1931 conferences ruled out the concept of “regional security.”57 Disarmament was a world, not a regional, issue and therefore not considered appropriate to be discussed at an IPR conference.58 Almost no participants at the IPR conferences in 1925 and 1927 referred to Hawai‘i as a naval base. Its dominant image was commercial—beaches, tropical weather, tourist attractions, and pineapple farms. Hawai‘i’s Local Autonomy: Its Capital and a Challenge to the Nation-state The strength of capital in Hawai‘i, or more precisely the strength of the American capital based in Hawai‘i, had significant implications. Hawai‘i raised almost one-third of the IPR budget in 1925. The 1925 conference proceedings showed that

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Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

of the entire IPR budget of the United States—$75,000 in 1925—$25,700 was raised in Hawai‘i alone. The U.S. mainland’s contribution was expected to be a similar amount, and the remaining $25,000 was raised in other involved countries.59 According to the summary of revenue recorded in 1929, Hawai‘i’s contribution in 1927 was $20,000; the U.S. mainland, $57,000; and others, only $125.60 In 1928, Hawai‘i contributed $13,200; the U.S. mainland, $55,300; the Chinese Council, $1,000; and others, $3,100. Considering the size of the economy in Hawai‘i in comparison to the whole of the mainland United States, Hawai‘i’s portion of the IPR revenue was very high. Even in 1929 when more councils began to contribute to the budget, Hawai‘i’s contribution remained significantly larger than those of other National Councils. Hawai‘i donated $14,350, and the U.S. mainland around $42,000.61 The pledged quota for each country was $5,000 for Canada, $20,000 for Japan, $5,000 for Britain, $1,250 for Australia, and $500 for New Zealand. The large figure for Japan reflected the fact that it hosted the conference that year. Even after the Wall Street crash in late 1929, Hawai‘i still contributed substantially, while other National Councils, except for the American council, had great difficulty managing even a very small percentage of the ISIPR’s budget. The Great Depression was given as the reason for this difficulty. Yet Frank Atherton, a leading figure of the Honolulu group from the very beginning and treasurer of the ISIPR since its foundation, remained a big donor in Honolulu. If he could do it, then he had to wonder whether their smaller donations reflected other National Councils’ evaluation of IPR activities.62 Hawai‘i’s large contribution continued until the mid-1930s. In 1935, while Great Britain contributed $3,000, Japan $850, and Australia $600, Hawai‘i still donated $10,000 (U.S. mainland’s donation was $36,000).63 This consistent strength of Hawai‘i’s donation is of great significance. It meant that big local American capital, such as the Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company, and wealthy philanthropists, such as Atherton, valued the significance of the IPR. Their initial rationale might have been that they saw great merit in promoting a good trans-Pacific relationship inside and outside Hawai‘i for their business. Their sustained support for a long period of time, however, would not have been possible without the strong leadership of Atherton among local businessmen. He not only maintained a strong sense of commitment to the IPR but also had the capacity to support it, and he was a driving force of local business support. This financial strength of the Hawai‘i group, its initiative in organizing the first conference and the establishment of the headquarters, enhanced a strong sense of autonomy of the group. This was also backed up by the “territory” status of Hawai‘i, its geographical distance from the mainland, and its distinct historical and cultural backgrounds. Hawai‘i’s separate representation was incorporated into the IPR’s constitution and shaped the unique nature of the IPR among similar multinational



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 29

and private organizations of the time. Significantly, as a result the IPR presented an alternative to the dominant nation-state framework of these organizations of the time. While the IPR’s constitution defined membership as being composed of national units, Section 2 of Article III stated: “With the approval of the Pacific Council [the executive body of the IPR], independent Local Groups may be organized in an eligible country which has not created a National Council.”64 The following Section 3 also read: “To encourage at Conferences of the Institute the fullest selfexpression of distinct racial or territorial groups existing within an eligible country as defined in Section 2 of this Article, the Pacific Council and the Secretariat may, with the assent of the National Council of such country, enter into direct relations with such groups . . .” (emphasis added).65 So far, no available documents suggest that the Hawai‘i group lobbied to insert this unique practice of accepting subnational groups in 1927. While the Hawai‘i group had a strong vested interest in this provision, other “subgroups” within a national/imperial boundary also benefited from it. They included colonial groups such as Korea, the Philippines, and later the Dutch East Indies. It was also relevant to British Dominions, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which were still an integral part of the British Empire. Korea and the Philippines had been enthusiastic supporters of Pan-Pacific conferences, and this, as well as a strong Hawai‘i group, may have been a significant factor in making this practice possible. Accepting colonial subunits was a very unusual practice among most international private organizations of this period. Like their official counterparts, these private organizations were usually based on national units and encouraged the consolidation of these national units.66 Too much emphasis on this “anticolonial” or “antinational” nature of the IPR’s Pacific Community, however, would be misleading. Separate representation was possible only with the approval of its sovereign national (imperial) council. The Korean group argued for fuller independent status. This was rejected by the Pacific Council, and not only Japanese members, but also certain key U.S. and British members opposed the idea. As a result, the Korean group withdrew from the IPR in 1931.67 Later in the same clause, which made colonial participation possible, it was also suggested that European colonial powers could join the IPR. The IPR would include “any sovereign or autonomous state lying within or bordering the Pacific Ocean or having dominions, colonies, dependencies, territories, mandated or otherwise, in the Pacific area.”68 Participants from these European powers and colonies were often former colonial officers. By the late 1920s, however, the practice of organizing subgroups from within national boundaries was weakening. National Councils were largely consolidated as a unified national body in most countries. IPR operations were dropping an alter-

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native mode and increasingly conforming to and reinforcing a dominant nationstate framework. In this climate, the Hawai‘i group ceased sending the separate representation in 1929. In the 1920s, many IPR members shared the vision of the Pacific Community and accepted Hawai‘i as its center. Hawai‘i represented new ideas and attitudes that were implied in the concept of the Pacific Community. While there were some limitations, these new ideas were critical of the dominant ideas of international politics of the time. They included a criticism of the Eurocentric worldview, a proposal for more equal relations between the “East” (or Asian powers) and the “West,” and an alternative to the state-centered and security or defense-centered thinking of international relations. Good economic relations were a priority in the policy of the U.S. and Japanese governments, not strategic fears. IPR members in the United States and Japan were strong backers of this policy. The IPR’s Pacific Community was not in opposition, but complementary, to these state policies. The IPR reflected the confidence, not fear or insecurity, of U.S. leadership. It emphasized a nonofficial status, was optimistic about solving problems by unofficial discussions, and was willing to deal with the “Orient” on a relatively equal basis. From the Center to the Periphery: Hawai‘i and the IPR in the 1930s As enthusiasm for the vision of the Pacific Community declined, so did Hawai‘i’s symbolic and practical significance in IPR operations. This was especially the case after Edward Carter (1878–1954) was appointed as secretary-general of the ISIPR in 1933. Carter pushed the IPR in a more Atlantic-oriented, state-centered, and security/defense-centered direction.69 This did not mean that IPR members in the United States and Japan began to see Hawai‘i in the same way as naval strategists did. The U.S. Navy was keen to strengthen the central base of military operations in Hawai‘i, and Japanese counterparts were increasingly concerned with this development. In contrast, Carter diminished the centrality of Honolulu in IPR operations by removing major functions of the ISIPR to New York in 1933–36. This marginalization of Hawai‘i, however, did not suddenly begin in the 1930s. The move could have been detected even at the time of organizing the first conference at the end of 1924, and Carter only accelerated the process—he did not cause it. The counter-Hawai‘i process can be understood partly as mainland experts’ increased control of IPR operations over the YMCA group.70 It also reflected a growing skepticism toward the centrality of Honolulu in IPR operations among key members. These people were aware that the IPR needed to be presented as a credible and serious organization in the academic establishment on the East Coast in order to secure good funding from major funding organizations. As early as the end of 1924, key conference organizers, including members from Hawai‘i,



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 31

realized that they had to eliminate an association with the YMCA, the Christian agenda, and the Pan-Pacific Union for that purpose. The Union, or more precisely Ford, gained a bad reputation among this establishment.71 Carter’s negative view of Honolulu was enhanced by this skepticism. “That Small Town” in the Pacific and New York72 Carter did not dismiss the Pacific region. He considered the region as significant, and American relations with East Asia as important. He was also critical of the Eurocentric view of the region. However, New York was Carter’s base city, and the East Coast of the United States was the center of not only the region but the world. Carter wanted a strong, centralized ISIPR in New York. While Honolulu had a symbolic meaning for IPR members in Hawai‘i, Australia, and New Zealand, Carter and many North American experts, especially on the East Coast, did not think Honolulu was the best site for the ISIPR.73 Carter especially did not care for its claim to be the “Geneva of the Pacific,” and he referred to Honolulu as “that small town.” When he was still secretary of the American Council of the IPR (ACIPR) in 1930, he confided to his British friend, Lionel Curtis, that “I doubt whether in our lifetime Honolulu will ever have the world news daily. . . . [T]he stimulus that comes through the almost daily visits of able minds from all over the world is something that will not be achieved in Honolulu in our lifetime.”74 Contrary to the dominant understanding among IPR members, Honolulu was officially designated as a temporary location of the ISIPR in 1927, not a permanent one.75 Until 1933, however, no attempt was made to change the arrangement. Meanwhile, the idea of locating the headquarters in Asia constantly came up.76 The issue was discussed officially for the first time at a meeting of the Pacific Council in 1933. The council decided that the headquarters would remain in Honolulu until the next conference, without any reference to a new site. Most Pacific Council members thought that Carter, new secretary-general of the ISIPR, would move to Honolulu.77 Carter had no such intention.78 He wanted the ISIPR in New York, and he began to “localize” the Honolulu office. In 1933 as new secretary-general, for example, Carter assigned a job to Charles Loomis, who had been Honolulu-based ISIPR officer since 1925, to work on a project to make Hawai‘i “a model community of race relations.” Later Carter argued that the Honolulu office had increased its local emphasis in 1934, and that therefore it could not claim a budget as the headquarters as well as a salary for Loomis.79 The episode indicates that the community in Hawai‘i, which IPR members projected as a blueprint for a regional community in the 1920s, was now understood as merely a “local” community with no broader implications. Carter remained in his base, New York, and, one by one, removed functions

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from the Honolulu office. Atherton, treasurer of the Pacific Council, based in Honolulu, and members on the Pacific Coast, objected strongly to this move. For Atherton, Carter’s move meant the loss of the Pacific-centered perspective and the IPR’s original spirit.80 He resisted Carter’s push by not approving the Pacific Council budget. Similarly, IPR members on the Pacific Coast opposed Carter’s move to shift the ISIPR to New York. The Institute of “Pacific” Relations, they argued, should be in the Pacific; communication and trade across the Pacific were much denser on the Pacific Coast than on the East Coast. Leading figures formed the Bay Region branch in San Francisco in 1928, in which the Chamber of Commerce took a central role. Hawai‘i and the West Coast groups constantly demanded that the American Council (headquartered at New York) strengthen and consolidate the West Coast IPR. Not until 1935 did Carter and Frederick Field (secretary of the ACIPR, 1934–40) make a serious attempt to consolidate the West Coast group. Even then, however, Carter made it part of a fund-raising campaign for the sixth conference in Yosemite in 1936, and an ad hoc and “local” matter.81 Carter argued that “localizing” Hawai‘i as well as the Pacific Coast groups was necessary for a financial reason. He was concerned with the increasing budget deficit of the ISIPR, and wanted to make these groups self-sufficient. It is, however, also clear that his effort to localize the Hawai‘i office was driven by his broader vision for the IPR, and it was consistent and effective. When Carter sought to transfer the research account to New York in late 1935, Atherton, who had been treasurer of the ISIPR since its inception in Honolulu, saw this as the last straw. He tendered his resignation, marking a virtual end of Honolulu’s ISIPR.82 By the time the Pacific Council discussed the location of the headquarters at the sixth conference in 1936, many seem to have agreed that Hawai‘i was too provincial to claim to be the site of the ISIPR. It decided to have no headquarters, and Honolulu’s bid was lost.83 While the council still voted that the headquarters should be somewhere on the Pacific Coast, many North Americans agreed with Carter that New York would be the best site.84 Honolulu had looked unbeatable as a site for the ISIPR in 1925. This meant that a Pacific-centered view of the world, symbolized in the idea of the Pacific Community, was dominant among the first IPR members. A strong skepticism, however, existed from the beginning, and for many on the East Coast, like Carter, New York always seemed a more suitable site. It was a crucial location for raising funds, and the fund from the Rockefeller Foundation alone accounted for almost half of IPR revenues in 1933.85 The IPR needed to maintain and foster a good relationship with these foundations. Other institutions—such as research centers, publishing companies, and major academic associations—were stronger on the East Coast than on the Pacific Coast during this period. Chairpersons of the American Council and



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 33

the Pacific Council both felt it essential for IPR operations that Carter remain in New York.86 In other words, Carter’s view reflected those of a growing majority of influential figures of the IPR, especially in North America. The move of headquarters to New York was physical, but its implication was substantial in symbolic and political terms. The distinction between the American Council (based in New York) and the ISIPR became increasingly blurred. It also entailed IPR operations’ shifting to an Atlantic-centered view of the world, and their stronger official and state orientation: New York was closer to Washington, D.C. Atherton and Wallace Alexander of San Francisco predicted a substantial loss of local business contributions to the IPR, both in Hawai‘i and on the Pacific Coast, as a result of this move.87 To Atherton, Carter did not seem to be interested in appealing to the business community.88 Carter’s focus was clearly not on the business sector but the state. Like many mainland regional experts, Carter wanted the IPR to become a think-tank organization for foreign policy makers.89 Shifting the emphasis of IPR activities to more policy-relevant issues, Carter made security and war the main topics for IPR research projects and conferences. This was best seen in his initiation of the research project on the Sino-Japanese War, the “Inquiry” series. Along with topics on culture, topical political issues had been recognized as a priority of IPR’s international research projects since 1929.90 Yet economics dominated projects up until 1937. In contrast, the Inquiry project, which was to occupy a central position in IPR operations after 1939, focused on the issue of defense and state policies. The move reflected the development of war in the region. The conferences in 1939, 1942, and 1945 dealt mainly with security issues and postwar (first post–Sino-Japanese War and later post–Pacific War) reconstruction in the region. The conferences of 1942 and 1945 became the Allies’ policy forum attended by many former and current officials, who dealt with the region. The Pacific and Asia were discussed largely as objects of the Allied policies rather than as “equal partners.”91 The position of Hawai‘i in the IPR was ironic. While the strategic significance of Hawai‘i increased and IPR’s security concerns and official orientation strengthened, its significance in IPR operations declined. All three IPR conferences between 1939 and 1945 were held away from the Pacific Coast. The last two conferences were held on the Atlantic side of the United States, close to Washington, D.C. Although this was partly due to the war in the Pacific, the symbolic meaning was nevertheless significant. The Pacific Community for JCIPR Members in the Late 1930s While many IPR members were moving away from the concept of the Pacific Community in the 1930s, JCIPR members hung on to the concept, and still tried to argue the importance of maintaining cooperation with the United States, not

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war. By this time, Japanese political parties, which drove the policy of disarmament and cooperative diplomacy in the 1920s, had lost their dominance. The Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1931 led to the creation of the puppet regime of Manchuguo, and Japan decided to withdraw from the League of Nations in 1933 over the issue of the legitimacy of Japanese aggression in Manchuria. Politicians, military officers, and bureaucrats in Tokyo who supported the Japanese army’s aggression in Manchuria and North China were strengthening their power in domestic policy making. In the navy, Katō Kanji, a strong follower of Mahan, was also leading a formidable force against the Washington Naval Disarmament Treaty.92 The treaty had been a fulcrum of the U.S.-led multilateral framework of cooperation that inspired the initial idea of the Pacific Community in the mid1920s. Now support for this framework decreased considerably at a governmental level in Japan, and the Japanese government finally terminated the naval treaty in 1936. The Japan-led Asianist order in the region, not the U.S.-led Pacific order, became increasingly dominant among intellectuals and policy makers in the 1930s. Yet, JCIPR members did not abandon the notion of the Pacific Community and the idea of cooperation with the United States at least until mid-1941. They had been arguing for the need for cooperation with the powers in order to make them support Japan’s special rights in China at previous IPR conferences.93 Ishii Kikujirō, former diplomat and Japanese representative at the Assembly of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1927, was now chairperson of the Japan International Association with which the JCIPR was merged in 1935. Ishii continued to argue a similar line. Trying to promote Japanese interests in a framework of cooperation, he stressed the importance of the notion of the Pacific region in international politics in 1935.94 Similarly, at the IPR conference in Yosemite in 1936, former foreign minister and now JCIPR member Yoshizawa Kenkichi stressed the significance of the concept of the Pacific. The Pacific was the center of international politics and economy because countries like China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and Canada were increasing their power in international politics; European powers would be less involved in this region’s politics as they became more preoccupied with European affairs. The most important relationship in the Pacific, he went on to underscore, would remain the U.S.–Japan one. While Yoshizawa justified the Japanese Navy’s expansion, he still emphasized the significance of cooperative transPacific relations: it would be wise to avoid confrontation and to maintain good economic relations with the United States.95 Nevertheless, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War made Japanese participation in IPR operations difficult. The JCIPR could not agree on the terms of the Inquiry project that Carter had initiated. A sticking point was the JCIPR’s insistence on control over the content of the study of Japanese policies toward China. Failing



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 35

to reach a compromise, the JCIPR decided to produce its own research series on the war. It also withdrew from IPR’s international operations in mid-1939 (and did not participate in them again until the early 1950s).96 Meanwhile, some JCIPR members contributed to formulating visions for the New Order of East Asia in 1938.97 When it was declared as an official policy in November 1938, the New Order of East Asia’s regional vision was not as confrontational to U.S. and other powers as is often thought. Nevertheless, it was clearly different from the earlier vision of the IPR’s Pacific Community: it was a Japanese-led regional order, focused on East Asia. The center was in Tokyo, not Hawai‘i. The only time Hawai‘i was mentioned in the context of the U.S.–Japan relationship immediately before Pearl Harbor was as the site for a top-level conference between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro. Konoe proposed the idea in August 1941. The timing suggests that he had a “Pacific Charter” in mind to correspond to the Atlantic Charter. The Japanese government was trying to negotiate a new agreement on navigation and trade with the United States, but the process was in deadlock. Konoe thought that a top-level meeting, focusing on principles, not details, would break this deadlock. Bureaucrats and military officers in both the United States and Japan, however, opposed the idea. Konoe relied, not on bureaucrats, but on his own brains trust, which included some JCIPR members. They were instructed to prepare the content of the negotiation for this meeting. Scholars regard this attempt as highly flawed.98 Still, if it had been successful, the image of Hawai‘i as a historic symbol of conciliation would have presented a stark contrast to one of its current dominant images—the historic site of the beginning of a disastrous war. Conclusion What are the implications of the IPR’s vision of the Pacific Community of the 1920s and the role of Hawai‘i for current regional relations? The strategic significance of Hawai‘i for U.S. security still dominates its image among policy elite. The revival of Hawai‘i-based think-tank organizations reflects this focus. The establishment of the East–West Center can be understood as one example. The establishment of the Asia–Pacific Center for Security Studies in 1995, funded by the U.S. Defense Department, indicates a similar attempt in the post–Cold War framework. Both were funded by the state, and a main focus of these institutions has been security. As Croly warned in 1927, IPR’s proximity to the state and strong security orientation eventually led to its downfall in the 1950s.99 However, this is a fundamental dilemma of any think-tank organization that has to work out a fine balance among independence, influence, and funding. Yet, as the IPR demonstrated in the 1920s, these think tanks foster not only knowledge but also a network of cooperation and dialogue among experts in the region. This, in turn, could provide a significant

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channel between countries, especially in a time of high diplomatic tension. Nonetheless, it is a hard task to continue arguing for a common agenda beyond nationstates once a conflict breaks out, because pressure to give priority to “national interests” and to support “national policies” becomes paramount. The IPR’s Pacific Community, however, is significant now not because of the strategic significance of Hawai‘i or its role in state–state relations. It is important because of its original, broader implications, which Hawai‘i symbolized in the 1920s. To be sure, the IPR’s Pacific Community was limited when judged from today’s perspective. It was a community of affluent, mainly male elites from the Pacific Rim countries. American dominance and the colonial status quo were not questioned. It was largely a policy elite’s vision for trans-Pacific relations, from which non-elite as well as the communities within the Pacific were excluded. Yet the Hawai‘i of the Pacific Community represented alternative factors that are essential for more just and equitable relationships in the region. First, it was critical of a Eurocentric understanding of the world. Second, while this view was based on the assumption of American moral supremacy, participants’ attitudes were defined by their self-reflection, not self-righteousness. Third, although limited in its scope, Hawai‘i provided the IPR with a place where voices from the margins, such as non–Euro-America, colonies, or local (subnational) groups, were sought, and there participants held discussions. Its initial conferences in Honolulu fostered a sense of this regional community to which participants felt they belonged on a relatively equal footing. Furthermore, some saw this dynamic vision of a regional community as having sprung from interactions within a local community in Hawai‘i. If we want to fully materialize the vision of the Pacific Community beyond its limitations in the 1920s, therefore, it is best to see Hawai‘i as the center of a community where people from various backgrounds from the region (both within the Pacific and on the rim of the Pacific) gather and raise voices from the margins as well as the center.100 Within this framework, they have the potential to work out a more inclusive regional community with hope and belief in human capacity, not with fear and paranoia. In the current climate of the war on terror, the Pacific Community’s potential and implications remain as significant as they were in the 1920s and 1930s.

Notes Japanese names are listed as they are in Japan, family names first and given names second, unless they are widely known otherwise. Some parts of this chapter are drawn from Tomoko Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan, and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–45 (London: Routledge, 2002).



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1. Charles DeBenedetti, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement, 1915–1929 (New York: KTO Press, 1978), xi. 2. Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921–1931 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 13–22, 301. 3. The organization lasted until 1961. As for its controversial role in the “loss” of China, see John Thomas, The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993). On its role as a pioneering NGO in the Asia-Pacific, see Lawrence Woods, Asia-Pacific Diplomacy: Nongovernmental Organizations and International Relations (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993), and Yamaoka Michio, Ajia Taiheiyō jidai ni mukete: sono zenshi toshiteno Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai to Taiheiyō kaigi (Tokyo: Hokuju shuppan, 1991). On an examination of the nature of the IPR’s internationalism, and its relations to nation, state, and empire, see Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific. On an analysis on the Japanese Council of the IPR in the U.S.–Japan diplomatic relations, see Katagiri Nobuo, Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai no kenkyū: senkannki Nihon IPR no katsudō o chūshin toshite (Tokyo: Keiō gijuku daigaku shuppankai, 2003); Nakami Mari, “Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai to nihon no chishikijin,” Shisō 728 (1985): 104–27; and Sandra Wilson, “The Manchurian Crisis and Moderate Japanese Intellectuals: The Japan Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations,” Modern Asian Studies 26.3 (1992): 507–44. 4. For an extensive study on the issue, see Izumi Hirobe, Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). Also the chapter by Itō in this book examines the role of some key Japanese IPR members in private diplomacy. 5. The Korean group withdrew from IPR activities between 1931 and 1941. On the detailed discussion, see Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 142–4, and Katagiri Nobuo, “Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai to Chōsen daihyōken mondai: Chōsen gurūpu no dattai, 1925– 1931,” Hōgaku kenkyū 59.4 (1986): 69–70. 6. Tomoko Akami, “The Rise and Fall of a Pacific Sense: Experiment of the Institute of Pacific Relations, 1925–1933,” Sibusawa kenkyū 7 (1994): 2–37. 7. In early to mid-2001, there was a discussion of either advancing the CINCPAC to Guam, or retreating to the mainland. The issue is closely connected to the Bush administration’s strategic policy toward the Asia-Pacific region, especially China. On a recent assessment of this matter, see Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness, eds., Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2005). 8. In 2000, the Pacific Command accounted for almost 300,000 military personnel, the largest number of U.S. military personnel allocated to any region; PACOM, United States Pacific Command Mission Briefing (PACOM, 2000), 16. I thank Paul F. Hooper for this source. Even after some changes after September 11, the U.S. Pacific Fleet, headquartered at Makalapa Crater nearby Pearl Harbor, remains the world’s largest naval command. 9. Asada Sadao, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei: Kaigun to seisaku kettei katei (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1994), 1. 10. It became the fiftieth state in 1959. 11. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 11–12. 12. Jack London, Revolution and Other Essays (London: Mills and Boon, 1910), 220–37.

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London’s “Yellow Peril” was originally written in Manchuria in 1904. Homer Lea’s Valor of Ignorance (published in 1909 and translated into Japanese in 1911) sold 40,000 copies in Japan. 13. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 23. 14. Ibid., 21–22, Neville Meaney, The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901–1914 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), chap. 9. 15. It was also not until 1913 that strategic goals overtook commercial interests (providing coal and water for whaling and trading ships) at the harbor. The Naval History Centre, “The U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1826–1945: An Administrative History,” at http://www.history .navy.mil (accessed November 30, 2001). 16. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 19. 17. http://www.history.navy.mil (accessed November 30, 2001). 18. Building of airstrips, for example, was not completed until 1942. Peter Hayes, Lyuba Zarsky, and Walden Bello, American Lake: Nuclear Peril in the Pacific (Ringwood, Vict.: Penguin, 1986), 16. 19. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 162. 20. Ibid., 275, 312. 21. Asada, however, disputes whether this pro–Washington Treaty attitude dominated the mainstream in the Navy in the 1920s (ibid., 160). 22. Shibusawa Masahide, Taiheiyō ni kakeru hashi: Shibusawa Eiichi no shōgai (Tokyo: Yomiuri shimbunsha, 1970), 239. 23. Hosoya Chihiro, “Kokusai shakai no nakadeno Nichibei kankei,” in Hosoya Chihiro and Honma Nagayo, eds., Nichibei kankeishi (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1993), 6–7. In the early 1920s, the Japanese Navy’s size was only about 20 percent of the army. It lacked the political power, while its equipment cost much more. It needed strong rhetoric to block a budget cut, especially when naval disarmament was considered a fiscal priority in the 1920s. 24. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 160, 176–77. 25. Ibid., 190–91, 205, 212–13, 214. 26. “The Minutes of the Yale Club Meeting,” 22 February 1925, A981; Org 93, Australian Archives (AA), Canberra. 27. The IPR, Institute of Pacific Relations: Honolulu Session June 3–July 14, 1925 (Honolulu: IPR, 1925), 7–8. 28. Paul F. Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The Internationalist Movement in Modern Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980), 179–81. 29. Ibid., 7–15. 30. Ibid., 43, 52, 54–5, 57. 31. Ibid., 52–3, 57. This imperial inclination with the slogans of anti-European colonialism reminds us of Japanese Pan-Asianism. On this account, the rejection of the Meiji Emperor to join Hawai‘i’s proposal in 1881 to challenge European dominance and to promote independence movement in Asia and the Pacific is interesting. Hooper, Elusive Destiny, 46–7. Like Japanese-led Asianism, Hawai‘i’s political leaders (native or Euro-American) used the rhetoric of liberation from European colonialism to expand Hawai‘i’s power in the region, although, unlike Japan, Hawai‘i did not actually colonize the other Pacific islands.



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 39

32. “The Pan-Pacific Union Is Doing for the Pacific What the Pan-American Union Has Done for Latin America,” The Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin (1923): 11; Paul F. Hooper, “Alexander Ford: Shaping Hawaii’s Image,” Honolulu xiv.5 (1979): 172; Hooper, Elusive Destiny, 76. The predecessor of the Pan-American Union was formed in 1889 and was renamed the Pan-American Union in 1910. 33. “The Pan-Pacific Club in Tokyo,” The Mid-Pacific Magazine (1924): 21. Hooper, Elusive Destiny, 84–5. 34. “The Pan-Pacific Club in Tokyo,” 17, 19, 21. Ko Sakatani shishaku kinen jigyōkai, ed., Sakatani Yoshirō den (Tokyo: Editor, 1951), 601–2. Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryō kankōkai, ed., Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryō, vol. 37 (Tokyo: Editor, 1961), 452. 35. Wallace Farrington, “Address of Welcome,” in IPR, 1925, 41–2. 36. Ibid., 44. 37. Ibid., 45. 38. Ibid. 39. Arthur Dean, “The Approach to Pacific Problems,” in IPR, 1925, 48. 40. Ibid., 49. 41. Dean remained central to the IPR and continued to propose a harmonious and beneficial trans-Pacific relationship at Honolulu even in the postwar period. Hooper, Elusive Destiny, 112–13. 42. Herbert Croly, “The Human Potential in Pacific Politics,” in John B. Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific, 1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928), 582–3. 43. Saitō Sōichi, “Taiheiyō jidai no tōrai to sono shomondai,” Bōeki 28 (1928): 18, 19. 44. Sawayanagi Masatarō, “The General Features of Pacific Relations as Viewed by Japan,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1927, 30. 45. “Diplomatic Relations in the Pacific,” in ibid., 168. 46. Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryō kankōkai (1961), 113. 47. “The Minutes of the Yale Club Meeting,” 22 February 1925, A981; Org 93, AA. 48. Tilley to Lord Cushendun, 18 October 1928, A981; Org 93, AA. 49. “The Minutes of the Yale Club Meeting,” 22 February 1925, A981; Org 93, AA. 50. Croly, “The Human Potential,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1927, 583. 51. Akami, “Rise and Fall of a Pacific Sense,” 21–5. 52. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 104–6. 53. Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Touchstone, 1990), 236. They also included many Republican notables, such as Elihu Root, a Republican senator, Henry Taft, brother of William H. Taft and attorney general, and George Wickersham, former attorney general and Republican. They did not join the IPR in 1925. 54. Among 13 executive members, 45 council members (three of them also being executive members), and 40 members, 36 members represented big business. “Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai kaiin meibo,” November 1927, Takaki Yasaka Bunko (TYB), 19/3/9, American Center of Tokyo University (ACTU), Komaba, Tokyo. 55. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 104–7. 56. In 1925 the main topics were immigration, racial and cultural relations, trade, tar-

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iffs, and industrialization. In 1927, they were China, industrialization, immigration, and foreign investment; and in 1929, food and population in the Pacific, industrialization, and Manchuria. In 1931, economic relations in the Pacific and China’s economic development were major topics. In 1933, the conference mainly discussed economic conflict and control in the Pacific, and in 1936, the aims and results of social and economic policies in Pacific countries and trade competition. 57. Frederic W. Eggleston, “Australia and the Pacific,” Melbourne Herald, 30 December 1929. 58. “Round Table I: Diplomatic Machinery in the Pacific, 27 October 1931,” TYB, 55/8, ACTU. 59. “History and Organization,” in IPR (1925), 25. 60. “Appendix VI: Biennial Report of the General Secretary IPR,” in J. B. Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific, 1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), 678. 61. Ibid. 62. Atherton to Carter, 12 January 1931, E-1b/33 and 4 December 1935, E-2/20, The Archives of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (AUH). 63. The IPR, Report of the International Secretariat to the Pacific Council, 1933–1936 (New York: IPR, 1936), 157. 64. “Appendix III: Constitution of the IPR,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1927, 607. 65. Ibid. 66. Only a few, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, opened membership to colonies. Lyman C. White, The Structure of Private International Organizations (Philadelphia, PA: George S. Ferguson Company, 1933), 35–6, 220. 67. Katagiri, Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai (1986), 69–70. 68. “Appendix III: Constitution of the IPR,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1927, 607. 69. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 169–70. 70. Ibid., 117–18. 71. Ibid., 52. 72. This section largely is from ibid., 173–6. 73. Akami, “Rise and Fall of a Pacific Sense,” 23. 74. Carter to Curtis, 16 March 1928, PRC, Box 108/Curtis 2, and Carter to Greene, 4 April 1930, Pacific Relations Collection (PRC), Box 112/J. Greene, Butler Library of the Columbia University, New York (BLCU). 75. J. Merle Davis, “Report of committee on permanent organization,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1927, 591. 76. Tokyo and Shanghai were two strong contenders. Curtis to Greene, 18 May 1933, MS Curtis 9, BL. During Carter’s visit in Tokyo, Japanese discussed the possibility of Tokyo. “Carter’s Visit in Tokyo in 1934,” Ōkubo Genji Collection (OC), B-7, Library of Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Tokyo (LHU). 77. Ernest Scott, “General report on the conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations held at Banff, Canada, August, 7–29, 1933,” p. 3, Harrison Moore Paper, 11/3, The Archives of



Hawai‘i and the Pacific Community 41

the University of Melbourne (AUM). Minutes of the Pacific Council meetings, 29 July 1933, E-2/22, AUH. 78. Carter to Mrs. Carter, 10 August 1933, Carter Papers, Box 1, BLCU. 79. Carter to Atherton, 10 May 1935, E-2/15, AUH. 80. Atherton to Baker, 27 January 1936, E-2/25, AUH. 81. Alexander to Atherton, 17 January 1936, E-2/24, AUH. 82. Atherton to Carter, 4 December 1935, E-2/20, AUH. 83. “Appendix VI: Conference organization and administrative decision,” in W. L. Holland and Kate L. Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 459. 84. “[Report of Australian delegate of the] Institute of Pacific Relations, Sixth Conference at Yosemite, August 15th–29th, 1936,” A981/1/Org 95, AA. 85. “Appendix VI: Summary of revenues and expenditures, 1932–3,” in Bruno Lasker and W. L. Holland, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1933 (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 479. 86. Baker to Atherton, 11 February 1936, E-2/26, and Tarr to Atherton, 2 May 1936, E-3a/4, AUH. 87. Field to Walker, 10 December 1935, Rockefeller Foundation Archives (RFnA)/1.1/200/351/4174, Rockefeller Archives, Tarrytown, NY (RA). 88. Atherton to Carter, 10 January 1936, E-2/23, AUH. 89. T. Akami, “Between the State and Global Civil Society: Non-official Experts and Their Network in the Asia-Pacific, 1925–45,” Global Network 2.1 (2002): 73–4. 90. “Appendix IV: Minutes of meetings of the Pacific Council, the IPR,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1929, 653–4. 91. Chinese and Indian IPR members, however, consistently argued for a more equal status in the Allied operation at the conferences of 1942 and 1945. 92. Asada, Ryō taisenkan no Nichibei kankei, 226, 228. 93. Rōyama Masamichi, “Japan’s Position in Manchuria,” in Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 1929, 593. 94. Ishii Kikujirō, “Taiheiyō mondai chōsakai tono gappei ni tsuite,” Kokusai chishiki 15.12 (1935): 80. 95. Yoshizawa Kenkichi, “Kokusai kankei no genjō,” in Nihon kokusai kyōkai, ed., Taiheiyō mondai: Dairokkai Taiheiyō kaigi hōkoku (Tokyo: Editor, 1937), 5–7. 96. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 219–24. 97. Ibid., 228–39. 98. Sudō Shinji, Nichibei kaisen gaikō no kenkyū: Nichibei kōshō no hatten kara Haru nōto made (Tokyo: Keiō tsūshin, 1986), 185–86. 99. Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific, 65, 75, 78. 100. Haas discusses organizations that are specifically focused on the Pacific islands. Michael Haas, The Pacific Way: Regional Cooperation in the South Pacific (New York: Praeger, 1989), chap. 9.

C hap t e r 2

“Colossal Illusions” The Institute of Pacific Relations in U.S.–Japanese Relations, 1919–1938 Jon Davidann

The failure of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR)—a nongovernmental organization (NGO) founded in 1925 to promote mutual understanding and create better relations in the Pacific in the interwar period—is usually thought of in terms of external circumstances. The rise of Japanese militarism, the struggles of China to emerge as a sovereign nation, and the Great Depression are some of the reasons given for the collapse of the IPR’s project. While these reasons cannot be ignored, I would like to suggest that there were other conditions present in the interwar period, both within the IPR and in the world at large, that made the goals of the IPR unachievable.1 Two issues stand out. First, the internationalism of the IPR was surrounded by a resistant strain of nationalism throughout the period from the end of World War I to the beginning of World War II. Not simply limited to the late 1930s, the nation was ubiquitous throughout the period. The existence of nationalism made attempts to take a broad “objective” internationalist view difficult and encouraged the various parties involved in the IPR to use the organization to pursue their own national interests. Consequently, while Japanese nationalists made a concerted effort to make their presence felt in the IPR, American national interests and influence predominated. Because the IPR in Hawai‘i served as a crossroads between American and Japanese interests, it is not surprising that the organization, ostensibly committed to peace in the Pacific, became a zone of competition and tension between the two nations. Thus it is that one Japanese Christian in 1919 called postwar internationalism a “colossal illusion.”2 The second issue concerns the perceptions through which the IPR formed its opinions about the problems of the Pacific and solutions to those problems. Simply put, the IPR believed that a fundamental problem in the Pacific was one of irrationality. Sentiment and emotions dominated the debate there. IPR members believed



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that if they could bring objective facts to the forefront, they could promote mutual understanding and the tensions would subside. While it is quite true that many tensions in the Pacific, especially between the United States and Japan, were due to mutual misperceptions about the intentions and motives of the other player, the IPR’s attempt to bring rationality to the Pacific through its conferences and research program failed. In spite of the IPR’s wellknown and considerable achievements in establishing research agendas that laid the foundation for Asian studies scholarship today, the “objective” facts the IPR thought it could bring to the table were from the inception of the organization never completely objective. In addition, the partners in the IPR defined rationality in different ways. Some Japanese delegates saw the new internationalism of the postwar era as dominated by sentiment and an unwise approach to geopolitics. They suggested instead that a rational calculation of national interests could provide the basis for realistic discussions. American internationalists believed nationalism to be irrational, and they began to see the Japanese as dominated by irrational and authoritarian nationalism. East Asians, including both Japanese and Chinese, believed that the protection and strengthening of their nations were the only reasonable response to a situation where Western imperialism in East Asia threatened their very survival. So the perception of rationality was not a solid ground but shifting sands for the IPR that in the end helped to cause its downfall. Hope for a rational Pacific, like the belief in internationalism, was illusory. Americanization and Internationalism in Hawai‘i after WWI Before the troubles in the Pacific that erupted in the 1930s, there was considerable hope that the sometimes tense relationship between Japan and the United States could be placed on a more stable basis. In the aftermath of World War I, there was great revulsion at the horror of war on the part of both Americans and Japanese who were interested in cooperation. Both tended to embrace Wilsonian internationalism, although for different reasons and with differing amounts of faith and skepticism. Woodrow Wilson’s ideas of freedom—free trade, self-determination, democracy—of course had great appeal for many sympathetic observers in the United States and abroad. We often do not recognize how revolutionary Wilson’s ideas became for the world in 1919. He successfully fashioned an anticolonial discourse for the first time coming out of the capitalist West. Wilson’s formulation was also intriguing because it combined internationalism with the United States’ national identity.3 His ideas demonstrated—if somewhat unsuccessfully, since the United States refused to participate in the League of Nations—that the American tradi-

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tion of seeing themselves as a separate and exceptional nation did not have to be rejected in order for Americans to project themselves into the larger world. His fusion of American distrust of European methods and an American thrust into the postwar world was remarkably innovative, notwithstanding his racism and conservatism at home.4 Consequently, skepticism about European geopolitical solutions to the problems of the world, a deep and abiding sense of superiority and self-righteousness, and a firm belief that American traits were models for the world and should be transmitted abroad all amounted to an American identity that matched the American embrace of Wilsonian internationalism after World War I. Wilsonian internationalism became not simply an alternative to a European order or militaristic nationalism in Asia but in its own way very strongly related to the American national vision and goals.5 The American attitude at the end of the First World War was filled with ambivalence. Isolation was the logical escape from a European-inspired nightmare, but Americans also dreamed of transforming the world, and so isolation was largely a rhetorical pose. American financing and influence propped up both postwar Europe and East Asia. Europe was heavily damaged and dependent upon American help and sustenance and East Asia became unstable. Consequently, both at the diplomatic level and in the lives of private citizens such as businessmen, missionaries, and others, Americans could now see a world in which their influence was needed and more than ever envision a world made in their own image. Accordingly, they set about “Americanizing” the world. The IPR, whose internationalism supposedly transcended the nation, nonetheless became entangled in this mission to spread the American message.6 In 1925 at the first IPR conference in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, Frank C. Atherton, a prominent businessman from Hawai‘i, modeled this American spirit of engagement and “innocence” when he asked during an opening speech, “Are we to allow the struggle for wealth and power and the selfish ambitions of men in important governmental positions to dominate the life of nations or are these to be subordinate to reason, justice, and liberality and regard for the rights of humanity?” One can read this statement in several ways. On its face, it is plainly an argument for the universals of justice and humanity and an internationalist plea for involvement by men of goodwill. However, just as Wilson couched American values, interests, and influence in the world in universal terms, Atherton did the same here. Indeed, many American presidents in the twentieth century since Wilson have followed this pattern.7 More excavation is needed to capture the full meaning of Atherton’s words. First, there is some irony in Atherton’s argument against “wealth and power,” since he was himself quite wealthy and powerful as vice president and general



The Institute of Pacific Relations 45

manager of Castle and Cooke, one of the “big five” companies that literally ran Hawai‘i in this period. His position of privilege allowed him a prominent place on the podium at the first IPR conference. American wealth and power in the Pacific allowed people like Atherton to argue that Americans should have more influence there. His argument in favor of justice, liberality, and human rights is poignant, but it is made operational by the prerequisite of American power in the Pacific. And the words themselves begin to look strange, and more than slightly hypocritical, once examined in light of Atherton’s own position in Hawai‘i.8 Second, he rejected a European approach. “Fortunately, we [in the Pacific] have not the heritage of generations of hatred and ill-will that prevail across the Atlantic.” With this statement, Atherton stumbled into the seedbed of American nationalism by invoking the opposition between the dangerous “old world” of Europe, demonstrated so well by World War I, and the “new world” of the United States. Later on in the 1930s, Atherton led the battle to keep the IPR headquarters in Hawai‘i, and when it was moved to New York City, he condemned the organization for giving into “Atlantic” influences (mostly British). Here, he suggested that because the Pacific did not suffer from historic hatreds, Pacific peoples should be able to overcome their differences. Blinded by this myth of American nationalism, Atherton could not see that in 1925 the Pacific was seething with its own more recent heritage of enmity and distrust—evidenced by decades of European, American, and Japanese imperialism—when he spoke these words.9 In addition, Atherton invoked Herbert Spencer’s concept of social evolution. “In the early days of the human race, primitive wants were the strongest and largely dominated the individual, but as people have become wiser and more civilized they have learned to put honor and charity ahead of their primitive wants.” The view that humans were becoming more civilized, however, did not mean that all people were at the same level of civilization. Atherton’s rhetoric only hints at this connection. Wallace Farrington, governor of the territory of the Hawaiian Islands, made a clearer statement on civilization at the IPR conference with this comment, not about the Japanese, but concerning the native Hawaiians. “Their people were stirred by the spiritual awakening following new contacts with modern Western civilization.” Even Arthur L. Dean, who was president of the University of Hawai‘i, identified the progress of civilization in the Pacific as a crucial factor in the ultimate success of the territory of Hawai‘i in his speech before the convention.10 But Spencer’s ideas had been modified since the turn of the century. The rise of an anthropological concept of culture allowed for the transformation of arguments about race and civilization that had been prominent in the Spencerian mode in the late nineteenth century. Franz Boas, a well-known anthropologist, argued that culture, not race, determined development and evolution. In this way, then, culture replaced race as the signifier of progress and civilization. In turn, Boas’ ideas

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Hawai‘i at the Crossroads

became connected with the evolution to modernity. The argument concerning culture, civilization, modernity, and non-Westerners was becoming more widespread in this period among American intellectuals as Boas’ ideas were being disseminated. In fact, the IPR later asked Boas to write an analysis of race and culture in modernity for the organization. And the YMCA missionary movement, which was very involved in the founding of the IPR, used this connection between culture, civilization, and modernity in its assessment of the failure of some of its mission initiatives in 1930. The resulting YMCA report suggested that non-Western YMCA leadership had failed because people such as the Japanese were not as civilized and therefore could not be expected to run a complex modern organization like the YMCA. “Whether Anglo-Saxon virtues are more or less lovely than the Latin or Oriental virtues, they seem to be required by the [modern] economic world that is evolving.”11 Therefore, while Atherton only hinted, others were clearer, and he found himself enmeshed in a community of intellectuals (the Hawai‘i YMCA and IPR had many members and leaders in common) who shared a concern for human progress—a concern that ran from the civilized West to the “less civilized” peoples of Asia and the Pacific. The concrete consequence of this rhetoric was the very real possibility that non-Westerners, because they were further back in the march of modernity, would not be allowed to become equal participants in the IPR because it was perceived that they were not equal to the task. At the same time, there is a sense that progress could be made if only more civilized people were involved in the world, and this sentiment blended well with the sense of American superiority that resided within Americanization. In fact, as the reader will soon see, Americans came to dominate the agenda and proceedings of the IPR. Therefore, while Atherton’s rhetoric was not nationalist in the strictest sense, his ideas about the Pacific did reflect American values, and his position testifies to American power in the region, therefore making Americanization the centerpiece of his vision.12 Not all IPR leaders endorsed Americanization uncritically. Galen Weaver—a liberal pastor from Church of the Crossroads, a UCC Church in Honolulu—became influential in the founding of the IPR. He served on the Central Executive Committee that planned the 1925 conference and was head of the editorial section of the organization. Weaver was particularly outspoken. And his comments reveal a very different viewpoint than the prevailing sentiment. It is also telling that Weaver disappeared very quickly from the leadership role that he occupied in helping with the first conference. He wrote about the pressing issues in United States– East Asian relations: the Japanese viewpoint, China’s struggles, and America’s own attitude. “Japan is justly suspicious of western professions. She is pressed by a great socio-economic problem for whose solution she thinks expansion is necessary.



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She is jealous of her hardly won independent position. The sentiment of nationality is strong. She demands equal treatment.” When he turned to China he found the country “physically needy. But among her thinkers, a new consciousness of nationality is growing strong. . . .” And then there were the Americans. They had, according to Weaver, exacerbated the problem with their superiority complex and their habit of ignoring domestic problems while making judgments about other countries. “America if not indifferent is still negative towards the world situation. She is arrogant, self-contained, and ‘superior.’ Domestically she is filled with strife and lawlessness. She needs salvation as much as any of the other nations.”13 Weaver identified the major problems that confronted Japanese and Americans: Japanese expansionism, the rise of nationalism in East Asia, and the continuing American vision of itself both as bastion against and savior of the world. It should be noted, however, that he was not suggesting that the United States limit its influence; far from it, Weaver’s words hinted at even more engagement. Rather, he pointed to the American attitude as part of the problem. Weaver articulated an unusual internationalist viewpoint within the IPR and American society at large in the interwar period by endorsing the United States’ encounter with the world but also criticizing the nationalist thrust of that power. This minority position, which also criticized Western imperialism and saw Japan’s concerns in East Asia as legitimate, was to be found among some missionaries to Japan and others who achieved the critical objectivity to see America and Europe’s actions from afar. Nevertheless, thinkers like Weaver apparently could not see that American nationalism and the United States’ expanding role in the world were inextricably linked. The United States had in fact been projecting its own sense of nationalism onto the world for decades—ironically, through the missionaries who eventually turned against it. Weaver’s critique went against the grain of the dominant mode of thinking in criticizing American arrogance. And his influence, not surprisingly, was quite limited within the IPR.14 Japanese Ambivalence toward Internationalism Many Japanese also embraced internationalism and looked to the idealism of the postwar climate. It promised peace and would allow them fuller participation in world affairs. Particularly attractive in Wilson’s ideas was the concept of selfdetermination, which sympathetic East Asians understood to apply to their own aspirations of independence and national sovereignty. The Chinese delegation to the Versailles conference asked for a greater degree of sovereignty, and the May Fourth Movement within China sprung from a sense of experienced indignity that had grown in part from the taproot of Wilson’s ideas. The Japanese held forums in

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the YMCA journal Kaitakusha (Pioneer) to debate Wilson’s ideas. Intellectuals such as Sakuzo Yoshino signaled this new attitude with commitment to democracy and fairness in Japan and greater self-determination within the Japanese empire.15 But underneath the hope for a new spirit in the world was a degree of skepticism among Japanese cultural leaders. Hiromichi Kozaki, a well-known Japanese Christian, suggested at one point that internationalism was a fad. Danjo Ebina, another prominent Christian, had this to say about the League of Nations that had been proposed at the Versailles Conference. In the March 1920 issue of Kaitakusha he wrote: “It is not usually said but concerning Japan and the League of Nations, we should not submit to the empty impracticality of pacifists. From the beginning I did not like the idle daydreaming of these individuals. Speaking of the ideals of international morality, scholars in the West are convinced that we ought to struggle hard to accomplish this in a world-wide campaign. But my own convictions are that this innovation is unwelcome.”16 And Inazo Nitobe, the great translator of things Japanese to the West and eventually the best-known Japanese internationalist in the interwar period, was also said to have initial doubts. Of course, later Nitobe was asked to be apologist for Japan after it invaded Manchuria. He agreed and traveled to the United States on a goodwill tour, where—tragically—he collapsed and died in 1933. The reconciliation of Japanese nationalism with an internationalist viewpoint took a heavy toll indeed.17 Why did some Japanese, especially those who were sympathetic to the West, react negatively as they openly sought Western ideas? The skepticism about Wilsonian internationalism and the League of Nations was linked in part to Japanese outrage at Wilson’s rejection of the racial equality clause the Japanese sought to have inserted into the Treaty of Versailles. Also ongoing discussions about whether the Japanese should be forced to give back the Shantung peninsula, which they had won from Germany in World War I China, upset the Japanese. It was Setsuo Uenoda, a YMCA leader stationed at an overseas branch of the Japanese YMCA in Chicago, who called Wilsonian idealism a “colossal illusion.” He also pointed out that Wilsonian idealism was contradictory. “It is significant that the principles of justice and humanity so nobly advocated by President Wilson not only collapsed at the Peace Conference but that they have driven the United States into a position both awkward and untenable. The popular problems of the ‘equality of races’ and of ‘Shantung’ show that America as a part and parcel of the world system has to be cautious and practical in the world of things as they are.”18 In addition, the Japanese experience culturally in its relations with the West was one of ambivalence. Japanese intellectuals strove to find a middle way between the great strength and seeming progress of the West and the attraction of their own cultural foundations, as they set out on this perilous journey in search of



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enlightenment from the West. Japan was becoming unmoored from its traditional position within the orbit of a Chinese Confucian civilization and moving itself into the framework of the West. A movement of this sort was cataclysmic for the Japanese, and there is much evidence that they struggled mightily to hold their ideas together, since they believed their own survival to be at stake. Arguing that Japan could become a bridge for the innovations of the West and a foundation of strength and progress for the rest of East Asia, their rhetoric was at once nationalist, civilizational, and internationalist. Because of its rapid modernization and acquisition of things Western, Japan was perfectly suited to bring progress to all of East Asia.19 As a consequence, Japanese in the postwar period were likely to embrace only with hesitation and ambivalence the ideas flowing from the West concerning the new international world of the 1920s. Given the experiences of the Japanese with Western diplomacy, such as the triple intervention in 1895 and other examples already mentioned, the Japanese were understandably hesitant to rely on concepts such as internationalism that were Western in origin and might serve Western ends.20 Dr. Sawayanagi, a prominent member of the Japanese educational establishment, had served as president of Kyoto Imperial University, held a high post in the Japanese education ministry, and was even a member of the House of Peers. Sawayanagi evidenced some of this struggle and characteristic determination at the first IPR meeting in 1925 when he gave the opening address on the Japanese view of Pacific Relations. You will have perceived from what I have said so far that the Japanese people on the whole are making an open-minded and hearty response to the call of a broader and more enlightened world civilization combining the good qualities of the civilizations of the East and the West. The East and West are meeting in Japan. The West has found an opend-minded [sic] welcome from the East. May we not hope for a similarly responsive attitude on the part of the West, so that the central gulf that now divides the two great sections of the world may be removed to the lasting happiness of the human race.

Here we find many of the central elements of Japanese nationalism as it was projected into the West. The acknowledgment of the “call” to progress and civilization (with undeclared but clear Western authorship), the high place of the “East” and “West” as foundational categories in the thought of the Japanese (as Orient and Occident were to westerners), the search for a fusion of the two in a vision of a civilization, the assimilation in a unique and advantageous way of the best of Asia and Western nations into Japan—all revealed that fundamental Japanese principles

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of nationalism were at stake in the founding of the IPR. Japanese independence was demonstrated by its “hearty response” and the somewhat defensive stance of Sawayanagi.21 This vision, powerful as it was, was based upon myths, just like the American vision. The Japanese account of their own Easternness did not calculate the vast changes taking place in Japan since the Meiji Restoration. Perhaps “East” was simply a safe port in the storm that had descended upon East Asia, and especially China, in the 1920s. The assumption of one “West,” while it met the need for a symmetrical opposite to the East, was too solid to be true. And in “fusion” could be read cooptation and indigenization. For example, this is how Japanese Christians translated their concept of religious syncretism into action in Japan.22 In the end, what this meant was that the Japanese and Americans alike brought along their nationalism to the party of internationalism the IPR held in Honolulu in the summer of 1925. “Civilization” negotiated the blooming contradictions between the more substantial ideas of the nation and the newer rhetoric of internationalism. This initial rhetoric of the 1920s also indicated that the Pacific was not calm, but a boiling cauldron of competing nations and ideas. A Rational Pacific? The IPR Research Program By 1925 and the founding of the IPR, relations between the United States and Japan had worsened dramatically with the passage in the U.S. Congress of the General Immigration Act in 1924, which banned immigration from Asia to the United States. To Japan, not only was the law an insult because it suggested the Japanese were of inferior racial stock (the Americans were willing to allow in Europeans, although in very limited numbers), but it was just one more way that the West had slammed the door just as the Japanese had tried to enter. John V. MacMurray, who was assistant secretary of state in 1925, discussed the issue with J. Merle Davis, a former YMCA missionary to Japan who helped to found the IPR and became its first executive. Davis paid a visit to MacMurray in Washington, D.C. to get the reaction of the United States government to plans to found the IPR. MacMurray said that the U.S. government should have no relations with the organization because other nations would interpret this as American interference. However, contrary to his earlier admonition of noninterference, he gave free advice to Davis on the immigration restriction issue. He claimed that the best approach to the immigration restriction issue was to consider it as irrevocable. He believed that the conference would do a disservice by bringing it up and inflaming feelings on both sides. MacMurray had faith that the other connections the United States had with Japan would be enough to overcome the immigration issue.23 When Americans thought about their relationship with Japan—especially



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since Japan held the most promise in the non-Western world for becoming a “modern” nation—they often saw themselves. And when they did not see themselves, they most often saw the polar opposite: a hideous, irrational authoritarianism.24 Americans in the 1920s routinely argued that Japan was becoming more democratic and was on a path toward greater and greater liberalism.25 In the 1930s, even after the rise of militarism in Japan, Americans continued to look for signs that liberalism was still alive and kicking in Japan. As late as July 1937, the very month when Japan was to prove how illiberal it had become by engaging in war against China, Galen Fisher, former YMCA missionary to Japan, found the militarists on the defensive and liberals recovering.26 On the other hand, Americans also saw disturbing signs of authoritarianism. One commentator attacked what he saw as a dangerous cult of emperor worship. He criticized Nitobe Inazo for his conception of the duties of Bushido and also brought Ebina Danjo, a prominent Japanese Christian, to task for his arguments about the connections between the first emperor and the Sun Goddess who supposedly bore him.27 This was a fairly consistent line of questioning on the part of several American writers. Did the Japanese really believe all this bunk about the emperor being semidivine? Once the question was asked in an informal survey done by an American writer, the Japanese answers varied. Several said they did not believe it but it was important for national unity. The Americans seemed obsessed about the issue, for it came up over and over again. Perhaps this was because it was inconceivable to Americans that a country undergoing a liberal revolution would engage in hidebound superstitions and faith in a supreme emperor.28 It must have raised suspicions that the Japanese might not follow the American path after all. After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, criticism concentrated upon the military, which was described as a “line of God-descended men whose duty it is to find peace and plenty for the Yamato race.”29 One writer, a journalist, argued that in Manchuria, Japan had proved that it was not Western at all. “In maintaining these pretenses, which they know are wholly unsatisfactory to the Occident, they are shedding the frock coat, in which they have been proud to conduct meticulously correct relations with the West and resuming the kimono and with it the Asiatic preference for face above good faith.”30 This writer saw Japan turning from a Western, rational approach to Oriental inscrutability.31 Finally, an American commentator, reacting to Japanese expansion in China shortly after the end of World War I, wrote with blunt foreshadowing, “Grey battleships on the horizon line would bring home to Japanese leaders what all the butchery of the war has failed to teach.”32 It was in this charged atmosphere that a group of private citizens from Pacific Rim countries decided to form the Institute of Pacific Relations, to try to bring some clear and accurate thinking, in the words of the program committee that planned the first conference.33 Most of the founders of the IPR themselves were

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people who had been involved in Pacific affairs for a long time. Many had been engaged in the U.S.–Japanese relationship informally for some time, and so U.S.– Japanese matters predominated from the very start of the organization. YMCA missionaries who had served in Japan were very influential. J. Merle Davis spent time in Japan as a YMCA missionary. Galen M. Fisher, who was the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and also helped found the IPR, had been the general secretary of the Japanese YMCA in Tokyo from 1898 to 1919. George Sidney Phelps, who was the reigning American YMCA representative in Japan, attended, as did his Japanese counterpart, Soichi Saito. Many Japanese Christians were also involved, such as Nitobe Inazo, Yoshino Sakuzo, Ibuka Kajinosuke, and Niwa Seijiro, as well as several scholars and journalists. Motosada Zumoto, who was then editor of the Herald of Asia and had spent time in Korea as a journalist, attended. Many Japanese scholars from Tokyo Imperial University participated or expressed their support for the enterprise: Professor Yanaibara, who studied colonial policy; Professor Nambai, who studied the history of politics; Professor Ebara, who examined political economy; Professor Anesaki, who studied science of religion; Professor Takaki; and Professor Abe Isoo from Waseda, legendary Christian Socialist and political leader. In addition, Shibusawa Eiichi, Baron Shimpei Goto, and Matsuoka Yasuke from the government and business community expressed interest. Not all of these men attended the conference, but all were interested in the work of the IPR. This list looks a bit like a Who’s Who of the intellectual and business elite of Japan. It was a very influential group indeed, and an indication of the high stakes placed on the IPR by the Japanese to salvage the relationship between the United States and Japan.34 The goals of the Institute of Pacific Relations were simple. The Institute sought to bring comity to the Pacific. It would do this through face-to-face dialogue in conferences and then by replacing the irrationalities of the Pacific with objective facts in its research program. Frank C. Atherton, whose words were noted previously, once again said it best: “There is no doubt that much of distrust and suspicion arises from ignorance of the facts governing one’s activities. . . . Hence first and foremost is the need to ascertain all the facts about each country which influence its thought and actions, and the attitude of its people toward the people of other countries.”35 The search for unbiased facts, while a strong part of the EuropeanAmerican scientific and Enlightenment tradition, has been shown in so many ways since the beginning of the IPR to be impossible. The work of Thomas Kuhn, the rise of cultural relativism in anthropology, the poststructuralist questioning of the relationship between facts and knowledge have all helped to unravel the surety of knowledge as it was assumed to be in 1925.36 The research projects emerged very logically out of the initial goals the IPR set for itself. If IPR members were to have objective facts, then they would need to



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obtain those facts, and thus research in the Pacific became an enduring part of the IPR.37 By 1927 the IPR was beginning to whittle down its willowy notions of facts into more concrete practice. In May of that year, while the research committee met in New York City to discuss the overall parameters of research, and by 1928, the various national councils began generating sets of research questions.38 One of the most prominent questions was the issue of immigration restriction. The May 7 committee meeting immediately took up the issue of the Japanese rationale for immigration. Many Japanese believed that some form of expansion was inevitable because of a growing population on an overcrowded island, and this problem was all the more reason to denounce the new American immigration restriction law.39 Because the immigration issue was an immediate concern and caused such tension, it was immediately put on the IPR docket. But taking it on as a research project presented problems. As this research was so politically charged, either side in the debate could benefit from certain conclusions. For instance, if the food supply in Japan was found to be inadequate, then the Japanese would have further justification for expansion. If the food supply was found to be adequate when supplemented by Manchurian grains and soybeans, then the Americans could be justified in saying that the Japanese argument was a chimera intended to rationalize the expansion of their empire into northeast Asia. In the end, the research did show that Japan had been unable to support itself with domestic agriculture for at least ten years before 1929. And its move to industrialization had not lessened Japan’s reliance upon agricultural products. Rather, it had made Japan even more dependent, since it was estimated that up to two-thirds of its agricultural products were used as raw materials, such as oils in industrial production. So the research tended to support Japan’s argument that Manchuria was a “lifeline.” But the Americans often shot back that there was still no credible argument for an exclusive Japanese sphere in Manchuria.40 To the credit of the IPR, the research questions were reviewed after being formulated by the national councils. The proposals would be examined by the IPR research committee, which was made up of representatives from the member nations, although the national councils still had the right to veto research projects of which they did not approve at this administrative level. In the experience of the next ten years, it was the Japanese national council that most often objected to proposed projects, and their objections centered on the ever-sensitive issue of Manchuria and, after the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, all of China. While the Japanese could object, the Americans tended to dictate the overall direction of the IPR from powerful positions within it. The administrative arm of the IPR was heavily weighted in favor of the West, and especially the Americans. The executives of the IPR before World War II, J. Merle Davis and Edward Carter,

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were both Americans. Perhaps this was to be expected, since much of the funding came from the United States, largely from the Rockefeller Foundation in this period. To the end of finding more funding, the IPR headquarters was moved to New York City from Honolulu in several stages in the early 1930s. Thereafter the organization moved further under the control of Americans. John B. Condliffe, an economist from Canterbury College in New Zealand who became the head of the research section of the IPR in 1928, recognized the problem of American dominance within the IPR and how this might affect the research topics pursued. He believed control and veto power in the national councils helped to decentralize the research program. To make the research more international, the national councils were encouraged to pursue research subjects that lay outside of their national area. For instance, Condliffe suggested that the Japanese formulate a study of the American missionary movement. In this way it was hoped fairness could be ensured, although in this particular case, the fact remained that the Japanese Christians involved with missionaries were exceedingly independent and had clashed repeatedly with American missionaries over the issue of autonomy; thus a study made by the Japanese of American missionaries could hardly be expected to be objective, and might be quite critical. As a consequence, while the structure of the research agenda around the national councils might cancel out American predominance, it could also reemphasize nationalism, something the IPR desired to overcome.41 Another set of problems arose in the formulating of research questions. As scholars well know, this is perhaps the most crucial part of the research task, because if one gets the questions wrong, then the research is bound to turn out badly. In 1928 the IPR directed its national councils to formulate research questions. J. Merle Davis, then general secretary of the IPR, traveled to East Asia and along with many other duties compiled a list of questions submitted to him by the national councils.42 Not surprisingly, when the reports came in, the questions were biased. But they told a revealing story nonetheless. The Japanese council molded their questions not only to meet their own national interests but also to discredit the United States. They suggested a study of American foreign policy in Latin America in places like Nicaragua and Mexico. Without missing a beat, they also suggested that a study of “the American Monroe doctrine in relation to the Pacific area” would be appropriate. Japanese diplomats and private citizens alike were very adept in this period at taking issues about which Americans were fulminating, such as Manchuria, and shoving them ever so politely back into the Americans’ faces. A careful study of the American Monroe Doctrine in the Pacific would have shown American influence in the Pacific to be what it really was—not a moral-minded impartial attempt at arbitration and fairness through the Open Door, but an ever-creeping



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extension of power into the Pacific achieved through moral suasion, diplomatic gambits, brute military force, and, in the case of the Philippines, a combination of the three. It would have resembled the same kind of influence the Japanese were developing in Manchuria. In fact, when Americans expressed outrage at Japanese ambitions, the Japanese often suggested to them that, just as the United States had its sphere of unfettered sway in Latin America, Japan should be allowed to have its own Monroe Doctrine in northeast Asia.43 In short, when the Americans pointed fingers, the Japanese pointed back. Far from objectivity, these research proposals are remarkable for their almost mischievous attempts to bring to light issues that would make the Americans uncomfortable. Of course, none of these proposals were implemented. But the finger-pointing contributed nothing to a calmer atmosphere in the Pacific.44 The Japanese also made research proposals that were aimed more exclusively at bolstering the Japanese nation. “A study of the permanent elements of value for the world in Japanese culture and national characteristics,” a study of the blending of Japanese and Western culture, research on the profit of introducing Oriental characteristics into Western life, and one final project on whether foreign missionary or native standards should be carried out in the rise of Christianity in Asia (playing off of Condliffe’s suggestion)—all of these match the Japanese national vision it consistently presented to the outside world and to itself about its role in the world. The Japanese intended to maintain their nation by resisting the hegemony of Western culture, infusing their ideas into Western discourses, synthesizing what the West had to offer, and preserving and spreading the results of that mix at least in their part of world, because Japan believed that it had a unique role to play in using Western ideas to strengthen East Asia against Western intrusions. Thus, meeting the research goal of getting objective facts was already proving to be a difficult task.45 This approach gave way in the early 1930s under pressure from the national councils—especially the Japanese council—to avoid controversial current problems such as Manchuria. It was argued by Yusuke Tsurumi, writer, politician, and member of the Japanese parliament, that Japanese liberalism was damaged, and Japanese liberals like Nitobe Inazo and Yosuke Matsuoka (former SMR vice president) left embarrassed by the thrashing Japan took on the Manchurian issue at the 1929 Kyoto IPR Conference. The Japanese argued that Manchuria was too politicized to be useful for the “objective” research the IPR was supposed to be doing, pointing out that Manchuria had come to represent an eastern “Balkans” in the eyes of some westerners. Instead of hard rational thinking, Manchuria seemed to be a choice based on sentiment and could become “a rostrum for causes.” Yasaka Takaki, Professor of American Institutions at Tokyo Imperial University, wrote in 1935, “I personally would like to see the banner of revitalized, vigorous (not senti-

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mental but rational), internationalism carried forward by the IPR in the face of the countrary [sic] tendency prevailing in many lands—even at the sacrifice of losing temporarily some of its members” (parentheses in original).46 William L. Holland, who had by 1932 become the research secretary of the IPR, in letters to Ed Carter, the new general secretary, made two recommendations. First, the organization needed to concentrate on long-term issues in its research and drop the current-issue approach. Second, research should be directed by the executive arm of the organization called the Secretariat instead of by the research committee and national councils.47 The research had been designed to help IPR members confront problems in a new light, and the shift from current issues to long-term ones tended to move discussions away from the most pressing issues. Standards of living in the Far East and other issues such as comparative imperialism, markets in the Far East, foreign trading companies, communism and fascism in the Far East, disintegration of traditional community organization in the Far East, and changes in local government, family organization, and national consciousness all sounded like interesting issues for an academic conference, but not for lessening tensions in the Pacific.48 In addition, the IPR meetings began to take on the air of official diplomatic exchanges. It has been suggested that the Japanese Council maintained a very close relation to the Japanese government from its inception, and the evidence fits that scenario. The Japanese Foreign Ministry provided one-quarter of the initial operating funds for the Japanese Council and consulted frequently with its leadership. In 1929, leading up to the Kyoto IPR conference, Foreign Minister Kijuro Shidehara sent a note to Nitobe Inazo, organizer of the conference, and Vice-Minister Shigeru Yoshida briefed him in person on continuing Sino-Japanese tensions. Especially in 1933, after the Japanese left the League of Nations and had few avenues for informal diplomatic communication remaining other than the IPR, did the organization act more and more like another arm of the Japanese government.49 “Fatal Danger”: The IPR Secretariat Inquiry By the late 1930s, the rise of nationalism, militarism, and war in East Asia forced the IPR to once again concentrate upon current problems. This time however, the ruling body, the Secretariat, which was dominated by Americans, initiated a research study of the Sino-Japanese War, called the Secretariat Inquiry, without the unequivocal support of the Japanese Council. The inquiry project demonstrates the problem presented by the concept of nation to the research of the IPR, since it became clear that American national interests and influence (along with the British) drove this research program. The Japanese grudgingly agreed at first, later protested, and eventually quit the IPR altogether, amid grave suspicions on both



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sides. The research of the IPR, intended to bring objective facts to light and promote understanding and calm, instead brought a new and greater tension to U.S.– Japanese cultural relations, which by 1938 paralleled that in the official diplomacy between the two nations.50 When war broke out between Japan and China in the summer of 1937, the IPR was placed in an untenable position. Its cherished goals of creating peace and understanding in the Pacific were foundering on the rocks of the Sino-Japanese War. The IPR began a soul-searching examination of what it could do to revive its agenda. Edward Carter traveled to Europe to consult. Europeans, especially the English, who had insinuated themselves into a leadership position in the IPR in the mid-1930s, fired a series of hard questions at Carter. Even now, verbatim, these questions sear into the very heart of the internationalist agenda. “What was the Institute going to do to stop the war? Does not the outbreak of war mean the end of the IPR? Does not the war prove the utter futility of the kind of work which the Institute has done in the past ten years? Have the leaders of the Institute courage enough to announce that the Institute has failed and proceed to liquidate it? Does not prudence demand that the Institute cease its activity during the war in order to preserve itself intact for service in the interest of Peace when the war is over?”51 As a consequence of his trip and internal discussions with other IPR leaders— J. W. Dafoe, chair of the Pacific Council, and W. L. Holland, the research secretary— Carter initiated a study of the Sino-Japanese War. R. H. Tawney, the well-known English historian, formulated the research questions. How would China recover from the ravages of war? How could the “economic appeasement” argument be applied to Japan? There were also questions concerning the future of Mongolia and the applicability of the nine-power treaty principles after the outbreak of war. The leadership recognized that tension might flare up between the Secretariat and the Japanese Council. Meeting summaries reveal that, while there was concern about the Japanese reaction, the leadership never intended to allow Japanese disapproval to stop the project. “Every effort should be made to refrain from taking any steps that would make either the Japanese or Chinese councils feel that they would be criticized by the other councils if they did not find it possible to co-operate.” This approach was a crude face-saving gesture that would allow the project to go forward despite the disapproval of the Japanese.52 In this case, the nationalism of Japanese within the IPR was overcome. But the price paid was that in working out of a majoritarian and international basis, the Americans were victorious, the Japanese further alienated, and the stake driven in deeper. The U.S.–Japanese relationship was now in mortal danger. The antiWestern, anti-imperialist argument had by 1938 grown powerful in Japan, and it seemed to them that the Western (European and now American) imperialists were once again conspiring against Japan. The Secretariat sent William Holland, the

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research secretary, to Japan with a vague statement of aims to be communicated to the Japanese and with instructions to keep it general. Japanese representative Nagahara Yasu sent a vague reply of general approval, which was later rescinded.53 By the summer of 1938 the Japanese had staked out a position of clear opposition to the matter. In July, the Japanese Council responded formally in a letter written by Tadao Yamakawa, vice-chairman of the council, a former high-ranking diplomat, and a member of the House of Peers. The Japanese said that the IPR should do “purely academic and strictly objective research. . . . And now I look at the program of the project again. Honestly I cannot help finding it as something other than purely academic and strictly objective.”54 The Japanese were asserting a fundamental truth about the research program, but they did so only because it fit their immediate need to discredit the IPR. The research program, which had never actually been objective but had become more academic with the move to long-term issues in the mid-1930s, was with this short statement condemned by the Japanese. But the letter does not end here. Instead, it became a platform for the Japanese Council openly to break with the Americans rather than pursue a more diplomatic approach, as in previous times: When we discovered that some things are much more dangerous and undesirable for the establishment of real and constructive peace in the Far East, which by the way is the most vital pre-requisite for the future existence of Japan and also China for that matter, than temporary employment of swords and guns, there came to be among us the consensus of opinion that we were bound to carry this unfortunate warfare through to the end for the sake of Japan and also for the sake of China. And so the so-called “Japan’s Disunited Front” was dissolved. We genuinely believe that we, the united Japanese Nation, are undertaking a great constructive work which, although both Japan and China will suffer from it temporarily, will in the long run liberate the Far East from the accumulated misunderstandings, misgivings and misgovernment. Now let us come back to the IPR. As you will see clearly, we are at the moment at war—de facto—with China. And, should there be, among the groups in the States, some who, thinking that Japan being disunited between the militarist group and those who advocate a more liberal policy, the time will come sooner or later when the present Government is replaced by [a] more liberal Government with which the third Powers may be able to confer more comfortably, and endeavor to bring about a situation which is likely to accelerate the fall of the present regime in Japan. It is a grave mistake. If the IPR itself were to base its activities on such a theory, not only would it be a grave mistake, but also it would signify a fundamental and lamentable metamorphosis of the IPR. It will be suicidal for the IPR to plunge headlong into actual political controversies. Some of the members of the



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IPR have, I understand, been advocating boycott against Japan; some others are urging the authority to adopt interventionist policies; they are doing this through public speeches or publication of articles in their “private capacity.” If such be the predominant atmosphere among those who are, it is proposed, to be entrusted with the project of inquiry, which should be purely academic, strictly objective, and certainly not political, would it be prudent action on the part of the Pacific Council or the International Research Committee or the Secretariat to encourage the prosecution of such a project, or would it be more prudent to reconsider the matter altogether. . . ? I do feel a certain presentiment of fatal danger in the air.55

Then the Japanese Council invited E. C. Carter to come to Japan, much as Carter had invited Baron Saionji, who was sympathetic to IPR initiatives, to the United States to see the project unfolding. There is something of imperial competition in these cross-invitations. The letter was very open and blunt about tensions in U.S.–Japanese relations (very un-Oriental!). Yamakawa expressed a suspicion of partiality that was accurate, for some American IPR leaders had already engaged in anti-Japanese rhetoric outside of the IPR. The letter contained a clear and somewhat menacing warning against American attempts to influence internal Japanese politics. Finally, it proclaimed the goal of liberating East Asia, with its attendant anti-Western implications. This was the penultimate moment for the IPR. Whereas previously the organization had at least striven to be fair, the Secretariat Inquiry clearly was not; it was skewed toward American influence and interests. The Japanese continued to protest against the inquiry, stopped attending IPR meetings, and, with the outbreak of war in 1941, the Japanese Council was eventually disbanded.56 The disconnect between the assumptions and the reality of the IPR research program had finally come home to roost. And this problem destroyed what little credibility and effectiveness the IPR had maintained in 1937 about its fundamental goals. William Holland admitted that the experience changed the IPR. Never again did the organization pursue peace in the Pacific as it had at its founding in 1925. Its innocence, which had always been mythic—like the innocence of America—was despoiled.57 Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the IPR’s leader, Edward Carter, openly documented the success the IPR was having in placing its officials at the disposal of the Allied forces: “Former IPR staff members have been promptly called into important government work. There have been urgent requests from the Army, Navy, and other government departments for special reports and for the loan of IPR studies still in manuscript or proof.” This almost seamless shift from open internationalism to open nationalism indicates the consistent pulse of the nation beneath the surface of the seemingly internationalist interwar period.58

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The IPR failed in large part because the people who created it and pushed it forward carried within them dichotomized notions of nationalism and rationality, whether it was that the nation was inherently irrational, or whether the perception was maintained that internationalism was sentiment without reasonable calculation. Rather, the presence of nationalism, American predominance, the rivalry between the United States and Japan, and irrationality were all counterpoints to the internationalist and rationalist goals of the IPR. Neither can the influences of external conditions such as the struggles of China in the period or the innovations of the Japanese military in Manchuria be ignored. In fact, these problems can be explained by the strength of nationalism that underlay the Pacific region during this period. This study of the IPR indicates that cultural conditions clearly played a significant role in the causes of the Pacific War. Of course, even a more successful IPR would not necessarily have been able to guarantee peace in the Pacific. And the IPR did lay the groundwork for postwar cultural reconstruction, as did other sympathetic nongovernmental organizations working in the Pacific such as the YMCA.59 The voices of these organizations, for example the 1944 IPR conference on Japanese reconstruction and that of YMCA leader Russell Durgin in the SCAP occupation force, helped to moderate the American occupation of Japan in 1945 and perhaps to provide an explanation for why the years of war and race hatred so quickly gave way to a peaceful postwar environment in Japan.

Notes In this chapter, I will refute that assertion with the evidence of the IPR in the interwar period. Rather, there are many indications that the IPR, especially in the last few years before Pearl Harbor, acted most often in the interests of the United States and other Western nations. Japanese names are listed in the Western style, with surname last, simply because this is the manner in which their names appear in IPR documents. 1. For an analysis of the rise of the Pacific as a concept and a region, see Pekka Korhonen, “The Pacific Age in World History,” Journal of World History 7.1 (Spring 1996). 2. Setsuo Uenoda, “When East Meets West I: Japan’s Right to Empire,” Asia 19.12 (December 1919): 1214. Akira Iriye argues, in “A Century of NGO’s,” Diplomatic History 23.3 (Summer 1999), that many NGOs represent a true internationalism separate from the interests of any particular nation. 3. See Prasenjit Duara’s Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Duara argued, in a powerful analytical insight, that the nation is the subject of modern history. It is indeed very difficult to write the history of the modern world without starting with a nation, or several nations, as the subject



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of that study. This conception of the nation argues for seeing internationalism as linked inextricably to the nation. Since then, Duara has published several other articles also forwarding this argument. Examples are “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900–1945,” American Historical Review 102.4 (October 1997), and “The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender and National History in Modern China,” History and Theory 37.3 (October 1998): 287–308. Yik-Yi (Cindy) Chu has argued that the nation relates to a community of nations like this: “While nationalism is self-oriented, internationalism is the projection of the self into the larger community”; Yik-yi Chu, “Nationalism and Chinese Foreign Relations: A Historical Assessment of the Period from 1949 to the Present,” paper given at the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, Maui, Hawai‘i, August 5–8, 1999. Steven I. Levine, “Perception and Ideology in Chinese Foreign Policy,” in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice, ed. Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 43, identifies national identity attributes that have played an important role in Chinese foreign policy. 4. Thomas Knock, To End All Wars: World War I and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), is a compelling study of the origins of Wilson’s internationalism. Arthur Link’s five-volume biography, Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947–1965), and his Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace (Arlington Heights, IL: H. Davidson, 1979) are older but solid works on Wilson. When I use the term “nationalism,” I use Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as a “deep cultural system,” not an ideology. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1981). 5. David W. Noble’s book The End of American History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 4–7, is the most sophisticated exploration of the ideological divide between old-world traditions of Europe and the New World of America. See also my own work on American missionary nationalism in Jon Thares Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890–1930 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh and Associated University Presses, 1998), chap. 1. 6. The literature on Americanization has of course studied the American nation as it went abroad in a variety of ways, but most scholarship connects at some point to the definition I have given. Emily Rosenberg’s Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), concentrates more on liberalism and democracy but of course also covers American modeling, influence, and sense of superiority abroad. Reinhold Wagenlietner’s quip in “The Empire of Fun or Talkin’ Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe,” Diplomatic History 23.3 (Summer 1999)—“Who after all, needed the Monroe Doctrine, when the Marilyn Monroe doctrine seemed so much more desirable and much less painful to boot?”—indicates his point of view adequately. But his essay and book Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994) are serious about U.S. interests and influence abroad. And his understanding of the American nation as it was projected abroad, especially into Europe, matches that of David Noble. The recent issue of Diplomatic History 23.3 (Summer 1999) sponsored a forum on the “American Century,” in which several of the articles focused on U.S. interests and influence abroad. For U.S. interests in the

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Pacific, see Bruce Cumings’ recent book Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American East Asian Relations at the End of the Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), and Walter Lafeber’s book The Clash: U.S.–Japanese Relations throughout History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), although neither one of these books presents a clear lens for seeing American nationalism abroad. Cumings has described how deeply American influence has operated in East Asia, arguing that American influence has been prominent there for a century. In fact, he suggests that American hegemony has been more complete in East Asia even than European imperialism. For American influence in East Asia in traditional foreign policy-centered studies, see Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1897–1911 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), and Michael Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 7. One could pick any recent president and explore his foreign policy to confirm this notion. Bush in Kuwait in the Desert Storm Campaign and in Somalia, Clinton in Kosovo—both demonstrate the felt need of Americans to couch their interests in terms of humanitarianism or democratization. And one can reasonably assume, based on the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, that the world of nations is mythic or invented. Consequently, one can begin to see that Atherton imagined the nation of America through his invocation of universals. 8. See Gavan Daws’ book for a fascinating account of the history of Hawai‘i and the interests and power of the big five companies in this period. Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu, Hawai‘i: University Press of Hawai‘i, 1968). “Membership,” Institute of Pacific Relations Proceedings, Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14 (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 35. 9. Frank C. Atherton, “The Purpose of the Institute of Pacific Relations,” in Institute of Pacific Relations Proceedings, Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14 (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 57. David Noble’s End of American History points out the ideological divide that has grown up between “Old World” and “New.” 10. Herbert Spencer, Herbert Spencer on Social Evolution; Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by John David Yeadon Peel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). Atherton, “The Purpose of the Institute of Pacific Relations,” 55. Arthur Dean also pointed to modern science to solve the problems of the Pacific. In 1925, all three men identified civilization and progress, rather than race, as the indicator of one’s place in the world. All of these men further articulated the rejection of racial prejudice. Wallace R. Farrington, “Address of Welcome,” 41; Arthur L. Dean, “The Approach to Pacific Problems,” 46–48. All found in Institute of Pacific Relations Proceedings, Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14 (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 55. 11. See Boas’ work on race and culture for this transformation. Franz Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960), chaps. 2, 7. This new way of thinking was no less than the beginning of modernization theory, although it would be decades (1950s) until this way of seeing the world received an academic imprimatur. It was a very common way to characterize intercultural dialogues between the weak and the strong; and it also could become a rationale for revitalizing imperialism. In the case of the American YMCA,



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a comprehensive study of conditions in the foreign-mission fields concluded that part of the problem was the inability of non-westerners to run a complex, modern organization like the YMCA. So Americans should step back into positions of leadership in the overseas organizations, which they had given up only recently, to revitalize the overseas YMCAs. See Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress, 154–158; quote from 155. Daniel C. Tipps, “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 15 (March 1973). 12. Perhaps a way of reorienting our thinking about Atherton’s position that at the same time overcomes the problem of the inherent conflict between nationalism and internationalism is to see his comments as an enunciation of an American civilization. Accordingly, Atherton was articulating an American vision that transcended the nation but still highlighted American values and an American agenda. In the 1920s and 1930s, this kind of discourse became quite common, as nationalist intellectuals mediated the new global trends by turning to civilizational concepts that were nationalist in their origins but transnational in their scope and implications. Thus American civilization was identified by intellectuals such as Vernon L. Parrington, whose three-volume Main Currents in American Thought set the standard. As the reader will see, discussions of a different civilization led by the Japanese became common currency in intellectual circles in Japan as well. Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: An Interpretation of American Literature from the Beginnings to 1920, 3 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927–1930). Once again, Prasenjit Duara’s seminal insights are helpful. He has argued recently that civilizational discourses took a powerful turn after World War I with the rise of concepts of Wilsonian self-determination and anti-imperialist movements worldwide. He has identified Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, which pointed to the decline of European civilization in the wake of World War I, as the turning point. However, as Atherton makes clear, America and the Pacific were separate from Europe or “the West” as Spengler used the term. In some ways, then, the very opportunity for a Pacific led by American values was made possible by the pessimism generated by the catastrophe of World War I. Prasenjit Duara, “Pan-Asianism: The Discourse of Civilization among Nation-States,” Nicholas Tarling Lecture, NZASIA Conference, Dunedin, New Zealand, October 26, 1999; Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1926–1928). 13. Galen Weaver, “Comments on Purpose of Pacific Conference,” IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i, Box A-1, folder 1, 1923, pp. 3–5. 14. Arthur Jorgensen offers an example of this view. He was a YMCA missionary to Japan but rejected the racial argument and saw Japan’s needs in East Asia as legitimate. See Letter, Arthur Jorgensen to Charles Herschleb, March 30, 1933, Correspondence and Reports, Kautz Family YMCA of USA Archives, St. Paul, MN 55108, p. 1. 15. Sakuzō Yoshino’s article appeared in the Japanese YMCA journal Kaitakusha 14.8 (September 1919), called “Dual Government and the Mistaken Idea of National Defense,” attacking Japan’s colonial policies, especially in Korea where a massive repression of dissent had just recently taken place. Between 1918 and 1920 the concept of internationalism was discussed in six different issues of Kaitakusha. All the Japanese-language articles in the February 1919 issue were devoted to President Woodrow Wilson’s life and ideas; Kaitakusha 14.2;

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Sakuzō Yoshino, “Our Changing Life and Thought,” in Japan Speaks for Herself, ed. Milton Stauffer (New York: Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1927), 28; Tetsuo Najita, “Some Reflections on Idealism in the Political Thought of Yoshino Sakuzō,” in Japan in Crisis: Essays in Taisho Democracy, ed. Bernard Silberman and Harry Harootunian (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 33. 16. Danjo Ebina, “Urging the Awakening of the Nation to the Spread of the Attitudes Surrounding the League of Nations,” Kaitakusha (March 1920), p. 15. 17. Jackson Fleming, “Japan and the World Organization,” Asia 18.8 (August 1918): 634–637. 18. Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress, chap. 2. Setsuo Uenoda, “When East Meets West I: Japan’s Right to Empire,” Asia 19.12 (December 1919): 1214–1217. 19. Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 33–34, argues that Japan moved from East Asian civilization to a Western frame of reference in the period before World War II. Joseph R. Levenson also articulated this problem of the flow of progress and modernity from the West for Chinese intellectuals in Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 117–125. Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1986), 2. Chatterjee indicates that this problem confronted by both Japanese and Chinese might have an even wider resonance in Asia. Chatterjee locates the problem within the context of colonialism and Asian reactions to it. 20. Setsuo Uenoda, “When East Meets West I: Japan’s Right to Empire,” Asia 19.12 (December 1919). Scholarship on Japan divides badly on the issue of Japanese justifications for empire. For an overview, see Harry Wray and Hilary Conroy, Japan Examined: Perspectives on Modern Japanese History (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983). Some scholars, led by Chalmers Johnson and John Dower, argue that Japan as a late developer had no choice but to protect itself against Western imperialism. My own thought also embraces this approach. The other side of this debate has been characterized by a great deal of stereotyping and carping at Japan. Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the New World Order (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996) is one example. 21. Probably, Sawayanagi was also reacting to the immigration restriction law, which had recently been implemented in the United States and had outraged many Japanese; Dr. M. Sawayanagi, “A Japanese View of the Pacific Relations,” in Institute of Pacific Relations Proceedings, Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14 (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 76. For more evidence of this view, see M. Anesaki, “The Present Crisis of Culture in Japan,” Asia 36.9 (September 1936): 579–582. 22. Kevin Doak, Dreams of Difference: The Japan Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress, chap. 3. 23. J. Merle Davis, “Interview with John V. MacMurray Asst. Secretary of State,” IPR Collection, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i, box A-1, folder one, January 22, 1925, p. 1. Possibly the immigration issue was not such a dramatic moment as simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is a story not so much of the



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rise of tensions as of the continuing problems that confronted the U.S.–Japan relationship at many levels throughout the period after 1905. For instance, the immigration restriction was a front-burner issue from the time of the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907 that limited Japanese immigration informally. 24. Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1955), 72–73. Though Kohn’s analyses covered the entire globe, his greatest expertise was in the Middle East, where he traveled several times in the 1920s and 1930s. He identified a pattern of authoritarian nationalism in Oriental nations that contrasted with the democracy and liberalism of Western nations. His work, wide-ranging and erudite, unfortunately must be seen in part as an orientalist perspective. 25. Arthur Jorgensen, “Public Opinion and the Washington Conference,” The Pioneer 17.1 (January 1922): 1–2. 26. Galen Fisher, “Revisiting Japan,” Amerasia 1.5 (July 1937): 219–224. 27. Americus (pseud.), “The Case of China and Japan,” Asia 19.9 (September 1919): 836–841. 28. Elsie Weil, “At the Natal Hour of the Japanese Emperor’s Daughter,” Asia 27.3 (March 1927): 250. 29. Charles Howland, “Washington’s Stand on the Far East Crisis,” Asia 32.4 (April 1932): 230–236, 263; Arthur Christy, “The Religion of Japanese Militarism,” Asia 34.7 (July 1934): 422–425. 30. Rodney Gilbert, “Japan Goes into Reverse against Russia,” Asia 32.5 (May 1932): 299–303. 31. In this analysis, the writer succumbed to a long-established tradition in the West, that of Orientalism, a stereotyping that gave rhetorical and ideological power to westerners who used the framework. See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978). 32. Putnam Weale, “If Japan Refuses?” Asia 19.5 (May 1919): 453–459. 33. Planning Committee, “Conference on Problems of the Pacific Peoples, to be Held in Hawai‘i July 1 to 15, 1925,” IPR Collection, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Sinclair Library, Box A-1, folder 1, New York: Association Press, September 1924, pp. 1–3. 34. Institute of Pacific Relations Proceedings, “Membership,” Honolulu Session, June 30–July 14 (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 35–40. 35. Atherton, “The Purpose of the Institute of Pacific Relations,” 56. 36. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). See the much earlier work of Franz Boas for the beginnings of the concept of cultural relativism in the field of anthropology; Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life, chaps. 2, 7. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida have both deconstructed the nature of knowledge. Michel Foucault, “The Order of Discourse,” in Untying the Text, ed. R. Young (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972); Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. and annot. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). This is not an endorsement of the deconstructionist approach, but rather an acknowledgment of the erosion of objectivist modes of thought such as rationalism and empiricism.

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37. The main positive legacy of the IPR was not promoting peace but pursuing the first comprehensive studies of Asia and conceptualizing Asian studies in general. 38. Minutes-Meeting of Research Committee, IPR Collection, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Sinclair Library, A-4, Folder 2, May 7, 1927, p. 1. 39. Ibid., 2. Ryusada Tsunoda et al., comps., “Hashimoto’s Address to Young Men,” in Sources of Japan Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 2:289–291. Kingoro was a prominent Japanese officer and politician and part of the militarist right wing that believed it to be Japan’s destiny to stand astride Asia. The rationale of military expansion had, according to Kingoro, a perfect logic. Japan was overcrowded, and the options of immigration and economic expansion through trade had been destroyed by the Americans—the first through the immigration restriction law of 1924, the second through the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. Door number three, as Kingoro put it, expansion by force, was the only one left to Japan, and so the Japanese strode through it. 40. John B. Condliffe, “Chapter Two: Food and Population in the Pacific,” in Problems of the Pacific: Proceedings, Third Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), 56–58. The writer cited the figures in terms of yen. Of agricultural products valued at 4.5 billion yen produced in Japan, 3 billion of that total went into industrial production. Because Japan was so strapped for basic resources like petroleum, agricultural production that normally would have become foodstuffs became raw materials for industry. Consequently, Japan had a serious food and population problem. Of course, this does not justify Japan’s actions on the continent of Asia. 41. John B. Condliffe, “Speech, Hawaii Council at the Pacific Club,” IPR Collection, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Sinclair Library, March 1928, pp. 1–2. John B. Condliffe, Report on Research Activities, 1927–1929, Kyoto Conference, October 23–28, 1929, p. 2. 42. J. Merle Davis, General List of Specific Suggestions on Conference Agenda, Compiled on board the SS President Taft, Appendix H, 1928, Pacific Council, IPR Collection, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Sinclair Library, Box A-1 folder 8, p. 1. 43.Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, “Roosevelt on Japan,” Asia 32.9 (November 1932): 538–541. 44. J. Merle Davis, General List of Specific Suggestions on Conference Agenda, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-2 folder 5, p. 2. 45. Ibid., 1. 46. Yasaka Takaki to E. C. Carter, Letter Concerning His Views on Goals Role of and Direction of the IPR, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-3 folder 11, August 20, 1935; Yusuke Tsurumi, Minutes of Program Committee, NY, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives Box A-1 folder 20, November 29, 30, 1930, p. 11; “Matsuoka’s Views on the IPR Meeting,” The Japan Times, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-7 folder 14, July 29, 1931. 47. William L. Holland to E. C. Carter, Letter Concerning Scientific Research in the IPR, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-3 folder 5, August 14, 1934. 48. William L. Holland, Draft memorandum on the Future Scope and Administra-



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tion of the International Research Program, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-3 folder 10, Feb. 12, 1935. 49. Michio Yamaoka, “The Role and Activities of the Japanese-American Relations Committee in the Formation of the Japan Pacific Council,” trans. George M. Oshiro, in Rediscovering the IPR: Proceedings of the First International Research Conference on the Institute of Pacific Relations, ed. Paul Hooper, published by Department of American Studies, Center for Arts and Humanities Occasional Paper No. 2, 1993, p. 47; Nobuo Katagiri, “A Reappraisal of the Japan IPR: With a Focus on the Period from the Establishment in 1925 to Withdrawal in 1936,” also in Rediscovering the IPR, 55. 50. International Secretariat Inquiry, Statement of Project, June 28, 1938, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, Box A-4, folder 3. 51. International Secretariat Inquiry: Its Origins and Progress, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-4 folder 3, Sept. 30, 1938, p. 1. 52. Ibid., 7, 10. 53. Ibid., 9. 54. Tadao Yamakawa, Letter, Concerning the Objections of the Japanese Council to the International Secretariat Inquiry, 1938, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-4 folder 3, Appendix K, July 19, 1938, pp. 1–2. 55. Ibid., 1–2 56. Ibid., 2. E. C. Carter, Letter, Concerning Personnel Departures from IPR, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-4 folder 4, Oct. 21, 1941. 57. Paul Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland (Tokyo: Ryukei Shyosha, 1995), 148. It should be noted that the Inquiry Project produced a large number of published works, some of which became well-known, such as E. Herbert Norman’s survey of Japanese history, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940). 58. E. C. Carter, Letter, Concerning Personnel Departures from IPR, IPR Collection, Sinclair Library, University of Hawai‘i Archives, A-4 folder 4, Oct. 21, 1941; Anonymous, Report, IPR Long-Term Research, IPR Collection, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, c. December 1941, p. 1. 59. While the research approach had its own set of concerns, identified above, the IPR did allow for some open constructive dialogue between its Pacific members, especially between Japan and China, Japan and Korea, and East Asians and Americans. This was evident at several of the first conferences. A short but animated discussion between a Mr. Jaisohn, a Korean-American businessman, and M. Zumoto ensued about Japanese rule in Korea; Hooper, Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations, 136. However, it is difficult to tell how effective these discussions were. Even W. L. Holland admitted in his memoirs that the fact that the Pacific War, and after it the Korean conflict and the Vietnam War, all took place seems to suggest the obvious; the IPR in a very real sense had failed in its mission to create better relations in the Pacific. Roundtable Discussion, Institute of Pacific Relations, Proceedings, Honolulu Session (published by the Institute, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 1925), 157–158.

C hap t e r 3

The Japanese Institute of Pacific Relations and the Kellogg-Briand Pact The Activities and Limitations of Private Diplomacy Michiko Ito

Seeking a New World Order in the Post–Great War Era The day has passed when high policy can be carried on by diplomats who know little about the opinion or condition of the people with whose political fate they deal.1

As wars destroy the existing orders and postwar eras begin with the search for new orders to stabilize the world, so the Great War gave birth to new world and regional peace mechanisms. The League of Nations Covenant declared that the League would regard any war or threat of war as a matter for the whole League and would take adequate actions to safeguard the peace of the world. The Covenant also stipulated that disputes that could lead to a rupture should be submitted to arbitration or to inquiry by the League. In the Pacific, the United States—which abstained from participating in the League and European affairs—took the initiative of sponsoring the 1921–1922 Washington Conference that resulted in the establishment of the “Washington system” that aimed at maintaining the status quo in the region. In Europe, although the Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes of 1924, known as the Geneva Protocol, was aborted, the idea of submitting disputes to arbitration, conciliation, or judicial settlement was included in the Pact of Locarno of 1925, which guaranteed the maintenance of territorial status quo and collective security among its signatories. The post–Great War world order was founded upon the structure and psychology formed during the imperialist period and therefore, in retrospect, was doomed to fail, but the world could, though temporarily and partially, rejoice over the idea of international cooperation and prosperity. In the process of seeking a collective security system, new developments began to affect the arena of diplomacy. In contrast to previous times, the forging of inter-



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national cooperation was no longer the exclusive preserve of diplomats. During and after the Great War, many influential individuals, intellectuals, and political activists publicly discussed the maintenance of harmonious international relations. This trend was particularly strong in the United States, where concerned citizens, and in particular scholars, formed several private groups and attempted to influence diplomacy, either directly by addressing proposals to policy makers or indirectly by educating the public through lectures and publications, thereby swaying public opinion. The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War, signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, is of significance in the history of civilian participation in diplomacy. Its practical value proved limited, since it could neither settle coming international disputes by peaceful means nor prevent the Second World War. However, it is important to note that many contemporary private groups, political activists, and university scholars—in particular in the United States—enthusiastically supported and campaigned for its conclusion. The negotiation process for the conclusion of the Pact of Locarno followed a democratic process to the extent that public enthusiasm for peace influenced government-level policy making, as Robert Ferrell and Stephen Kneeshaw’s extensive studies on the pact illustrate—though Ferrell called the American public understanding of international affairs “appallingly naive” and Kneeshaw believed that the enthusiasm grew from a desire for “peace without commitment and security without entanglement.”2 This essay will discuss the Japanese perspectives on and reactions to the security system, specifically related to the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Japan was one of the first fifteen nations that signed the pact, known as the Anti-War Treaty (fusen jōyaku). There are several scholarly studies that examine the Japanese government’s signing of the pact. For example, Ōhata Tokushirō’s pioneering study proves that the signing of the pact became an imperative goal of Tanaka Giichi, both prime minister and foreign minister (April 1927–July 1929), who saw it as crucial to the success of his “positive” China policy.3 Also, Kobayashi Keiji discusses the dilemma of the Japanese diplomacy illuminated by the pact.4 Building upon these earlier studies, this essay will examine discussions of the pact and other related security treaties at both the governmental level and in public discourse. As for the latter, I will specifically focus on the Japanese members of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), an international private organization that originated in Hawai‘i. Through the IPR, the Japanese IPR (JIPR) members learned of the activities of the American IPR members even when the intergovernmental negotiation for the renunciation of war treaty was still in an embryonic stage; and, in response, the Japanese group attempted to serve the government by forming a study group and developing public support in Japan for the signing of the antiwar treaty. Therefore, this essay will discuss the origin of the IPR in terms of U.S.–Japanese relations,

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then examine its second international conference held in Honolulu in July 1927. Through an analysis of the security draft proposed at this conference and the JIPR members’ subsequent discussions, I shall examine their concerns about and expectations of an international security system. In terms of signing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, two major issues were discussed at the governmental level: reservation on Manchuria and the interpretation of the right of “self-defense.” Thus, while reviewing the Tanaka cabinet’s attitude toward the pact, this essay will also discuss how the JIPR’s international law experts reacted to the Japanese government’s decision, illustrating the mounting sense of tension between Japan’s traditional diplomacy and the evolving international law and security system. Establishment of the IPR in the Context of U.S.–Japan Relations The origin and principles of the IPR were unique and peculiar when compared to those of contemporaneous private organizations. While major private organizations on the East Coast, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, and the Williamstown Institute of Politics—all established around 1920—were concerned with European affairs, the IPR focused on issues and problems in the Asia-Pacific area. Its birthplace, Hawai‘i, then a territory of the United States, contributed significantly to the IPR’s uniqueness. Its origins were neither sudden nor accidental. Many of the American businessmen and missionaries who dominated the Hawaiian monarchy in the nineteenth century and territorial affairs in the early years of the twentieth century envisioned Hawaiian society as a model for a utopian multicultural, multiracial society and Hawai‘i as a leader in the Pacific community. Far from the main arenas of American politics and business on the East Coast, these figures’ internationalist vision was largely an optimistic dream, but it was compelling enough to lead them to sponsor a wide variety of internationally oriented activities.5 One of the earlier examples of this was the formation of the Pan-Pacific Union of 1917. The union hosted international conferences with delegates from throughout the Pacific region and sponsored a variety of related activities. In cooperation with the union’s leading members, in 1924 the YMCA of Hawai‘i utilized its Asia-Pacific network to organize an international conference of private citizens from Australia, Canada, China, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States to cultivate mutual understanding and friendship through frank discussion. The success of this gathering led to the establishment of the IPR as a permanent organization in the same year. Although the organization’s central headquarters were moved to New York in the 1930s and the subsequent contributions of the local Hawaiian internationalists were limited, it would never have come into being without the tradition of internationalism already developed in Hawai‘i.6 In short, Hawai‘i was a crossroads for the internationalist movement in



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the Asia-Pacific region. The IPR was dissolved amid McCarthy- era charges in 1961, but the Institute left substantial legacies. First, it developed into a research-oriented scholarly institute that made significant contributions to international understanding and the foundation of Asian studies in North America. Also, the IPR became a forerunner of international nongovernmental organizations and functioned as a think tank during the Second World War.7 From the viewpoint of U.S.–Japan relations, the creation of the IPR was particularly important. Owing to America’s Immigration Act of 1924 that effectively banned future Japanese immigrants, Japanese public opinion had become radically anti-American. One of the principal reasons for holding the international conference in Hawai‘i was to soften the tension between the two nations and to seek better solutions. Frank C. Atherton, the director of the Pan-Pacific Union and an influential businessman in Hawai‘i, was a leading organizer of the conference. Atherton sent a copy of a tentative plan for the conference to Hanihara Masanao, Japanese Ambassador to the United States, for his review. Considering the fact that Atherton called Hanihara’s attention to the subject “To Consider the Human Contacts, Issues and Future Cooperation of the Pacific Peoples,” Atherton definitely sought a chance to solve the immigration-related problems through unofficial channels.8 It is noteworthy that Atherton knew Viscount Shibusawa Ei’ichi, a major entrepreneur and leading figure in business and industry of Meiji and Taishō Japan who had strong ties with the Japanese government. Aware of the importance of promoting the position of Japan in the international community, Shibusawa also pioneered “civil diplomacy” (minkan gaikō) and had organized several private groups aimed at expanding friendship with foreign nations.9 In particular, Shibusawa was greatly concerned with the rising tensions between Japan and the United States after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, and when he learned of the antiJapanese movement on the West Coast of America, he organized the JapaneseAmerican Relations Committee (JARC) in 1916 to ease tensions between the two nations. Atherton was a member of the JARC’s Hawai‘i chapter, and Shibusawa was the union’s honorary vice president. Therefore, it was natural that Atherton requested Shibusawa’s support. In his letter to Shibusawa dated July 17, 1924, while expressing his deep regret that Congress had passed the anti-Japanese immigration bill, Atherton described his plan to hold an international conference in which “some outstanding leaders of thought and influence from the countries around the Pacific” would “discuss very frankly . . . such matters as the Immigration Bill and others relating to the economic and social relations of the various Pacific peoples” to “see if we can not work out the right solution of them and then gradually mold the thought and opinion of our peoples along the ideal line.”10 To make the international conference successful, Atherton attempted to gather the most influential individuals from each participating country. He repeatedly requested Shibusawa’s

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help in securing “the strongest possible delegation from Japan.”11 Shibusawa assisted in selecting influential individuals and scholars from the Japanese-American Relations Committee—many of whom were faculty members at Tokyo Imperial University—to send to the first IPR gathering. Naturally, they were concerned with promoting U.S.–Japan friendship, and they found that the IPR provided a rare opportunity to appeal directly to American citizens regarding the immigration problem and other crucial issues. Although the IPR was a nongovernmental organization and stressed the importance of private diplomacy, partly because it had a nation-based structure the IPR members “voluntar[il]y” acted to “represent what they thought their ‘national’ interests [were], or to make other participants understand their ‘national’ policy,” and the JIPR was no exception.12 The JIPR maintained strong ties with the Foreign Ministry through personal relations and received financial and other assistance from it. Stronger ties with the Foreign Ministry developed as the activities of the IPR received more international attention. In retrospect, the JIPR’s participation in actual policy making was marginal at best, but many distinguished intellectuals became actively engaged with the organization.13 The modification of the anti-Japanese immigration law in the United States was the JIPR’s immediate task. Yet the promotion of security and peace in the Pacific became another major concern when the IPR held its second international conference in Honolulu in July 1927. Views of the Security System in the Pacific at the IPR’s Second Honolulu Conference In the first place, the most outstanding thing to me is the inadequacy of our international machinery. . . . We are simply behind the needs of the times.14

The IPR’s Second Honolulu Conference added a new group of participants from Great Britain, which held vital interests in China and elsewhere in Asia. From Japan, eighteen individuals attended, including Takagi Yasaka and Takayanagi Kenzō, both faculty members at Tokyo Imperial University.15 Also, Aoki Setsuichi, the director of the Tokyo Office of the League of Nations, joined as an observer from the League. At this conference, the session entitled “Diplomatic Relations in the Pacific,” which mainly discussed disarmament, security, and the situation in Manchuria, received a high level of interest.16 In summary, the delegates confirmed the instability of the Pacific region. They pointed out that international contact and interdependency among the Pacific nations had developed rapidly, but without creating any adequate machinery to solve disputes. In Europe, the League had exercised its influence, as seen in the



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implementation of the Locarno Pact that had further strengthened European stability. However, in their view, the League’s activities and influence in the Pacific had been limited by the abstention of the United States and the Soviet Union as well as by the lack of an efficient government in China. The Washington system was the only regional machinery, but its limited scope and function were ineffective in solving international disputes, as proved by the failure to settle the anti-Japanese immigration controversy. The Washington system was also the product of “the old prewar diplomacy” to the extent that the Nine Power Treaty signed at the Washington Conference treated China as an object for fair resource sharing among other signatories rather than as a treaty partner. In fact, the Chinese delegates criticized the Washington Conference because China had been forced to accept agreements made by other powers.17 Concerning China, George H. Blakeslee of Clark University illuminated Manchuria’s volatile situation by discussing the conflicting interests of China, Russia, and Japan in terms of the control of railway lines. This ongoing Manchuria dispute was “a clear and urgent case of international conflict for the settlement of which the existing international machinery is utterly inadequate.”18 Thus, the conference stood in agreement over the urgent need to strengthen diplomatic mechanisms in the Pacific. In this context, James T. Shotwell, a professor of history at Columbia University and director of the Divisions of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, presented a “Draft Treaty of Permanent Peace” drawn up with his colleague at Columbia, Joseph Chamberlain. Shotwell, an historian of Mediterranean Europe, was famous as one of the leading international activists in the United States who not only had served for the Inquiry, the “brain trust” for President Wilson for the peace settlement of the Great War, but also had helped outline the aborted Geneva Protocol of 1924.19 The proposal Shotwell expressed at the Second Honolulu Conference was prepared in response to French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand’s public announcement of April 1927, in which Briand declared that France was ready to conclude a treaty with the United States to renounce war. This public announcement was actually suggested by Shotwell, who believed that the United States needed to commit itself to a universal collective security system that would guard against aggressive powers as a means of establishing a sturdy and durable world peace. Briand took advantage of Shotwell’s proposal, not to create a security system such as the one Shotwell had envisioned, but to form a Franco-U.S. alliance that would strengthen France’s security in Europe.20 Briand’s proposal, eagerly supported by activists in the United States and France, eventually resulted in the conclusion of the KelloggBriand Pact. Although Shotwell’s draft was prepared as a bilateral treaty, he intended to expand it to be a multilateral one and, at the Second Honolulu Conference, nomi-

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nated Japan as a treaty partner. “I confess that I had in my mind,” Shotwell stated, “not so much a treaty relating to France as one to which the United States and Japan might subscribe for guaranteeing the permanent peace of that great danger zone, the Pacific.”21 Interestingly, Shotwell, who was rather Europe-oriented in terms of his history training as well as his political activities, recognized U.S.–Japan relations as the key factor in establishing security in the Pacific region. Considering the fact that the U.S.–Japan Arbitration Treaty of 1908 would expire in August 1928, there was “every need of securing Japanese support for the treaty which was to renounce war as the instrument of national policy.”22 Shotwell’s draft included issues that would be repeatedly discussed during intra- and intergovernmental negotiations as well as among the concerned JIPR members, and thus the proposal deserves detailed analysis. His draft consisted of fifteen articles, roughly divided into two main categories: the “renunciation of war” provisions and “arbitration and conciliation” provisions, which were drawn from the Locarno Pact and from American bilateral treaties, such as the 1908 Root Arbitration Treaty and the 1914 Bryan Conciliation Treaty.23 The provision for the “renunciation of war” required that the United States and the other signatory party would agree to refrain from going to war against each other except in the case of “the exercise of the right of legitimate defense” and, only in the case of American actions, “in pursuance of its traditional policy with reference to the American continents.” The provision for “arbitration and conciliation” required the signatory powers to submit disputes arising between them to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, to the Permanent Court of International Justice for arbitration, or to the International Conciliation Commission, depending on the nature of the dispute. During the procedure of conciliation or arbitration or judicial settlement, the signatories also agreed not to resort to war. It is important to note that Shotwell believed that a call for the renunciation of war would not be acceptable without adding the right to self-defense; thus he attempted to define legitimate self-defense. War had been a free prerogative of nations before the Great War and, in those days, self-defense was merely a preamble of casus belli and thus had little significance. However, in the post–Great War era, because of the effort to restrict “aggressive war,” this distinction between “aggressive wars” and “nonaggressive wars” became crucial. Because of the lack of conventional case or customary interpretation of self-defense, its definition was (and is) ambiguous.24 In his proposal, Shotwell restricted the misuse of self-defense, adding the caveat “provided that the attacked party shall at once offer to submit the dispute to peaceful settlement or to comply with an arbitration or judicial decision.” In other words, an aggressor would be the “nation which goes to war refusing to meet the request for peaceful settlement or arbitration, or the court.”25 Shotwell optimistically seemed to expect that all civilized nations could accept the investi-



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gation and recommendation without resorting to violence. In his view, then, the legitimacy of the exercise of the self-defense right would be determined by such a third party as an arbitrator, a conciliator, or more generally, the international community that observes the conflict. The draft provided insurance that the signatories would not aid any country that violated treaties designed for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, and in case the treaty violator was one of the signatory parties, the other nation would have “full liberty of action.” For Shotwell, who wanted the United States to commit itself to an international security system developed by the League of Nations and the Locarno Pact through this treaty, it was vital that the document provide collective sanction against violators. Although America’s obligation prescribed in the draft was limited, allowing the American government to determine the measure of its action, this provision was designed to bring the treaty into accord with the League of Nations Covenant and the Locarno Pact, both of which obliged the member countries to take collective sanctions against the “aggressor.” Shotwell’s intricate and shrewd treaty draft, however, included apparent compromises. From the stipulation of “renunciation of war,” he exempted American actions in the sphere of the “Monroe Doctrine” lest the treaty affect relations between the United States and Latin America, so that, according to his memorandum, it would “leave us free in Nicaragua!”26 Moreover, in terms of “arbitration and conciliation,” following the formula of the Root arbitration treaties, Shotwell excluded all questions affecting “the vital interests, the independence, of the honor of the two Contracting Parties” from arbitration, although in a “diplomatic sense,” this escape clause meant that signatory powers could refuse to “arbitrate the very questions which led directly to war.”27 He understood that without such qualifications the Senate would not approve the treaty, but such a realistic approach created apparent loopholes. Needless to say, these qualifications were criticized by Takayanagi Kenzō, international law professor at Tokyo Imperial University, at the conference’s general meeting. Although Takayanagi’s opinion was “personal,” the points made in his remarks would be repeatedly discussed, and his views can be said to have represented those of Japan in general. Regarding the provisions for renunciation of war, he pointed out the unfairness of the reservation regarding the Monroe Doctrine. According to him, such a reservation would allow the United States freedom to resort to war. He reasoned that Japan would be dissatisfied over the inclusion of a provision safeguarding America’s position in the Western Hemisphere while equal freedom of action in Asia was not guaranteed for Japan. In the second category of “arbitration and conciliation” provisions, he objected to the exclusion of domestic disputes from the scope of arbitration, indicating that many international disputes developed from domestic problems. Takayanagi’s concern arose from the Ameri-

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can anti-Japanese immigration acts, which had caused diplomatic friction. Thus, he suggested establishing an independent organ to determine whether certain questions should be settled within domestic jurisdictions or submitted for international arbitration.28 Despite such criticisms, the Japanese members, including Takayanagi himself, found Shotwell’s proposal fascinating. Takayanagi stated that Japan would accept the proposal if the draft served as “a stepping-stone” toward American participation in the League of Nations. Thus Takayanagi expected that the pact would lead the United States to participate in the League. Although the State Department had been unresponsive to Briand’s proposal, not to mention Shotwell’s draft treaty, the Japanese representatives brought it back as an informal proposal from the United States government for further review.29 Law Experts’ Views of Shotwell’s Proposal After returning to Japan, the JIPR members took the initiative in introducing James T. Shotwell’s proposal as a model for a U.S.–Japan security treaty, attempting to stir public opinion in Japan. Their enthusiastic activities were perhaps partly due to their respect for Shotwell. Takagi Yasaka and Aoki Setsuichi had known Shotwell personally through his activities in the League of Nations. Takagi viewed him as an American “warrior for humanity” who, as if to atone for America’s failure to join the League, had contributed much toward international security and peace. He vividly expressed his admiration for Shotwell, describing him as having an energetic, bright face and a rich voice, though such a description overstressed Shotwell’s possible role, neglecting the fact that Shotwell, a private citizen, held no real influence in diplomatic circles.30 Nonetheless, the Foreign Ministry of Japan initially took Shotwell’s proposal seriously. The Japanese ambassadors to France and to the United States had reported that Shotwell’s proposal received strong attention in both nations, and by the end of July, the ministry obtained his treaty draft.31 At the same time, Matsudaira Tsuneo, Ambassador to the United States, reported that Secretary of State Frank C. Kellogg had suggested strengthening the existing U.S.–Japan Arbitration Treaty, commenting that the United States should consider it more appropriate to conclude a security treaty with Japan and Great Britain than with France. Matsudaira stated that Japan did not enter into a Bryan Conciliation Treaty because of the immigration dispute at that time; thus, though the Bryan Treaty had no practical value, concluding a stronger security treaty between Japan and the United States would give a sense of assurance that would help to solve the immigration problem in the future.32 Hence, examining the Shotwell proposal seemed appropriate to prepare for future negotiation between the two governments. When the League of



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Nations Association, a semiofficial organization working in conjunction with the League of Nations, hosted a study group with JIPR members, two officers from the Foreign Ministry joined. The study group held meetings between November and December 1928 with a variety of experts on international relations, including Takayanagi Kenzō, Aoki Setsuichi, Yamakawa Tadao, a member of the House of the Peers who had served the previous cabinet as the Director of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, and Shinobu Junpei of the faculty of international law at Waseda University, who joined JIPR’s executive board.33 While Shotwell, who wished to develop an “American Locarno,” regarded the provisions for war renunciation and collective security as the essence of the concept, the Japanese group showed more interest in the provisions for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. (The difference was probably owing to the fact that Japan, as a member of the League of Nations, was already obliged to the League’s collective security system.) The two most important concerns were related to the one-sided reservation of the Monroe Doctrine and the limited scope for arbitration and conciliation. Regarding the first issue, they discussed whether the reservation of the Monroe Doctrine should be restricted or whether the agreement should be revised to be fair to Japan—that is, by including a condition regarding its “special interest” in Manchuria. Eventually, they decided to accept the original draft as it was.34 One of the reasons, judging from Takayanagi’s article written a few weeks before this study group meeting, was because Japan had already repeatedly declared its open-door policy in China.35 It is plausible to assume that the Japanese considered demanding the same degree of precedence over Manchuria as the United States claimed in Latin America would raise suspicions among other powers. However, as discussed later, when negotiations over concluding the Kellogg-Briand Pact progressed, Shinobu Junpei argued for making a reservation in terms of Manchuria. However, at this point, rather than making changes, the study group decided to keep the revisions minimal, hoping it would help the United States government to obtain approval from the Senate more easily. Their final recommendation—the most uncompromising one—was that in disputes where the concerned parties disagreed as to whether or not a matter belonged to domestic jurisdiction, it should be submitted to a committee for inquiry. The consensus was to set up a committee to investigate and report if a matter fell within domestic jurisdiction or could be classified as an “international dispute.”36 The study group showed a strong interest in the nature of disputes as did Takayanagi at the Second Honolulu Conference, and by this modification they aimed toward paving the way to raising the immigration issue as an international dispute. From the end of 1927 to early 1928, those who attended the IPR’s Second Honolulu Conference or joined in the study group, such as Takayanagi Kenzō,

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Shinobu Junpei, Aoki Setsuichi, and Takagi Yasaka, introduced the Shotwell proposal through magazines and newspapers. For example, the whole text of the treaty draft was published in the December issue of Kaizō with Takayanagi’s detailed comments.37 As the negotiations between the United States and France concerning the conclusion of a war renunciation treaty progressed, the questions related to a U.S.–Japan security treaty became a heated topic, and experts in international law and diplomacy, including Tachi Sakutarō, Matsubara Kazuo, Kamikawa Hikomatsu, and Suehiro Shigeo, published interpretations on the Franco-U.S. antiwar treaty in popular magazines such as Kaizō, Kokusai chishiki, and Gaikō jihō, as well as in academic journals, including Kokusaihō gaikō zasshi and Hōgaku ronsō, law journals published by Tokyo Imperial University and Kyoto Imperial University, respectively.38 The Tanaka Cabinet’s Attitude toward the Kellogg-Briand Pact The French and United States governments agreed to conclude an antiwar treaty, but they differed over whether the treaty should be bilateral or multilateral. Eventually, on February 6, 1928, the two nations did conclude a bilateral treaty that combined the previously separate arbitration and conciliation treaties. In April, the two nations agreed to invite other powers to sign a multilateral treaty to renounce war, but, because they disagreed with each other in terms of the concept of the treaty, they separately sent their own treaty drafts to the signatories of the Locarno Pact and to Japan. The draft prepared by France preserved the right to self-defense and other qualifications lest it violate the League of Nations Covenant, the Locarno Pact, and many other existing security treaties. The United States, on the other hand, desired to keep the treaty vague to avoid involving the nation in European affairs. Kellogg delivered a speech at the American Society of International Law on April 28 in which he largely accepted France’s viewpoints, including its commitment to collective security as stipulated by the League of Nations Covenant and the Locarno Pact. Moreover, in terms of the right to self-defense, he confirmed that every nation was free to “defend its territory from attack or invasion.” While admitting that the right was inherent and inalienable, he avoided defining the right, pleading the inappropriateness of making a definite interpretation. According to him, “it is far too easy for the unscrupulous to mold events to accord with an agreed definition.” Thus Kellogg’s statement concerning the right to self-defense remained ambiguous. While stating that the nation “alone is competent to decide whether circumstances require recourse to war in self-defense,” he entrusted the matter to the third party, adding “if it has a good case, the world will applaud and not condemn its action.”39 The United States delivered this note on June 23 with the revised treaty draft and requested the other powers to accept the treaty without qualifications or reservations.40



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The invited nations accepted, announcing their own interpretations of the right to self-defense, and the American government regarded them as unilateral, informal declarations, thereby intentionally leaving the potential differences intact. Great Britain’s response showed great finesse. In his announcement, British Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain “remind[ed]” the United States of the “certain regions of the world the welfare and integrity of which constitute a special and vital interest for our peace and safety,” thereby requiring British protection against attack as “a measure of self-defense,” and comparing the “certain region” as the area covered by the Monroe Doctrine. Chamberlain manipulated the United States into accepting this extensive interpretation of self-defense, later called the “British Monroe Doctrine.”41 Furthermore, although he later implied that Egypt was in the “certain regions,” by generally leaving the area undefined, the British government would be able to apply this qualification to any area of British imperial interest.42 The Treaty for Renunciation of War, known as the Pact of Paris or the KelloggBriand Pact, was signed on August 27, 1928, among fifteen nations. The text simply stated the principles that the signatories agreed to renounce war and solve disputes by peaceful means. That is: Article I. The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another. Article II. The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.43

The Japanese government signed the treaty without any reservations but stated that Japan’s understanding of the treaty was “substantially the same as that entertained by the government of the United States.”44 Sugimura Yōtarō, undersecretary in the League secretariat, called for more prudent and circumspect consideration by the Japanese government. He thought it vital to secure the right of “free action” in China equal to the British government’s claim, lest Japan’s future action cause “unnecessary misunderstanding or suspicion” among the powers.45 The Tanaka Cabinet seriously considered making reservations over Manchuria, but eventually discarded the idea for the very reason Sugimura gave. The statement by Horita Masaaki, chief of the European and American Bureau, at the meeting of the Privy Council’s Investigation Committee on June 18, 1929, best illustrates the government’s thoughts. He explained that, as Japan’s interest and position in Manchuria developed in the future, the scope of actions taken by Japan would be different, and making any definite reservations today might prevent Japan from

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taking necessary actions in the future. On the other hand, making broad reservations would arouse suspicions among the foreign powers regarding Japan’s China policy. The government understood that Japan should have the freedom of action to protect its interests in Manchuria, and, in that case, it would be appropriate to explain its action as “self-defense” in accordance with the circumstances. Also, as for the interpretation of the right to “self-defense,” Horita stated that the government agreed with the American interpretation stated in its official note dated June 23, 1928.46 If it understood the implications of Kellogg’s statement, Japan needed to secure the acknowledgment of the “world”—or the other powers, to be more precise— for its action. During the governmental negotiations over the pact between Japan and the United States, while denying Japan’s territorial ambition over Manchuria, Tanaka reminded Charles MacVeagh, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States, that Manchuria, adjacent to Soviet Russia in the north and Korea in the south, was of strategically vital importance to the security of Japan, and in order to protect the open-door policy and promote economic development there, Japan would take necessary measures to protect the region.47 In fact, from 1927 to early 1928, Tanaka dispatched troops to the Shantung Peninsula under the pretense of protecting Japanese residents there, resulting in a military clash in Tsinan in May 1928. Also, Tanaka’s “positive” China policy sought autonomy for Manchuria, first under Marshall Chang Tso-lin, then Young Marshall Chang Hsüeh-liang, with whom Japan would be able to protect its existing treaty rights and vested interests. However, his attitude toward the Kellogg-Briand Pact shows that he also attempted to support the Washington system and to coordinate its China policy with the other powers to deal with both the rapidly changing political situation in China and the international diplomatic response.48 On July 7, 1928, after completing the unification of China, the Nationalist government abruptly declared its intention to abrogate all unequal treaties and demand negotiations for concluding new treaties “on the basis of equality and mutual respect for territorial sovereignty.”49 The United States signed a new tariff treaty on July 25, thereby virtually recognizing the Nationalist government. While Sino-American relations took a turn for the better, Japan, worried that the Nationalist government’s influence over Manchuria would jeopardize Japan’s vested interests, failed to initiate a prompt rapprochement.50 The signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact would provide Japan with an opportunity to explain Japan’s stance on Manchuria and to coordinate policy toward China with the other powers; thus Tanaka instructed Count Uchida Yasuya, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, who would represent Japan at the signing of the pact, to meet the policy makers of the other powers.51 Even after the signing ceremony, Uchida continued his mission, visiting Great Britain and the United States, the two



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nations Japan considered most important. Interestingly, Uchida stopped briefly in Hawai‘i in October 1928 and made an address at a party hosted by the IPR Honolulu Branch. Uchida spent almost half of his talk reiterating Japan’s policy in Manchuria; that is, Japan had respected the open-door policy and had no territorial ambitions in Manchuria, and what Japan desired was that the region be kept under a capable government that could preserve peace and order while fulfilling treaty obligations and protecting foreign residents and their property.52 In retrospect, the preconditions for Tanaka’s plan—to establish an independent pro-Japanese regime in Manchuria and to coordinate China policy among the concerned powers—had already begun to fall apart. The instructions from Tanaka to Uchida seemed to assume that Chang Hsüeh-liang would establish a pro-Japanese regime in Manchuria, but Chang and the Nationalist government had already started compromise negotiations in July. Moreover, the United States had already begun to develop friendly relations with the Nationalist government by signing a new tariff treaty. Understanding the United States’ intention to invite the remaining countries in the world to participate in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Tanaka requested that the United States postpone inviting the Nationalist government, reasoning that the adherence of the Nationalist government to the pact might be problematic for Japan, which had not yet recognized the regime.53 Despite Japan’s request, on August 27, the United States sent an invitation to the Nationalist government, which China accepted on September 13.54 Although the concerned parties basically agreed to exchange their views on China, the meetings also revealed the different positions of each nation. France cordially welcomed Uchida and not only sympathetically accepted his argument but also promised France’s cooperation with Japan.55 However, while reminding Uchida that Japan had not cooperated in the past regarding the tariff issues, Great Britain expressed that, although it would cooperate with Japan on issues they both fully agreed upon, complete cooperation would be impossible.56 In fact, the British government recognized the Nationalist government in December 1928, leaving Japan behind. The United States also supported cooperation among the powers, but unlike Japan, which stressed the fragility and irresponsibility of the Nationalist regime, Kellogg believed that positively supporting the Nationalist government would help to stabilize China.57 Their positions ran parallel to each other. The Japanese government’s aide-mémoire handed to the United States on December 29, 1928, criticized the Nationalist government’s radical diplomatic tactics, which “persist only in their zealous endeavors to attain their desired objects while neglecting the fulfillment of the promises which they have on various occasions given in the past” and requested concerted action lest the Nationalist government entirely disregard its commitments. Assistant Secretary of State Nelson T. Johnson, though only as a personal comment, practically denied the benefits of such action.58

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While experiencing difficulties filling the gap between Japan and the other powers, the Foreign Ministry drafted questions related to the unequal treaties with China, including tariffs, extraterritoriality, and the navigation of inland waters, to discuss with the other concerned powers. However, a political controversy that originated from the phrasing of this pact developed into an unexpectedly harsh attack against the cabinet, preventing it from proceeding with the plan. That is, Article I declared a renunciation of war “in the names of their respective peoples,” and this phraseology provoked strong opposition among the public and the Diet. According to the Imperial Constitution, the right of concluding treaties was the emperor’s prerogative, thus those who opposed ratification argued that signing a treaty “in the names of their respective peoples” would violate that prerogative. The Privy Council, a senior consultative body to the emperor and the cabinet, also opposed ratification. Facing such opposition and criticism, the Tanaka Cabinet even admitted the incompatibility between the phrase and the Meiji constitution, but the cabinet was determined to ratify the pact. If Japan failed to do so, it would not only lose trust among the great powers but also deepen their suspicions of Japan and lose the consensus for cooperation in China policy.59 Eventually, in late June 1929, the Japanese government ratified the pact, but with the caveat that “the phraseology ‘in the names of their respective peoples’ . . . is understood to be inapplicable in so far as Japan is concerned.”60 The dissolution of the Tanaka Cabinet at the end of June 1929, a week after the pact’s ratification, stemmed directly from Tanaka’s mishandling of the assassination of Chang Tso-lin.61 However, contemporary newspaper accounts attributed the collapse to Tanaka’s support for the pact. This controversy and the right-wing movement eventually awakened interest in the issue of the emperor’s prerogative and paved the way for the attack against the Hamaguchi Cabinet’s signing of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the condemnation of the “Emperor-as-an-Organof-the-State Theory” (Tennō kikan setsu) as a part of the “clarification of the kokutai movement” (kokutai meichō undō) in 1935.62 The strong opposition to the Kellogg-Briand Pact concerning the phraseological problem developed after Japan signed the pact, yet some critics had already attacked the idea of concluding an antiwar treaty in early 1928. For example, the foreword to the January 15 issue of Gaikō jihō sarcastically stated that “No banquet is needed for those who eat plenty. Every nation can advocate pacifism if possessed with the best wealth and arms in the world.”63 The foreword criticized America for its refusal to repeal the exclusive anti-immigration acts. Several other writers shared this anti-American feeling, expressing their disdain for American arrogance and selfishness.64 On the other hand, the JIPR acted as the defender of the antiwar treaty, discussing the value of the pact. At the same time, they eagerly discussed concluding a new arbitration treaty, which was, for them, the remaining half of James T. Shotwell’s vision.



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Law Experts Support an Arbitration Treaty From all of this you will see that we have departed from the text of the Draft Treaty of last May. But this was to be expected. The main thing is that the principles which it embodied are still alive and are daily gaining in strength in spite of all the vicissitudes of politics. I feel sure that in the interval between now and your ratification of the Japanese treaty we can do a great deal to make that treaty vastly more effective than the old arbitration treaty was.65

James T. Shotwell’s name is associated with the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and he has been regarded as its behind-the-scenes architect. In May 1929, the National Institute of Social Science awarded Shotwell a gold medal for his devotion to world peace.66 However, his conspicuous activities in winning public opinion and his direct influence on policy makers were different matters. His draft was never discussed in the diplomatic exchange between the United States and France, and though there were similarities between the pact and Shotwell’s draft in terms of the structure and some phrases, they were merely a matter of appearance, as the pact lacked the detailed stipulations provided in Shotwell’s proposal.67 Although he had advocated the pact as the first step toward international peace, Shotwell lamented that the pact itself ended up being a “pious declaration of good intention.”68 Shotwell’s colleagues in Japan also found that the Kellogg-Briand Pact lacked practical value. Nonetheless, those JIPR members who introduced his draft in Japan applauded the pact, believing that the United States’ strategy was to achieve a multilateral antiwar treaty and separately enter into bilateral arbitration treaties with selected nations so that the principles of the pact would be realized. Therefore, while supporting the pact and defending its value, they called for the conclusion of a new U.S.–Japan arbitration treaty. Among the defenders of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Shinobu Junpei was one of the strongest advocates for an arbitration-conciliation treaty with the United States. Shinobu embraced the pact as a universal principle that would drive nations to create effective security mechanisms. According to him, the value of the pact lay in its war-prevention provision, reasoning that the oath to renounce war would be protected if all international disputes were settled peacefully. The pact’s warprevention provision would also serve to close the loopholes in the League of Nations’ Covenant. That is, Article XV prescribed that the League would reserve its intervention for peaceful settlement when the members of the League Council failed to reach an unanimous agreement on the report by the council, or the council agreed to one of the disputing nation’s claims that the matter belonged to its domestic jurisdiction. If the signatories of the pact concluded arbitration and conciliation treaties on the model of the Franco-U.S. arbitration treaty, in accor-

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dance with the principle of war prevention, the disputes that the League failed to solve might be resubmitted for further arbitration or conciliation. That, Shinobu stated, would provide a longer “cooling-off ” period for the disputing nations. Shinobu trusted, perhaps rather naively, that the investigation and recommendations by the detached third party could help to solve international disputes, and that the disputing nations, as responsible sovereign states, would not take recourse to war if they respected the principle.69 Other JIPR members called for the establishment of a U.S.–Japan arbitration treaty. Takayanagi Kenzō discussed the Franco-U.S. arbitration treaty in detail, and while pointing out that domestic matters were exempt from international adjudications, he concluded that the treaty stipulated the submission of all disputes to the Permanent International Commission for investigation and reporting. The disputing party did not have to accept the recommendation of this body, but Takayanagi recognized that this conciliation method had practical value and was another effective technique for handling international disputes. He found this stipulation valuable for Japan and advocated that concluding a new arbitration-conciliation treaty would be important in promoting U.S.–Japanese relations.70 Rōyama Masamichi, a professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University and another leading JIPR member, believed that the Franco-U.S. arbitration treaty represented a major development from the viewpoint of the traditional American isolationist policy. He argued that international arbitration would be the key to establishing an international mechanism between the League of Nations and the United States.71 Other experts on international law also joined in an academic discussion of the methods of settling international disputes.72 The vigorous discussion among international law experts can be attributed to JIPR members’ initial promotional activities, although such interest was limited to the academic circle of law specialists. Nonetheless, Japan and the United States did not conclude a new arbitrationconciliation treaty, nor did they renew the existing one, despite an offer from the American side. The treaty draft submitted by the United States in March 1928 covered both arbitration and conciliation, and though the draft arbitration treaty still contained reservations, the separately prepared provisions for conciliation did not provide any.73 Therefore, for Japan, the offer was very welcome. The foremost reason for this failure seems to have been the constant delays of exchanges between the two governments. Despite the fact that the United States wished to conclude an arbitration-conciliation treaty before the expiration of the current one, Japan delayed its reply, intending to observe the reaction from Great Britain, another party that received a similar offer.74 Japan made an inquiry regarding the text in June 1928, but the American answer was not delivered until August 1929.75 During the interim, controversy surrounding the phraseological problem prevented the Foreign Ministry from proceeding with the tabled proposal. The



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change of administration on both sides might have influenced the delay: in the United States, Henry L. Stimson was appointed secretary of state under President Herbert C. Hoover in March 1929, and in Japan, Hamaguchi Osachi formed a new cabinet in July 1929 after the collapse of the Tanaka Cabinet. However, considering that the United States concluded arbitration and/or conciliation treaties with approximately fifty nations, including European and Latin American nations and China under Kellogg and Stimson, as well as the fact that the Foreign Ministry continued to argue for the necessity of concluding an arbitration-conciliation treaty with the United States until at least April 1931, the absence of such a treaty between the two nations is rather striking.76 It would be naive to believe that the conclusion of an arbitration treaty between the United States and Japan would have altered the course of conflict between them, as the New York Times quoted one diplomat who stated that there were at least twenty-nine arbitration treaties in force in August 1914, and not one of them was invoked to prevent the outbreak of war.77 In retrospect, the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident, which radically swayed American public opinion against Japan, ended the possibility of concluding a treaty for the peaceful settlement of international conflicts between the two nations. Concluding such a treaty is largely a friendly gesture, but the two nations failed to take even such a symbolic step. The Ambiguous Meaning of “Self-Defense” Although the phraseological problem was largely political and used to attack the Tanaka Cabinet, scholars of law, political science, and English discussed the proper interpretation and translation of the phrase. The outspoken JIPR members denounced this controversy, but they recognized the implication of renouncing war “in the names of peoples.” Shinobu Junpei asserted that the “peoples” in the phrase was merely a descriptive word used to add dignity to the text and did not carry any particular meaning.78 Yet he also explained that the phrase was an expression of popular diplomacy, as the Kellogg-Briand Pact had originated in Briand’s proposal to the “people” of the United States.79 Takayanagi Kenzō stated that the problem lay in the dissonance between the different concepts upon which international law and the Imperial Constitution were founded. He stressed the fact that the Imperial Constitution excluded the Diet from involvement in the process of concluding treaties, and though he did not argue for revising the Constitution, he suggested establishing a convention allowing the Diet to be in charge of concluding treaties.80 Therefore, both Takayanagi and Shinobu realized that the phraseology symbolized the democratic development of international relations. While attempting to clarify the phrase problem, they commented critically that the political controversy diverted public scrutiny of the Kellogg-Briand Pact from more fundamental prob-

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lems. For them, the “misconduct” of the Tanaka Cabinet was not so much concerned with phraseology as its failure to secure Japan’s interests in Manchuria. For example, Takayanagi asked skeptically if the government had considered how the pact would affect those interests.81 Shinobu, on the other hand, took the government to task by examining their interpretation of the right to self-defense. The Foreign Ministry’s interpretation of the right to self-defense can be discerned in the report prepared in May 1929 by its Asian Affairs Bureau. The report referred to the five conditions for invoking the right to self-defense as argued by Tachi Sakutarō, Professor of International Law at Tokyo Imperial University and an authority in the field: (1) when an immediate danger faced the nation, its institutions, or its citizens; (2) when the danger left no other choice of means; (3) when action by self-defense is limited only to that which is necessity; (4) when the danger did not originate in the delinquency of the attacked nation; and (5) when the danger originated in the delinquency of the other party, or at least the other party was irresponsible in not preventing a danger.82 The report examined the legitimacy of Japan’s sending troops to the Shantung Peninsula in previous years and, by citing Tachi’s first condition mentioned above, justified Japan’s action. In addition, as the study directly legitimated Japan’s action, the report used arguments of Edwin M. Borchard’s Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad, published in 1915. Borchard legitimated sending troops to protect citizens or their property in foreign countries “where the local government has failed, through inability or unwillingness, to afford adequate protection to the persons or property of the foreigners in question” as an act of “non-belligerent interposition.”83 The report, however, admitted it would not be possible to invoke self-defense to protect Japan’s interests in Manchuria based on this theory, reasoning that Japan’s interests were broader than its persons or their property. In particular, the Tanaka Cabinet regarded the security of Manchuria as a prerequisite to and part of Japan’s interest in the region. Unable to obtain a legal basis for the use of self-defense, the report depended on the other powers’ precedents. For example, the United States and Great Britain could make informal reservations to the Kellogg-Briand Pact owing to their superior power, so based on its special position in Manchuria, Japan could claim its action in this region as self-defense, following their cases. In other words, in order to legitimate its future actions in Manchuria, Japan would have to depend on two external conditions: the Chinese government’s incapability to govern and sympathy from the other powers. Without these conditions, Japan would lose the ability to “legitimately” invoke self-defense in Manchuria. Shinobu criticized the government’s extended definition of the right to selfdefense. He considered it indispensable for the accomplishment of true world peace to interpret the right to self-defense in the narrowest way while restricting abusive exercise of the right. According to him, all wars could be fought under the



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pretense of self-defense so long as such extensive interpretation was permitted, and such abuse would threaten universal peace. Thus for him, it was contradictory that the Japanese government, which had signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, embraced an extensive definition of the right to self-defense. Shinobu argued that the scope of the right to self-defense was restricted to the nation’s own territory and quasi-territory, such as possessions, colonies, leased territories, and railway zones so long as a nation held the right to station troops within the zone. Therefore he argued that invoking the right to self-defense over the territory of another sovereign nation was a deviation from its legitimate scope. He further pointed out that the other concerned nations might also exercise their right to self-defense to protect their interests in the region. Moreover, he argued that if Japan used its armed forces in Manchuria by the right to self-defense, China, as a sovereign nation, could also invoke the same right to confront Japan. In that case, China’s claim would be legitimate.84 For this reason, Shinobu found reservations a pragmatic means of protecting Japan’s free action in Manchuria without invoking the right to self-defense. In fact, apart from theory, Shinobu found it necessary to use armed forces to guard Japan’s interests. Previously, concerning sending armed forces to China, he ended up recognizing Japan’s action as appropriate. He believed that the Tsinan Incident demonstrated that China had neither the intention nor the capability to protect foreign citizens in their territory. Hence, “While, in theory, it is true that dispatching troops to a foreign territory violates the sovereignty of the nation, in case of China, it can be said that there are reasons which exceptionally and irregularly legitimate such an action.” And, Shinobu concluded, on the condition that Japan’s stationing of troops was temporary, dispatching forces to China for the security of the Japanese citizens who resided there was acceptable, and to obtain approval from other nations for Japan’s actions should not be difficult.85 It is fair to mention that as a supporter of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Shinobu seemed to face a dilemma in accepting such a pragmatic solution. As Sino-Japanese relations became more aggravated, he reflected upon the two paths Japan could choose. One was to establish consensus among the great powers to deal with Manchuria exceptionally, following the cases of Great Britain and the United States, which claimed reservations over the areas in which they had vital interests. The other was to be a model for the world and make every effort to restrict the misuse of the right to self-defense and avoid the commodious definitions made by the other powers, “following the order of one’s consciousness” and “with the spirit of the Anti-War Treaty.” Shinobu suffered from the conflict between pragmatism and idealism: “If one desires to be loyal to the principles of international law and ethics of international politics, one should definitely choose the latter way, but if one desires to compete in the international arena in accordance with the reality

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of diplomacy, one cannot but help following the former. The majority would consider the latter as an unwise scholar misleading the nation and take the former for granted.”86 Conclusion This is a fine illustration of how a picked group of men sent to one of our conferences can accomplish important results in a comparatively short time by using their brains and their time and determination.87

When the Japanese government decided to accept the Kellogg-Briand Pact without reservations, some of the IPR members praised their colleagues’ activities in Japan. On June 13, 1928, J. Merle Davis, General Secretary of the IPR, wrote to James T. Shotwell, applauding the activities of their Japanese colleagues, who “secured a degree of interest and support of the Japanese public and kept the matter uppermost in the minds of the leaders and in the attention of the Foreign Office.”88 Learning of the discussion of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in the public press and academic journals in Japan from his IPR colleagues, Shotwell was also impressed with their success in “public diplomacy, in the fullest sense of the word.”89 Moreover, the 1928 issue of Survey of International Affairs, edited by Arnold J. Toynbee, Director of Studies in the Royal Institute of International Affairs and one of the British representatives to the IPR’s Second Honolulu Conference, directly linked the Japanese government’s decision to public education efforts by the semiofficial study-group members as awakening public opinion in Japan.90 Although their compliments about the JIPR members’ success were self-congratulatory to some extent, they testify to the IPR members’ belief in the power of “people’s diplomacy.” And, indeed, JIPR members should be credited for their active support of the Kellogg-Briand Pact: they took the initiative in public discussion of Shotwell’s draft, and supported the KelloggBriand Pact throughout its conclusion and ratification. The JIPR members’ discussion also reveals their commitment to the conclusion of an arbitration-conciliation treaty with the United States, believing it would promote U.S.–Japan friendship and indirectly help modify the anti-Japanese immigration issue. They also expected that the Kellogg-Briand Pact would lead the United States to cooperate with the League of Nations, and that the IPR’s coming international conference, which would be held at Kyoto from October to November 1929, would be a platform to discuss the establishment of a mechanism for arbitration and conciliation. To their disappointment, however, at this Kyoto conference, the American representatives proposed creating a regional security system in the Pacific based on the Four Power Pact, thereby rejecting the idea of rapprochement between the League and the United States.



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Japan’s commitment to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, together with the success of “people’s diplomacy,” helped to promote a positive image of Japan. In late 1929, Shotwell published War as an Instrument of National Policy, in which he dedicated one chapter to discussing Japan’s serious commitment to world peace:91 “It was not entirely easy for a nation suffering a sense of grievance unredressed to give instant and cordial acceptance to the enunciation of universal peace when the nation proposing these high ideals seemed unwilling to take any practical steps to lessen existing misunderstandings.”92 Shotwell’s friendly discussion of Japan proves that the JIPR’s activities had contributed to a lessening of the U.S.–Japan tensions caused by the anti-Japanese immigration act. The IPR’s Kyoto conference in 1929 succeeded in impressing the international representatives, including Paul Scharrenberg, a leader of anti-Japanese immigrant opinion in California. According to several reports sent to the Foreign Ministry, Scharrenberg visited factories and interviewed several Japanese labor leaders during his stay in Japan and was impressed with the development of the Japanese labor movement. In a public speech, he expressed a pro-Japanese attitude, stressing the cooperation between American and Japanese laborers in California. After returning to California, he made a speech in which he declared that Japan was one of the great powers and that the United States should distinguish Japan from other Asian nations.93 The reports from the Japanese Embassy and consulates in the United States to the Foreign Ministry from early 1930 to the summer of 1931 noted American pro-Japanese activists’ attempt to modify the anti-Japanese immigration act and indicated that American public opinion was taking a favorable turn to Japan—until the Manchurian Incident nullified the activists’ efforts.94 The friendly gathering born in the middle of the Pacific—a fruit of the Hawai‘i internationalists’ ambition—made a valuable contribution by nurturing the development of a network of intellectuals in Japan and the United States. The resulting private diplomacy successfully promoted friendship between the two nations, although, in the end, it proved fragile and short-lived. The Tanaka Cabinet’s decision to accept the Kellogg-Briand Pact enjoyed at least temporary success. In War as an Instrument of National Policy, Shotwell also applauded Japan’s adherence to the pact without any reservation, despite the fact that Japan’s very existence depended upon Manchuria, the region he regarded as “the greatest menace to international peace.”95 Contrary to Shotwell’s compliment, the Japanese government was determined to use armed force to protect Japan’s interests in Manchuria. Japanese diplomacy at this point was based on a double standard. On the one hand, as a member of the League of Nations’ Council, Japan demonstrated a commitment to international cooperation with other powers; on the other hand, it took steps to secure its superior position in Manchuria. The government’s interpretation of the right to self-defense was contradictory to the

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principle of the renunciation of war, and thus Japan attempted to obtain support for its Manchurian policy from the other powers. In this regard, Japanese policy toward China was still founded upon pre–Great War imperialism, even though British and American policy was moving toward rapprochement with the Nationalist government and shifting slowly toward a more equal basis. In terms of the protection of Japan’s “special interest” in Manchuria, there was little difference between the Japanese government’s determination and the JIPR members’ attitude. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the JIPR members’ statements consistently show their concern over how the Kellogg-Briand Pact would affect Japan’s interests in Manchuria and/or how Japan could be exempted from the pact’s stipulations in regard to Manchuria. However, at least Shinobu clearly understood that it was world opinion that would determine the legitimacy of the claim of self-defense and anticipated that Japan’s loose interpretation of that right was incompatible with the course of international relations. Shinobu hoped that Japan would lead world opinion in restricting the use of self-defense and making efforts to actualize the spirit of war renunciation. In spite of such noble sentiments, in the Manchurian Incident of 1931, the Kwantung Army took control of Manchuria, and Japan claimed its right to self-defense, a claim that was rejected by the League of Nations.

Notes 1. Quincy Wright, “The Institute of Pacific Relations,” August 4, 1927, Institute of Pacific Relations Collection File B2/14, University of Hawai‘i Archives (hereafter cited as IPRC). 2. Robert H. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952), 265; Stephen J. Kneeshaw, In Pursuit of Peace: The American Reaction to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928–1929 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1991), 144. Although the practical value of the pact was low, according to Cynthia Wallace, it represented “a revolutionary change of attitude towards war in the international community” by initiating “further developments which have banned the use of war and of force as a lawful means to carry on international relations.” See Cynthia D. Wallace, “KelloggBriand Pact (1928),” in Encyclopedia of Public International Law, ed. R. Bernhardt (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992), 3:79. Wallace’s point has significant value for those who suggest that the pact provided the ideological foundation for the establishment of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation. For example, see Arai Seiichirō, Heiwa kenpō: kiso to seiritsu (Tokyo: Keibundō, 2001), and Kobayashi Hiroharu, Kokusai chitsujo no keisei to kindai Nihon (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2002), 116–118. Regarding Article 9, however, many works have focused on identifying who originally proposed including the war renunciation clause in the Japanese constitution. Nishi Osamu briefly summarizes the previous works in Nishi Osamu, Nihonkoku kenpō seiritsu katei no kenkyū (Tokyo: Seibundō, 2004), 217–234.



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3. Ōhata Tokushirō, “Fusen jōyaku to Nihon,” Kokusai seiji 8 (February 1964): 72–86. Ōhata discusses the conflict between the Tanaka Cabinet and the Privy Council in terms of the pact’s phraseology in Ōhata Tokushirō, “Fusen jōyaku-chū ‘jinmin no na ni oite’ no mondai,” Waseda hōgaku 44.1/2 (January 1968): 1–32. 4. Kobayashi, Kokusai chitsujo, 116–150. See also Ikō Toshiya, Kindai Nihon to sensō ihōka taisei (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2002). Also, for the reaction of the major powers to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, see Fujita Hisakazu, “Sensō kannen no tenkan: fusen jōyaku no hikari to kage,” in Tenkanki kokusaihō no kōzō to kinō, ed. Kiriyama Takanobu et al. (Tokyo: Kokusai Shoin, 2000), 9–53. 5. Paul H. Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The International Movement in Modern Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980), 6. 6. For the history of the IPR, see William L. Holland’s personal account in Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations, ed. Paul H. Hooper (Tokyo: Ryūkei Shosha, 1995). In relation to the IPR’s demise, see John J. Thomas, The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Studies and American Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974). 7. For the discussions on the IPR as an international nongovernmental organization and as a think tank, see Lawrence T. Woods, “Regional Democracy and the Institute of Pacific Relations,” in Rediscovering the IPR: Proceedings of the First International Research Conference on the Institute of Pacific Relations, ed. with an introduction by Paul L. Hooper (Honolulu: Center for Arts and Humanities, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1993), 80–93; Tomoko Akami, “Between the State and Global Civil Society: Non-official Experts and Their Network in the Asia-Pacific, 1925–1945,” Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 2.1 (January 2002): 65–81. According to Yui Daizaburō, many official and semiofficial diplomats participated in the IPR’s international conferences held during the Second World War and exchanged their views on the democratization of postwar Japan. Yui points out that many IPR members served for the Allied Powers during the occupation of Japan. See Yui Daizaburō, Mikan no senryō kaikaku: Amerika chishikijin to suterareta Nihon minshuka kōsō (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1989). 8. Shibusawa Seien Kinen Zaidan Ryūmonsha, ed., Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryō (Tokyo: Shibusawa Eiichi Denki Kankōkai, 1961), 37:458–461 (hereafter cited as Shibusawa, Shibusawa shiryō). 9. Regarding the activities of private and/or semiofficial groups in contemporary Japan, see Ogata Sadako, “The Role of Liberal Nongovernmental Organizations in Japan,” in Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese–American Relations 1931–1941, ed. Dorothy Borg and Okamoto Shunpei (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 459–486. 10. Shibusawa, Shibusawa shiryō, 37:455–457. 11. Ibid., 457–458, 461–463. 12. Akami, “Between the State and Global Civil Society,” 72. 13. The following books and articles are important sources for the study of the JIPR, although this essay does not directly refer to them: Hara Kakuten, Gendai Ajia kenkyū seiritsushi-ron: Mantetsu Chōsabu, Tōa Mondai Kenkyūjo, IPR no kenkyū (Tokyo: Keisō Shobō, 1984); Nakami Mari, “Taiheiyō Mondai Chōsakai to Nihon no chishikijin,” Shisō, no. 728 (February 1985): 104–127; Yamaoka Michio, “Taiheiyō Mondai Chōsakai” kenkyū (Tokyo: Ryūkei Shosha, 1997); and Katagiri Norbuo, Taiheiyō Mondai Chōsakai no kenkyū:

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senkan-ki Nihon IPR no katsudō o chūshin to shite (Tokyo: Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2003). 14. Ray Lyman Wilbur, “Address,” July 28, 1927, IPRC File B2/3. 15. Personal documents of Takagi Yasaka collected in “Takagi Bunko, Amerika Taiheiyō Chiiki Kenkyū Sentā” (hereafter cited as TB) indicate that his last name was written as “Takaki” in English. However, this article uses “Takagi,” which is more commonly used in English sources. 16. For the summary report of the discussion at the Second Honolulu Conference, see J. B. Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific: Proceedings of the Second Honolulu Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Honolulu, Hawaii, July 15 to 29, 1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1928); Inoue Jun’nosuke, ed., Taiheiyō mondai (Tokyo: Nihon Hyōronsha, 1927); and George H. Blakeslee, “Results of Honolulu Conference on Problems of the Pacific,” Current History 27.1 (October 1927): 69–73. For a study of the Second Honolulu Conference, see Katagiri Nobuo, “Senkan-ki Taiheiyō jidai no anzen hoshō imēji,” Kokusai seiji, no. 102 (February 1993): 82–98. 17. Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 169–170. 18. Ibid., 180. 19. For the activities of Shotwell, see James T. Shotwell, The Autobiography of James T. Shotwell (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1961); and Harold Josephson, James T. Shotwell and the Rise of Internationalism in America (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 1975). 20. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time, 72–73; Josephson, James T. Shotwell, 161–162. 21. “Story #104,” June 27, 1927, IPRC File B2/10. 22. James T. Shotwell, “Japan Drawn In,” 63, James T. Shotwell Collection File AAA, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library (hereafter cited as JTSC). 23. For the text and commentaries of Shotwell’s treaty draft, see Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 503–512. 24. Attempts to define “aggressive wars” continued after the Second World War, and it was not until 1974 that the definition of aggression was adopted by consensus of the United Nations General Assembly. However, the value and significance of the definition remains controversial. See Benjamin B. Ferencz’s discussion, “Aggression,” in Encyclopedia of Public International Law, 1:58–64; and Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defense, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 114–120. 25. Condliffe, Problems of the Pacific, 503, 509. 26. James T. Shotwell, “Memorandum of the Points in the Draft Treaty,” JTSC File AAA. 27. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time, 6. 28. Takayanagi Kenzō, “Remarks of the Proposed Draft Treaty of Permanent Peace,” July 28, 1927, IPRC File B2/3. 29. Takayanagi Kenzō, “Waga kuni gaikō no kichō,” Kaizō 11.6 (June 1929): 5. 30. Takagi Yasaka, “Taiheiyō Kaigi yoroku,” Teikoku Daigaku shinbun, October 10, 1927. Reprint Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1984, 2:426. 31. Gaimushō, ed., Nihon gaikō bunsho Shōwa-ki (Tokyo: Gannandō, 1988), Showa Period 1, pt. 2, vol. 1: 1–16 (hereafter cited as NGBS 1988).



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32. Ibid., 514–515. 33. “Fusen jōyaku mondai” [15], Hotta kiroku, Sensō hōki ni kansuru kaigi oyobi jōyaku kankei ikken, Gaimushō Gaikō Shiryōkan (hereafter cited as SH); Okuyama to Takagi, November 21, 1927, December 14, 1927, TB File 26. 34. “Fusen jōyaku mondai” [17], Hotta kiroku, SH. 35. Takayanagi Kenzō, “Nichi-Bei fusen jōyaku kenkyū,” Kaizō 9.12 (December 1927): 8. 36. “Fusen jōyaku mondai” [18–19], Hotta kiroku, SH. 37. Takayanagi, “Nichi-Bei fusen jōyaku kenkyū,” 2–16. 38. For examples of articles that discuss Shotwell’s proposal, see Matsubara Kazuo, “Shottoweru no heiwa keikaku ni tsuite,” Kokusaihō gaikō zasshi 27.1 (January 1928): 1–23; and Kamikawa Hikomatsu, “Beikoku teian hisen jōyaku to Kokusai Renmei,” Kokusaihō gaikō zasshi 27.2 (February 1928): 80–97. 39. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 113. 40. Ibid., 172. 41. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Records (hereafter cited as FRUS) 1928 (Washington, DC, 1942), 1:68. 42. Ibid., 74. 43. FRUS 1928, 1:155. 44. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 203–206. 45. Sugimura Yōtarō, “Fusen jōyaku ni tsuite,” August 14, 1928, 2–3, included in the letter from Aoki to Usami, September 11, 1928, and “Keroggu jōyaku to Renmei kiyaku,” August 19, 1928, 6, included in the letter from Aoki to Usami, September 14, 1928, vol. 1, SH. 46. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 368–369. 47. Ibid., 152–154. 48. Ōhata, “Fusen jōyaku to Nihon,” 83; Iriye Akira, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East 1921–1931 (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1990), 242–244. 49. FRUS 1928 (Washington, DC, 1943) 2:415–416. 50. Iriye, After Imperialism, 227–237. 51. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 231–234; Ōhata, “Fusen jōyaku to Nihon,” 76–80, 83–84. 52. “Fuzokusho dai 11-gō,” Keika chōsho, SH. 53. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 424–425, 427–428. 54. FRUS 1928, 1:212–214. 55. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 237–241. 56. Kashima Heiwa Kenkyūjo, ed., Kaigun gunshuku kōshō, Fusen jōyaku, vol. 16 of Nihon gaikōshi (Tokyo: Kashima Heiwa Kenkyūjo, 1973), 114–118. 57. FRUS 1928, 2:430. 58. Ibid., 445–449. 59. Ōhata, “Fusen jōyaku to Nihon,” 84. 60. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 397–398. 61. In terms of the process that led to the dissolution of the Tanaka Cabinet, see Harada Kumao, Saionjikō to seikyoku (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1950), 1:3–13; Awaya Kentarō, “Tanaka Naikaku tōkai zengo no seikyokou to tennō, kyūchū,” in Shōwa shoki no tennō to kyūchū: Jijūchō Kawai Yahachi nikki (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1993), 3:245–264.

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62. Ōhata, “Fusen jōyaku-chū ‘jinmin no na ni oite’ no mondai,” 13. 63. “Nichi-Bei fusen jōyaku,” Gaikō jihō, no. 555 (January 15, 1928): no page provided. 64. Generally, articles in Gaikō jihō were more critical of this treaty for the renunciation of war than those in Kokusai chishiki. It is interesting that the foreword of Kokusai chishiki supported the war renunciation treaty almost at the same time as Gaikō jihō criticized it. For critical articles about the treaty, see Inahara Katsuji, “Fusen jōyaku naru mono no shōtai,” Gaikō jihō, no. 556 (February 1, 1928): 1–24; Sakamoto Toshiatsu, “Fusen jōyaku, jitsu wa yūsen jōyaku,” Gaikō jihō, no. 556 (February 1, 1928): 84–90; and Asada Hikoichi, “Amerika fusen gaikō no omote-ura,” Gaikō jihō, no. 562 (May 1, 1928): 72–86. 65. James T. Shotwell to Takayanagi Kenzō, February 6, 1928, JTSC File 116. 66. Josephson, James T. Shotwell, 175. 67. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time, 97. 68. Shotwell, Autobiography, 214. 69. See Shinobu Junpei, “Fusen jōyaku to Kokusai Renmei no kankei,” Gaikō jihō, no. 566 (July 1, 1928): 46–54; “Fusen jōyaku ni taisuru sehyō,” Gaikō jihō, no. 573 (October 15, 1928): 44–50; and “Fusen jōyaku no honshitsu,” Gaikō jihō, no. 578 (January 1, 1929): 38–50. 70. Takayanagi Kenzō, “Beikoku no shin-chūsai seisaku to Nichi-Bei chūsai jōyaku no kaitei,” Gaikō jihō, no. 564 (June 1, 1928): 33–47. 71. Rōyama Masamichi, “Kokusai chūsai saiban no seijiteki igi (1),” Kokusai chishiki 8.3 (March 1928): 5–16; “Beikoku o chūshin to seru kokusai chūsai saiban: kokusai chūsai saiban no seijiteki igi (zoku),” Kokusai chishiki 8.5 (May 1928): 5–19. 72. For example, see Tachi Sakutarō, “Chūsai saiban, shihōteki kaiketsu oyobi Renmei Rijikai no shinsa ni kansuru mondō,” Kokusaihō gaikō zasshi 27.1 (January 1928): 94–101; “Amerika Gasshūkoku tono chūsai saiban jōyaku no teiketsu,” Kokka gakkai zasshi 42.6 (June 1928): 1–23; “Chōtei no nishu ni tsuite,” Kokusaihō gaikō zasshi, 28.10 (December 1929): 1–12; Suehiro Shigeo, “Fusen jōyaku to Kokusai Renmei,” Hōgaku ronsō 20.3 (September 1, 1928): 1–22. 73. NGBS 1988, 1-2-1: 540–550. 74. Ibid., 269–272, 552. 75. Ibid., 554–555, 569–575. 76. “Nichi-Bei chūsai saiban jōyaku oyobi chōtei jōyaku teiketsu hōshin-an riyū yōoshi,” April 1931, Nichi-Bei-kan chūsai saiban jōyaku kankei ikken, Gaimushō Gaikō Shiryōkan. 77. New York Times, January 15, 1928. 78. Shinobu Junpei, “Fusen jōyaku ni taisuru sehyō,” 47. 79. Shinobu Junpei, “Fusen jōyaku kenkyūjō no shomondai,” Kokusai chishiki 9.4 (April 1929): 7–10. 80. Takayanagi Kenzō, “Waga kuni gaikō no kichō,” 3–5. 81. Ibid., 3. 82. Ajia-kyoku Dai1-ka, “Jieiken ni tsuite,” May 1929 [2], Hotta kiroku, SH. 83. Edwin M. Borchard, The Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad or the Law of International Crimes (New York: Banks Law Publishing Co., 1915), 448–449. 84. Shinobu Junpei, “Fusen jōyaku to Man-Mō jieiken,” Gaikō jihō, no. 591 (July 15, 1929): 1–11.



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85. Shinobu Junpei, “Kokugai shuppei no riron to jissai,” Kokusai chishiki 8.8 (August 1928): 33–34. 86. Shinobu Junpei, “Man-Mō tokushu ken’eki to kokka jieiken,” Gaikō jihō, no. 634 (May 1, 1931): 12–13. 87. J. Merle Davis to James T. Shotwell, June 13, 1928, JTSC File 116. 88. Ibid. 89. James T. Shotwell, “Japan Drawn In,” 66. 90. Arnold Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs 1928 (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 22–23. 91. Debuchi Katsuji, Japanese Ambassador to the United States, summarized the chapter in Japanese and reported back to the Foreign Ministry. See “Debuchi Katsuji to Tanaka Giichi,” February 25, 1929, Jōyaku ni taisuru kenkyū kankei, SH. Aoki Setsuichi also translated the whole chapter in Gaikō jihō. See Aoki Setsuichi, “Fusen jōyaku to Nihon no gaikō,” Gaikō jihō, no. 586 (May 1, 1929): 10–20. 92. James T. Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy and Its Renunciation in the Pact of Paris (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1929), 243. 93. Shibata to Adachi et al., November 7, 1929, Taiheiyō Mondai Chōsakai ikken (TMCI), vol. 3; Ida to Shidehara, December 16, 1929, TMCI, vol. 4, Gaimushō Gaikō Shiryōkan. 94. Gaimushō, ed., Nihon gaikō bunsho Shōwa-ki, 1-2-4 (Tokyo: Gaimushō, 1991), 187–188. 95. Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy, 249.

C hap t e r 4

Hawai‘i, the IPR, and the Japanese Immigration Problem A Focus on the First and Second IPR Conferences of 1925 and 1927 Nobuo Katagiri

Internationalists in Hawai‘i took a leading part in the establishment of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) in 1925.1 Their basic belief was that “the Pacific is no longer one of the world’s great barriers; it is a highway of travel and commerce, and the cable and wireless unite us by almost instantaneous communication.”2 However, they also recognized that cross-cultural conflicts like the immigration problem between Japan and the United States and antiforeign nationalism in China had actually deepened regional divisions. Taking these realities into account, they saw the principal purpose of the IPR as the creation of a bridge across the Pacific between the East and West, and they set out to accomplish this through positive region-wide consultation and objective research concerning regional issues. By the time of its dissolution thirty-five years later in 1960, the organization had compiled an unprecedented record of conferencing, research and publication, international organizing and public involvement that engaged leaders from all sectors of all the major Pacific powers. Still, while there is no question that the IPR played a pioneering role in Pacific relations during this period, the question remains as to whether or not it achieved its founding objectives. The answer to this question depends upon one’s understanding of the interwar period. Akira Iriye has suggested that there are two opposing viewpoints on the question.3 The first is negative. From this viewpoint, the fragility of liberalism, democracy, and capitalism during the interwar years made way for Nazism, militarism, and communism. If we assess the contribution of the IPR from this standpoint, we have to consider its labors a failure. On the other hand, it is possible to view the period quite differently. New factors emerged, such as closer relations among nations brought about by the developments in traffic, transportation, and communication media and enlargement of economic interdependence and inter-



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national cooperation among nations. The reduction of armaments and the trend toward renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy as exemplified by the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the contribution to world peace made by civil groups and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) strengthened peace efforts. One could conclude that the interwar years were a time of positive developments in the ongoing search for world peace. In this context, the IPR, as a pioneering INGO, contributed in a major fashion to a cross-cultural understanding between the East and West as well as to world peace. The late John King Fairbank assessed the IPR’s contribution in his memoir, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir, as follows: Remember that between the two world wars travel was by ship, truly international conferences were few, and no think tanks or university centers researched the contemporary scene abroad. The IPR was alone in getting businessmen, scholars, and (after 1941) government officials together biennially or triennially for a fortnight’s discussion of international problems and national interests. . . . For my generation the IPR was a magnificent institution. Its conferences were held in glamorous settings.4

One of the many more specific contributions of the IPR to such an understanding involves its efforts to resolve Japanese–American tensions over the restrictive U.S. immigration laws adopted during the era. In this essay, I discuss how this issue was treated during the IPR’s two initial conferences (1925 and 1927) and, more generally, the matter of immigration conflicts as an East–West cross-cultural problem. The Immigration Issue of the First IPR Conference The first IPR conference was held at Punahou School in Honolulu with the participation of nine national groups (Australia, Canada, China, Hawai‘i, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the U.S. mainland) during the fortnight of July 1–15, 1925. About 150 participants, people primarily from the leadership ranks of the academic, religious, journalistic, and business worlds, met in an atmosphere of friendship and collaboration.5 The Japan group and the U.S. mainland group exercised the greatest degrees of influence during the conference. This was due to the fact that the relative power relationship within the gathering reflected the political, economic, and military status of the countries they represented. Nevertheless, the IPR was clearly a legitimate INGO from the outset. Reflecting this, the most important issue for discussion at the conference involved overpopulation and racial relations, more specifically

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the legal and political aspects of the immigration policies of the Pacific countries.6 Although this concern was pushed from the forefront during the group’s second conference in 1927 when the first of the European groups began to participate (the British represented by the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or RIIA) and attention began to shift toward more immediate political and military problems, immigration-related issues remained of major importance to the IPR well into the next decade. The discussion of immigration problems started on the afternoon of July 3. At the outset, each national group offered an explanation of its country’s policy to the general conference. No group was more concerned about the significance of this issue than the Japanese. The reason for this is that the Japanese people felt that the United States had shockingly betrayed Japan by passing the discriminatory 1924 Exclusion Act, which, among other things, made further Japanese immigration to the United States impossible. Previously, America had clearly supported the modernization of Japan since the Kanagawa Treaty in 1854, had so generously given assistance in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, and was well aware of Japan’s climb toward equality with the Western powers as a result of the Sino-Japan War, the Russo-Japan War, and World War I. People at all levels of Japanese society were humiliated by the U.S. Exclusion Act. A tearful statement by Ei’ichi Shibusawa, a leading figure from the Meiji era who had made numerous contributions toward Japanese-American friendship over the years, to the effect that he could not even sleep at night until the act was abolished is a poignant illustration. Therefore, the principal object of the Japan group at the conference was to explain their immigration problems to the other participants and hope for an understanding of their country’s situation as a result of the 1924 act—a situation that had lapsed into what amounted to an immigration blockade. They also appealed for an understanding of Japanese sentiment about the treatment of earlier Japanese immigrants in the United States. Active discussion followed the statements made by each national group. In the evenings, participants were divided into four round tables and discussed the legal and political aspects of immigration problems. Racial, cultural, religious, and economic factors were considered from a variety of viewpoints in an effort to arrive at reasonable comparative and scientific conclusions. As the Japanese-American dispute over immigration was the most heated part of this discussion—it was discussed four times at four different round tables—further analysis of the dispute is necessary. The first three meetings of the four round-table discussions focused on the existing regulations in each country and sought to find the fundamental principles common to most immigration law.7 The conflict between human rights and na-



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tional law became the main issue in these discussions. Illustrating the extremes of viewpoint on the topic, a member of the China group asserted that the right to movement is a natural right granted by Heaven and that it is wrong for people to possess land they are not cultivating when others need it, while the U.S. group defended legal restrictions on immigration and property rights as aspects of national sovereignty.8 Kenzo Takayanagi, who attended the fourth round table on this subject, clearly stated the position of Japan. He argued that human interests and desires should be carefully considered in applying any restrictions. Although sovereignty allows the restriction of immigration, it should be exercised in a fixed manner that avoids the ill effects of unequal racial treatment. Although he never said so directly, he indicted the United States for engaging in overt discrimination against Japan by passing the 1924 Exclusion Act and jeopardizing the status of earlier Japanese immigrants.9 Takayanagi’s statement, representative of the position of the Japanese group, was impartial, based on common sense, and balanced. It also positioned Japan in the middle of the continuum of opinion between the extremes of the China and U.S. groups, and it is an excellent example of Japan’s sensible contributions to East–West relations during this era. In an effort to provide some clear conclusions to the discussion, a round table on the actual treatment of resident aliens was held after the final one on the legal and political aspects of immigration. In it, participants tried to create a table summarizing the issue (see Table 1).10 It made it clear that only the United States and its Philippines possession legally prohibited Asian naturalization and ownership of land. While Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also discriminated against Asian immigration in practice, the only country where it was specified in the text of the law was the United States. Therefore, it was evident to all that the United States blatantly discriminated against Asians.11 Although there was no essential difference in the fundamental character of the immigration policies of the four Western countries, the Japan group focused its attention on the United States because it legally discriminated against Japan, no less a first-class nation than itself. Hence, Japanese opposition was as much a matter of honor and pride as it was concern for the details of the 1924 act. In addition, the discussion between the Japan group and the U.S. group also made it apparent that two different views existed about sovereignty. Japan, although admitting that sovereignty could not be formally restricted in international relations, argued that there should be some moral reservations with respect to its enforcement. The United States argued against any restrictions on national sovereignty that were based on ambiguous moral rights not yet acknowledged through legislation.12 Much of this debate was brought to a head when a member of the New Zea-

Table 1. Legal Facts Regarding Treatment of Resident Aliens in the Pacific Privileges and Restrictions Citizenship

(Ownership of property, etc.)

Residence and Travel

Australia

Equality: Aliens once admitted are treated like citizens.

Limitations on Asiatics: no invalid or old-age pension if born outside; (to be remedied in W.A.) no gold-mining rights and no lease of crown lands in N.S.W.; some occupations closed to aliens; some restrictions regarding factory ownership.

All eligible (power of discretion on part of officials). Franchise: Commonwealth and in 4 of 6 states; restricted in 2 states. Wives of alien Europeans and Indians have right, not Chinese.

Canada

Equality: Aliens once admitted are treated like citizens.

No discrimination except that only British subjects can hold shares in ships. Restrictions of license to Japanese fishermen; Chinese can’t engage in logging; a few other restrictions.

Birth or naturalization. Except B.C. denies vote to Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, and Indians, even to those born in Canada who are thereby Canadian citizens.

China

Equality: aliens mostly in foreign jurisdictions; equality in other parts of China. No passport is needed for Concessions but is required for the interior of China.

No ownership of land. Missions can lease; foreigners can own in name of Chinese. Perpetual lease permitted.

Naturalization open to all. So far only Koreans have applied in any number; conditions are adverse to Europeans applying. Children born of foreigners are foreigners according to blood of fathers.

Japan

Equality: for all except laborers of non-treaty countries or nonreciprocal countries. Chinese laborers can be brought out or allowed to reside only in certain places and under imposed conditions.

No discrimination in ownership but emperor may declare that nationals of countries that do not grant equal privileges may not own land. This has not yet been done.

No discrimination: Children of foreigners are foreign; naturalization possible by complying with ordinances.

Korea

Equality: Aliens once admitted are treated like citizens.

Like Japan, except for several treaties still in force, which were made with Korea.

Same as Japan.

New Zealand

Equality: See No. R26 of papers distributed to members.

No restrictions in ownership. Asiatics eligible for old-age pension (none eligible by age to claim it; to be remedied). Possibly a few other restrictions.

Chinese pay registration fee, but naturalization is open to all. Citizenship by birth, unless otherwise declared by the individual.

continued

Table continued Privileges and Restrictions Citizenship

(Ownership of property, etc.)

Residence and Travel

Philippines

Equality: Aliens once admitted are treated like citizens.

Equality except in sale of public land, which is restricted. Mining rights restricted to American and to Filipino citizens; a few other similar occupational discriminations.

Naturalization according to U.S. law. Birth entitles one to citizenship: “Although we are Orientals we cannot be naturalized Orientals.” Filipinos are American nationals; they cannot be naturalized in the United States except through service in certain naval and military units.

United States of America

Equality: granted by law; no [national] laws; practice varies in different states. Negro inequality affects aliens only when one is mistaken for Negro by ignorant persons. Negroes are citizens, not aliens.

Determined by state law (see No. R8 of papers distributed to members). There are a few discriminations by law, such as ownership of land, engaging in business, school attendance, etc.

Citizenship granted to all by birth. Naturalization of white and of blacks; Asiatics not eligible. Women who marry anyone ineligible for citizenship lose their own citizenship. Filipinos are “nationals,” not aliens; they have been declared ineligible for naturalization except by the special enactment. In Hawai‘i, the laws treat all aliens alike. No restriction on land ownership. A few occupations closed to aliens. Aliens cannot be employed for national or territorial work, except for “experts.” Women teachers who lost citizenship by marriage to a person ineligible for citizenship are permitted by special legislation.

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land group remarked that the United States adhered to old notions that were out of date and was resistant to new trends in the world.13 This remark turned the round table into a kind of court scene. In this case, the Japan group was the plaintiff, the U.S. group the defendant, the Australia, New Zealand, and Philippine groups the witnesses, and still other groups the jury. In the end, the U.S. group was “found guilty.”14 As a consequence, the Japan group was able to accomplish its chief aim of demonstrating that the United States was the only nation to specifically prohibit Asians from becoming naturalized citizens or owning real estate. Further, many in the U.S. delegation were inclined to make an effort to correct the error of the U.S. Congress in passing the Exclusion Act upon their return from the gathering, although differences of opinion within the group remained.15 In short, the conference was a great success, at least from the standpoint of specific Japan group objectives. In keeping with what would become an IPR tradition, no resolutions or other formal statements of institutional position were adopted at this meeting, but the Japan group nonetheless knew it had scored a victory and that it had done so in more than just the round-table discussions. For example, Paul Scharrenberg, part of the U.S. group but also a ranking official in the famously anti-immigrant California State Federation of Labor, acknowledged that he understood the ideas and notions of the various races surrounding the Pacific Ocean more clearly after the conference, and that the conference discussions had changed his strong support for the exclusion of Asian immigrants to merely moderate support. He further stated that he had become sympathetic to Japan.16 According to Takayanagi, Scharrenberg’s view had shifted toward the Japanese position. Takayanagi’s belief was based upon Scharrenberg’s remark that if Japan admitted that the immigration problem between the United States and Japan had been already resolved, he would make every effort to fight discrimination against Japanese immigrants in California, and also based upon Scharrenberg’s attitude toward the Japanese delegates, which had changed to one of courtesy and moderation.17 Although Scharrenberg’s conversion was possibly overstated by the Japanese delegates, the shift in his views represents more than simply a Japanese victory; it also demonstrated the educational value of the conference. The fortnight that the IPR delegates spent together at Punahou School provided a unique opportunity for them to get to know one another as individuals. Through private conversations at dinner and during coffee breaks, they were able to discuss difficult issues frankly, and through such talks they were able to develop the mutual understanding and trust necessary to see domestic and international problems from different viewpoints. Needless to say, such achievements were central to the IPR’s subsequent success.



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The Immigration Problem at the Second IPR Conference The IPR’s second conference also met at Punahou School in Honolulu for a fortnight, this time from July 15 to 29, 1927. It was different from the first gathering in terms of an increased number of participants, the first participation of the British group,18 and attendance by two observers from the Secretariat of the League of Nations and one from the International Labor Organization.19 For these reasons, this conference marks a turning point in global recognition of the significance of the IPR and, more generally, that of the Pacific region. The Japan group arrived in Honolulu on July 8, 1927, and each member was anticipating participation “in a peaceful and quiet scientific conference.”20 However, this attitude, constructive as it appears, was to cause a major problem for the group. Counting upon the “peaceful and quiet” agenda set in advance by the IPR’s new secretariat, they arrived in Honolulu only to discover that the new British participants, backed by Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, were insisting that the agenda be changed to place primary emphasis upon the then contentious matter of the revived Chinese revolution and its impact upon British interests in China.21 The U.S. group also supported this change, not so much out of support for Britain as sympathy with China’s nationalistic aspirations, particularly the goal of ending extraterritoriality and regaining full sovereign territorial control. Hence, the conference agenda was amended at the last minute, and the China problem, not the immigration issue that continued to be so important to Japan, was made the principal focus of the gathering. The immigration issue was by no means forgotten, but, to Japan’s chagrin, it never again enjoyed the attention devoted to it at the first conference.22 While it was evident in the opening statements by the Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and American chairmen that they were concerned about the immigration issue, their concerns were different from those of the Japanese delegation. For example, these spokesmen supported the sovereign right of nations to enact exclusion acts, the necessity to control immigration both during the present and in the future, the need to prevent the flood of many unassimilable immigrants into their countries, and the importance of preserving a nation’s standard of living. Among them, Ray Lyman Wilbur, chairman of the Pacific Council and leader of the U.S. group, best understood the attitude of the Japanese and had the most compassion for Japan. Although he was of the opinion that emigration could never completely resolve overpopulation problems such as Japan’s (any permanent solution, he believed, had to involve industrialization), he still insisted that the American quota system should be extended to Japan, if for no other reason than to salve to the nation’s wounded pride. In response to these statements, Masataro Sawayanagi, a member of the House

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of Peers and chairman of the Japan group, asserted that Japan faced a serious population and food-supply problem that was tied to immigration. Continuing, he acknowledged that Japan respected the sovereignty of foreign countries but that it could never consent to immigration quotas based upon race. He also noted that, as Japan had moved into the ranks of the world’s great powers, it could not accept the view that Japanese are unassimilable. In making these points, Sawayanagi separated the population and food-supply issue from that of immigration and insisted that both be considered as fundamental problems for investigation by the IPR. Hence, perhaps because of disappointment over the last-minute agenda change, the attitude of the Japan group at this conference was notably sharper than it had been at the previous gathering. At a session devoted to the population and food-supply issue on July 21, O. E. Baker and Carl L. Alsberg of the U.S. group and Hiroshi Nasu of the Japan group presented brief reports, and a round-table discussion based on them followed. Both Baker and Alsberg explained the international meaning of the issue from a technical standpoint. In contrast, Yusuke Tsurumi of the Japan group emphasized its political and social meanings, asserting the Japanese perspective. The pressure of surplus population takes two directions. One direction is to encourage immigration to foreign countries in search of a new life for the immigrants. Another is to try to find relief through social organization reconstruction. Surplus population is a double-edged sword that operates both inside and outside Japan. Now, the pressure of surplus population is about to deeply cut the social organization of Japan. . . . If we improve the organization of the social economy and at the same time improve the productive capacity of industry to the maximum, it might still be insufficient for the desired improvement of living standards. Why should civilized, diligent and peace loving people not be allowed to immigrate in an amicable way to other countries that have abundant under utilized lands. . . . Should it be regarded as the moral right of people who possess such lands to maintain only their own standard of living and to uncaringly prevent other poor races from immigrating?23

In the following round-table exchange, discussion focused mainly on Japan’s population and food-supply problems, and there was a remarkable showing of sympathy and understanding for the country’s circumstances.24 For example, when Hearst’s newspapers threw its support behind the exclusion of Japanese immigrants by comparing the Japanese birthrate to that of rabbits, Alsberg retorted that there was no racial difference in propagation powers and pointed out that the Japanese birthrate had fallen substantially in California. J. B. Condliffe, the IPR’s research secretary, argued that the unusually high birthrate of the Japanese was due



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to the unusual spread of male-dominated age groups throughout the population. Most participants agreed that the development of industry would provide the ultimate solution for Japan, but even this point was debated on the grounds that Japan was deficient in natural resources and would be threatened by Chinese industrial development in the future. Discussion ended on this note, and a decision was made to designate Pacific regional population movement and food production as the research theme for the next IPR conference. Given the seriousness of the continuing immigration question and the wide attention it received in the population and food-supply discussions despite the previously noted shift in the main focus of the conference to Chinese topics, its treatment deserves further analysis. As is obvious, the Japan group took the lead in these discussions, and it brought five basic assumptions to the debate: (1) the immigration problem remained unsolved; (2) Japan dared not send immigrants to the United States; (3) Japan’s status as a major power was being disrespected; (4) the problem was of general concern to all Japanese and there was a willingness to work together with the United States to find a way to resolve it; and (5) the Japanese people would wait patiently for an amicable solution, believing the influence of understanding American intellectuals would eventually produce one.25 Focal themes of these discussions included the causes of immigration and emigration, the discriminatory treatment of the 1924 Exclusion Act, Japan and the quota system, the discriminatory treatment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians, intermarriage between yellows and whites, and second-generation Japanese Americans. While in large part carried over from the concerns expressed at the first conference, these themes had become of even greater concern in Japan during the intervening years and were now reflective of a growing general sense of unfair treatment and insult in all Japanese, no longer simply the leaders. Three round tables were devoted to related discussions. The general trend of the discussion was that a certain amount of restriction could not be avoided because leaving immigration entirely to chance would cause international problems. The Japan group did not object to this reasoning, but it strongly resisted the idea that immigration controls should be based on race. Such a formula, the group argued, defeated the concept of international cooperation and, more specifically, dishonored and insulted Japan. The only solution, it concluded, involved correcting or eliminating the 1924 Exclusion Act.26 Most of the U.S. group favored Japan on this point, although Chester H. Rowell, formerly an editor of the Fresno Republican of California, and Paul Scharrenberg expressed some opposition. Another serious problem was raised by a member of the U.S. group relative to the appropriateness of enacting another immigration law that treated Asians differently from other people. The Japan group did its best to counter these doubts. Hiroshi Nasu, for example, argued that if discrimination was

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to be part of any immigration law, it should be based not on race but on the country’s level of culture.27 However, this suggestion was problematic in that it assumed that only the Japanese among the peoples of Asia possessed a level of culture that would entitle them to be treated as the equals of whites. In a forum on immigration and emigration in the Pacific held on the evening of July 27, Touru Ishi’i pronounced the view of the Japan group on the general subject. It was that “Japan would never argue the injustice of the 1924 Exclusion Act in order to solve its own population and food supply problem. It is most regrettable that this act was not only legislated in disregard of the 1907–8 Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States but that it also hurts the national pride of Japan and treats Japanese in a discriminatory fashion. Japan looks to the United States for introspection and settlement of the problem on its own initiative.”28 Following Ishi’i, Bunji Suzuki, president of the General Federation of Labor of Japan, observed that “The immigration problem is essentially equal to the labor problem. . . . I was disappointed that the 1924 Exclusion Act has the support of the U.S. labor’s movement. . . . I want to propose that we need to establish an immigration committee composed of both Japanese and American labor leaders to seek an amicable settlement similar to the U.S.-Mexican committee. I think peace should be established based on the mutual understanding, love, and respect.”29 After their speeches, frank discussion took place focused on the question of whether an international organization charged with investigating the Pacific immigration problem was necessary. Nasu argued that Ishi’i had expressed the genuine intention of Japan, and that “I believe firmly that the United States will acknowledge the sincerity of Japan and produce some solution that will satisfy Japan.”30 However, there was considerable opposition to this proposal.31 The discussion ended on this note. Conclusion The IPR was established in Hawai‘i in 1925, and the cross-cultural immigration problem that it addressed from the outset was a most appropriate topic for a pioneering INGO that aimed to bridge the gap between East and West through an adventure in friendliness and understanding. In the first IPR conference of 1925, the basic posture of the Japan group was to attach great importance to the immigration problem, to criticize the unjust nature of the U.S. Exclusion Act of 1924, and to protest against the related discriminatory treatment that so injured the national pride of Japan. At the second IPR conference in 1927, the Japan group was intent upon promoting the idea of a better general understanding of its view that the immigration problem was necessary, that Japan could not agree with the restriction of immigration based on racial discrimination



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even if it did respect the sovereignty of other countries, and that the quota system the U.S. government had applied to European peoples should also be applied to the Japanese people. The main difference in the Japan group’s approach to the first and second conferences was to divide the subject of immigration into a population and food-supply problem and an immigration problem at the second conference in an effort to keep the debate alive. As a result, the seriousness of Japan’s food deficit was better recognized than ever before, and continued attention was devoted to the related immigration problem. With respect to the application of the quota system to Japan, influential central figures like Wilbur raised doubts about it, and, despite the objections of a few like Rowell and Scharrenberg, this is the central achievement by which the work of the conference should be evaluated. There are two important aspects to the second conference that defined much of the future direction and value of the IPR. Worthy results were realized in response to regional problems. The organization’s investigation and research efforts were substantially greater than those of the first IPR conference. However, the gradual politicization of the group, as illustrated by its focus on the problems of the British and Chinese, would soon draw it into a degree of political partisanship that contributed to its eventual destruction. More specifically, how should the value of the IPR be estimated considering the fact that it never found a concrete means of settling the Japanese-American immigration problem? We had to wait twenty-eight years before the quota system was applied to Japan (185 people) with the enactment of the McCarran-Walter Act in June 1952. Is this evidence of the failure of the first and second IPR conferences? It is unquestionably true that the IPR had only marginal utility in this regard. Still, this does not mean the organization was a failure. As noted, the IPR did contribute to improved mutual understanding and international education. Scharrenberg’s changing views is a good example of this. The immigration question at the two conferences reminds us that the IPR was an important experiment in INGO activities and demonstrates the necessity and possibility of such efforts in the international affairs of today and of the future.

Notes 1. On the IPR, see John N. Thomas, The Institute of Pacific Relations: Asian Scholars and American Politics (Seattle and London, 1974); Paul F. Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The Internationalist Movement in Modern Hawaii (Honolulu, 1980); Nobuo Katagiri, “Taiheiyo Mondai no Kiseki,” Gumma Kenritsu Joshi Daigaku Kiyou, no.3 (March 1983); Kakuten Hara, Gendai Ajia Kenkyu Seiritsushiron (Tokyo, 1984); Yui Daisaburo, Mikan no Senryou Kaikaku (Tokyo, 1989); Lawrence T. Woods, Asia-Pacific Diplomacy: Non-governmental Organization and

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International Relations (Vancouver, 1993); Paul F. Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute of Pacific Relations: The Memoirs of William L. Holland (Tokyo, 1995; hereafter cited as Holland Memoirs); Michio Yamaoka, Taiheiyou Mondai Chousakai Kenkyu (Tokyo, 1997); Hiroaki Shiosaki, Kokusai Shinchitsujo o Motomete (Fukuoka, 1998); and Nobuo Katagiri, Taiheiyou Mondai Chousakai no Kenkyu (Tokyo, 2003). 2. Akira Iriye, “Souron: Senkanki no Rekishiteki Igi,” in Senkanki no Nihon Gaikou, ed. Akira Iriye and Sadashi Aruga (Tokyo, 1984), 4–13. 3. Development of the Plan for a “Conference on Problems of the Pacific Peoples,” Institute of Pacific Relations—1st Conference Proceedings 1925 (Honolulu, 1925), 13 (hereafter cited as Proceedings). 4. John King Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York, 1982), 323. 5. At the beginning, the Japan group was variously called Taiheiyo Mondai Kyogikai, Taiheiyo Kankei Chousa Kaigi, and Pan Taiheiyou Kaigi. At a consultation meeting held in the Ginkou (Bank) Club on December 8, 1925, Nihon Taiheiyou Mondai Chousakai was selected as the proper name. 6. Yasaka Takaki described the immigration problem as one “that most concentrated a member’s attention for the longest time.” See Yasaka Takaki, “Taiheiyou Kankei Chousakai no Setsuritsu ni tsuite,” Gaikou Gihou, October 15, 1925, 65. 7. See H. Duncan Hall, “Legal and Political Aspects of Immigration,” in Addresses and Papers on Institute of Pacific Relations, 1st Conference, Honolulu 1925 (Honolulu, 1925), 1:253 (hereafter cited as Institute of Pacific Relations). 8. As a typical example of such speech by a China group member, see Ta Chen, “Chinese Immigration in the Pacific,” in Institute of Pacific Relations, 1:253. 9. See Shou Sakaguchi, “Taiheiyou Kaigi Hiroku–No. 4,” Hawai‘i Nippu Jiji, July 18, 1925. 10. “Legal Facts Regarding Treatment of Resident Aliens in Pacific Countries,” Proceedings, 175–76. 11. At that time, Australia carried out a dictation examination, Canada concluded a “gentlemen’s agreement,” and New Zealand adopted a permission system. 12. Hall, “Legal and Political Aspects of Immigration,” 253. 13. Sakaguchi, “Taiheiyou Kaigi Hiroku–No. 5,” Hawai‘i Nippu Jiji, July 19, 1925. 14. See Sakaguchi, “Taiheiyou Kaigi Hiroku–No. 1,” Hawai‘i Nippu Jiji, July 15, 1925, and Takayanagi, “Imin Mondai to Taiheiyou no Heiwa-Taiheiyou Kankei Chousakai Daiikkai Soukai de Tougi sareta Imin Mondai Shosou,” Kaizou, December 1925, 29. 15. For example, the religionists asserted that the question of discriminatory treatment was a serious problem of morality and conscience. Therefore, they asserted continuously that the discriminatory provision should be abolished, that a movement should be initiated to enable Japanese emigration to the United States according to the quota system, and that it was necessary to indicate the U.S. people’s real intention toward the Japanese people. This request ended in failure. The labor unions represented by Scharrenberg were opposed to Asian immigration. However, if the Japanese people were to admit that the immigration problem had already been solved, they said they would make efforts to gradually abolish the discriminatory legislation against Japanese living in California. Concerned scholars ad-



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mitted that the discriminatory provision was inconvenient for Japanese immigrants, but that they were afraid the abolition movement would trigger a revived anti-Japanese sentiment that would make the Japan–U.S. relationship even worse. Therefore, they suggested that the discriminatory provision should be left intact and the method of application should be changed. In conclusion, they said this would be the wisest way of showing goodwill toward Japan and attempting to remove the obstacles to admission into the United States. See Takayanagi, “Imin Mondai to Taiheiyou no Heiwa,” 39–40. 16. San Francisco Daily News, August 4, 1925. 17. See Takayanagi, “Imin Mondai to Taiheiyou no Heiwa,” 39–40. 18. Chairman of the British group was Frederick Whyte, formerly president of the National Indian Legislative Assembly. Other members were men of ability belonging to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, including Lionel Curtis, Honorary Secretary of the Institute. 19. One person in it was Setsuichi Aoki of the League of Nations Tokyo branch office. 20. Yusuke Tsurumi, “(II) Honolulu Kaigi(1) Taiheiyou Kaigi Kakan,” in Taiheiyou Mondai-1927 Nen Honolulu, ed. Jun’nosuke Inouye (Tokyo, 1928), 43. 21. Ibid. The agenda had been set by Edward C. Carter, James T. Shotwell, William H. Kilpatrick, and Tsurumi. According to Tsurumi, there was tacit agreement that the setting of the second conference agenda would be left to Japan and the United States. The revision of the agenda ended this understanding. As regards the revised agenda, see “The Conference Program,” J. B. Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Honolulu, Hawaii, July 15–29, 1927 (Chicago, 1928), 603–6 (hereafter cited as Problems of the Pacific). 22. In a taped interview, William L. Holland pointed out that intense concern about Soviet influence on the Chinese Nationalist Party was one more of the reasons that the program was changed. See Holland Memoirs, 207. 23. Hiroshi Nasu, “Zinkou Shokuryou Mondai,” Inouye, ed., Taiheiyou Mondai, 140–41. Nasu distributed an English language booklet of twenty-six pages, entitled “The Problem of Population and Food Supply of Japan,” to the participants. Nasu’s intention was to develop more understanding about the position of Japan. 24. On the discussion of the population and food-supply problem in a round-table session, see “Summary of Round-Table Discussions: 5 Population and Food Supply,” Problems of the Pacific, 117–28. 25. “Dainikai Taiheiyou Mondai Chousakai Gaiyou,” Takaki paper. 26. Hiroshi Nasu, “Taiheiyou Kaigi to Imin Mondai,” Chuou Koron 42.10 (October 1927): 60–61. 27. Ibid., 61. 28. Hidemichi Akagi, “(ha) Imin Mondai,” in Inouye, ed., Taiheiyou Mondai, 161. 29. Ibid. 30. Concerning the remarks of G. L. Wood, Scharrenberg, and Suzuki, see ibid., 163. 31. Akagi, “(ha) Imin Mondai,” 162–63.

Section II The Politics of Americanization from Japanese Immigrant Perspectives Eileen H. Tamura

During the interwar years, the words “Americanization” and “assimilation” were used interchangeably; any discussion of either word in this introduction, therefore, necessitates a discussion of the other. This short piece will not provide a comprehensive examination of the vast literature on assimilation and Americanization. Instead it will mention some relevant studies. Today the word “Americanization” may refer to the process “by which newcomers or their descendants come to identify themselves as ‘American,’ however they understand that identity.”1 From the final decades of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, however, Americanization had a different and distinctive meaning in the United States. During this period, as millions of migrants from southern and eastern Europe entered the U.S. continent, Americanization and assimilation referred to the notion of Anglo-conformity. The idea was that these European migrants would acquire the dominant white middle-class culture and shed their former customs and practices. At the same time, these newcomers and their children would remain at the bottom of the U.S. hierarchy, socially and economically, until they absorbed so-called American practices.2 This notion of Americanization grew into a crusade that swept the United States during and after World War I. The war had aroused suspicion of anyone and anything foreign.3 While attention on the U.S. continent centered on migrants from southern and eastern Europe, in Hawai‘i attention focused on the

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Nikkei4—ethnic Japanese—who were numerically the largest and therefore the most visible non-white, non–Native-Hawaiian group in the Islands; in particular, the movement concentrated on the children of the Japanese. Most of the Japanese—like most other Asians and other potential workers— had been recruited to work on the rapidly expanding sugarcane plantations. The children of foreign plantation workers, born on American soil, were American citizens, and they—especially the children of the multitudes of Japanese— became the concern of European Americans in Hawai‘i. The national Americanization movement as applied to the Islands thus focused mainly on second-generation Nisei, the American-born children of Japanese migrants. Americanizers as well as the Nikkei agreed that Americanization meant that the Nisei should be patriotic Americans, obey laws, work diligently, and learn the English language. They disagreed, however, on two points. Americanizers sought to have the Nisei discard Japanese cultural practices, become Christians, and follow their parents as plantation workers. The Nikkei thought otherwise. They believed that the Nisei should combine the best of Japanese and American practices and improve their social and economic standing.5 While current notions of diversity and pluralism have made discussions of Americanization and assimilation seem outmoded, Ewa Morawska and Elliott Barkan, in separate essays, argue that it would be premature to discard the idea of assimilation altogether.6 Russell Kazal, in his noteworthy article “Revisiting Assimilation,” provides a history of the concepts of assimilation and Americanization, discussing the popular uses of these concepts among scholars beginning in the 1920s and the subsequent rejection of these ideas beginning in the 1960s. Kazal notes that since the 1980s, however, despite the earlier renunciation of the terms, historians have revisited the concepts, albeit in more sophisticated ways. Rejecting earlier notions of Anglo-Americanism as the core of American culture, this later return to questions of assimilation finds scholars immersed in the complexities of migrant adjustment and open to the idea that immigrants and their children should develop American identities.7 This section on Japanese immigrant perspectives examines the ways in which Japanese in Hawai‘i and Japan participated in efforts to “Americanize” Hawai‘i’s Nikkei, especially the Nisei youth, during the period between the two world wars. In this time of increasing tension between the United States and Japan, these leaders sought to mitigate European-American enmity toward the large Nikkei presence in the American territory. Of primary concern to both Japanese immigrants and European Americans was the education of the Nisei. This concern during the interwar years should be seen in the larger context of the Japanese ethnic community. Within this community, which was evolving and multifarious, it is possible to discern a series



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of overlapping stages. The first stage began in 1885, when farmers in Japan were first recruited in large numbers to work on the sugar plantations in Hawai‘i, and ended in 1908, when the Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States stopped the flow of Japanese male laborers.8 During this period, the Issei saw themselves as sojourners who would return to their mother country as soon as they had earned enough money. Like other sojourners who came before and after them, the Issei sent money regularly to their families back home. In time many Issei were able to earn enough money to return to their villages in Japan, but others who could not save enough remained in the Islands. As they gradually came to realize that they would be unable to return as quickly as they had once hoped, they took steps to make their lives in Hawai‘i more comfortable. Married men sent for their wives; single men went home to find brides or sent for picture brides.9 The arrival of wives enabled the migrants to establish families, and with families the Nikkei community became increasingly stable. This second period ended when Congress passed the 1924 immigration law that blocked the entry of all migrants from Japan, including wives.10 The third stage lasted from about 1910 to 1935, as the Nisei children grew up and attended elementary and secondary schools. A fourth stage emerged as most Nisei reached maturity, from about 1920 to 1940, and continued on to college or, more likely, entered the job market. During this time they began to have an impact on the wider community.11 During the first two stages of migration and settlement, the Japanese sought to adjust to life in Hawai‘i. One way to do this was to create Japanese schools so that their children would be able to continue their schooling when the family returned to Japan. But as families put down roots in the Islands, the schools modified their curricula to become more compatible with American life. Issei parents believed that the schools would help maintain the Japanese language and ethnic identity, and facilitate communication between parents and their American-born children. In creating these schools the Japanese behaved like other ethnic groups—the Chinese and Koreans in Hawai‘i, and the Germans and Jews on the U.S. continent.12 Although some European Americans viewed the schools with suspicion before World War I, it was not until the United States entered the war that organized opposition arose, when exaggerated feelings of patriotism swept the nation, including Hawai‘i. As German and other mother-tongue languages became targets of suspicion on the continent, hostility in Hawai‘i focused on the Japanese. The Territorial Legislature reacted by passing laws aimed at abolishing the schools.13 In “Invisible Threads” (Chap. 5), Hiromi Monobe examines the cooperative efforts of leaders in Japan and Hawai‘i to reduce such anti-Japanese sentiment in

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the islands. Monobe highlights the role of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in promoting two concurrent campaigns—one to educate non-Japanese about the Japanese, and the other to Americanize the Nikkei. Leading the effort in Hawai‘i were the Issei leaders Takie Okumura, Tasuku Harada, Yasutaro Soga, and Iga Mori, as well as the sugar executive Frank Atherton, who, along with the Japanese Foreign Ministry and Japan’s influential Eiichi Shibusawa, formed a cooperative relationship aimed at countering anti-Japanese attitudes. The close ties between Japanese nationals living overseas and Japanese government officials and leaders were not unique to Hawai‘i. In “Attorney for the Defense,” Yuji Ichioka demonstrates that on the U.S. West Coast during the interwar years, the Stanford university professor Yamato Ichihashi maintained an association with the Japanese Foreign Ministry as its unofficial spokesperson. Funds from the Japanese government went to Stanford University for Ichihashi’s salary. This was a time when Japanese nationals were denied the right to naturalize, a time of strong anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast; Ichihashi was called upon to help ameliorate the situation.14 In “Social, Cultural, and Spiritual Struggles” (Chap. 6), Noriko Shimada adds to this discussion on the cooperative efforts among Japanese in Japan and those overseas as she compares the efforts of two Issei leaders, the Christian minister Okumura Takie and the Buddhist bishop Imamura Yemyo. Shimada examines the two men’s responses to the critical issues facing the Issei and their Americanborn children: Americanization, citizenship, nationalism, Japanese-language schools, and the Second Oahu Strike. Both spiritual leaders sought to alleviate growing conflict between European Americans and the Nikkei, but each in his particular way. The animosity toward the Nikkei in Hawai‘i had been growing even before the First World War, and in this context, as discussed earlier, Japanese schools were becoming objects of suspicion. In “Anti-Japanese Sentiment and Shiga Shigetaka’s Recommendations” (Chap. 7), Masako Gavin notes that as early as 1912 Issei leaders sought to alleviate this suspicion by attempting to revise Japanese school textbooks to make them more acceptable to critics and more suitable to Nisei in Hawai‘i. They asked Shiga, a prominent intellectual in Japan, for his advice. Deeply concerned about anti-Japanese sentiments in Hawai‘i and the U.S. West Coast, Shiga argued against an imperial-style education for the Nisei, instead favoring an education that prepared Nisei youths for future roles in the international community. Like Japanese schools, Buddhism was viewed with suspicion by European Americans. In “Buddhism at the Crossroads” (Chap. 8), Tomoe Moriya focuses on that religion’s most prominent leader in the islands, the Reverend Imamura Yemyo. Sent to the islands in 1899 to minister to the spiritual needs of the Nikkei, Imamura rose to become bishop of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i.



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Moriya explains how Imamura guided the mission in transforming Japanese Buddhism into an Americanized form of the religion. He established an English Department in the mid-1910s in an effort to meet the needs of the growing population of Hawai‘i-born Nikkei. And in the spirit of religious freedom, which he pointed to as a cornerstone of American life, Imamura argued for acceptance of this Americanized Buddhism by the European American community. The final essay in this section shifts the focus away from individual leaders to a study of the Japanese-language school litigation campaign and “the education campaign.” Mariko Takagi-Kitayama’s “In the Strong Wind of the Americanization Movement” (Chap. 9) offers a comparison that highlights the objectives, methods, and characteristics of each interest group. In doing so, Takagi-Kitayama provides the reader with an understanding of the political, economic, and social status of the Japanese immigrant community within the larger society of Hawai‘i, the class structure within the Nikkei community, and the meanings of the two campaigns and of the concept of “Americanization” as interpreted by various groups in Hawai‘i as well as by Japanese government officials. The chapters in this section affirm the presence of close ties among individuals in Japan and Hawai‘i during the interwar years. In this affirmation, they demonstrate the different manifestations of internationalism, which in this case evolved not only within the context of the relationship between two nations, but also within the localized Hawai‘i environment, as immigrant Japanese sought to grapple with the politics of Americanization. The essays further demonstrate the overlap of Japanese history and JapaneseAmerican history, and in so doing, enrich both fields of study. The authors included in these two sections have an important commonality—their fluency in both Japanese and English, which has enabled them to mine sources in both languages. They are among a growing group of scholars who are making valuable contributions to our understanding of Asian history and Asian-American history, and the interrelationship between the two. Surveying the growing literature on the World War II incarceration of ethnic Japanese, Ichioka noted the dearth of studies on the period before the Second World War. As a result, he spent much of his career engaged in research on the Nikkei in the United States during the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century, and encouraged others to do the same.15 The essays included in this section and in the rest of this book provide evidence that underscores the validity of Ichioka’s conviction: Those interested in the events during and after World War II must understand the interwar years in order to appreciate more fully the second half of the twentieth century. It also underscores the complexity of the Nikkei experiences and actions, and warns us away from simplistic notions of the meaning of loyalty.

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Notes 1. Russell A. Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History,” American Historical Review 100.2 (1995): 440. 2. Harold J. Abramson, “Assimilation and Pluralism,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1980), 151–53; Philip Gleason, “American Identity and Americanization,” in ibid., 39–41. For an argument that highlights the positive aspects of Americanization during this period, see Otis L. Graham Jr. and Elizabeth Koed, “Americanizing the Immigrant, Past and Future: History and Implications of a Social Movement,” The Public Historian 15.4 (1993). 3. Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 98; Edward G. Hartmann, The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 105–7. 4. The term “Nikkei” means “of Japanese descent.” This essay uses Nikkei to refer to both Japanese nationals and their descendants who lived outside Japan, in particular, Japanese migrants and their American-born children living in Hawai‘i. 5. For further discussions on Americanization and assimilation in the Islands, see Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 6. Ewa Morawska, “In Defense of the Assimilation Model,” Journal of American Ethnic History 13.2 (1994); Elliott R. Barkan, “Race, Religion, and Nationality in American Society: A Model of Ethnicity—from Contact to Assimilation,” Journal of American Ethnic History 14.2 (1995). 7. Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History.” See also Peter Kivisto, “The Transplanted Then and Now: The Reorientation of Immigration Studies from the Chicago School to the New Social History,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 13.4 (1990). 8. Alan T. Moriyama, “The Causes of Emigration: The Background of Japanese Emigration to Hawaii, 1885 to 1894,” in Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II, ed. Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 248–76; Alan T. Moriyama, Immingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii, 1894–1908 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1985); Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953). 9. Japanese picture brides of this period should be distinguished from the more recent worldwide mail-order brides. For a discussion of picture-bride marriages, see Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 23–25. 10. For a study of the Issei in Hawai‘i, see Yukiko Kimura, Issei: Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1988). 11. For studies on the Nikkei in Hawai‘i, see Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity; Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii, 1885–1924 (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1985).



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12. For a discussion of Japanese-language schools, see Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 146–61; Ann L. Halsted, “Sharpened Tongues: The Controversy over the ‘Americanization’ of Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, 1919–1927” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1988); Yoshihide Matsubayashi, “The Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii and California from 1892 to 1941” (Ph.D. diss., University of San Francisco, 1984). For studies on Japanese-language schools focused on the mainland United States, see Toyotomi Morimoto, Japanese Americans and Cultural Continuity: Maintaining Language and Heritage (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997); Yuji Ichioka, “Kokugo Gakko: The Debate over the Role of Japanese Language Schools,” in Before Internment: Essays in Prewar JapaneseAmerican History, ed. Arif Dirlik, Eiichiro Azuma, and Gordon H. Chang (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005). 13. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 146–51. 14. Yuji Ichioka, “‘Attorney for the Defense’: Ichihashi Yamato and Japanese Immigration,” in Dirlik, Eiichiro, and Chang, Before Internment. See also Gordon H. Chang, Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writings, 1942–45 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 15. A number of Ichioka’s essays were published in Yuji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: The Free Press, 1988); Ichioka, “‘Attorney for the Defense.’” Other scholars who have published on the period before World War II include John J. Stephan, Call of Ancestry: American Nikkei in Imperial Japan, 1895–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, in press); Brian Hayashi, For the Sake of Our Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Jere Takahashi, Nisei/ Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); David K. Yoo, Growing up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–49 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000); Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity; Sylvia Junko Yanagisako, Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship among Japanese Americans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985).

C hap t e r 5

Americanizing Hawai‘i’s Japanese A Transnational Partnership and the Politics of Racial Harmony during the 1920s Hiromi Monobe

On August 26, 1920, approximately two months after a major sugar plantation strike on O‘ahu, Frank Cooke Atherton (1877–1945), a distinguished business and civic leader in the Territory of Hawai‘i, wrote a letter to his friend Shibusawa Eiichi, a prominent entrepreneur in Japan.1 An advocate of international friendship between the two countries, Atherton was the vice president of Castle and Cooke, one of the so-called Big Five business concerns that controlled the sugar industry, the pivot of the territorial economy. I am very pleased to learn from the Reverend Okumura that he has arrived in Japan . . . [to present to you] his plans for bringing about a better understanding between the Americans and Japanese . . . and . . . for the Americanization of the Japanese who are making their homes here. . . . I am very heartily in accord with his ideas . . . [to] meet in groups with the older Japanese to explain to them the necessity of having their children educated in American ways. . . . Since these young people have been born in American territory, they are eligible for American citizenship and if they plan to live here should rightly seek to imbibe our American ideals . . . not . . . to be Japanese and loyal to Japan.2

As his letter reveals, Atherton’s main concern revolved around whether or not young Nisei, natural-born American citizens raised by their Japanese immigrant parents, would become “American” enough, and most important, solely loyal to the United States. In addition to addressing the importance of Nisei Americanization, which he characterized as “one of the most serious problems . . . confronting us here in the islands,” Hawai‘i’s business leader also wrote this letter out of the concern that the general public’s misgivings about Hawai‘i Nikkei (people of Japanese ancestry) might negatively affect a future course of U.S.–Japan relations—a concern that brought together the social elites of the two nations, like Atherton and

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Shibusawa, over Hawai‘i’s “Japanese problem.”3 The “Japanese problem” refers to various potential problems implied by the presence of Issei (Japanese immigrants) in the United States during the early twentieth century. For example, some white American propagandists alleged that the Japanese were an “unassimilable” race with a high birthrate, able to bear a low standard of living, and willing to work for low wages. Such assertions gradually led to a popular fear that the Japanese would soon take over American jobs and eventually dominate Hawai‘i economically on behalf of their home empire.4 Because nearly a majority of Hawai‘i’s population had been Japanese since the turn of the century, that fear seemed more than justified in the eyes of the local white minority. Perhaps the most influential figure on the Japanese economic and political scene since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931) was equally, if not more, concerned about the development in Hawai‘i mainly from a standpoint of bilateral trade relations. By the time of his death in 1931 at age ninety-one, Shibusawa played a pivotal role in Japan’s manufacturing, financial, and export industries. Due to his economic interests in foreign trade, Shibusawa had long striven to foster international goodwill, believing that the prosperity of Japan depended on a stable economic relationship with its major trade partners, especially the United States.5 He worked closely with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs with an eye to ridding the negative factors from the bilateral relations with the United States.6 Similarly committed to the alleviation of the Japanese problem, albeit in a local context, Protestant minister Takie Okumura (1865–1951) was one of the key Japanese leaders in Hawai‘i and used his own Makiki Christian Church for the promotion of international amity and interracial harmony. Born as the eldest son into a samurai family in Kochi, young Okumura had to try his hand at various businesses to support his family after his father’s early death, but these attempts did not succeed. After a brief stint in the so-called Liberal Democratic Movement of the early 1880s, he entered Dōshisha Theological School in Kyoto to become an ordained minister. In 1894, the reverend came to Hawai‘i with the purpose of improving the spiritual and social lives of Japanese immigrant workers and their children on the sugar plantations.7 His efforts ranged from opening one of the earliest Japanese-language schools for Hawai‘i-born Nisei (1896) to establishing the first Japanese hospital in the islands (1900). He was also instrumental in building the first interracial YMCA in the territory (1918) by successfully raising donations from Japanese and white elites, including Shibusawa and Atherton.8 Like Atherton, Okumura feared negative consequences of the massive 1920 strike, which seemed to have not only widened an existing gulf between Hawai‘i’s Japanese and white residents but also exacerbated bilateral relations.9 Thus, he discussed his plan to mitigate this situation with Japanese Consul General Yada Chōnosuke, and then with Atherton. Along with some white business leaders and



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clergymen, Atherton enthusiastically supported Okumura’s plan of “Americanization,” as revealed in his letter to Shibusawa. A self-proclaimed “popular” diplomat, Shibusawa was duly interested in what Atherton and Okumura perceived as “one of the most serious problems” in Hawai‘i. This essay demonstrates how four different parties—local Issei leaders, Hawai‘i’s white elites, Japanese diplomats, and social elites of Japan—became involved in a “campaign of education” (keihatsu undō) in the Territory of Hawai‘i during the 1920s. In studies on Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i, scholars have treated this “campaign of education” as part of the Americanization Movement that took place throughout the islands as well as in the continental United States. Conducted by white progressives, the Americanization Movement was a liberal political project intended to assimilate new immigrants into dominant AngloAmerican culture. According to the theory, the vestiges of ethnic cultures were to disappear completely in the process of their metamorphosis from “foreigners” to full-fledged “Americans.”10 Earlier immigrants and their descendants, mostly of White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant ancestry, had attempted to create a “national unity” based on their own culture as “standard American culture.” In the era of massive immigration from eastern and southern Europe, as well as Asia, these pundits saw new cultural elements as incompatible, if not detrimental, and therefore many religious, educational, and other organizations promoted the adoption of the English language, Anglo middle-class customs, and protestant norms. Reaching its peak during the First World War, this movement dwindled on the mainland United States, but a version targeting the Asian population remained strong in Hawai‘i along with the fear of “foreign” influences until World War II.11 This essay first probes the underlying motivations of Issei leaders and white elites in their involvement of the Americanization Movement in the islands. Previous studies have yielded two distinct interpretations with regard to the activities of Okumura as well as those of his like-minded Issei friends. One approach accounts for Okumura’s actions by claiming that he benefited from an alliance with white elites, the main force behind the Americanization Movement, by cooperating with them to mold local Japanese into pliable elements in the existing social, political, and economic structure. The contrary approach asserts that this Christian minister chose to cooperate with white leaders, not because he merely sought personal benefit in return for his collaboration, but because he deemed it necessary to defeat anti-Japanese agitation, to improve U.S.–Japan relations, and to prepare a better future for the Japanese community in Hawai‘i. While American scholars such as Roland Kotani (1985) and Gary Okihiro (1991) generally support the former approach,12 scholarship in Japan, as represented by the Dōshisha University group (1991) and Shimada Noriko (1994), projects the latter argument.13 The differences between the two interpretations seem to stem mainly from the source materials

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examined. Documents that indicate the motives and objectives of Issei leaders like Okumura more often exist in Japanese than English, and oftentimes the contents differ depending on to whom they are addressed and in what language they were composed. In an effort to build on the accomplishments of existing literature without dismissing one or the other approach, this essay assembles disjointed discourses and interpretations that have unfolded along the language line. And unearthing new information in rarely consulted archival materials, it reexamines the nuanced thinking and complex practices of not only Okumura but also his Issei allies—namely Tasuku Harada, Iga Mōri, and Yasutaro Sōga—whose involvement in campaigns for education deserves more close analysis. Expanding on existing studies that usually focus on the involvement of specific white and Issei leaders in Hawai‘i, this essay also examines how their activities in the Americanization Movement actually dovetailed with the efforts of the Japanese government and Japanese elite. It delineates why and how the latter groups sought to steer local Issei toward adopting American values and customs and raising the Nisei as loyal American citizens. The analysis of the activities of Japanese officials and their allies moreover sheds light on another “educational” project, which, in tandem with the assimilationist effort, aimed to inform Hawai‘i’s white residents about the positive aspects of Japan and local Japanese. In order to counter antiJapanese sentiments, this type of educational campaign presented Japan as a modern, civilized nation, and local Issei and Nisei as assimilable to mainstream society. By examining the intersection between these complementary activities—one turning local Japanese into integral members of Hawai‘i’s society and the other making whites realize their acceptability—this essay complicates the meaning of Americanization and assimilation for Japanese in Hawai‘i during the 1920s.14 The Emergence of Cooperative Relations: The 1920 Sugar Plantation Strike and the “Japanese Problem” On July 1, 1920, approximately two months before the aforementioned letter was written, the O‘ahu sugar plantation strike ended, which provided the background for international partnership, including Atherton, Shibusawa, and Okumura. This six-month strike, which involved upwards of 8,300 Japanese, Filipino, and other laborers, not only exacerbated local race relations but also impacted U.S.–Japan relations negatively, as it was often characterized as the “Japanese conspiracy.”15 Although the main body of the strikers was multiethnic, only Japanese, who made up approximately two-thirds of the protesting group, were censured as the ringleaders. Influential white politicians and businessmen, along with major local English newspapers, contended that Japanese workers’ resistance against sugar plantation



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owners was an indication of the “subversive,” “unassimilable,” and “anti-American” nature of the entire local Japanese population in the islands. Partially because some Japanese strike leaders resorted to patriotic rhetoric to keep up the morale of the protesters, their solidarity during the walkout was perceived as an expression of hard-core Japanese nationalism, which allegedly conspired against the United States. For example, there was a widely circulated rumor that Noboru (Takashi) Tsutsumi, Secretary of the Japanese Federation of Labor, said at a strike meeting that the Japanese battleship Yakumo, which happened to have visited the islands for training, came to Hawai‘i in defense of Japanese strikers.16 This event not only propelled white elites to label local Japanese as a dangerous antisocial element but also aroused suspicion that the Japanese government had manipulated the strikers behind the scenes so as to control Hawai‘i’s sugar industry. On January 20, 1920, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser wrote: “what we face now is an attempt on the part of an alien race to cripple our principal industry and to gain dominance of the American territory of Hawaii.”17 In the minds of many leading whites in the Islands, the strike—essentially a matter of class conflict—turned into the question of race in general, and of national allegiance among the Japanese in Hawai‘i in particular.18 Japanese Consul General Yada Chōnosuke in Honolulu, having observed that the local economic strike had become a thorn in U.S.–Japan relations, wrote a letter to the minister of foreign affairs, Uchida Yasuya, in Tokyo, three months after the end of the strike.19 This letter stated that the 1920 strike had greatly exacerbated white-Japanese tensions in Hawai‘i. It also summarized some of the “most proJapanese” white leaders’ interpretations of the strike and their concerns regarding the local Japanese. First, unlike previous strikes by Issei laborers, the demonstration of adamant Japanese nationalism in the 1920 sugar strike was perceived as a “racial issue” rather than a labor/class issue. Second, white leaders alleged that the Hongwanji and other Buddhist temples, which ran numerous Japanese-language schools, ardently supported the strike and were assisting the Japanese Federation of Labor, the nucleus of the strike. Third, there was a widely prevailing concern that second-generation Japanese Americans, whose numbers were rapidly increasing, would control the politics of Hawai‘i in the near future by resorting to bloc voting based on their racial allegiance. To counter this eventuality, haole elites, according to the Japanese diplomat, thought that it would be necessary to close down all Japanese-language schools in the islands and immerse future voters of Japanese ancestry in Americanism. Indeed, the three points delineated in Yada’s letter reflected prevalent concerns and general assumptions among white residents about the local Japanese—their racial solidarity and parochial tendency, the “anti-American” dimension of Japanese-language schools, and the possible future political influence

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of the second-generation Japanese. All these issues essentially revolved around one question: namely, whether or not Hawai‘i’s Japanese were wholeheartedly loyal to the United States. This apprehension over Japanese immigrant nationalism was not necessarily a direct product of the 1920 plantation strike; its genesis was traceable to the previous decade. As noted earlier, intense chauvinism swept American society during World War I. Under the slogan of “one language under one flag,” the “Americanization fever” urged people of different ethnic origins to embrace White-Anglo-SaxonProtestant values as the “universal American” norm and to purge cultural and racial heterogeneity out of their communities and America at large.20 On the West Coast, this xenophobia was intensified by conflict between working-class whites and Asian laborers. White farmers, producers, and workers saw Asian immigrants as economic competitors and spearheaded the political movement for Japanese exclusion.21 Taking off from mass antagonism against Asians, certain white leaders on the West Coast such as the Sacramento Bee publisher Valentine S. McClatchy, secretary of the California Federation of Labor Paul Scharrenberg, and California governor Hiram Johnson deployed rhetoric about the “Japanese problem” to their political advantage. They asserted that it was necessary to protect America from an alien takeover. These whites played a central role in the enactment of the Alien Land Laws, which banned land ownership or lease by “aliens ineligible for citizenship” in California, Washington, Oregon, and other states between the early 1910s and the 1920s.22 This was largely an attempt to reduce Japanese immigrant farmers to the economic status of migrant labor. In contrast to those mainland whites, a number of influential haole (such as Frank C. Atherton, George P. Castle, Charles H. Cooke, and William D. Westervelt), many of whom were directly or indirectly involved in the dominant sugar industry, tried to maintain amicable relations with the Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i, although for some their ultimate goal was to keep the Japanese population in their place within the existing social/racial hierarchy. The agricultural system of the territory, dependent on sugar and pineapple, lacked a sturdy white working class. Big capitalists were elite haole while the workers were predominantly Asians.23 Haole capitalists recognized that they stood to benefit more from coopting Asians quietly into the established system than politicizing their “menace” and excluding them. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the sugar industry relied heavily on Issei workers. Thousands of first-generation Japanese immigrants came to Hawai‘i as plantation laborers and eventually constituted an essential part of the entire workforce in the sugar industry, not only in the fields but also in the mills. One year prior to the 1920 walkout, Japanese workers on sugar plantations in the territory numbered 24,791, accounting for 55 percent of the 45,311 laborers in the industry.24 Even though their importance had diminished with the influx



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of Filipinos as an alternative labor force in the 1910s, they were still indispensable for operating the plantations. Haole planters were thus afraid that to alienate the Japanese population, as was happening on the West Coast, would put the islands’ chief industry in jeopardy. From the perspective of the white ruling class, the fear of the potential “racial menace” was rooted in the numerical dominance of Japanese in Hawai‘i as well as their apparent “foreignness.” Not only on the sugar plantation, but also in the territory in general, people of Japanese ancestry were the largest ethnic group, constituting 43 percent of the islands’ 255,912 residents in 1920.25 Most spoke only Japanese and retained the values and customs of their home country rather than adopting the culture of the host society. This is not surprising, because many of them came to Hawai‘i as temporary sojourners, hoping to make a fortune and someday return to Japan. Also, the majority of the Issei were Buddhists. Temples sprang up throughout the islands with Japanese-language schools for the Hawai‘i-born generation.26 Most Issei parents sent their children to Japanese-language schools to facilitate intergenerational communication as well as to prepare them for the eventual return to Japan. Indeed, in 1920, 98 percent of the 20,651 Japanese students receiving compulsory public school education also studied at Japanese schools. Most teachers at the Japanese schools in Hawai‘i were Japanese nationals certified by educational institutions in the home country. These teachers taught young Nisei students not only the Japanese language but also Japanese values and ethics, using textbooks published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, which were intended to raise children to be subjects of Imperial Japan.27 As noted in Yada’s letter, these schools, and the education they offered the Nisei, became another locus of white misgivings in their discussions of the Japanese problem. Furthermore, the 1920 strike also revived an argument over the potential voting power of the Nisei. During and after the event, anti-Japanese white leaders in Hawai‘i, such as Walter F. Dillingham and Harry A. Baldwin, publicly expressed their apprehension over Nisei ties to Japan.28 Nisei possession of dual citizenship, American and Japanese, a result of the conflicting nationality laws of Japan and the United States, led mainstream society to doubt the second generation’s loyalty to the United States. Even before the strike, some whites in Hawai‘i and the continental United States shared the view that Hawai‘i-born Nisei’s rapidly increasing numbers due to a high birthrate would eventually influence the Hawai‘i body politic and possibly lead to the takeover and control of the islands by Imperial Japan. In the past, this fear of the Japanese racial menace had generated a discussion over the necessity to abolish the self-rule of Hawai‘i and to surrender the territory to a commission form of government comprised of members appointed by the president of the United States, an idea that most of the privileged class in the islands strongly opposed.29 The 1920 sugar strike rekindled these flames of skepticism about Nisei

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loyalties. Concerned about this situation, pro-Japanese white leaders like Atherton exchanged opinions with Issei leader Okumura and Consul General Yada. They then attempted to involve individuals of the Japanese social elite, such as Shibusawa, to settle the exacerbated “Japanese problem” in Hawai‘i. It was in this context that Atherton wrote to Shibusawa about Okumura’s plans for “the Americanization of Japanese.” Japanese Response to Hawai‘i’s Racial Conflict Two weeks after the 1920 plantation strike, Okumura left for Japan to seek advice from Shibusawa. During his stay in Tokyo, he was invited to a meeting of the Japanese American Relations Committee (Nichibei Kankei Iinkai) headed by Shibusawa and composed of twenty-four prominent Japanese who strove to promote friendly relationships between Japan and the United States.30 From its inauguration of 1916, this organization continually held conferences with American business, political, and civic leaders visiting Japan to discuss current issues in U.S.–Japan relations as well as giving convivial parties for them. After listening to Okumura’s presentation, the committee members showed wholehearted approval of his plan for “a campaign of education” of Hawai‘i’s Japanese. Through Shibusawa, Okumura also met Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya and Prime Minister Hara Takashi. They also endorsed his idea and encouraged him to continue his efforts.31 At first glance, it may appear odd that these leaders and governmental officials in Japan unanimously and enthusiastically supported Okumura’s goal of “Americanizing” Japanese national Issei and dual-citizen Nisei in Hawai‘i in spite of the fact that both groups were subjects of Imperial Japan. It is, however, not at all surprising if one considers that they wished to remove any conflict that would harm cordial relations between Japan and the United States, which were mutually dependent trading partners during the early decades of the twentieth century.32 Japan’s ongoing economic and industrial development, particularly in textile production, was indirectly supported by the United States. America provided Japan not only with raw cotton for its cotton manufacturing but also with a huge market for silk fabrics, Japan’s main export.33 Since 1880, Japan had imported more from America than from any other country, constituting one-third of its total imports after World War I. At the same time, Americans imported more commodities from Japan than any other country save Great Britain and Canada.34 For the sake of maintaining an amicable partnership with the United States and the Territory of Hawai‘i, since the 1910s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had secretly conducted two complementary types of activities called keihatsu undō (some officials coined the phrase “campaign of education” as an English equivalent), which were designed to alleviate anti-Japanese sentiments among mainstream whites



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in Hawai‘i and on the continental United States. One activity aimed at educating the general American public about Japan and Japanese immigrants in the hope of eliminating prejudice arising from ignorance. The second was intended to promote the adoption of American manners and customs among Japanese immigrants.35 In conducting these “campaigns of education,” the Foreign Ministry and the Japanese Consulate avoided the limelight so as to counter anti-Japanese propaganda that alleged a conspiratorial link between the Japanese government and the Nikkei community. Thus, both Issei and whites who were collaborating with the ministry publicly carried out the work as if they were doing so on their own. These “campaigns of education” were initiated by Consul General Numano Yasutarō in San Francisco. To begin his project, Numano recruited Kiyoshi Kawakami and Toyokichi Iyenaga and let them run pro-Japan, English-language newspaper presses targeting the general public, the Pacific Press Bureau in San Francisco and the East & West News Bureau in New York, respectively.36 Japanese business elites, represented by Shibusawa Eiichi, also willingly accepted the Foreign Ministry’s mission to improve whites’ view of Japan. Shibusawa, who played a central role in the expanding cotton textile production in his country, was fully aware that trade with the United States was crucial to Japan’s economic and industrial expansion.37 Therefore, his efforts to promote friendly feelings between the two countries and strengthen the basis for firm trade relations served both personal and national interests. As early as 1909, even before the ministry requested him to cooperate with the education campaign, Shibusawa, along with thirty-five Japanese leaders (the group was called the Honorary Commercial Commissioners of Japan), visited more than fifty cities in the United States over the course of three months to become acquainted with prominent figures in various spheres (including President William H. Taft), as well as to learn about the latest industrial technology.38 During the ensuing years, believing in a diplomatic approach called “people-to-people diplomacy” (kokumin gaikō), which was intended to “promote and preserve amicable United States–Japan relations” and “entailed direct, private contracts between the people of the two countries over and beyond formal diplomatic intercourse,”39 Shibusawa and other Japanese businessmen strove to cultivate friendships with key American leaders such as California’s Wallace M. Alexander and Hawai‘i’s Frank C. Atherton. Calling upon these close personal relationships, they then attempted to discuss and resolve economic and political problems in the international arena.40 Shibusawa invited various American leaders, including a well-known anti-Japanese propagandist, Paul Scharrenberg, to his villa in Asukayama near Tokyo, and entertained them as part of this diplomatic mission.41 While engaged in the campaign aimed at whites on the U.S. mainland, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also worked with individuals and organizations to pro-

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mote acculturation among Japanese immigrants in the continental United States. As part of this effort, Shibusawa and other Japanese leaders established a school for emigrants to the United States to learn English and American manners and customs before their departure. On the West Coast, many Issei leaders also strove to “reform” Japanese immigrants so that they could fit into the host society. For example, the Japanese Association of America, comprised of influential Issei, invited Kyoto’s Dōshisha University former president the Reverend Danjō Ebina from Japan to tour California to give lectures to Japanese immigrants on the importance of assimilation and permanent residency in the United States. Both the Japanese government and Shibusawa provided the Association with funds to support their efforts.42 During the 1910s, the Foreign Ministry focused most of its education campaign on the continental United States. After the 1920 plantation strike, however, the ministry became keenly aware of the necessity for similar campaigns in the Territory of Hawai‘i. As on the U.S. mainland, the ministry did not take direct action in these campaigns, in order to avoid drawing public attention to its operations or being suspected of involvement in the local Japanese community. Instead, it sought cooperators among qualified Issei individuals with connections to the mainstream society of the territory who could talk to influential whites personally and, in Consul General Yada’s words, “appeal to their emotions.”43 Among these Issei cooperators, University of Hawai‘i Professor Tasuku Harada (1863–1940) was a key figure. A Yale graduate in theology and former president of Dōshisha University, Harada was closely acquainted with and highly respected in elite social circles in both Japan and Hawai‘i. Initially, Shibusawa persuaded him to cooperate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in countering the anti-Japanese movement in the continental United States. Harada made an inspection tour of the West Coast in 1920, where he conducted a survey among 230 eminent whites about their views of the “Japanese problem” in California. He analyzed their answers and compiled a volume titled Beikoku Kashū Hainichi Mondai Chōsa Hōkoku (1921).44 Subsequently, he was asked to socialize with the ruling class of Hawai‘i to improve their views of the Nikkei and Japan by discussing and explaining the “Japanese problem” in the islands and U.S.–Japan relations in general. “To assist his campaign of education,” the Foreign Ministry paid Harada $1,200 annually beginning in 1923.45 Another Issei engaged in this effort was Iga Mōri (1864–1951), president of the United Japanese Association of Hawaii (Hawai Nihonjin Rengō Kyōkai) and a prominent medical doctor. He dealt with a different segment of Hawai‘i’s white population. Unlike Harada, who was in charge of contacting upper-class whites, Mōri targeted people in less exclusive but still influential positions. With expenses paid by the Honolulu Japanese Consulate, he held banquets at fancy hotels, where



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he entertained top police officials and other authoritative whites with a view to cultivating close relationships. He adopted the same strategy for handling newspapermen from the two major local English papers—the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (renamed the Honolulu Advertiser in March 1921) and the Honolulu StarBulletin—in order to encourage favorable reporting about Japan and the local Japanese community. From August 1920 to January 1921, the Honolulu Japanese Consulate spent $998 on inviting newspapermen of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin to dinner hosted by Mōri at the Moana Hotel and paying them honorariums for writing pro-Japanese articles. In August 1921, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs increased the allocation for expenses for “controlling English newspapermen” to $4,000.46 Still another noteworthy Issei ally was Yasutaro Sōga (1873–1957), publisher and editor of the Nippu Jiji, which boasted the largest circulation among local Japanese newspapers. He cooperated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by educating American readers through the English-language articles in his paper. On August 6, 1920, Yada wrote to Uchida that he was considering providing financial aid to the Nippu Jiji in hopes of expanding its English section and thus better utilizing it to inform the society about Japan and local Japanese.47 As the newspaper had won a considerable number of non-Japanese readers since establishing its English section in January 1919 and was often quoted in English newspapers in the islands, the consul general’s request was accepted, and a year later the Foreign Ministry allocated $4,800 as a “subsidy for the Nippu Jiji.”48 By early 1920, the Nippu Jiji had already begun playing the role of an “educator” for white Americans in Hawai‘i. In January 1920, precisely when the O‘ahu sugar strike started, the publishing company reprinted a highly pro-Japanese pamphlet written by Theodore Roosevelt entitled What the Japanese Have Stood for in the World War.49 The former president stated that Japan was a trustworthy partner for the United States, as proved by its wholehearted participation in World War I, and concluded by saying, “Japan is playing a great part in the civilized world; a good understanding between her and the United States is essential to international progress.” In his foreword to the pamphlet, Sōga asserted, “The article is most timely at this precise moment when anti-Japanese agitators, basing their arguments on distorted facts, are unjustly fulminating against the Japanese.” He said that his purpose in publishing the pamphlet was to “dispel the mist of misunderstanding which acts as barriers to the friendship between the Americans and Japanese.”50 While it is not certain that the Japanese Consulate requested publication of Roosevelt’s article, by distributing a pamphlet written by one of America’s most respected leaders, Sōga was clearly attempting to counter anti-Japanese sentiments brought about by the 1920 strike. In addition to attempting to influence whites, the Foreign Ministry also pro-

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moted a campaign of education aimed at the acculturation of the Nikkei in the territory, as it had done in the continental United States. In this so-called Americanization Movement, Japanese governmental officials, together with Shibusawa and his elite circle, initially attempted to advocate “external assimilation” (gaimenteki dōka) of the immigrants. This involved helping them adjust their “external appearances” to mainstream American norms—namely, by learning English and adopting American manners, clothing, housing, and sanitation standards so that they would not stand out in public or become the objects of censure or contempt. A letter written by Consul General Yada to Foreign Minister Uchida, manifesting the typical elitist Japanese view of immigrants, is interesting in this context. On August 6, 1920, approximately when Okumura met Shibusawa in Tokyo, Yada wrote Uchida regarding the “propaganda activities” of the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu. He noted that Japanese residents in Hawai‘i were predominantly “lowclass laborers” and that they adhered to the customs of their home country. Their lifestyle and behavior were regarded as unacceptable by mainstream American standards, certain to evoke anti-Japanese emotions in the larger island population. Yada insisted that there was an urgent need for a well-educated and well-respected man to visit Hawai‘i and, through lectures and meetings, inspire the Japanese community to accept American manners and customs. In his letter, Yada also proposed establishing a “patrol” to watch over immigrant manners, behavior, and clothing and, with the cooperation of the police, give warnings to people who did not meet the appropriate standards.51 As this letter reveals, officials in the Japanese government, as well as the people in Shibusawa’s circle, looked down on the immigrants and their adherence to traditional rural ways of life as “boorish,” “uncultured,” and “premodern.” Although they were eager to retain certain aspects of Japanese heritage and cultural identity in the quest of becoming “modern,” many Japanese elite considered Western values as international yardsticks for being “civilized” and viewed Japanese adoption of things Western as liberation from feudal influences that modern Japan had attempted to stamp out.52 In this respect, their perception of Japanese immigrants matched those of the privileged haole segment in the territory. They were therefore willing to cooperate with white leaders in encouraging Hawai‘i’s Japanese to conform to American norms. Takie Okumura and a Campaign of Education To carry out the campaign of education among the Nikkei in the islands, the Honolulu Japanese Consulate needed a “man to visit the Japanese in different towns and inspire them to accept American manners and customs through lectures and meetings,” as suggested in Yada’s letter of August 1920. Takie Okumura stepped forward to perform this role. He began conducting extensive lectures throughout



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the Islands in January 1921, only five months after Yada’s letter was written. Over the next six years, with the financial assistance of the Foreign Ministry, Shibusawa, and Atherton and other elite whites, he tirelessly canvased Maui, Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i, and O‘ahu, disseminating “Americanism” throughout the Japanese community.53 Based on the belief that maintaining harmonious interracial relations was indispensable for building their secure future community, Okumura directed his message at local Japanese, specifically stressing the following two points: (1) They must adopt American virtues and customs, think and act according to the point of view of the American people, and contribute to the prosperity of Hawai‘i as long as they lived under the protection of the United States; (2) Inasmuch as their Nisei children were born in Hawai‘i and expected to live and work here permanently, they should educate and raise them as good loyal citizens of the United States.54 It is no coincidence that these two key points addressed the prevailing worries of the white mainstream in the post-1920 strike period concerning Issei Japanese nationalism and Nisei loyalty to America.55 Okumura held more than sixty meetings per year, ranging from mass lectures to small informal talks. If he found sympathy and approval in an audience at the meetings, he obtained the signatures of supporters.56 Through such person-to-person interaction, he appropriated the techniques of American grassroots political organizing in reaching ordinary folk like plantation laborers. During the early years of his campaign, Okumura directed his message at the Issei generation, asserting both the necessity of the “Americanization” of the immigrant generation and its importance to the Hawai‘i-born generation. Though other Issei intellectuals in that period also discussed Nisei Americanization, Okumura most consistently and energetically spoke about the future of the second generation and directed the attention of the local Japanese masses to this subject. In the fourth year of his campaign, Okumura broadened his argument to include more concrete topics, such as occupational problems and political participation.57 The end result—no doubt much to the satisfaction of the Foreign Ministry, Shibusawa, and Atherton—was that concern for the Americanization of the Nisei generation gradually came to be shared by Hawai‘i’s Japanese population. Okumura also attempted to educate a segment of mainstream white society, much as Harada, Mōri, and Sōga had, but the people he targeted were plantation managers. Whenever he went to a plantation to hold meetings with Japanese laborers, he met with the manager first and told him about the importance of “Americanizing” local Japanese. To help them understand his activities, he also distributed English-language pamphlets. Through such interactions, he formed close ties with the managers and sometimes even mediated between them and Japanese plantation workers. With the help of his son, Umetarō, who served him as an interpreter and translator, he passed along requests to each side—especially laborers’

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needs for better living conditions in camps. This helped both parties to understand each other and maintain good relations.58 It also gained him influence over each side and made it possible for him to effectively carry out his “Americanization” project. Throughout the years of his work on the education campaign, the Foreign Ministry, Shibusawa, and certain white elites sponsored Okumura.59 In addition to travel expenses, the ministry funded publication of Japanese- and English-language pamphlets for distribution among his listeners and prospective supporters.60 After Yada approved his trip to Japan in 1920, his partnership with the Honolulu Japanese Consulate began to develop. In 1933, the Foreign Ministry recommended him for an award in recognition of his services for the betterment of Hawai‘i’s Japanese and the promotion of friendly U.S.–Japan relations.61 In this way, the “plan for the Americanization of the Japanese,” mentioned in Atherton’s letter to Shibusawa, became actualized and was sustained through the collaborative efforts of all his allies—the Foreign Ministry, Shibusawa, and the conciliatory haole leaders. Though this campaign appears to have been conducted solely by one tenacious Issei man, Okumura was in fact part of a transnational social mechanism that extended across the Pacific. Importantly, in his Nikkei campaign, Okumura never referred to “Americanization” (beika in Japanese) as the adoption of superficial aspects of modern American social life. Nor did he advocate the wholesale denial of a Japanese identity so as to blend into Anglo-America. Rather, he regarded beika as the absorption of fundamental American ideals and values while retaining certain Japanese characteristics that meshed well with American culture. This differed from the usual meaning of “Americanization” among white Americans, who expected immigrants to conform completely to the dominant culture until the last vestiges of ethnic culture had disappeared. Based on his belief that Japanese and American identities could be compatible, Okumura hoped that Hawai‘i Nikkei, particularly the second generation, would become an integral part of U.S. society through diligence, perseverance, and loyalty, qualities he saw as strengths of the “Japanese race.”62 This “best of two worlds” argument constituted the core of Okumura’s discussion of how to raise Hawai‘i-born Nisei. Okumura’s perception of an ideal Hawai‘i’s Japanese might have been influenced by internationalist visions embraced by many Western-educated Japanese and liberal American intellectuals during the 1920s. This movement promoted an amicable and harmonious atmosphere between different cultures, particularly between East and West, and encouraged the appropriation of certain dimensions of other cultures into one’s own. Atherton and Shibusawa were part of this cosmopolitan effort—a union of upper-class whites and Asians—particularly with respect to their roles in the formation of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), a



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private international conference and research organization that was created in 1925 and remained active until the late 1950s.63 The IPR’s aim was to develop friendlier relations between countries through dialogues among eminent scholars and civic and business leaders from Asia, Oceania, and the United States, concerning international affairs as well as the latest research on the Pacific region. This organization was also supported by Harada, Sōga, Mōri, and Okumura’s son Umetarō, all of whom served on its various committees.64 Allying with these individuals to promote mutual understanding among people from diverse cultural backgrounds, Okumura naturally sought solutions to the “Japanese problem” in Hawai‘i through conciliation and cooperation between Japanese and whites, and, more generally, between Japan and America. Considering this conciliatory stance, it is not difficult to imagine why Okumura opposed the sugar plantation strike of 1920. Despite harsh criticism from strike supporters, he contended that the action would, in the long run, intensify conflict between local Japanese and whites, especially leaders of the sugar industry. In his criticism of the Japanese Federation of Labor (JFL), the controlling body behind the strike, he called the massive walkout “a battle over self-interest” and refrained from showing sympathy with the struggle of workers.65 In addition, he challenged the prevalent Issei idea that all of Hawai‘i’s Japanese were obliged to support the strike because it was Japanese-led, claiming that such a belief in “racial” solidarity would justify and fuel strife between Japanese and other ethnic groups in Hawai‘i.66 Sharing his view, Issei leaders such as Harada, Mōri, and Sōga also contended that the laborers should restrict themselves to peaceful negotiations with the sugar plantation owners rather than engaging in work stoppage.67 This conciliatory approach—some would say appeasement—was even more manifest during the controversy over Japanese-language schools that occurred between 1919 and 1927. The Second Stage of Cooperation: The Japanese-Language School Problem 1919–1927 While the turmoil caused by the 1920 strike was raging in Hawai‘i, another issue involving Japanese-language schools arose to further complicate the “Japanese problem” in the Islands. Unlike the strike, in which the issue of Issei “racial” solidarity was central, the locus of the language-school controversy lay in the question of Nisei national identity: that is, whether they should be raised as solely American or partly Japanese. By 1919 Japanese-language schools had already become a target of criticism by some whites who claimed that attending the schools hindered the Americanization and English-language acquisition of the Nisei. In November 1920, the Honolulu

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Chamber of Commerce proposed that the Territorial Legislature abolish the language schools. To preserve the institutions for teaching Japanese to the second generation, eighteen Nikkei leaders—including Sōga, Mōri, and Umetarō Okumura— quickly responded by drafting a more lenient bill in place of the original proposal. Their bill was approved by the legislature and enacted as Act 30 of 1920.68 Instead of banning Japanese-language instructions, Act 30 required all Japanese language schools to obtain a permit from the territorial government, limited the hours of instruction, and instituted rigid qualifications for the teachers.69 This law was essentially a compromise. For Japanese, regulating schools was far more acceptable than eradicating them, while for those whites who still wished to close the schools, it seemed a stepping-stone to their ultimate goal. With an eye to impeding the future abolition of the schools, the Honolulu Japanese Consulate took action immediately after the enactment of Act 30. Consul General Yada consulted with Lorrin A. Thurston, president of the Advertiser Publishing Company, and was advised that the best way for local Japanese to ameliorate white–Japanese relations was to demonstrate a cooperative and conciliatory spirit. Thurston stated that he was willing to lend a hand in settling the Japaneselanguage controversy, proposing to work with Issei representative Mōri, Japanese Consul Yada, and Superintendent of the Territorial Department of Public Instruction Vaughan MacCaughey.70 Soon after Yada reported this conversation to Tokyo, the consul actually commissioned Thurston to produce a pamphlet approving the activities of Japaneselanguage schools for the education of the Nisei in Hawai‘i, while allocating over $160 for the project. Published early in 1921, The Language School Question forcefully argued that Nisei children had the right to learn their parents’ language as ethnic Americans. Thurston also contended that whites’ refusal to accept the Japanese as equal members of society—but not Japanese-language education per se—was the major hindrance to the Americanization of Hawai‘i Nikkei. Without acknowledging monetary subventions from Japan’s Foreign Ministry, Thurston distributed 1,500 copies of the pamphlet throughout Hawai‘i, especially to whites critical of the Japanese-language schools.71 After the enactment of Act 30, some local whites and leading Japanese began to work toward reforming the language schools in an attempt to refute the accusations of anti-Americanism. In July 1921, with the backing of white scholars, eighteen Issei intellectuals, including Mōri, Harada, Sōga, and Okumura, organized the first lecture class designed to help Japanese-language teachers prepare for territorial certification examinations.72 About the same time, a committee of six whites and fifteen Issei formed to compile new Japanese-language-school textbooks incorporating American ideals, culture, and history as well as Japanese counterparts.73 In



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short, cooperative measures for managing the language-school controversy were developing. The conciliatory Issei attitude, however, did not wipe out haole apprehensions over the potential Japanese “racial menace.” To further regulate the language schools, allegedly a hotbed of Japanese nationalism, the Territorial Legislature passed even more restrictive legislation in November 1922. Its enactment engendered a stormy discussion over whether local Japanese should test in the courts the constitutionality of the territorial regulations on the language schools. It eventually resulted in splitting Hawai‘i’s Japanese community into two factions. One faction was called hi-shiso-ha (anti-litigation) and was predictably represented by Sōga, Mōri, Harada, and Okumura. Supported by the Japanese consul general, the four men opposed a lawsuit, claiming that it would put an immense strain on the relations between local Japanese and white Americans. The other faction was called shiso-ha (pro-litigation) and was led by Fred Kinzaburō Makino, the publisher of a local Japanese-language newspaper called the Hawaii Hochi. Makino initiated a constitutional challenge to Act 30 and the regulations imposed on the language schools.74 Though he was one of the most popular community leaders among the Nikkei in the Islands, unlike many of his counterparts, Makino did not belong to the elite Issei circles whose center was the consul general. From the perspective of the Honolulu Japanese Consulate, which adopted peacemaking tactics, Makino appeared to be a “troublemaker.” In several letters from the consulate to Tokyo, he was portrayed as “radical” and “inflammatory.”75 Contrary to so-called moderates like Okumura, Makino did not avoid either conflict or confrontation if they were necessary to achieve his agenda. Willing to sacrifice larger causes, like the maintenance of harmonious international and interethnic relations, he prioritized fighting for solutions that would improve the everyday life of the masses. His style was likely derived not only from idealism but also from pragmatic calculations. By designating himself as a “popular leader,” Makino attempted to make a grandstand play to gain influence with other local Issei leaders and to increase the circulation of his newspaper.76 To counter Makino’s activities, the new consul general Yamasaki Keiichi held a joint meeting with his Issei allies and representatives of the language-school association at the Japanese Consulate on December 9, 1922. The diplomat, who had just arrived in Honolulu, hoped that leading Issei moderates would thus persuade parents to abandon the idea of filing suit. Under Yamasaki’s guidance, the fifteen Issei leaders—including Okumura, Harada, Mōri, and Sōga—delivered an official statement that going to court over the language-school issue would severely damage relations between local Japanese and Americans. After listening to the statement

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of the Issei leaders, the diplomat hoped, the parents would change their minds.77 Yamasaki’s attempt, however, was unsuccessful. By the end of the month, Makino did go to court, accompanied by representatives from four language schools. Eventually 88 of the 146 Japanese schools in the territory backed the constitutional challenge. In an attempt to avoid generating further friction between whites and local Japanese, Yamasaki tirelessly engaged in “propaganda” activities after the lawsuit started. To give whites a full account of how Issei leaders had striven to solve the language-school problem peaceably and how “a few ‘radical’ Japanese”78 had initiated the litigation, the diplomat allocated $500 for the publication of A Brief Survey of the Foreign Language School Question (1923).79 This brochure, written by his Issei partners, was widely distributed among influential haole, including legislators, educators, and members of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. To influence public opinion in the local Japanese community, Yamasaki also frequently wrote for the Nippu Jiji.80 In general, his articles reiterated that the language-school litigation would undermine mainstream Americans’ trust of local Japanese, and appealed to immigrant readers to reject the action. Sōga and his loyal Issei allies also denounced the lawsuit in publications and public speeches. As the test case proceeded, this “conciliatory” group continued to work on mainstream Americans. Their endeavor bore fruit, in that more sympathizers emerged among influential whites. For example, in June 1922, when Territorial Delegate Harry A. Baldwin attacked Hawai‘i-born Nisei and questioned their loyalty at hearings in Washington D.C.,81 twenty-seven distinguished haole leaders in various fields sent an open letter to major local newspapers defending the Nisei that stated: “[W]e have been pleased to see you [the Nisei], . . . endeavoring at much trouble and expense to establish proof of your Hawaiian birth and preparing yourselves with the characteristic idealism and enthusiasm of youth, for the responsibilities of citizenship.”82 In this letter, these prominent members of society publicly expressed their trust in young Nisei, whom they referred to as “the first generation of a new type of Americans.” They strove to put an end to the ill feelings of both whites and local Japanese toward each other.83 Likewise, when some haole attempted to divest Hawai‘i Nisei of their American citizenship in August 1923, the Honolulu Ad Club and the Rotary Club criticized this racist attempt and jointly offered resolutions to protect the rights of native-born Nisei.84 In spite of the various efforts of the “moderates,” however, the pro-litigation party attracted great enthusiasm from the local Japanese masses, and Makino gained enormous popularity, which, among other things, led to a vast increase in the number of subscriptions to his newspaper.85 Over the years of litigation, shiso-ha and hi-shiso-ha factions vigorously criticized and attacked one another’s positions. Each publisher of one of the two leading local Japanese newspapers



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represented an opposing faction—Makino of the Hawaii Hochi and Sōga of the Nippu Jiji—and thus both papers served as arenas for the stormy debate. This dispute also contributed to focusing the attention of the local Japanese community on the questions of how to educate the Nisei and what they were supposed to become as Japanese born in Hawai‘i. With this shift in the public interest, the so-called Japanese problem became synonymous with the “Nisei problem” in the minds of both Japanese and whites in Hawai‘i during the 1920s. In February of 1927, the United States Supreme Court ruled that regulating foreign-language schools was unconstitutional. The plaintiff Makino and his supporters celebrated their victory over the Territorial Legislature and their moderate rivals in the community. Nonetheless, the end of the Japanese-language school litigation did not conclude discussion of the “Nisei problem” nor did it terminate the activities of the “moderates.” The community struggle among Issei leaders instead entered a new phase. Only five months after the Supreme Court decision, Okumura came to terms with his defeat by reassuming the leadership role pertaining to the “Nisei problem.” In July 1927, he inaugurated the New Americans Conference, a soon-to-become annual conference solely intended for Hawai‘i-born Nisei. At the six-day conference, second-generation delegates, each selected from a different district of the territory, discussed issues that concerned all Hawai‘i Nisei, including education, occupation, marriage, and political participation. The conference also provided the delegates with an opportunity to hear advice from prominent white American, local Japanese, and Japanese leaders in various fields—for example, statesmen, businessmen, and educators—and exchange opinions with them. This annual conference, held thanks to the united efforts of mostly familiar faces— Harada, Sōga, Mōri, Atherton, and the Japanese consul general—was a further development of preexisting Japanese–white collaboration. As numbers of Nisei subsequently played an active role in Hawai‘i’s society as full-fledged citizens, the trans-Pacific partnership was to reap a rich harvest, despite its abrupt demise in December 1941. Conclusion This essay delineates the development of the transnational and interracial joint cooperation organized to resolve the so-called Japanese problem in the Territory of Hawai‘i during the 1920s. The Japanese Foreign Ministry, Shibusawa, local Japanese leaders, and white leaders were all involved in a campaign of education that followed a similar pattern to ones conducted in the continental United States several years earlier. In the process, they developed a quadripartite relationship, working together behind the scenes toward the shared goal of “Americanizing” the Nikkei and promoting a pro-Japanese sentiment among whites in Hawai‘i. Each party ap-

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peared to work on its own, concealing both the Japanese government’s involvement in the campaign and the systematic interactions among the four from the general American public. Such secrecy was necessary if their activities were to avoid suspicion and their missions to succeed. Because of the confidentiality of the project, the partnership among the four parties has remained mostly unknown, and thus been given little scholarly attention. Although mutually cooperative, each of the four had different reasons for taking part in this effort. Economic concerns largely drove the Foreign Ministry and Shibusawa to reduce strife between Americans and the subjects of Japan in order to encourage cordial U.S.–Japan relations. Likewise, self-interested haole elites collaborated with Foreign Ministry officials and Issei leaders in the hope of pacifying immigrant laborers’ militancy and confining the local Japanese masses to the lower end of society. They were attempting to protect the sugar industry and the existing social structure. Like elite Japanese and officials in Tokyo, these white leaders’ perceptions of Japanese/local Japanese were class-bound; they were willing to socialize with and cooperate with upper-class Japanese beyond the differences of race. On the other hand, the main concern of Issei leaders—Okumura, Harada, Mōri, and Sōga—revolved around securing a better future for local Japanese. Though caring about the diplomatic relations between their homeland and the United States, they were primarily concerned about empowering the Nikkei in the Islands. In particular, Okumura—though he himself belonged to the so-called privileged class—did not simply try to persuade the local Japanese masses to become Americanized, but rather strove to improve their lives by mediating between the elite and the working classes as well as between whites and Japanese. In this way, for these immigrant leaders, Japanese–white collaboration provided an arena for demonstrating their leadership and directing the local Japanese community in the direction chosen by them. For the Issei population, the 1920 strike, the language-school controversy, and the resultant education campaign revealed a type of community formation that conformed to the visions of Hawai‘i’s haole and Japanese elites. Key Issei leaders— Harada, Mōri, Sōga, and Okumura—took it upon themselves to construct an ethnic community based on a specific set of values and presumptions agreeable to their sponsors and allies in Hawai‘i’s Big Five corporations and Japan’s Foreign Ministry. Yet, this is not to say that these immigrant leaders simply submitted to the demands or inducements of the white ruling class and the Japanese state. They had their own reasons for and beliefs in doing what they did, and through their cooperative efforts, the four men projected their own ideal of a Japanese resident in Hawai‘i, whether as imperial subject or American citizen. Such a representation and construction of the collective self was not the only



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vision for the Japanese in Hawai‘i, however. Indeed, as exemplified by those who criticized Okumura, a counter-image was modeled by Issei labor leaders and strikers who envisioned a radically different ethnic community that valued class ties in the local context over broader diplomatic or cultural issues. Whereas the four immigrant leaders opted for cooperation with white and Japanese elites in order to facilitate their version of community formation through reconciliation with the dominant society and the betterment of international relations, the Japanese Federation of Labor and its supporters posited a class-based community.86 They concentrated on economic advancement for the masses at the cost of more general white–Japanese relations. Similarly, Makino found it more important to protect the rights of the Issei to teach their native language to their children than to maintain conciliatory relations with mainstream society. This clash between the competing notions of community as conceived by different groups of Nikkei leaders was clearly expressed in the 1920 strike and the language-school controversy. Being on good terms with influential whites, the “moderates” have often been regarded as servile to the privileged class in local Japanese history. Similarly, the “radicals” have tended to become essentialized as heroes and martyrs. As this essay has demonstrated, the historical reality of Hawai‘i Nikkei was far more complicated than either characterization. To fully understand the multilayered reality of their history, it is crucial to look at the thinking and practices of historical agents from diverse perspectives and examine their hidden motives and objectives. This study is an attempt to reveal the intricacy of Hawai‘i Nikkei history, by exploring Issei efforts from an international dimension, in hope of shedding new light on the accounts still left in the dark recesses of the past.

Notes 1. Shibusawa got acquainted with Atherton when he stopped over in Honolulu in October 1915 on the way to San Francisco to attend the Panama Memorial Exposition. When Atherton visited Tokyo in November 1917, Shibusawa held a dinner reception for him at the Tokyo Bank Club. See Seien Kinen Zaidan Ryūmon Sha, ed., Shibusawa Eiichi Denki Shiryō (Tokyo: Shibusawa Eiichi Denki Shiryō Kankōkai, 1960), 33:27–28, 476–478; hereafter cited as SEDS. 2. Ibid., 542–543. 3. Ibid., 542. 4. For further details of the “Japanese problem,” see Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (New York: Atheneum, 1973). 5. Shibusawa served as the president of many international goodwill organizations in Japan, such as the France-Japanese Society, the Japan-India Society, the Japanese Rumanian

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Commercial Relations Committee, and the League of Nations Association of Japan. See SEDS, vols. 34–40. 6. Michio Yamaoka, “Taiheiyo Mondai Chosakai” Kenkyu (Tokyo: Ryukeisho-sha, 1997), 42; “Taiheiyo Mondai Chosakai ni okeru Katsudo,” in Koeki no Tsuikyu-sha Shibusawa Eiichi, ed. Shibusawa Kenkyu-kai (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1999), 196–208. 7. For further information on Okumura’s life, see his bilingual biography, Fusa Nakagawa, Tosa kara Hawai he: Okumura Takie no kiseki/From Tosa to Hawaii: The Footsteps of Takie Okumura (Kochi: Kochi Shimbun Kigyo, 2000). 8. When Okumura went to Japan in 1917 to solicit donations for the construction of the YMCA, Shibusawa, in sympathy with the minister’s belief in maintaining harmonious international/interracial relations, initiated fund-raising among the elite Japanese circles. See Nippu Jiji, Hawai Dōhō Hatten Kaikoshi (Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1921), 177; Takie Okumura, Onchō Shichijyū Nen (Kyoto: Naigai Shuppan, 1937), 41–47; SEDS, 42:292–301. 9. Takie Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problems: A Campaign to Remove Causes of Friction between the American People and Japanese (Honolulu: n.p., 1921), 2–3. 10. This assimilation theory was developed by sociologists of the Chicago School including Robert Park. For details, see Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 11. Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 52–69. 12. While most American scholars depict Okumura as a propagandist for American assimilation and servile to white plantation owners, some of them, at the same time, seem to be aware of the importance of examining the complex nature of Okumura’s activities. See Gary Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), xiv. 13. See Noriko Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi: Nichibei Kankei kara mita Hawai ni okeru Hainichi Yobō Keihatsu Undō,” Nihon Jyoshi Daigaku Kiyō 43 (1994). The Dōshisha University group include the following: Sugii Rokurō, Iida Kojirō, Motoi Yasuhiro, Okita Yukuji, Sakaguchi Mitsuhiro, and Yoshida Ryō. See Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūsho, comp., Hawai ni okeru Nikkeijin Shakai to Kirisuto Kyōkai no Hensen (Kyoto: Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūsho, 1991). Also see the last two chapters of Masayo Umezawa Duus, The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 14. Izumi Hirobe’s Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001) also deals with trans-Pacific partnership developed among Japanese elite, Tokyo officials, and white leaders who aimed at removing Japanese–white conflicts on the West Coast during the interwar period. Different from Hirobe’s work, my study discusses the involvement of Japanese immigrant leaders in the partnership as well as focuses on a Hawai‘i case. 15. See Duus, Japanese Conspiracy. For further information on the 1920 strike, see Ronald Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii 1835–1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983). 16. See Acting Consul General Furuya’s letter to Uchida, dated March 1, 1920, in “Beikoku ni okeru Hainichi Mondai Zakken: Hawai no bu,” The Japanese American Research



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Project (JARP) Collection, Reel 710, University of California Los Angeles Library; Duus, Japanese Conspiracy, 81–83; Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 43. 17. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, January 20, 1920. See also ibid., January 30, 1920, and Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 13, 1920. 18. Ryukichi Kihara, Hawai Nihonjin Shi (Tokyo: Bunseisha, 1935), 687, 691; Okihiro, Cane Fires, 78–81. For further discussion on Japanese immigrant nationalism in Hawai‘i during the prewar years, see chapters 2 and 3 of John J. Stephan, “Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1984). 19. Yada to Uchida, October 13, 1920. Beikoku ni okeru Hainichi Mondai Zakken: Hawai ni okeru Gaikokugo Gakkō, Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo. Yada’s predecessor also reported to Tokyo that labor leader Tsutsumi’s alleged statement regarding the battleship Yakumo might well give American society another reason to believe in Japan’s involvement in and backing for the strike. See Furuya to Uchida, March 1, 1920. 20. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 45–69. 21. Edna Bonacich, “Asian Labor in the Development of California and Hawaii,” in Labor Immigration under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States before World War II, ed. Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 157–178. 22. For further details about Asian exclusion on the West Coast, see Daniels, Politics of Prejudice. 23. Bonacich, “Asian Labor in the Development of California and Hawaii,” 178–182. 24. Nippu Jiji, Hawai Dōhō Hatten Kaikoshi, 25. 25. Hawai Shimpōsha, Hawai Nihonjin Nenkan: Dai Jyūkyū-kai (Honolulu: Hawai Shimpōsha, 1925), 25. 26. In 1920, about 39 percent of the 163 Japanese-language schools were Buddhistsponsored, most of them affiliated with the Hongwanji sect, the largest denomination in Hawai‘i. See Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 155. 27. Ibid., 146; Kihara, Hawai Nihonjin Shi, 659–669, 689; Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 43. 28. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, June 7, 1922; Duus, Japanese Conspiracy, 284. 29. Ernest K. Wakukawa, A History of the Japanese People in Hawaii (Honolulu: The Toyo Shoin, 1938), 361–364. 30. The Japanese American Relations Committee was inaugurated by Shibusawa in February 1916 in the hope of “bring[ing] about a better understanding between the people of Japan and the people of the United States of America.” See Kyūgorō Obata, An Interpretation of the Life of Viscount Shibusawa (Tokyo: Tokyo Insatsu Kabushiki Kaisha, 1937), 208. 31. Takie Okumura, Hawai ni okeru Nichibei Mondai Kaiketsu Undō, 6th ed. (Kyoto: Naigai Shuppan, 1937), 10–12, 88; hereafter cited as Nichibei. Also see SEDS, 33:536; Rokurō Sugii, “Hainichi Yobō Keihatsu Undō,” Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisuto Kyō Undō shi (Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1991), 105–108; Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 47. 32. Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 46, 49. 33. Mikiso Hane, Modern Japan: A Historical Survey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), 142–143.

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34. Asahi Shimbunsha, Asahi Nenkan (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1925), 340. 35. Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 171–183. 36. Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885–1924 (New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1988), 190–196; Azuma, Between Two Empires, 52. 37. Hane, Modern Japan, 142–143. 38. Sueo Iwaya, Tobei Jitsugyōdan-shi (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1910); SEDS, 32:5–490; Masao Kimura, “Minkan Keizai Gaikō Shidōsha to shite no Shibusawa Eiichi (2),” Shibusawa Kenkyū 2 (1990): 3–23. 39. Ichioka, The Issei, 131. 40. For example, when Atherton came to Japan to attend the third meeting of the Institute of Pacific Relations, an international conference held in Kyoto in 1929, he also visited Shibusawa’s villa in Asukayama to discuss Japanese immigration issues. See SEDS, 35:146– 153; Katagiri, “Shibusawa Eiichi to Kokumin Gaikō.” 41. For further information on the visits of American VIPs to Shibusawa’s villa, see SEDS, vols. 33–35. For details of Scharrenberg’s visit, see SEDS, 39:638–647. 42. Ichioka, The Issei, 176–196; Azuma, Between Two Empires, 50–53. 43. Beikoku ni okeru Hainichi Mondai Zakken: Hawai ni okeru Gaikokugo Gakkō (1919–), Diplomatic Records Office, Tokyo; hereafter cited as DRO. 44. SEDS, 33:583–602. 45. The ministry agreed to pay Harada following negotiations with Shibusawa and Consul General Yamasaki. See the letters from the Honolulu Japanese Consulate to Foreign Minister Keishiro Matsui (June 28, 1923, November 4, 1923, December 18, 1923, December 24, 1923, April 4, 1924, and May 15, 1925) in JARP Reel 36, Hainichi Zakken: Hawai no bu. 46. See the financial report dated January 7, 1921, in Senden Kankei Zakken: Honoruru/ Manira, DRO, as well as Senden Kankei Zakken, DRO. 47. The Nippu Jiji started publishing columns in English from January 1919 in the hope of “bring[ing] about mutual understanding between the Japanese and the Americans, and to maintain more amicable relation between them.” See the Nippu Jiji, January 4, 1919. 48. Yada to Uchida, August 6, 1920, Senden Kankei Zakken: Honoruru/Manira. 49. The article “What the Japanese Have Stood for in the World War” first appeared in the New York Times on November 30, 1919, after the former president’s death. It was reprinted by the Nippu Jiji courtesy of the New York Times. 50. Theodore Roosevelt, What the Japanese Have Stood for in the World War (Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1920). 51. Yada to Uchida, August 6, 1920, Senden Kankei Zakken: Honoruru/Manira. 52. On this topic, see Jon Thares Davidann, A World of Crisis and Progress: The American YMCA in Japan, 1890–1930 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1998), 172–173; and Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), esp. 3–22. For further discussion on Japanese officials’ biases toward Issei, see Azuma, Between Two Empires, 37–39. 53. Okumura, Nichibei. Also see Sugii, “Hainichi Yobō Keihatsu Undō,” 69–147.



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54. Okumura, Nichibei, 12. 55. For details of prevailing white concerns about local Japanese, see Consul General Yada’s letter of October 13, 1920, in Beikoku ni okeru Hainichi Mondai Zakken: Hawai ni okeru Gaikokugo Gakkō. 56. Okumura, Nichibei, 13; Sugii, “Hainichi Yobō Keihatsu Undō,” 73, 108–134. 57. Okumura, Nichibei, 42. 58. According to Okumura, both plantation managers and Japanese laborers appreciated his efforts of mediation. See Okumura to Shibusawa, dated February 18, 1924, in SEDS, 33:545. 59. For instance, when his lecture trips began in 1921, the Honolulu Japanese Consulate newly allocated $6,000—more than for the activities of Harada, Mōri, and Sōga in the same year—for “a campaign of education intended for the Japanese,” as indicated in Senden Kankei Zakken. It is highly probable that this money was meant to finance Okumura’s lecture trips. Further donations were made by Shibusawa and the Atherton, Castle, Cooke, and Westervelt families. For example, Okumura received $478 (1,000 yen) from Shibusawa in 1922 and $1,000 from George Castle in 1923. See Okumura to Shibusawa, dated August 7, 1922, and February 18, 1924, in SEDS, 33:544–546. 60. In the report on his first year, Okumura stated: “Because Consul General Yada also recommended compiling the reports [of the first year of his campaign] and endowed the fund for publication, I published a thirty-two page Hawaii ni okeru Nichibei Kaiketsu Undō: Daiichinen Hōkoku (the campaign for resolving U.S.–Japan problems: first year) and sent them to distinguished Americans like the President of the United States”; see Okumura, Nichibei, 57. Likewise, in August 1925, presumably funded by the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu, he published another pamphlet titled Hawaii ni okeru Nichibei Kaiketsu Undō, a compilation of his writings about his educational campaign over four years. According to its financial report, the Honolulu Japanese Consulate spent $119 on “the publication of the campaign of education for local Japanese” in the approximately same month this pamphlet came out. See Aoki to Uchida, October 1925, in Hojyo Dantai Shūshi Keisansho Kankei Zakken, DRO. 61. Kenji Okuda to Uchida, July 29, 1933, Hompō Hyōshō Kankei Zakken, DRO. 62. Okumura, Nichibei, 185; Rakuen Jihō, January 1931; Ryō Yoshida, “Okumura Takie to Nikkei Shimin Kaigi,” Hawai ni okeru Nikkeijin Shakai to Kirisuto Kyōkai no Hensen, 66; Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 45. 63. For further discussion on the IPR, see Paul F. Hooper, Elusive Destiny: The Internationalist Movement in Modern Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980); Rediscovering the IPR: Proceedings of the First International Research Conference on the Institute of Pacific Relations (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994). 64. Keihō (Yasutarō) Sōga, Gojūnenkan no Hawaii Kaiko (Honolulu: Gojūnenkan no Hawaii Kaiko Kankō Kai, 1953), 388. 65. Rakuen Jihō, June 1920. 66. Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 44. 67. In February 1920, the distinguished Christian minister Robert Palmer, who viewed the strike as “a racial conflict” and was concerned about the nationalistic solidarity of local

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Japanese, proposed a plan to both the JFL and the HSPA (Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association) to end the strike. Mōri, Sōga, and Harada supported this plan. See Sōga, Gojūnenkan no Hawaii Kaiko, 316. 68. Gijyō Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakkō Kyōiku-shi (Honolulu: Hawai Kyōiku-kai, 1972), 121. 69. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 147–148. 70. See Yada’s letters dated November 20, 1920, and December 18, 1920, in Hainichi Zakken. Also, for another example of Thurston’s mediation, see Yukuji Okita, Hawai Nikkei Imin no Kyōikushi (Kyoto: Minerva Shobō, 1997), 181. 71. See Senden Kankei Zakken and Hainichi Zakken, JARP Reel 35. 72. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakkō Kyōiku-shi, 123–124; Okita, Hawai Nikkei Imin no Kyōikushi, 184. 73. Okita, Hawai Nikkei Imin no Kyōikushi, 187–190. 74. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakkō Kyōiku-shi, 126–140; Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 146–151. 75. See Consul General Yamasaki Keiichi’s letters dated August 21, 1922, October 8, 1922, and November 20, 1922, as well as the letter of acting Vice-Consul Furuya Eiichi of November 7, 1919. Further, according to his letter to Uchida, Yamasaki suspected that the parents of children going to the Palama School, the first Japanese-language school filing a suit, were in fact incited to litigate by bribes from Makino. For further details, see his letter dated December 28, 1922. All letters are in Hainichi Zakken, JARP Reel 43. 76. According to an editorial of August 15, 1925, the Hawaii Hochi suffered by losing subscriptions immediately after the 1920 strike because it “debunked” the “dissipated lives” of JFL (the Japanese Federation of Labor) members, the nucleus of the walkout. In retaliation, the editorial says, the JFL incited Japanese plantation laborers, the main readers of the Hochi, to boycott the paper. After the emergence of the Japanese-language school problem, this newspaper company, which fought for the rights of the local Japanese masses, gradually revived. For details, see Hawaii Hochi, Hawaii Hochi Sōkan Shichijū-go Shūnen Kinenshi (Honolulu: Hawaii Hochi, 1987), 265–268. 77. Yamasaki to Uchida, December 24, 1922, Hainichi Zakken, JARP Reel 43. 78. Japanese Educational Association of Hawaii, A Brief Survey of the Foreign Language School Question (Honolulu: Nippu Jiji, 1923), n.p. 79. Commissioned by the Foreign Ministry, the Japanese Educational Association of Hawaii compiled A Brief Survey of the Foreign Language School Question in March 1923. See Yamasaki’s letter of March 3, 1923, in Hainichi Zakken, JARP Reel 43. 80. For example, see the Nippu Jiji, July 13, 1923. 81. The article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin of June 7, 1922, states that at the hearings, “Baldwin pointed out that Japanese industrial control would be followed by political control, thus threatening the value of the islands . . . he pointed out that the Japanese were not assimilated by the American population, even those born in Hawaii maintaining their racial isolation.” 82. This letter appeared in the Nippu Jiji, June 30, 1922, and in the Honolulu Advertiser, July 1, 1922.



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83. “Speaks Trust in Japanese Born in Hawaii: Open Letter of Confidence Follows Baldwin’s Reported Disparagement,” the Honolulu Advertiser, July 1, 1922. 84. Yamasaki to Uchida, August 10, 1923, in Hainichi Zakken Hawai no bu: Gaikokugo Gakkō Mondai, JARP Reel 36. 85. Celebrating the victory in the litigation, the prosperous Hochi expanded its business and purchased adjacent buildings and the latest model of printing press. For details, see Hawaii Hochi, Hawaii Hochi Sōkan Shichijū-go Shūnen Kinenshi, 265–268. 86. For further discussion on the trans-Pacific cooperation, especially the efforts in the post-litigation period, such as the New Americans Conference and the Back-to-theFarm Movement, see Hiromi Monobe, Shaping an Ethnic Leadership: Takie Okumura and the “Americanization” of the Nisei in Hawai‘i, 1919–1945 (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2004).

C hap t e r 6

Social, Cultural, and Spiritual Struggles of the Japanese in Hawai‘i The Case of Okumura Takie and Imamura Yemyo and Americanization Shimada Noriko

During the interwar period, social as well as spiritual dynamics operated in the rivalry between Buddhists and Christians within the Japanese community in Hawai‘i. The Japanese population in the American territory steadily increased, and in 1920 the Japanese numbered 109,000, nearly half (42.7%) of Hawai‘i’s population. By 1940, it would increase to 158,000 (37.3%).1 During these years, two spiritual leaders, Imamura Yemyo (1867–1932) of Honpa Hongwanji Mission and Okumura Takie (1865–1951) of Makiki Christian Church, were conspicuous among the Japanese. They appear to stand for different sets of Japanese ideas and values in the face of tense social conditions and changing international relations between Japan and the United States. How did they respond to the critical issues of the period such as nationalism, citizenship, ethnicity, and spirituality? What did their responses mean? What were their contributions to the struggles of the beikaundou, or “Americanization” movement, in the Japanese community? This chapter examines Imamura’s and Okumura’s ideas and strategies to meet the rising anti-Japanese feelings in Hawai‘i and Japanese issues such as the foreignlanguage school laws, the O‘ahu Sugar Strike of 1920, and the dual (Japanese and American) citizenship of second-generation Japanese, the Nisei. The essay analyzes the two leaders’ ideas and criteria of Americanization, and what they did to advance the Americanization movement. Finally, it considers how the activities of the Japanese in Hawai‘i reflected the changes in Japan–U.S. relations and the involvement of Shibusawa Eiichi (1840–1931), the giant in Japanese business circles and leader of “people-to-people diplomacy,” in Japanese issues in Hawai‘i. By 1920, the Hawaiian Islands had become an important crossroads between Japan and the United States regarding the issue of Japanese immigration. Imamura Yemyo was born into a Buddhist priest’s family in Fukui Prefecture.



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After graduating from a Hongwanji Buddhist school in 1890, then Keio University in Tokyo with a major in English in 1893, he worked as an English teacher for five years. He then became a Buddhist missionary of the Honpa Hongwanji sect and came to Hawai‘i in 1899. The official and earnest missionary work of the Honpa Hongwanji had begun only two years before, and there were only a few temples in Hawai‘i at that time. Imamura was deeply distressed to see Christian missionary work among the Japanese immigrants.2 After he became bishop the following year, he started to counter this influence by establishing temples throughout the Islands. He also organized the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) and began to publish its monthly organ, The Dobo, in 1900. He also helped establish Japaneselanguage schools attached to the temples: there were thirty-five such schools in 1916.3 In addition, Imamura not only organized the Pan-Pacific Buddhist Youth Conference, the International Buddhist Institute, and the Hawaii Japanese Library, but also participated in founding various ethnic organizations such as the Prince Hushimi Memorial Scholarship, the Japanese Charity Association, and the Japanese Charity Hospital, together with others, including Christian leader Okumura. As a result, he became one of the most prominent and influential leaders in the Japanese community. In fact, Imamura came to be regarded as the guardian of Japanese religion and guided Japanese immigrants until his death in 1932. His greatest concern was to firmly plant Buddhism in Hawai‘i and transmit it to the Nisei, as well as to propagate Buddhist beliefs to white Americans. The Honpa Hongwanji Mission was by far the largest sect in Hawai‘i, and Bishop Imamura was the leader of the entire Buddhist community, with a large majority of Japanese immigrants being Hongwanji followers (about 70% in 1916).4 Scholars have long regarded Bishop Imamura as the defender not only of Buddhism but also of Japanese values and ethnic solidarity. Together with Makino Kinzaburou of the Hawaii Hochi, Imamura served as a spokesperson of the Japanese masses at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, siding with the Japanese sugar strikers in 1920 and the litigants over the control of the Japanese-language school in 1923–1927. Imamura’s rival, Okumura Takie, was born into a lower-class samurai family in Kochi Prefecture. His father was a county magistrate and gave his son a strict Confucian education. This upbringing as a samurai seems to have provided him a lifelong basis for his thinking and behavior, including his perception of Christianity and Americanization. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, with his family in ruins, young Okumura was forced to go to Osaka to seek a new way of life. He then joined the democratization movement to found the National Diet (the Jiyuuminken Movement), being influenced by its leader, Kataoka Kenkichi, who was related to Okumura.5 Kataoka was a Christian, and under his influence Okumura was baptized in 1889. The next year he entered the Theological School of Dōshisha

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University in Kyoto. He came to Hawai‘i as a missionary right after graduating in 1894. Okumura first became vice-pastor, then pastor of the Nuuanu Congregational Church in downtown Honolulu. Ten years later he left and organized a new church, Makiki Christian Church, in the then suburban area of the city. Makiki Church quickly increased its membership from 443 members in 1914 to 742 in 1926.6 Okumura’s influence grew in the Japanese community as he organized the first Japanese kindergarten in 1895, and in 1896 the first Japanese elementary school in Honolulu, as well as dormitories for the Japanese youth from sugar plantations outside Honolulu and from other islands. He also participated in organizing the Japanese Temperance League and the Japanese Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), as well as the Prince Hushimi Memorial Scholarship, the Japanese Charity Association, and the Japanese Charity Hospital. The Reverend Okumura, unlike Imamura, had a congregation of only several hundred in his Honolulu church, but this institution was the largest among Japanese Christian churches and had a much stronger influence than its membership would indicate because of his social activities and his contact with haole (white) society. Okumura has been regarded as the minority leader who advocated assimilation into American culture, especially as Christians. He has been criticized as an accommodationist and a promoter of mainstream society, encouraging Japanese immigrants to forgo their ethnic culture and identity. Okumura was a puppet leader, it is said, subservient to the dominant haole establishment and seeking to maintain the status quo at the expense of those on the bottom rungs of society. Thus, he refused to support the Japanese strikers and sided with the anti-litigation language schools. Many scholars have emphasized the rivalry between Imamura and Okumura, as they certainly represented contrasting viewpoints in their approaches to Americanization issues. In particular, Okumura’s arguments and practices for Americanization have been severely criticized by researchers.7 For example, Louis H. Hunter and Roland Kotani write that Okumura’s “Americanization” was the same as Christianization, and that Okumura led the Japanese to sacrifice Japanese religion, values, customs, and way of life. Gail Nomura and Gary Okihiro also negatively view Okumura’s Enlightenment Campaign as an effort to accommodate the Japanese to the status quo of haole control. On the other hand, Yoshida Ryo concludes that, while Okumura’s “Americanization” meant to learn the best qualities of American culture based on Christianity, he never advocated uncritical, slavish adoption of American culture. Rather, Okumura tried to propagate Christianity among the Japanese on the basis of Japanese samurai ethics.8 In contrast to Okumura, the Buddhist leader Imamura has attracted much less scholarly attention. Imamura’s leadership in the interwar period has been little studied, except for Louis H. Hunter’s book and the more recent contribution by



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Moriya Tomoe.9 Both scholars evaluate Imamura very positively. In Hunter’s opinion, Imamura was “one of the most extraordinary religious leaders in Hawaiian history,” while Moriya depicts Imamura as the ingenious founder of Americanized Buddhism.10 Yet there are no serious studies from a comparative viewpoint on the Okumura and Imamura rivalry, especially their ideas and activities of Americanization— how and to what extent they differed, not to mention what they had in common. Thus, it will be beneficial to compare the two leaders to assess their contributions to the struggle of Americanization, and to clarify the meaning of Japanese responses to the critical issues of the interwar period. Movement toward Americanization by the Japanese Themselves The key concept in this chapter is Americanization. During the 1920s the term “Americanization” was used in very different ways by haole Americanizers, Japanese immigrants, and political leaders in Japan. As white Americanizers used the term, it meant “haole-directed and –controlled assimilation . . . to maintain minority control of Hawaii,” and was accompanied by an implication of eliminating immigrants’ own ethnic culture.11 On the other hand, beika-undou, or the Americanization movement, as advocated by immigrants themselves, meant “self-directed and -controlled” efforts to acculturate themselves to the mainstream values and ways of life. It was “self-directed” in their efforts to cope with the pressure from the haole Americanizers. Sakaguchi Mitsuhiro defines beika-undou as follows: “Beika-undou is a generic term for the counter efforts of Japanese immigrants to Americanize themselves as much as possible to face Americanization propaganda of the host society. Characteristically, they did not surrender to the oppressive assimilation pressure from the outside and change their [Japanese] creeds and customs against their will, but voluntarily adopted [American] creeds and customs that they judged indispensable for harmonious coexistence with American people. . . .”12 This concept may be close to Eileen Tamura’s “acculturation,” which she differentiates from the haole usage of Americanization. She understands Japanese beika-undou, not in terms of assimilation to the mainstream, but in terms of “acculturation.” She writes: “Acculturation refers to the adaptation of a group to American middle-class norms and assumes that the process entails the persistence of ethnic identity.”13 The term “Americanization” was used in still another way by leaders in Japan like Shibusawa Eiichi. They supported Japanese immigrants’ efforts to Americanize themselves, not for the good of the immigrants, but as a means to maintain good relations with the United States. They were rather indifferent to the immigrants’ needs and their desire to maintain ethnic culture. Therefore, we should be careful when we use the term “Americanization,” differentiating between the interpre-

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tation of haole Americanizers, that of the leaders in Japan, and that of Japanese immigrants themselves (beika-undou). In this essay it is used mostly in terms of beika-undou. In Hawai‘i, the Americanization of Japanese immigrants by themselves started in the late 1900s, responding to the ban imposed on their sailing to the mainland in 1907 and the Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1908. Even the Buddhist magazine, The Dobo, began to carry articles urging its readers to Americanize and advising, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” in order not to invite anti-Japanese feelings.14 For them, as was mentioned above, Americanization did not mean submission to haole control; they regarded Americanization as a mutual process of creating a new American culture. The Dobo insisted that Americanization was a two-way process in which Japanese culture, especially Buddhism, naturally and positively influenced that of the host society, while in turn the immigrants should respect the host society and adjust to the Western ways of life, while keeping religious faith as Buddhists.15 Among the Japanese in Hawai‘i, the advocacy to settle permanently and seek harmonious racial relations with haole society increased during the 1910s. For example, “Japanese schools” transformed themselves into “Japanese-language schools,” stopped using textbooks authorized by the Japanese Ministry of Education, and began to publish their own textbooks suitable for children born in Hawai‘i.16 They decided to bring up their children as good American citizens who were loyal to the United States. In 1915, at the inaugural ceremony of the newly organized Hawaii Kyouiku Kai (Japanese Language School Association), Okumura made a speech in which he said: “All the children born in Hawaii should be brought up in Hawaii, and in due time we should let them make great strides towards the U.S. mainland. For that purpose we should let them secure U.S. citizenship at any cost. Indeed, citizenship will be the first step to safeguard [the] rights and interests of the Japanese. In conclusion, I do wish that Japanese schools be purely language schools in order not to harm the future of our children.”17 On this occasion, both Okumura and Imamura were present as honorary members, and Imamura would have agreed with Okumura’s speech. It is interesting that at this moment Okumura foresaw the Nisei’s advancement to the U.S. continent, leaving sugar plantations in Hawai‘i and transcending their status as immigrant laborers. Americanization was not exclusively Okumura’s. It should be emphasized that in 1916 Imamura joined the Japanese Enlightenment Movement for assimilation supported by Japanese YMCA members. Imamura said that he had refrained from joining the movement lest Buddhist participation should confuse it, and that when two representatives from the YMCA came to him asking for his cooperation, he found it a suitable opportunity. After ascertaining the nonreligious nature of its activities, he decided to support it openly.18 In addition, the Honpa Hongwanji



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Mission adopted new guidelines for its priests, encouraging them to promote the Nisei’s renunciation of Japanese nationality and to support the general Americanization movement by the Japanese.19 In 1918, Imamura even published an essay in English entitled “To the American Public,” in which he proclaimed Honpa Hongwanji Mission’s position on Americanization and referred to the need for an enlightenment campaign targeted at the Issei (first-generation Japanese). Imamura explained: “To start an educational campaign throughout the island, with the Japanese parents as its object, is the only and sure way of Americanizing this territory. The responsibility lies on the shoulders of the whole community. . . . I take here the liberty of announcing in no ambiguous terms that our mission as a whole advocates Americanizing the people of this territory in every possible way.”20 So, though it was Okumura who would start such “an educational campaign throughout the island” soon after the war, Imamura, not Okumura, first mentioned it. Imamura could have started it, but he was not confident of carrying it out. He confessed: “I, more than anybody else, am aware of my incompetence in carrying on this work. Born as a Japanese, brought up as a Japanese, I am a Japanese through and through.”21 It is probable that Okumura read Imamura’s essay and was inspired to carry out the campaign, though of course in a very different way from what Imamura would have conceived. In the same essay, Imamura also pointed out some evil tendencies of the immigrants’ community. According to him, the foremost evil was “the lack of singleminded loyalty.” He explained: “Immigrants have to attend to two countries, to live dual nationalities, to serve dual cultures. This is inevitable, but none the less lamentable.”22 The second evil was “sociological, psychological, and vocational” restlessness: “They must be taught to settle, to concentrate, to make a choice once for all and abide in it.”23 Interestingly, at this time Imamura insisted not on social and vocational mobility but on settlement. Okumura would have heartily agreed with him. It should be emphasized that before World War I we cannot discern much difference on the issue of Americanization between the opinions of Christian Okumura and Buddhist Imamura, as they both openly supported the acculturation of the Issei community and the expatriation of Nisei’s Japanese nationality. The Rise of Anti-Japanese Agitation during and after World War I The social situation drastically changed during World War I. The wartime slogan of 100 percent Americanization (“One Flag, One Language”) gained momentum in the United States and produced intolerant pressure on “un-American” new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. After the war, the “Yellow Peril” propaganda also stirred up anti-Japanese sentiment. In California, the anti-Japanese proposition to expand and strengthen the 1913 California Alien Land Law was

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placed on the ballot as a referendum and passed in November 1920. Then, in December, Senator James D. Phelan of California for the first time proposed a constitutional amendment to deprive the Nisei of their American citizenship. This proposal did not die easily. In May 1923, the chair of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Albert Johnson, came to Hawai‘i with Congressman J. E. Baker from California to inspect the Japanese situation, and upon returning to Washington they advocated that citizenship be denied to native-born children whose parents were ineligible for citizenship.24 In December, congressional resolutions were proposed to that effect, reformulating Phelan’s constitutional amendment proposal of 1920. Then, in April 1924, the so-called anti-Japanese immigration law was enacted, banning all Japanese immigration. The immigration law was a serious insult to Japan and alerted the Japanese on the West Coast, in Hawai‘i, and in Japan to the possibility of further troubles. Hawai‘i had been fairly free from anti-Japanese movements before World War I because the Japanese were desperately needed as laborers on the sugar plantations. However, even in Hawai‘i “Americanizers” started anti-Japanese propaganda during the war. As Daniel Erwin Weinberg points out, public opinion in the mainstream community supported the claims of anti-Japanese agitators from 1919 to the spring of 1923.25 Suddenly, as shown below, tense anti-Japanese feelings prevailed in Hawai‘i. Before the war Okumura and Imamura, though rivaling each other, had shared community responsibilities. They agreed that the immigrants should settle permanently in Hawai‘i and supported the Americanization movement in the Japanese community. After the war, however, facing unprecedented pressure from the haole community, they definitely parted company and adopted opposing approaches to the issues, especially those of the Japanese-language school debate and the O‘ahu Sugar Strike of 1920. Imamura assumed the “struggle for rights” stance, while Okumura’s strategy was persistently “cooperation and harmony.” Japanese-language schools, along with Japanese ethnic newspapers and proliferating Buddhist temples, became the primary target of anti-Japanese agitation. There were 134 Japanese-language schools in 1915 and 142 in 1927. “The Japanese language schools were regarded as an institution to propagate loyalty to Japan and to teach totalitarian and feudalistic ideology among Japanese youth.”26 One bill after another restricting Japanese-language schools were introduced; and finally, in November 1920, the first foreign-language school law was passed and then was strengthened in 1922, 1923, and 1925. The laws regulated the qualification of teachers and textbooks, restricted the number of class hours, and banned the attendance of elementary school pupils. They aimed at the eventual closing of all foreignlanguage schools. Being cornered, with Makino’s strong advice and guidance, a few nonreligious schools decided to litigate in December 1922.



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The Buddhist Imamura was in a position to supervise many Japanese-language schools affiliated with the Hongwanji Mission. He favored challenging the legality of the law. So much was at stake. Japanese-language schools were important to Buddhist temples—as their economic foundation, as the basis for religious propagation, and as a tool for community service. After deliberate consideration for several months, the two largest Hongwanji schools filed litigation. The principal of Fort Gakuen, Iwanaga Tomokazu, explained: To tell the truth, Fort Gakuen and Palama Gakuen are properties of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission. The Mission possesses various properties and cannot move impetuously. Therefore we discreetly and prudently sought [the] legal advice of professionals. . . . [We found out] that if we violate the foreign language school law without filing a lawsuit and petitioning for an injunction, we shall be fined . . . and that unless we file a lawsuit, we cannot petition for an injunction. Then, on the basis of the legal advice, the Hongwanji schools decided to file a lawsuit.27

Eventually Imamura’s schools all joined the majority of nonreligious schools to file an action against the 1920 and 1922 language-school laws.28 Eighty-seven schools, or two-thirds of the total, joined the litigation, and they would eventually win at the Federal Supreme Court in 1927. In contrast, Christian Okumura insisted that Buddhist language schools had caused anti-Japanese feelings and that the education of Japanese youth should be separated from religious (i.e., Buddhist) influence. Okumura in 1899 had already given up his own Japanese-language school and made it a nonreligious school, and therefore he had little to lose. He supported the enactment of the 1920 languageschool law, claiming that it would be desirable to teach the Japanese language openly under the supervision of the Department of Public Instruction. In 1930, he even started the so-called Chain School program to teach Japanese language, which was operated free of charge in the facilities of six public schools after regular school hours, threatening the language schools, which “were already in cutthroat competition” to no small extent.29 Naturally, Okumura supported the minority opinion in the case of languageschool litigation. He theorized, using the analogy of child adoption, “Japanese children are adopted into the U.S. family” and therefore “their education should be left in U.S. hands.” He argued that if the Japanese, or their parents’ family, “meddled in it” or “contended for its control [by litigation],” then “the adoption would be broken off and the two families [Japan and the United States] would become estranged from each other.”30 He even stated, “If Japanese language education should conflict with American education of the citizenry, we should be willing to change the former. We should be ready even to abolish it if necessary. For otherwise . . .

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the future of the Nisei generation would be ruined and Japan–U.S. relations would face further difficulties.”31 How did the Nisei respond to this debate? Interestingly, the Nisei youth “strongly opposed contesting the legality of the language school statute” and asked Imamura “to discourage other schools from joining hands with the litigating schools.”32 They were concerned, not with “the constitutionality of Hawai‘i’s language school statutes, but rather, their own status and prestige as citizens of an American community,” and they sided with Okumura.33 Not surprisingly, the youth were brought up as American citizens and did not have much sympathy for Japanese-language school teachers. As for the second issue, the O‘ahu Sugar Strike began in February 1920 and lasted for five months, during which about 10,600 Japanese and 2,800 Filipino workers and their families were evicted from sugar plantations. The strike intensified anti-Japanese feeling, influencing the language-school debates and being influenced by them: “the two issues mutually produced a vicious cycle.”34 Though the plantation workers had a legitimate cause to strike—unreasonably low wages—the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA) refused their demands because, it argued, the strike was incited by radicals and Japanese ethnic newspapers and supported by Japanese-language school teachers and Buddhist priests.35 The YMBA participated in organizing the union,36 and the Hawaii Shimpo, one of the ethnic newspapers, urged the Japanese, in its editorial on January 21, “to march through the city flying red banners.” In addition, the labor leader Tsutsumi Takashi was believed to have said that the Japanese government was behind the strikers.37 Unfortunately these arguments, true or not, resulted in another fabrication of a “Japan scare.” English newspapers asserted that the strike was a Japanese conspiracy: the Japanese intended to seize control of the sugar industry and eventually to control the Hawaiian Islands, as it did Korea and Manchuria.38 In response, Buddhist Imamura expressed a sympathetic opinion on the newly organized labor union in the Hawaii Hochi on January 1, 1920. He observed that the union in Hawai‘i, unlike the radical and political unions on the continent, demanded only economic betterment. Furthermore, he agreed that plantation workers’ demands for raises in wages were understandable, especially at a time of such a rapid rise in commodity prices. Imamura, along with five other leading Buddhist priests and two Shinto priests, sent a letter of petition to the HSPA on January 22 pleading that it “grant the demands of the Japanese Federation of Labor.” It only provoked the HSPA, however. When the strike broke out in February, the HSPA thought Buddhist agitators were behind it.39 The ejected Japanese laborers and their families fled to Honolulu, causing much social turmoil. They found refuge in Japanese inns, warehouses, vacant houses, and sake wineries, which were empty due to prohibition. Since the majority



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of those workers were Hongwanji believers, many of them naturally assembled at the Hongwanji temples. Imamura not only supported the union and contributed money to the strikers but also provided them with food and shelter at the temples: “This open and forthright stand was more than enough to anger the haole oligarchy of the Territory.”40 In contrast, Christian Okumura opposed the strike. As a general rule, he admitted the importance of workers’ rights to organize, negotiate, and strike. But he thought that, “in Hawai‘i, workers should not strike, but should cooperate with capitalists” because of its special capital-labor relations.41 He argued: On the continent, there are many places to work. Even though workers strike and fail at a place, they can find other places to work. In Hawai‘i, however, the sugar plantation is the only place where many can work. If workers are forced out of plantations, they have no other choice but to return to Japan or starve to death. . . . Also on the continent, both capitalists and laborers are Americans, but in Hawai‘i, capitalists are Americans and laborers are Japanese. Strikes may not end as capital-labor conflicts, but occur between Americans and Japanese and turn into race wars.42

Okumura and Makiki Christian Church neither helped the stranded workers nor contributed any money. This unsympathetic reaction was conspicuous, because many Japanese organizations gave “deep sympathy and liberal contributions” to the strikers.43 Okumura knew that even among his church members some criticized his attitude.44 While he was much like a samurai magistrate, strongly leading the congregation based on his judgment, he never suppressed the free action of his followers. He stated: “Makiki Church does not prohibit individual members’ free action. Anyone can contribute freely. He may even become a union leader.” However, he added, “Does the church have to support the strike because the strikers are largely Japanese?” and concluded, “Our church must firmly oppose it and . . . try to wipe out racial antipathy.”45 Worried about rising anti-Japanese feelings, though fully aware of making enemies within the Japanese community, Okumura openly opposed the strike. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he prepared for the Enlightenment Campaign. The Involvement of Shibusawa Eiichi in Hawai‘i Affairs The general response of the Japanese government toward anti-Japanese movements during the 1920s was conciliatory to the United States. It was basically an era of conciliation under the Washington Treaty System. In addition, the Japanese economy was heavily dependent upon the trade with the United States (40% of

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total Japanese international trade).46 As one historian pointed out, the Japanese immigration issue was “almost the only exception left out of the framework of the Japan–U.S. harmonious relationship,” and the Japanese government was willing to concede to the United States concerning the immigration issue.47 For example, despite desperate opposition from Japanese immigrants, the Japanese government voluntarily decided in December 1919 to restrict picture brides because they were the target of anti-Japanese agitation. According to Yuji Ichioka, this was “an unforgivable instance of the Japanese government sacrificing the welfare of Japanese immigrants on the altar of what it perceived as diplomatic necessity.”48 That decision, however, did not palliate the anti-Japanese movement, and the 1920 California Alien Land Law was passed. Then, the Japanese government was pressed to amend the Japanese Nationality Act (which prohibited Nisei males ages seventeen to thirty-seven from relinquishing Japanese nationality due to their military duty) so that another target of anti-Japanese agitators, the Nisei’s dual nationality, could be removed. The bill was finally passed on July 22, 1924. The new nationality law allowed all Nisei to apply to relinquish their Japanese nationality, and the newly born Nisei would lose their Japanese nationality unless their parents took the trouble to submit reports of their births to the Japanese Consulate. Against this background of the conciliatory policy toward the United States and of turbulent anti-Japanese agitation in California, Okumura’s proposal for Americanization (his plan for the Enlightenment Campaign) was welcomed and supported in Japan. For the Japanese establishment, Americanization of the Japanese in the United States was the diplomatic strategy to promote national interest. With perfect timing, Okumura visited Shibusawa Eiichi in Japan and won the endorsement of Shibusawa, Shibusawa’s business circle, and political leaders. Shibusawa became the patron of Okumura’s campaign. In Hawai‘i, Okumura successfully took advantage of his connection with Shibusawa to carry out his version of the Americanization movement.49 Shibusawa was the leading nongovernmental figure in Japan who promoted harmonious Japan–U.S. relations. He had been a major founder of Japanese capitalism and a business leader until his retirement in 1916, and he continued to participate in various social welfare, educational, and international goodwill activities until his death in 1931. He also evolved what he called “people-to-people diplomacy” after the Russo-Japanese War and maintained strong influence over Japanese politics. Among various things he did for “people-to-people diplomacy” was the creation of the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai (Japan–U.S. Relations Committee). He organized it in 1916 with twenty-four members, mostly business leaders of the day with a markedly international character.50 It was only natural that Okumura would approach and ask Shibusawa and his committee for assistance.



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In 1917, Okumura visited Shibusawa in Tokyo for the first time, asking for his help in raising funds for the new “Oriental” YMCA building in Honolulu.51 On this trip, Okumura came to know that Shibusawa and the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai members endorsed his idea to restrict Japanese-language schools. Also, when Shibusawa introduced Okumura to Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake, Terauchi told him that a good Japan–U.S. relationship was the diplomatic mainstay and that the Japanese in Hawai‘i should try hard to promote harmonious relations between Japan and the United States.52 Okumura not only raised enough money for the YMCA, he also learned that his ideas about Americanization basically corresponded with the Japanese national interest. Behind his attitudes toward the Japanese-language school laws lay his conviction that he was not betraying Japan. When he started the Enlightenment Campaign in 1920, Okumura returned to Japan to seek Shibusawa’s endorsement. Shibusawa was ready to help him, for he was worried about the rising anti-Japanese agitation in California and the coming referendum on the land law in November.53 Okumura proposed that Hawai‘i could offer a key to solving the anti-Japanese problem in California by demonstrating that the Japanese were “assimilable,” because anti-Japanese propaganda was based on the argument that they were “unassimilable.” Okumura was to encourage Issei in Hawai‘i to adapt themselves to American values and institutions and Nisei to renounce their Japanese nationality.54 Shibusawa, the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai members, and political leaders—this time Prime Minister Hara Takashi and Minister of Foreign Affairs Uchida Kousai—all endorsed Okumura’s plan and assured him that Nisei’s relinquishing Japanese nationality was no longer a problem.55 And on the day he left for Hawai‘i, Shibusawa gave him a letter and said: “I heartily desire that, upon returning to Hawai‘i, you will kindly transmit the message of this committee to our fellow countrymen. . . . They should observe the U.S. institutions and civilization, share the joys and the sorrows of the American people, and cultivate the good custom of ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do.’”56 For a decade, until Shibusawa’s death in 1931, Okumura kept in touch, soliciting and taking advantage of both moral and some financial support from him. Okumura’s Enlightenment Campaign and Drive for Americanization During the 1920s, Okumura was a conspicuous crusader for Americanization. In contrast to Imamura, who felt unqualified to lead the movement, Okumura considered it as his “great mission” to start the Enlightenment Campaign and ease antiJapanese feelings in Hawai‘i. Okumura himself explained his three advantages: (1) he had consistently been a leader for Americanization and settlement of the Japanese; (2) he had many friends in haole society because of his Christian and social

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welfare activities; and (3) he had many Japanese friends on all the Islands who used to live in his dormitories and who would support his Enlightenment Campaign.57 He resigned from the ministry to bear the responsibility for the campaign. Unlike Imamura, Okumura was in a marginal position between the Japanese community and the mainstream community, and best suited to intercede between the two.58 One of the Nisei leaders, Earl Nishimura, said that “the Japanese community needed someone to coordinate the thinking of both sides, and only Reverend Okumura could do it.”59 As a mediator between the two communities, Okumura was keenly aware of white people’s misconceptions and prejudice. For example, he knew that the Issei’s open display of their national identity was likely to cause misunderstandings about Nisei’s loyalty to the United States. For example, Okumura observed in 1921, “Every Japanese house hangs pictures of the Emperor and Empress on the wall.”60 At the same time, he was a marginal man between the Japanese community in Hawai‘i and the political leaders in Japan. Many Issei maintained a strong sense of national identity and criticized Okumura as a traitor due to his attitudes toward the language-school litigation and the Japanese strikers. Therefore, as already mentioned, he secured the endorsement of the Japanese political leaders before starting the campaign; otherwise, his Enlightenment Campaign would have been supported by only a small minority among the Issei. Characteristically, Okumura assumed the whole responsibility like a samurai magistrate, planning the campaign, securing financial support, and visiting Japanese laborers with his Americanization message year after year. Okumura started the campaign in January 1921.61 He took his son Umetarou with him to visit sugar plantations on all the Islands twice a year, where they explained why Americanization was necessary and obtained supporters’ signatures. When people heard that Shibusawa and Japanese leaders also supported the campaign, many signed their names. In three years Okumura collected 3,122 signatures, or about 18 percent of Japanese plantation laborers in 1922.62 In 1924, to cope with the tension caused by the new immigration law, Okumura made another round of visits to the Islands in order to calm people’s unrest and prevent any anti-American movements. He published articles on the 1924 Immigration Act and anti-Japanese sentiments in the United States in his monthly paper Rakuen Jihou (Paradise Times) in May, June, August, and December, and then distributed tens of thousands of copies of these articles among the Japanese laborers.63 In these publications, Okumura explained that the immigration law would neither influence the life of Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i nor destroy harmonious relations between Japan and the United States. He emphasized that almost every sector in the wider society of Hawai‘i opposed and protested the passage of the law. “We are enjoying both physical and spiritual freedom and peace unlike



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the case on the continent,” he said. Okumura also urged the Japanese in Hawai‘i to persevere until the United States awoke to sane judgment, and to assimilate further and contribute to the prosperity of Hawai‘i. He admitted that the banning of the Japanese immigration was certainly racist, extremely unjust and inhumane, and that the law not only violated the American founding spirits but disgraced Japan. Nevertheless, Okumura urged Japanese people to continue to Americanize, because otherwise this legislation would become the first step toward a constitutional amendment to deprive the Nisei of citizenship.64 Although the immigration law was unreasonable, Okumura never encouraged Japanese people to protest politically. His advice reveals his political bias that common men should leave the important political decisions in the hands of superiors. In his words, “A serious problem like this, or the issue of a nation’s honor, should be left to governmental negotiation. It is wise for us to behave carefully not to disturb the negotiation. . . . If we give cause to anti-Japanese feelings, then it would weaken the sound argument of the Japanese government.”65 During the latter half of the 1920s, Okumura’s campaign targeted the Nisei on the renunciation of Japanese nationality, more voter registration, and their stability on the sugar plantations. In 1925 he visited Shibusawa again asking for the endorsement of his new plans. He and the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai passed another resolution to support Okumura’s campaign. Again he was given opportunities to meet Japanese political leaders. According to Okumura, Minister of Interior Wakatsuki Reijirou mentioned that “the Japanese residents in Hawai‘i should understand the policy of the Japanese government and carry out expatriation without reserve.”66 Okumura targeted the renunciation of dual nationality in his campaign from 1925, because the Japanese response to the new rule was slow in Hawai‘i. Only a few Nisei followed the necessary procedures for expatriation. From February to May, Okumura made a tour of Hawai‘i, Kaua‘i, Maui, and O‘ahu islands, distributing some ten thousand leaflets titled “Importance of Citizenship.” He also published a special article on the expatriation procedure and told the readers of his Rakuen Jihou (Paradise Times) that he would carry it out on their behalf. About three hundred responded to his offer.67 The Nisei leaders of the Hawaiian Japanese Civic Association also supported the expatriation campaign. The Great Depression gave further impetus to the increase of renunciants, as enterprises in Hawai‘i began to deny employment to those Nisei with dual nationality.68 Another major impetus was provided by the congressional hearings on the possible statehood of Hawai‘i in 1935 and 1937.69 In 1925, 1,879 Nisei renounced their Japanese nationality; 4,131 in 1926; 3,331 in 1927; 3,391 in 1928; 3,348 in 1929; 3,445 in 1930; 3,530 in 1931; 4,583 in 1932; and 4,441 in 1933.70 In order to contribute to Nisei enlightenment, Okumura organized a new project in 1927, the Conference of New Americans, which was held annually and

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lasted until 1941. Selected Nisei youths were invited from all parts of the Islands to Honolulu for a six-day conference. They were expected to get acquainted with haole leaders and exchange ideas with them as equal citizens, thus discarding the preconceived idea that haole Americans were superior to Asians and building up a sense of self-respect and self-confidence. They were also expected to learn the importance of political participation and register as voters.71 The purpose of the conference was to produce Nisei leaders who knew haole Americans and could mediate, like Okumura, between the Japanese community and the wider community.72 Most scholars have criticized this project as a vehicle to Americanize the Nisei in the haole framework and keep them on the plantations as laborers.73 On the other hand, Yoshida proposes that one should separate Okumura’s intention from that of the haole supporters who wanted to maintain the status quo of their socioeconomic control.74 Whatever intention Okumura had, the conference offered opportunities to the Nisei to learn about important issues, present their opinions, and develop independent leadership. As Nomura demonstrates, Nisei participants did not passively listen to but challenged “the platitudes presented by [haole] Conference speakers.”75 The conference seems to have been more positive and supportive of the growth of Nisei leaders than suppressive to them. Okumura was also criticized for his effort to Christianize the Nisei. He denied any religious connection between the New Americans Conference and the Nisei delegates, who were chosen regardless of their religion. However, the conference record does show that, in the discussion on Americanization, Christianity was recommended as a way to achieve harmonious racial relations.76 While religion was not the main theme of the discussion, Okumura intended to exert, though indirectly, Christian influence over the participants.77 It seems that, as a Christian minister, he did not accept the religious implications of American cultural pluralism or the real meaning of freedom of religion, like most haole Christian ministers of the time. Thus Okumura’s Americanization effort was criticized by the Buddhist circle, while it was supported by many Nisei, haole society, and political leaders in Japan. Imamura’s Reaction to the Issues of Americanization In the same year, 1927, Honpa Hongwanji Bishop Imamura started a Buddhist version of youth conferences to counter Okumura’s effort to Americanize Nisei youth in the Christian spirit. In contrast to Okumura, Imamura was known as an advocate of Japanese culture, ethnic identity, and the Buddhist faith. With this in mind, the examination of Imamura’s leadership will provide a balanced view of the Japanese response to the issue of Issei Americanization and Nisei citizenship. During the 1920s Imamura’s attitudes toward Americanization and Nisei citi-



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zenship were not consistent. In the early 1920s he emphasized the need for harmonious relations with others in Hawai‘i, in accordance with the conciliatory diplomatic policy of the Japanese government and with Okumura’s campaign. In the late 1920s, however, his position shifted to become nationalistic, reflecting the change in Japanese foreign policy and contrasting to Okumura’s constant Americanization drive. After Imamura made a trip to the continent in 1918, he published an essay, “Beikoku oyobi beikokujin” (America and American people). In it he presented very insightful observations on American civilization; but the cornerstone of all his observations seems to be the vindication and promotion of Buddhism in the United States. In particular, Imamura was deeply impressed by the multiethnic aspects of American civilization, because in its hybridity he found a sound footing of Buddhism. He wrote that much of philosophy, religion, education, literature, and art in America was hybrid, imported from foreign countries.78 Imamura disagreed with Okumura’s argument that the “Founding Spirits of America” were derived from Christianity and criticized religious Americanization (Christianization) as un-American: “As we live in America, we must have political allegiance to it and observe its laws. However, a polemist [probably referring to Okumura] argues that Americanization means spiritual servility and that true Americanization is to forsake Japanese religion and thoughts and adopt those of America. This contradicts the Founding Spirits of America. America esteems freedom, equality and independence, spiritual independence to the utmost. It never asks for spiritual servility.”79 At the same time, Imamura warned his readers neither to overestimate the merits of the Japanese nation nor to reject other cultures pointlessly.80 Even after the war, in the midst of the O‘ahu Sugar Strike and the languageschool debates, Imamura emphasized the importance of maintaining harmonious relations with others in Hawai‘i. In 1920, he told the graduating students of his Buddhist high school: “You must be a tie that binds Japan and the United States, become a forerunner of melting Eastern and Western civilizations, and contribute to the good relationship between Japan and the U.S.”81 In an essay published in 1921, “Buddhism and Social Service,” Imamura admitted, “We must correct all the mistakes we committed in the past as Japanese or as Buddhists, respect people and the founding creeds of the country where we reside, examine our position in this land, try to improve our own lives, keep harmonious relations with Americans and others, and endeavor to create a peaceful life.”82 In the spring of 1922, Imamura further softened his position in such articles in The Dobo magazine as “Buddhists’ Resolution” and “Teachings of Shinran and American Character.” According to the Buddhist teaching of “everlasting mutation,” he wrote: “There is no such thing as a mother country to which we should stick fast. Any place is our hometown.” He also told the Nisei that Buddhism was

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democratic, individualistic, and consistent with American creeds of freedom, equality, and independence, and insisted that the Nisei should be Buddhists before being Americans. Interestingly, Imamura also admired the hybridity of culture in Hawai‘i and its mixed-blooded people, writing, “The hybrids will control the future world. . . . Children of mixed blood will necessarily develop and prosper.”83 On the other hand, Imamura opposed submissive appeasement or “spiritual servility.” From his perspective, this notion implied that the Japanese in Hawai‘i should proudly propagate Buddhism and openly teach the Japanese language to Japanese children. In contrast with the Christian Okumura, Imamura had to defend Buddhism and the language schools attached to his mission under adverse circumstances where Christianity was dominant. He insisted that the Japanese should assert their convictions fearlessly and, if their assertions ran counter to those of the haole mainstream, then they could explain and agree to disagree. Imamura claimed that making their convictions known was consistent with the American creeds of freedom of thought and freedom of religion.84 When the anti-Japanese immigration law was enacted in 1924, Imamura displayed these two attitudes. On the one hand, he exhorted his followers to follow the Buddhist teachings of “universal equality,” claiming that “Americans and Japanese are fundamentally the same,” and of “everlasting mutability,” that “East may become West and West may become East, America may become Japan and Japan may become America.” He even taught that Japanese people were able to assimilate and that they should demonstrate it. Concerning this argument for assimilation, he agreed with Okumura—though he rejected Christianizing as “an awkward and frivolous imitation.” On the other hand, he strongly encouraged his students to protest against the discriminatory law: “I think, if you really love and admire America, you should stand up and protest at the risk of your lives for the sake of the American creed of national foundation [racial equality].”85 Like Okumura, Imamura was much concerned with the anti-Japanese politicians in Washington, D.C., who intended to deprive the Nisei of citizenship. Unlike Okumura, however, he encouraged the Nisei to fight for their rights just as his schools were fighting for their rights in court. In fact, Imamura warned the Japanese youth: “You now face an unprecedented, grave situation. Be ready and determined to deal with this difficult situation and do not disgrace the name of the Nisei.” He also reminded them to pay attention to the prevailing “law of the jungle” and get ready to fight: the American people had fought mercilessly with each other to expand their power and rights. The Nisei should be ready to fight with such merciless people under the rule of the jungle.86 In the late 1920s, however, as Japan began its imperialistic advance into Manchuria and clashed with U.S. interests, Imamura subtly changed his attitude. It should be noted that Imamura never denied his commitment to the American-



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ization of the Issei and the Nisei’s expatriation from Japanese nationality. He even reprinted his declaration of Americanization, “To the American Public,” in 1931, originally published in 1918, assuring again that he wholeheartedly supported the Americanization of Japanese in Hawai‘i.87 However, Imamura opposed the form of Americanization that promoted abandoning the Japanese language, Buddhism, and Japanese habits, as this would produce a “stateless person,” neither a Japanese nor an American.88 Also he began to propagate ideas of Japanese superiority in the late 1920s. He no longer admired hybrid and mixed-blooded people. In “To Our School Leavers” in 1929 he addressed the students as follows: In Hawai‘i different races and foreign peoples assemble. It is even called an exhibition hall of races. However, many are people without distinguished history, or are people who are destined to fall. The Nisei citizens live among such inferior children and receive evil influences. . . . In contrast, Japan has a brilliant history of 2,500 years, and we have transplanted and adorned the foreign land [Hawai‘i] with the quintessence of Japanese history. The Japanese people have compiled all Eastern civilization, and their essence will strengthen the world culture.89

As was mentioned above, rivaling Okumura and his New Americans Conference, Imamura promoted the first inter-island meeting of the YMBA in July 1927, uniting Buddhist youths and strengthening Buddhist beliefs among them. The next year he organized a study tour to Japan for his students so they would understand real Japanese culture. He explained his intention: “Pure Japanese as they are even under the Stars and Stripes, it is really unfortunate that they neither know Japan and the merits and virtues of Japanese people nor understand the value of Japanese culture. . . . At this moment, I intend to let them first make a field trip to their mother country and observe its beautiful landscapes, courteous and kind-hearted fellow countrymen, and their society and culture.”90 The trip was very successful, “giving strong stimulation and influence to the Japanese community” and resulting in an ardent desire among young Japanese to study in Japan.91 Actually, many did return to Japan to study, to Imamura’s great satisfaction. In fact, studying in Japan became so popular that in 1932 the number of the Nisei youths who left Hawai‘i for Japan rose to about five hundred. In 1930, Imamura also led the YMBA to host the first Pan-Pacific Young Buddhists Convention in Honolulu, inviting representatives from Japan as well as other countries. It aroused enthusiastic support from Japan and contributed to further strengthen the ties with Japanese Buddhist circles.92 Imamura’s last important project was to set up the Hawai‘i Japanese Library in 1931 so that the Nisei would learn that “their mother country possessed really great culture,” and thereby he hoped to inspire some to be Japanese-language teachers.93

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Conclusion During the early 1920s Japanese immigrants’ voices and actions concerning the issues of the language-school litigation, the O‘ahu Strike of 1920, and Okumura’s campaign were influenced by the contemporary turbulent U.S. domestic conditions, especially the rise of nativism and the Americanization pressures exerted on the “un-American” immigrant society. Both spiritual leaders, Okumura and Imamura voluntarily countered the Americanizers’ propaganda. In their own Americanization efforts (beika-undou), as Sakaguchi defines it, Okumura and Imamura respectively adopted “American creeds and customs which they judged indispensable for harmonious coexistence with American people” while maintaining their own religious and secular beliefs and ethnic identity. From our vantage point, we can see that these two rivals had much in common. This essay has demonstrated that, while Okumura and Imamura confronted each other on critical issues of the strike and the language-school litigation, they both consistently supported the Americanization movement, albeit on their own terms. At the same time, they never denied their Japanese ethnic identity and cultural heritage. While proving to be the most vocal Americanization leader, Okumura maintained such traditional samurai ethics as loyalty to the master and filial piety as his criteria of behavior. It was well known among his followers that he kept his samurai spirit to his death. For example, Okumura designed the new Makiki church building in 1932 to resemble the Kochi Castle in his hometown, and he and his wife continued to wear the Japanese kimono throughout their lives. Indeed, he was not a simple imitator of American culture. On the other hand, the two men were both flexible in adapting Japanese culture to the environment of Hawai‘i and creating new aspects of ethnic culture. For example, while protecting Japanese language and religion, Imamura adopted Christian forms of Sunday service, including organ music, Sunday school, and the organizations of the YMBA and auxiliary women’s associations, thus successfully creating an American style of Buddhist worship.94 Although Okumura and Imamura agreed on the need for Americanization, they differed most clearly about its religious aspect. There was strong religious conviction behind Okumura’s campaign as a Christian pastor just as there was strong religious conviction behind Imamura’s ideas and actions as a Buddhist bishop. They shared a common characteristic as earnest and partisan men of religion: they could not compromise on their religious interests. Okumura represented the minority Christian camp and solicited support from the leaders in Japan and from haole society to strengthen the weak standing of the religion in the Japanese community in Hawai‘i; but his straightforward efforts to Christianize the Japanese rather



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alienated them, raised antagonism, and did not succeed very much in the end. In contrast, Hongwanji membership increased to a hundred thousand, with seventyone temples, during the 1920s.95 As for strategy, Okumura and Imamura chose contrasting methods that were closely related to their religious beliefs. Okumura emphasized harmony and cooperation with haole society and promoted the Issei’s adaptation to the wider community and the Nisei’s renunciation of their Japanese nationality. His emphasis on creating harmony with the dominant Christian society coincided strategically with his desire to propagate Christianity among the Japanese. Also he adopted the strategy of utilizing the endorsement of leaders in Japan for his Americanization plans, as his plans happened to agree with the Japanese diplomatic policy toward the United States of the day. Imamura, on the other hand, adopted a strategy of fighting for legitimate rights based on the U.S. Constitution. Also he had a clear insight into the multiethnic and hybrid culture of the United States and rightfully utilized it as a solid foundation for the propagation of Buddhism in Hawai‘i. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, however, the situation in Hawai‘i changed quickly as Japanese diplomacy clearly altered. The basic policy toward the United States began to shift from cooperation to confrontation after the Japanese occupation of Jinan, Shandong, in May 1928. In Japan, the fascist group in the military began to gain power, especially after the London Conference in 1930; and in September 1931, Japan started an aggressive war in Manchuria. The military seized control of Japanese politics, and with the establishment of Manchuria as a Japanese vassal country, Japan–U.S. relations deteriorated rapidly. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in March 1933 and proceeded with its military expansion. In the Japanese community in Hawai‘i, “elderly Japanese smiled sweetly at the news [of Japanese expansion]. And they sent more and more children to Japan in order to let them recognize the new Japan”;96 in 1938, the number exceeded two thousand.97 Imamura’s project to send his students to Japan was part of this movement, a direct opposition to Okumura’s efforts to educate the Nisei solely as U.S. citizens. Imamura subtly altered his ideas about the value of the multiethnic hybrids of Hawai‘i culture and began to express Japanese superiority. After Imamura passed away in 1932, the Hongwanji Mission became more nationalistic, in accordance with the rising nationalistic enthusiasm of the Japanese community. For example, The Dobo reported in 1932 that the YMBA made a round tour of the Islands to show the documentary film, “The Manchurian Incident.”98 Especially under the leadership of Bishop Gikyo Kuchiba, “a fanatic Japanese nationalist,” the Hongwanji tended to be more nationalistic in the late 1930s.99 Okumura, on the other hand, still worked to promote Japanese Americanization and held to the idea that the Nisei were adopted children of the American

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family. If, unfortunately, “the families of Japan and America should fight as enemies,” Okumura proclaimed in 1938, then the Nisei should fight against Japan for the honor of America. This was “the true samurai spirit.”100 A Japanese diplomat, Yoshimori Saneyuki, published Nichibei kankeishi (History of Japan–U.S. relations) in 1943 and clearly demonstrated how the evaluation of Okumura was reversed in Japan: “In this social situation [100% Americanization in the 1920s] one Japanese [Okumura Takie] started a movement to Americanize the Japanese residents in Hawai‘i. . . . His arguments were heard and his plans were encouraged by Shibusawa Eiichi who was the chair of the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai, and its members. . . . The changes in history make an ironic drama. If one reads the report [of Okumura’s campaign] today, one must feel it is a completely different age.”101 In the late 1930s, disputes over Japanese-language schools and the Nisei’s dual nationality arose again in Hawai‘i. However, they took on a very different form: unlike the case in the 1920s, there was no support from the political leaders of Japan for the expatriation drive or for the Japan–U.S. friendship movement. Instead, in March 1938 Minister of Foreign Affairs Hirota Kouki said in the National Diet that the Nisei were Japanese all the same, and that the Japanese government was attempting to educate them as Japanese through Imin (Immigrant) Associations. The news of Hirota’s speech triggered anti-Japanese feelings in Hawai‘i.102 According to Yoshimori, “[in the 1920s] the dependency of the Japanese economy upon America drove politicians to harbor the illusion that Japan–U.S. cooperation would be an everlasting principle of Japanese diplomacy. They encouraged American residents to relinquish their Japanese nationality and came to expect them to be a tie of goodwill between the two countries.”103 As Yoshimori said, it was “a completely different age.” The Japanese in Hawai‘i, including Okumura and Imamura, were swayed by the changes in Japan–U.S. relations. In other words, whether they liked it or not, their ideas about national identity and citizenship changed, and their relationship with Japan and with Hawai‘i’s society also changed, reflecting and responding to the historical alterations in the Japan–U.S. relationship.

Notes 1. Iida Koujirou, “Senzen Hawai ni okeru Nihon no jinkou to kyojuuchi” [Japanese population and residential distribution in prewar Hawai‘i], Oosaka Shougyou Daigaku Ronshuu 124 (2002): 21. 2. “Kaisetsu: wagatou no shimei” [Our mission] (editorial), Dobo, December 1901, 1–2.



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3. Imamura Yemyo, Choushouin ibunshuu [Collected works of Imamura Yemyo], ed. Hawai Honoruru Hongwanji (Honolulu: Hawaii Honolulu Hongwanji, 1937), 79. 4. Ibid., 72. 5. Okumura Takie, Onchou shichijuunen [Seventy years of divine blessings] (Honolulu: private printing, 1937), 96. 6. “Shiryou: Hawai shotou kirisutokyou ichiranhyou” [Appendix: List of Christian churches in the Hawaiian Islands], in Hokubei nihonjin kirisutokyou undoushi [History of Japanese Christian movements in North America], ed. Doshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyuujo (Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1991), 831, 840. 7. See Louis H. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii: Its Impact on a Yankee Community (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1971); Roland Kotani, The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle (Honolulu: The Hawaii Hochi, 1985); Gail M. Nomura, “The Debate over the Role of Nisei in Prewar Hawaii: The New American Conference, 1927–1941,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 15.1 (1987): 95–115; Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865–1945 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991); and Ryo Yoshida, “Kirisutokyo-ka to Hawai Nikkeijin no Amerika-ka” [Christianization and Americanization of the Japanese in Hawai‘i], Shuukyou kenkyuu 296 (1993): 79–103. 8. As for Okumura’s perception of Christianity and Bushido or samurai spirit, see Yoshida, “Kirisutokyo-ka,” 1993. 9. Moriya Tomoe, Amerika Bukkyou no tanjou [Birth of American Buddhism] (Tokyo: Gendai Shiryou Shuppan, 2001). 10. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 170. 11. Nomura, “The Debate,” 108. 12. Sakaguchi Mitsuhiro, “Hokubei no nihonjin imin to hutatu no kokka” [Japanese immigrants in North America and the Two Nations], Historia 145 (1994): 27. 13. Eileen Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 52. 14. “Katsudou” [Activities], Dobo, November 1909, 27. 15. “Kaisetsu: eijuu to douka” [Permanent settlement and assimilation] (editorial), Dobo, December 1909, 3. 16. Ozawa Gijo, ed., Hawai nihongo gakkou kyouikushi [History of education of Japanese-language schools in Hawai‘i] (Honolulu: Hawai Kyouiku Kai, 1972), 75–76. 17. Ibid., 64. 18. Imamura, Choushouin ibunshuu, 73–74. 19. Nakano Takeshi, “Hawai Nikkei kyoudan no keisei to henyou” [Formation and changes of a Japanese religious sect in Hawai‘i], Shuukyou Kenkyu 248 (1981): 59. 20. Imamura Yemyo, “To the American Public,” in History of the Hongwanji Mission in Hawaii (Honolulu: Publishing Bureau of the Hongwanji Mission, 1918), 9. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 13. 23. Ibid., 14. 24. “Zai-Hawai douhou no gendou ni taisuru hankyou” [Response to word and deed of Japanese in Hawai‘i], Rakuen Jihou [Paradise Times], September 1923.

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25. Daniel Erwin Weinberg, “The Movement to ‘Americanize’ the Japanese Community in Hawaii” (MA thesis, University of Hawai‘i, Manoa, 1967), 110, 129. 26. Hawai Nihonjin Iminshi Kankou Iinkai, Hawai nihonjin iminshi [History of Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i] (Honolulu: Hawai Nikkeijin Rengou Kyoukai, 1964), 234. 27. Hawaii Hochi, July 16, 1923. 28. Ibid., August 1, 1923; Ozawa, Hawai nihongo gakkou, 132. 29. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 169. 30. “Zai-Hawai douhou no gendou ni taisuru hankyou,” Rakuen Jihou, September 1923. 31. “Zai-Hawai douhou hatten ni kansuru konpon mondai” [Fundamental problems about the development of Japanese in Hawai‘i], Rakuen Jihou, July 1919. 32. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 148. 33. Ibid., 172–73. 34. Hawai nihonjin iminshi, 276. 35. Weinberg, “The Movement,” 67. 36. Okihiro, Cane Fires, 68. 37. Kurita Yayoi, “Labor Movements among the Japanese Plantation Workers in Hawaii,” typescript, University of Hawai‘i Proseminar on Labor (1952), 40. 38. Dousu [Duus] Masayo, Nippon no Inbou: Hawai oahu-tou dai sutoraiki no hikari to kage (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjuusha, 1991), 100; English version of same book, trans. Beth Cary, The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). 39. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 121. 40. Ruth M. Tabrah, A Grateful Past, a Promising Future (Honolulu: The Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, 1989), 58. 41. “Roudou kumiai shuyou no mokuteki” [The major purposes of labor unions], Rakuen Jihou, February 1920; “Roushi kyouchou” [Labor-capital conciliation], Rakuen Jihou, May 1921. 42. Okumura, Onchou shichijuunen, 51–52. 43. Tsutsumi Takashi, 1920-nendo Hawai satou kouchi roudou undoushi [History of sugar plantation labor movements in Hawai‘i in 1920] (Honolulu: Hawai Roudou Renmeikai, 1921), 321. 44. Haga Takeshi, Hawai Imin no shougen [Witness account by a Japanese immigrant] (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobou, 1981), 183. 45. “Sutoraiki to kirisuto kyoukai” [The strike and the Christian Church], Rakuen Jihou, June 1920. 46. Iino Masako, Mouhitotsu no nichibei kankeishi [Another history of Japan–U.S. relations] (Tokyo: Yuuhikaku, 2000), 67. 47. Hata Kunihiko, Taiheiyou kokusai kankeishi [History of Pacific international relations] (Tokyo: Fukumura Shuppan, 1972), 150. 48. Ichioka Yuji, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885– 1924 (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 175. 49. As for Okumura’s relationship with Shibusawa, see Shimada Noriko, “Okumura



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Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi” [Okumura Takie and Shibusawa Eiichi], Nihon Joshi Daigaku Kiyou 43 (1994): 39–56. 50. Its purpose was “to permanently maintain ties of friendship between the two countries, always unite and harmonize sentiments of the people of both countries, and, when a dispute arose, endeavor to solve it.” Katagiri Nobuo, “Shibusawa Eiichi to kokumin gaikou” [Shibusawa Eiichi and people-to-people diplomacy], Shibusawa Kenkyuu 1 (1990): 7–9. 51. Okumura probably first met Shibusawa in 1915 when Shibusawa stopped in Honolulu on his way back from San Francisco. They then exchanged letters a few times before 1917. See Shibusawa Seitou Kinen Zaidan Ryuumonsha, ed., Shibusawa Eiichi denki shiryou [Biographical sources of Shibusawa Eiichi](Tokyo: Shibusawa Eiichi Denki Shiryou Kankoukai), vol. 33 (1960), 477; vol. 34 (1960), 587; supplement (1966), 82. Hereafter cited as Shibusawa. 52. “Nichibei mondai to kirisuto kyoukai” [The Japan–U.S. problem and the Christian Church], Rakuen Jihou, July 1920. 53. The Japanese Association of America sent Chiba Toyoji from California to see Shibusawa in Tokyo, asking for help. In response, the Nichibei Kankei Iinkai decided to donate 50,000 yen and send Harada Tasuku to San Francisco, just as Okumura reached Tokyo. See Shibusawa, 33: 524, 528. 54. “Nichibei mondai to kirisuto kyoukai”; “Hainichi ronkyo” [The grounds for antiJapanese arguments], Rakuen Jihou, November 1921. 55. Shibusawa, 33: 538; 34: 579. 56. Shibusawa, 34: 573. 57. Okumura Takie and Okumura Umetarou, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problems: A Campaign to Remove Causes of Friction between the American People and Japanese: Report of the Campaign, January, 1921 to January, 1929 (Honolulu: private printing, 1921), 4–5. 58. Kotani, Japanese in Hawaii, 44. 59. Interview with Earl Nisimura in Honolulu, August 1933. 60. Okumura, Onchou shichijuunen, 309–12. 61. As for Okumura’s actual campaign, see Sugii, “Hawai hainichi,” 108–47. 62. Okumura and Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problems, 9, 15, 20. 63. Okumura Takie, Hawai ni okeru nichibei mondai kaiketsu undou [Hawai‘i’s American-Japanese problems: A campaign to remove causes of friction between the American people and Japanese] (Honolulu: private printing, 1937), 47, 51, 59. 64. Okumura Takie, Taiheiyou no Rakuen [Paradise of the Pacific], rev. ed. (Kyoto: private printing, 1930), 349–52, 358, 359, 360–1, 366, 367. 65. Ibid., 355. 66. Okumura, Hawai ni okeru nichibei mondai, 85, 89. 67. Okumura, Onchou shichijuunen, 68–69. 68. Kihara Ryuuichi, Hawai nihonjinshi [History of Japanese in Hawai‘i] (Tokyo: Bunseisha, 1935), 158. 69. Dorothy O. Hazama and Jane O. Komeiji, Okage sama de: The Japanese in Hawaii, 1885–1985 (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1986), 119. 70. Kihara, Hawai nihonjinshi, 340.

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71. Soga Yasutarou, Gojuunenkan no Hawai kaiko [Memoirs of fifty years in Hawai‘i] (Honolulu: Gojuunenkan no Hawai Kaiko Kankoukai, 1953), 406. 72. Okumura, Taiheiyou no Rakuen, 424–25, 426. 73. See Nomura, “The Debate,” 102–8; and Okihiro, Cane Fires, 143–46. 74. Yoshida, “Kirisutokyo-ka to Hawai Nikkeijin,” 82–83. 75. Nomura, “The Debate,” 106. 76. Okumura, Taiheiyou no Rakuen, 429, 432. 77. Okumura, Okumura bokushi sekkyoushu, 190. 78. Imamura, Choushouin ibunshuu, 126. 79. Ibid., 130. 80. Ibid., 135. 81. Ibid., 138–39. 82. Ibid., 153. 83. Ibid., 162, 175–77, 185. 84. Ibid., 130–34. 85. Ibid., 198, 199–200, 201. 86. Ibid., 209, 213. 87. Imamura Yemyo, “To the American Public,” History of the Hongwanji Mission on Hawaii (Honolulu: Publishing Bureau of the Hongwanji Mission, 1918); A Short History of the Hongwanji Buddhist Mission in Hawaii (Honolulu: Publishing Bureau of the Hongwanji Mission, 1931). 88. Imamura, Choushouin ibunshuu, 240–41. 89. Ibid., 238. 90. Ibid., 246. 91. Ibid., 247. 92. Imamura Yemyo, Honpa Hongwanji Hawai Bukkyou sanjuugonenshi [History of Honpa Hongwanji in Hawai‘i for thirty-five years] (Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Bunshobu, 1931), 6, 8. 93. Imamura, Choushouin ibunshuu, 269–70. 94. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 131. 95. Ibid., 150–51. 96. Yoshimori Saneyuki, Hawai wo meguru nichibei kankeishi [Japan–U.S. history relating to Hawai‘i] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjuusha, 1943), 212–13. 97. Hawai nihonjin iminshi, 250. 98. Aoki Shuusaku, “Katsuben jungyouki” [Report on the film tour around the Islands], Dobo 371 (May 1932): 19. 99. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 171. 100. “Warera no kaishaku” [Our interpretation], Rakuen Jihou, April 1938. 101. Yoshimori, Hawai wo meguru nichibei kankeishi, 198–200. 102. In May, the new minister of foreign affairs, Ugaki Kazushige, declared that the Japanese government had no intention of interfering in the Nisei’s education. Yoshimori, Hawai wo meguru, 213–16; Nippu Jiji, July 24, 1939. 103. Yoshimori, Hawai wo meguru, 261.

C hap t e r 7

In Search of a New Identity Shiga Shigetaka’s Recommendations for Japanese in Hawai‘i Masako Gavin

After the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), overpopulation and unemployment became pressing issues in Japan. Many intellectuals were concerned about the social and economic hardships caused by these problems and advocated solving them through emigration. The prominent journalist and professor of geography at the Tokyo Senmon Gakkō (presently Waseda University), Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927), believed that Hawai‘i was an ideal migration destination for the unemployed and impoverished Japanese. Organizations were established to assist people going abroad.1 After the first wave of migration starting in 1885 saw 945 Japanese settlers in Hawai‘i, the numbers steadily increased, so that by 1909 there were 70,000 Japanese living there—more than a half of the total population. By then many immigrants settled in Hawai‘i permanently. This move toward permanent settlement coincided with the Americanization of Hawai‘i and growing discontent about the cheapness of Japanese labor and the increasing number of Nisei (the children of first-generation Japanese emigrants).2 After migrating to Hawai‘i, the Issei (first-generation Japanese emigrants) experienced a long period of transition in which they searched for a new identity. Whereas they remained Japanese subjects, “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (until 1954), their children, Nisei, became American citizens at birth and thus held dual citizenship after Hawai‘i became a U.S. territory in 1900. The Issei, not yet able to sever their ties with Japan, were anxious as to “how the Nisei would be educated and fare in their native land.”3 Some educators believed they should be educated as Japanese, in accordance with the moral principle expressed in the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890). Others were afraid that “undue emphasis on those aspects (of the Rescript) would create an insular mentality among Nisei children that would hinder their ability to adapt to American society.” Thus they advocated educational assimilation.4

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In Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi (History of education for Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i), Okita Yukuji points out that Shiga recommended that the education of the Nisei be freed from the Japanese curriculum, a stance that reflected his broader criticism of the imperial education system, and particularly the moral precepts expressed in the rescript.5 Shiga was one of the eminent Japanese scholars who visited Hawai‘i and encouraged the immigrants to assimilate into American culture and adopt the U.S. education system. As such he played a vital role in establishing a new identity for the immigrants and a new direction for the education of the Nisei. This essay examines his recommendations for Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i who, in the 1910s, were in transition from being sojourners to being permanent residents. It first outlines a brief history of Japanese migration to Hawai‘i and the education of these immigrants before the establishment of the Hawai kyōikukai (Japanese Educational Association of Hawai‘i) in 1914. It then examines Shiga’s advice during his 1912 and 1914 visits to Hawai‘i, which imply his opposition to the national moral campaign led by Inoue. Shiga believed that the immigrants would become pioneers for cultural coalescence between the East and the West, but that they needed guidance about how to bridge their Japanese moral foundation to the moral landscape of their new land. It will be clear that he was one of the few intellectuals who provided the immigrants with practical recommendations. The Purpose of Education: A Comparison with Inoue Tetsujirō After its victories in the wars with China and Russia, Japan was perceived by many rival nations as a “threat.” As Japan transformed itself into a militaristic nation, anti-Japanese sentiment increased overseas. At home, constant tax increases and worsening poverty created deep social tensions and fostered the rise of grassroots antigovernment theories and radical social movements such as socialism and anarchism. In order to pacify the political and social unrest, the government initiated kokumin dōtoku undō (the National Morality Campaign) and in 1910 appointed Inoue Tetsujirō (1855–1944), a professor of philosophy at the Imperial University, as its leader. In Kokumin dōtoku gairon (Outline of the national morality, 1912), Inoue argued that Japan’s unique kokutai (national essence), which derived from a continuous imperial lineage, was essential to its moral foundation.6 In essence, the moral teaching of the twenty-year-old Imperial Rescript on Education, chū (loyalty) and kō (filial piety) to one’s family, ancestors, and ultimately to the emperor, was reemphasized and linked with patriotism, and remained the guiding principle of Japanese education until the end of World War II. In Kokumin dōtoku gairon, Inoue argued that it was not necessary for emi-



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grants to adjust their moral foundation, kokutai, in order to reflect changes in their lives overseas.7 He claimed that the success of the Russo-Japanese War amply demonstrated the power of Japanese patriotism and made a mockery of calls to modernize the national curriculum. He was not supportive of emigration and certainly saw no reason to alter the essential nature of Japan’s educational principles for Japanese abroad. His attitude, in short, was centered on an idealized rendition of Japan’s past. As such, the passing of time was not, according to him, a reason to contemplate change. Shiga saw the purpose of education differently. In addition to following the “sound mind sound body” approach (borrowed from liberal Western educational theory), he believed that education should prepare Japanese students to take their place as members of the international community. Within Japan, he thought that people needed to be educated to deal with economic growth and technological development, but he also believed that education should provide for the needs of those who would eventually live overseas. He was convinced that emigration was essential to Japan’s survival, because the limited land mass of the country simply could not accommodate and feed an annual increase of 750,000 people. Contemporary statistics indicate that the average annual income in Japan in the mid-1920s was only 71 yen, while the monthly cost of living was 35.6 yen. Hence, people were forced to virtually starve for almost ten months of the year. It was with some alarm that Shiga wrote: “When people can barely subsist for ten months of a year, how on earth can one expect morality from them? Loyalty and filial piety will be observed when people’s basic necessities are assured. Dangerous theories (such as anarchism) which destroy society from the grassroots level arise as a result of simply not having enough to eat. The problem of overpopulation is thus desperate and is a vital issue for Japan and the Japanese.”8 Thus, Shiga considered the provision of people’s basic necessities of life to be more important than the enforced observance of moral principles. Unlike Inoue, Shiga considered emigration necessary for Japan’s survival. It promised to bring about immediate economic benefits. It was projected that by 1936 an additional 21 million births would bring Japan’s total population to 62 million. He believed that emigration would ease some of the social pressure caused by overpopulation and that it was vital for the lower classes of Japanese society, which suffered most from unemployment and impoverishment, to be able to emigrate overseas. Shiga is known among scholars of Japanese intellectual history as a pioneering advocate of kokusui shugi, a theory that, in the late 1880s, called for the maintenance of Japan’s cultural identity in the face of increasing pressure for modernization from the West. He was also one of the few Japanese intellectuals of that time to visit the South Seas. His firsthand account of his 1886 trip to Australia,

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New Zealand, Hawai‘i, and other South Seas islands, Nan’yō jiji (Current affairs in the South Seas, 1887),9 was an immediate best-seller. This trip convinced him that emigration was a viable solution to Japan’s population crisis, a policy he advocated for the remainder of his life. Shiga received a Western-style education and was taught in English from primary school onward; his father and grandfather were Confucian scholars, having been schooled primarily in the Chinese classics and Confucian studies. Whereas they had been taught to be loyal and observe filial piety to the family and the shogunate, Shiga was taught by American teachers such as Marion Scott (1843–1922) and William Clark (1826–1886) to be “a good citizen” and to care for others.10 It is possible that this exposure to Western thought and culture encouraged Shiga to develop an international awareness not possessed by his father or grandfather—a perspective further broadened by his experiences overseas.11 Hawai‘i as an Ideal Destination Being on the Pacific Rim, with warm climates and good job opportunities, Hawai‘i became a popular destination for Japanese emigrants. In 1886 a regular nonstop sea service from Hawai‘i to Japan commenced. This coincided with the Hawai‘i government’s encouragement of Japanese immigration in order to meet the demand for labor in the country’s sugar industry.12 Shiga believed Hawai‘i to be an ideal destination for Japanese emigrants. In Nan’yō jiji he maintained that one Japanese emigrant could provide economic relief for three people struggling to make ends meet. The first beneficiary was the emigrant. If a single emigrant worked hard and sent some of his or her wages home and/or ordered everyday commodities from Japan, the emigrant created a new job in commerce and trade for a second person in Japan, as well as freed up his or her original job for a third person in Japan. Thus, Shiga referred to emigrants as “true patriots who left for the benefit of the country.”13 At first, Japanese labor contractors worked at the sugar plantations for a period of three years. Although the salaries were low, the immigrants received free accommodation, power, water supply, and medical care. Initially, they were able to save their money and take it home once their contract expired. Very few of them stayed beyond the expiration of their first contract. This changed when, in the 1890s, government-level arrangements for contract workers were no longer available and individual ones were introduced. The Japanese government was concerned about the “maltreatment” of the immigrants and thus was reluctant to support calls for more emigration.14 After the termination of dekasegi (labor contracts and/or temporary agricultural works) immigrants stayed for longer periods, or permanantly. They were then referred to



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as shokumin (permanent settlers) rather than imin (sojourners), and many moved to the U.S. mainland after Hawai‘i was annexed by the United States in 1898.15 This situation continued until anti-Japanese labor sentiment spread throughout California in the 1900s and the Gentleman’s Agreement was imposed in 1908. This agreement put an end to Japanese immigration to the U.S. mainland and later to Hawai‘i.16 This marked the beginning of the second phase of immigration during which immigrants settled as farmers instead of as contract laborers.17 As the move to the U.S. mainland became prohibited and the “Americanization” of Hawai‘i grew, along with anti-Japanese sentiment, it became necessary for the Issei to search for a new identity and a new direction for the education of their children. We have seen that the Issei could not become naturalized U.S. citizens, while the Nisei received dual citizenship at birth.18 By educating the Nisei in accordance with the imperial principle, the Issei risked further antagonizing the local population, but if they educated their children as American citizens they would strip them of their identity as Japanese and force them to become “disloyal” to Japan.19 Shiga was one of the eminent Japanese who visited California and Hawai‘i and observed firsthand the Japanese exclusion movement, as represented by the 1913 Alien Land Law. Yūji Ichioka points out that Shiga claimed in his article “Nihon kyōiku no muyō” (The uselessness of a Japanese education) in the immigrant press that “a Japanese education, being insular and narrow, ill-prepared the Japanese people for overseas expansion.” Thus he advised Japanese immigrants to demand an American education for children.20 The Education of Japanese Immigrants in Hawai‘i Many of the earlier sojourner immigrants to Hawai‘i, most of whom were male, were tempted by gambling, drinking, and prostitution. After days of hard labor on a sugar plantation they were eager to relax and enjoy some diversion, and often they were forced to compete for a female companion. Some of the female immigrants became involved with prostitution, for the money and because of the fact that conditions were far better than those they encountered laboring in the field. Advocates of emigration hoped that more Japanese women would emigrate so that the male workers would come to lead more constructive lives, saving their money to start up businesses, or for marriage and raising a family.21 While so-called picture brides migrated to Hawai‘i, Japanese monks and missionaries also moved there in the hope of halting the moral decadence of the immigrants. As more Japanese emigrated, the demand for an organization of mutual support increased. When the number of Japanese immigrants to Hawai‘i exceeded 65,000 in 1903—more than half of the Hawaiian population—the Chūō Nihonjinkai (Cen-

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tral Japanese Committee), with Consul-General Saitō as its president, was founded. The committee called for cooperation among immigrants and believed that if Japanese immigrants were to improve their status from that of sojourners to that of settled immigrants, they needed to develop an economic and social stake in Hawaiian culture.22 As Ozawa Gijō points out, political shifts such as changes to the U.S. immigration policy in the 1890s and the annexation of Hawai‘i by the United States in 1898 created new tensions for immigrants.23 An important consideration for Japanese immigrants contemplating whether or not to settle permanently in Hawai‘i was the schooling of their children. At first, parents and teachers simply assumed that their children, the Nisei, remained Japanese citizens and, as such, they should be educated in accordance with the imperial education principle. The first Japanese school in Hawai‘i was founded on Kohala (the Island of Hawai‘i) in 1893. By 1908, eighty such schools had been established, and by 1915 they numbered 134. Most of these schools were run by Japanese religious organizations and staffed by either Buddhist monks or Christian missionaries.24 Their curricula were all based on the principle laid out by the Japanese Ministry of Education. As such, they all taught from the national textbooks used in Japan, which seemed appropriate for as long as they remained “sojourners.”25 At that time there was seemingly little conflict between the parents and their children’s Japanese teachers; if there was, it often lay in persuading parents of the need to educate their children and to send them to school.26 At any rate, most schools at this stage were run by volunteers and were not systematically organized as institutions. The Reverend Okumura Takie (1865–1951), head of Makiki Christian Church and a community leader, especially for Japanese Christians, recalled in his biography, Taihēyō no rakuen (Paradise of the Pacific, 1926), that soon after moving to Hawai‘i in 1894 he perceived an urgent need to teach Japanese language to the Nisei. He asked a little girl sitting alone if she was with her mother. She replied, “mī ma hanahana yō konai” (My mother is working and can’t come). He asked one of the so-called gan nen mono (the emigrants of the first year of the Meiji era), Ishimura Ichigorō, who happened to be there, to translate what the girl had said and was told that she had spoken a mixture of English, local words, and Japanese. At that time there was still no Japanese school, even though Japanese had been immigrating to Hawai‘i for almost a decade. Hence it was rare for children born in Hawai‘i to speak Japanese well, and this resulted in communication problems between the Issei and the Nisei. On learning of this, Okumura immediately began to teach the language.27 The Japanese population in Hawai‘i had reached seventy thousand in 1909, by which time there were as many as eighty Japanese schools. It was customary for such children to attend foreign-language (Japanese) schools outside the regular



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hours of their public (English) schools. With Hawai‘i then part of the United States, Nisei automatically became U.S. citizens, which in some ways made the practice of teaching them Japanese seem redundant. Consul-General Ueno, who had replaced Saitō, frequently sought guidance and support from the Ministry of Education in Japan.28 In this way the Japanese government came to extend its authority to its people living overseas, though after the Russo-Japanese War it was inclined to regard them as kimin (abandoned people).29 As Japanese schools spread across the islands, locals on the islands became aware of the high birthrate of the Japanese and the fact that they educated their children at public (English) schools, where they did very well academically. The education of Nisei at Japanese schools in accordance with the moral principles of imperial education was another cause of the antagonism. It produced loyal subjects but did not teach them how to assimilate to a new land and community. Ozawa claims that while Buddhist immigrants continued to insist on educating their children as Japanese, intellectuals such as Harada Tasuku (1863–1940) of the University of Hawai‘i and the Reverend Okumura advocated that children should be educated as U.S. citizens.30 Religious conflicts among the Buddhists of different sects, as well as between Buddhists and Christians, were coupled with immigrants’ internal disputes, such as arguments based on their regional differences back in Japan. Thus, the so-called gakkō mondai (school issues) not only caused conflicts between the immigrants and the local people but also became a source of antagonism between the immigrants themselves. In November 1912, the Maui education committee decided to organize a general forum for Japanese throughout the islands to discuss the direction that education should take.31 It was to this forum that Shiga was invited to give advice. Shiga and Japanese Immigrants in Hawai‘i During two separate trips to Hawai‘i in 1912 and again in July 1914, Shiga met with local Japanese. He was invited by the Kin’yōkai (Friday Club), an organization of business and intellectual leaders in the Japanese community, as an adviser when the first assembly of the Hawai kyōikukai (Japanese Educational Association of Hawai‘i) was held in 1914.32 The Friday Club, represented by Sōga Yasutarō (1873–1957), a president of Nippū jiji (Current affairs in Hawai‘i and Japan), invited Shiga to present seminars concerning a new direction for the education of the Nisei.33 Sōga was a former student of Shiga’s at Waseda University and had been much inspired by Shiga’s Nan’yō jiji.34 Sōga organized a series of seven lectures by Shiga held from June 28, 1912, at the Opera House and many more at other institutions such as the Hawai

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chūgaku (Junior High School in Hawai‘i). Each session was attended by a capacity audience, which Sōga claimed reflected the immigrants’ desperate need for future guidance.35 In the first lecture on June 28, 1912, Shiga, known to the audience as a kokusui advocate and a geographer, declared that “Japanese born in Hawai‘i should be prepared to bridge cultures between the United States and Japan.”36 This formed the key theme in all his seminars, including those he delivered during his subsequent visit in 1914. In the second talk, on June 29, 1912, Shiga stressed that the immigrants should remain in Hawai‘i and not return to Japan, as starting anew back home would be even harder. Living difficulties caused by the population crisis were becoming harsher every day and people were being further encouraged to emigrate overseas.37 The situation was so hard that some schoolchildren could not afford to bring lunch with them and that many were so feeble that they fainted during their daily physical exercises.38 In contrast, Shiga stressed that immigrants in Hawai‘i were blessed with better living conditions and climate. For example, Japanese living in Kona had large families with an average of seven to ten children, and many older people lived longer and in better health than their counterparts in Japan. Longevity was Shiga’s key criteria for measuring prosperity. He believed that, free from the hardships then prevalent in Japan, immigrants in Hawai‘i could become “global” citizens, discarding their insular thinking to occupy the cultural crossroads between the East and the West.39 Generally, the Friday Club hosted free seminars presented by eminent intellectuals traveling through Hawai‘i en route to or from the U.S. mainland. In the case of Shiga, however, the club sponsored both of his trips to Hawai‘i by preselling admission tickets to his lectures.40 According to Sōga, out of over twenty such lectures hosted by the Friday Club, Shiga’s were by far the most popular with the immigrant community. Despite there being a charge of fifty cents per head for Shiga’s talks, tickets to them sold out instantly.41 Upon his return home from the 1912 trip, Shiga organized a Hawai‘i Exhibition at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to promote Hawai‘i in Japan. The exhibition was so successful that he extended it for an extra two days, and on the last of these he escorted Royal Prince Fushinomiya (1858–1923) on a tour of the display. When a group of students from a junior high school in Hawai‘i visited Japan in July 1913, Shiga arranged for them to meet with the minister of education, Okuda Yoshito (1860–1917), with a general of the Imperial Army, Tsuchiya, and with the president of the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Ōya Kahē. Hence, despite the shortness of their stay, the students were exposed to a diversity of opinion from eminent Japanese.42



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Shiga’s Ideas for Educating Japanese in Hawai‘i When Shiga returned to Hawai‘i in 1914, the Friday Club once again arranged for him to present a series of seminars (from July 20 to 24 at the KB Hall). Also during the visit, he attended a three-day conference held by the Hawai kyōikukai (in Honolulu), in the capacity of a special adviser on the revision of textbooks.43 Most Japanese immigrants were now settling permanently in Hawai‘i, and the issue of educating Nisei had become a vital concern. Unlike Inoue, who stressed kokutai, the Japanese essence deriving from a continuous imperial lineage, Shiga strongly recommended that immigrants assimilate into the local culture and adopt the American education system for their children: “It is a duty for any man to abide by the constitution of the country where he lives. Therefore, the immigrants should not educate their children in accordance with the primacy of the education principle in Japan, but with the requirements of the republic in which they are living.”44 Shiga was not alone in advocating this path. Shimada Saburō (1852–1922) and Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933) had visited Hawai‘i prior to Shiga and had similarly suggested that the immigrants should not be preoccupied with a limited interpretation of loyalty and patriotism and instead should assimilate themselves as members of the republic. At the time these recommendations created an uproar. On September 15, 1911, the Hawaii shokumin shinbun (Newspaper for Japanese Settlers in Hawai‘i) denounced Shimada and Nitobe as “two shameful scholars.”45 In December 1911, the same newspaper published the opinion of Consul-General Ueno, who, representing the Japanese government, stated that it was a duty for Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i to bring up their children to be loyal to the United States yet well-acquainted with Japanese affairs.46 Hence it became widely accepted that the immigrants needed to establish a new identity as “U.S. citizens” independent from their motherland. As we shall see, Shiga was one of the few intellectuals who provided practical suggestions about how they might adapt traditional Japanese moral ability to their lives in Hawai‘i. In his lectures during the 1914 visit, Shiga asserted that the immigrants had to think of themselves as individual members of a community rather than as imperial subjects. Having been taught to be unquestioningly obedient to one’s family and to the emperor, the Japanese immigrants did not know how to make this transition. Their inability to show their Japanese identity alienated them from others in the Hawaiian community and resulted in widespread misunderstanding, and sometimes in anti-Japanese sentiment. In “Kaigai hatten no konponteki shisō” (Fundamental thought on overseas development), Shiga identified one of the key characteristics associated with the Japanese: “As a result of the imperial state-oriented

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education, Japanese have not fostered a capacity to express their care for others. Japanese are consequently regarded as selfish and such misunderstanding is the cause of anti-Japanese sentiment.”47 Shiga argued that immigrants needed to be encouraged to show their caring for people outside of their own family. Because of Japanese clannishness and the insular mentality born of Japan’s 265-year isolationist policy, the immigrants were not aware of their obligations to the host society. For example, other far smaller immigrant communities in Hawai‘i had introduced flowers, vegetables, and poultry to their new home. In contrast, even when there were over 90,000 Japanese living in Hawai‘i, they had failed to even introduce a Japanese favorite, like loach.48 Furthermore, the immigrants sent money back to Japan rather than investing in local industries. They participated in Japanese cultural activities but failed to invite local people, and thereby neglected to foster closer ties with the rest of the Hawaiian community. This lack of awareness of social mores, Shiga concluded, made overseas Japanese unpopular. The Reverend Okumura Takie claims that this attitude derived from dekasegi konjō, their sojourning mentality, their unwavering belief that they would one day return to Japan, which freed them from the need to create a new set of lasting social relations.49 Shiga thought it vital that the immigrants learn the Western virtue of having sympathy for others beyond one’s family. He saw this virtue as exemplified in the life of Father Damien (1840–1889), a Belgian Catholic priest who ministered to the lepers on Molokai Island when no health officials would go there. After twelve years of such service, the priest himself died of leprosy, proud to have become the lepers’ “true” friend. In 1890, another Catholic, a Frenchman, built a hospital for lepers at the foot of Mount Fuji, and in 1896, a British woman did the same in Kumamoto, Japan. Shiga believed that such concern for others, irrespective of their race or class, needed to be demonstrated by the Japanese if they were to be accepted as harmonious members of Western societies.50 In short, he argued that the moral principle of the imperial education failed to instill in the immigrants a sense of obligation and loyalty to their new community. In the seminars, Shiga cited many more examples of “assimilation,” including his own, which he hoped would inspire the immigrants to embrace the local way of life. For example, in response to Western claims that the Japanese were “ungrateful,” he compiled a list of forty Americans whom he thought deserving of Japanese respect and gratitude due to their dedication to Japan’s modernization since the arrival of Commodore Perry (1794–1858).51 The list included his mentors Marion Scott and William Clark, who contributed to modernizing the Japanese education system. He also referred to a stone monument that he had brought with him to present to the people of San Antonio. He had had the monument made in his hometown, Okazaki, in recognition of “the common values of courage and selfsacrifice for a worthy cause that both Texans and Japanese admired. The monument



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honored heroes of both the Alamo and of Nagashino.”52 Shiga believed such gestures of respect to be the first step toward Japanese assimilation. Having been raised to believe that Japanese culture is “unique and superior,” the immigrants had first to develop a respect for U.S. culture before they could contemplate assimilation. Shiga also lectured on the historical relationship between Hawai‘i and Japan, particularly in regard to Nakahama Manjirō (1827–1898).53 Sōga noted that these talks, filled as they were with Shiga’s ideas about cultural accord and practical examples of how it might be brought about, were both enlightening and inspiring to the immigrants that heard them. Dr. Katsunuma thanked Shiga on behalf of the Friday Club and the audience, and Shiga, in return, encouraged the immigrants, wishing them eternal prosperity in Hawai‘i.54 In discussing the adaptation of education to locality, Shiga thought that Hawai‘i had great potential for the Japanese. It was, he claimed, an ideal place for Japanese to establish themselves. Once settled there, he believed they could be pioneers in bridging the gap between the civilizations of the East and the West. Japanese children born in Hawai‘i, he claimed, were raised in an environment comprised of a variety of cultures and were blessed with the opportunity to combine cultures and to create a new civilization. He encouraged the two hundred thousand naturalized Japanese in Hawai‘i to follow the lead of Hamada Hikozō (Joseph Hiko) (1837– 1897), a fisherman from Hyogo Prefecture. In his Hyōryūki (Chronicle of drifting, 1863), Hikozō wrote, “being in both the United States and Japan, I dedicate my hard work to both countries, hoping only thus to express my gratitude to both.”55 This ideal, Shiga insisted, was only attainable if the immigrants successfully integrated themselves into Hawaiian life. Unlike Inoue, who did not see any need for Japanese emigrants to adjust their guiding principle, Shiga emphasized that a person’s education should be in accord with the needs of the country in which he or she resided. For this, it was essential that textbooks feature stories set in Hawai‘i, where the Nisei were being reared, rather than those drawn from Japanese history and culture. To further illustrate this, he referred to the following situations. British immigrants to Australia adopted textbooks suitable to Australian conditions, so that the characters children read about would go to the beach at Christmas instead of holidaying in the snow, as they might in England. In another case, after a group of young Nisei students from Hawai‘i saw a play in Japan, they thought that “snow” referred to pieces of paper falling onto the stage.56 In essence, Shiga’s advice to the Japanese immigrants was to adapt the Japanese curriculum and educational principles to the local situation in Hawai‘i, to observe the old maxim, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.” “Jargons such as kokutai, chū and kō only make the immigrants confused and argumentative in regards to moral conduct and fail to awaken them to the need for change.”57 As such, he be-

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lieved that they should not adhere to the primacy of the Japanese education system with its emphasis on the patriarchal moral principle.58 Having argued this case, the next step was to revise the textbooks. Shiga recommended that textbooks in Hawai‘i should support the resolution of the first World Conference held in London in 1913: “All men are created equal regardless of the country of their birth or their race. Elementary school textbooks should be amended explaining why people should not be treated differently.”59 In accord with this trend toward a universalist education, he emphasized the cultural coalescence required of people living in a culturally diverse society. Shiga’s second specific recommendation involved a “deemphasis” of the imperial moral foundation and a “refocusing” on its “universality.” He argued that Nisei had to be taught to think globally, and that educational institutions should teach from examples of tolerance and extended benevolence to all found in Japanese history. An example was when, in the Russo-Japanese War, the Meiji emperor instructed General Nogi Maresuke (1849–1912) to command his troops to evacuate Russian women, children, and missionaries prior to the attack on Port Arthur. Furthermore, when the fortress fell, the emperor commanded his soldiers to respect the Russian officers who had defended it.60 Shiga also recommended that textbooks include examples of commendable deeds done by women in both the East and the West, and those done by men through Bushido (the way of samurai), focusing on universal precepts. For instance, the benevolence of George Washington’s mother, or the Meiji empress who donated the 100,000 yen she had saved through austerity to the International Red Cross, or the unyielding spirit of the mighty fourteenth-century samurai Kusunoki Masatsura (1326–1348). Shiga believed that by emphasizing the universal aspects of the lives of such role models, Japanese immigrants would become aware that they were living in a cross-cultural environment and would feel more able to conform to local mores. Once they were so inspired, Shiga anticipated, they would act appropriately and thereby defuse the antagonism directed toward them by their fellow Hawaiians.61 The years 1914 and 1915 saw a shift toward greater assimilation. For example, the first general assembly of the Hawai kyōikukai was held on February 22, 1915. At this, the consul-general, Arita Hachirō (1884–1965), in his inaugural speech, rhetorically asked, “Would there be any hindrance to Japanese descendants, born and raised in the U.S. territory, being patriotic to the United States and respecting the Stars and Stripes when they are protected as U.S. citizens? Japanese education should be limited to the language rather than the principle of imperial education per se.”62 The transition from being sojourners to permanent residents paved the way for immigrants to become Nikkeijin (U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry) and to develop a new principle of education for the Nisei.



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Conclusion Okita Yukuji maintains that Shiga Shigetaka played an important role in adapting the education principle for the Japanese immigrants to a new environment, through the adoption of which they achieved something the Japanese living in Japan were unable to do—namely, to modernize the imperial education principle.63 This essay affirms Okita’s assertion and illustrates how Shiga encouraged and educated the Japanese immigrants as to how they might forge a future for themselves independent of the Japanese identity exemplified by Inoue’s backward-looking national moral campaign. In today’s global society, it may be difficult to imagine the intensity of cultural and educational conflict, the political and diplomatic complexity, experienced by Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i early in the last century. Within one generation, people who had been taught to be loyal imperial subjects were doing what would once have been unthinkable: teaching their children to become American citizens. It is probable that Shiga’s own mixed educational background provided him an insight into the Japanese immigrants’ search for a new identity. Believing in emigration as a means of easing Japan’s social problems of overpopulation and unemployment, Shiga considered educational reform essential to the integration of the Japanese immigrants. In short, much like the generational transition between his father’s education and his own, he advocated a switch in pedagogical perspective from a Confucian state-oriented principle to a “universal” one. He lauded Clark, Scott, and others as the progenitors of modernization in Japanese education, and was committed to assisting the immigrants to assimilate themselves into the Hawaiian way of life through cross-cultural communication and mutual respect. In this way, he was one of the few Japanese intellectuals able to offer practical advice to Japanese immigrants as they faced increasing resentment within their adopted community. For Shiga, Hawai‘i was the prime destination not only for emigration but also for cultural coalescence; something he believed that the Nikkeijin in Hawai‘i would help to affect in the fullness of time.

Notes Unless otherwise noted, all Japanese references were printed in Tokyo and all Japanese names appear with the family name first. Throughout this essay, macrons are placed over long vowels of Japanese words, except for places and publishers already known in English without them. For ease of reference, English translations are provided for the titles of most works. Shiga Shigetaka zenshū (The complete collected works of Shiga Shigetaka, hereafter

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referred to as SSZ) in Japanese, 8 vols., were published by Shiga Shigetaka zenshū kankōkai between 1927 and 1929. The reprint of SSZ was published by Nihon Tosho Center in 1995. Although the title suggests that the collection is complete, this is not the case, as it is in fact a selection of his works. See Masako Gavin, Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927): The Forgotten Enlightener (London: Curzon Press, 2001), 209–213. Portions of this essay have appeared elsewhere in earlier versions (in English): The Forgotten Enlightener: “Anti-Japanese Sentiment and the Responses of Two Meiji Intellectuals,” East Asia International Quarterly 21.3 (2005): 23–36. “Kirinuki chō” (Scrapbook), one of the major references in this essay, is unpublished. Comprising newspaper clippings pasted into a scrapbook by the Honolulu poet, journalist, and the president of Nippū jiji (Current affairs in Hawai‘i and Japan), Sōga Keihō (Yasutarō), it is housed in the Rare Hawaiian Collection in the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. The library catalogue indicates that the scrapbook’s clippings relate to a variety of subjects from articles published between 1916 and 1935 in the Honolulu StarBulletin, Honolulu Advertiser, Wela-ka-hao, Hawai‘i Chinese News, Nippū jiji, and other newspapers. “Kirinuki chō” comprises three volumes, and this essay focuses on volume 2, which contains Shiga’s articles published in the Nippū jiji between 1912 and 1914. I would like to thank George Oshiro of Obirin University and Chieko Tachihata, emeritus scholar of the University of Hawai‘i, for calling my attention to this scrapbook. In Gojūnenkan no Hawai kaiko (Fifty years of memories of Hawai‘i), Honolulu, 1953, Sōga recorded that reading Shiga’s Nan’yō jiji made him eager to travel abroad. While still a student in Japan, Sōga was taught geography and English by Shiga (ibid., 3). Later, as a representative of the Kin’yōkai (Friday Club), Sōga invited Shiga to give some seminars in 1912, and again in 1914. Shiga, already an eminent scholar of geography in Japan, was delighted to accept the invitation (ibid., 258–259). 1. For example, Shiga founded Kaigai tokō muhiyō hojokikan, a nonprofit organization that assisted people interested in going overseas by providing them with basic information about traveling and living abroad. Magazines such as Tobei zasshi (Going to the United States) and Tobei shimpō (News from the United Sates) provided information about transportation, employment, and current affairs in the United States. Mamiya Kunio, “Abe Isō to imin jinkō mondai” (Abe Isō and his view on emigration and the population crisis), Shakai kagaku tōkyū (1993), 28. 2. The birthrate in industrialized countries at that time was less than 25 per thousand people, but for the Japanese in Hawai‘i it was twice as much, almost 50 per thousand. For this reason the U.S. citizens in Hawai‘i were concerned that the Japanese would soon numerically dominate the population. “Sanji seigenron” (Birth control), Jitsugyō no Nihon (1922), 142–144. 3. Yūji Ichioka, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants 1865– 1924 (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 153, 254. 4. Ibid., 202. 5. Okita Yukuji, Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi (Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1997), 23, 167, 204. 6. Inoue Tetsujirō, Kokumin dōtoku gairon (Sanseido, 1912), 272–273.



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7. Ibid. 8. Shiga Shigetaka, “Kokka no Mangō” (Current Manchuria and Mongolia), SSZ 1 (1928): 389; Shiga, Shirarezaru kuniguni (Countries unknown to Japan), SSZ 6 (1926): 327. 9. Shiga Shigetaka, Nan’yō jiji (Current affairs in the South Seas), SSZ 3 (1887; 1927), 102. 10. William Smith Clark (1826–1886) and Marion Scott (1843–1922) were among the so-called oyatoi gaikokujin (foreigners on a short-term contract in the early Meiji period). Clark inaugurated the Sapporo Agricultural College (presently Hokkaido University). Scott founded a system of public schools and established Japan’s first teachers’ college. 11. As a war correspondent during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), Shiga accompanied the besieging army to Port Arthur and observed the siege of the fortress from the headquarters of General Nogi Maresuke (1849–1912). During a trip he began in March 1910 that took him to Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, Europe, England, Argentina, and Brazil, Shiga attended the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition in London and the Argentinean National Centennial. In June he delivered a lecture at the Brazilian Geographical Society in Rio de Janeiro and was awarded honorary membership in the society. He was also nominated by the Royal Geographic Society of the United Kingdom to the position of honorary correspondent in 1917. He lectured in Hawai‘i, California, Mongolia, and Manchuria—all places where anti-Japanese sentiment was prevalent. He remained something of a globe-trotter, covering 264,000 miles in the course of his life. Gotō Kyōfu, Waga kyōdo no umeru sekaiteki sengakusha Shiga Shigetaka sensei (Keigansha, 1931), 64. Minamoto Shōkyū, “Shigetaka Shiga 1863–1927,” Geographers Bio-bibliographical Studies 8 (1984): 97. 12. Before the first settlers of 1885, there was an unofficial group of emigrants, the gan’nen mono, sent in 1868. Gan nen mono literally means the emigrants of the first year of the Meiji era. Ozawa Gijō, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku (Honolulu: Hawai kyōikukai, 1972), 3. 13. Shiga, Nan’yō jiji, 94. 14. Nagai Mansuke, ed., Meiji Taishō shi (Kuresu shuppan, 2000), 357. Yūji Ichioka maintains that “the Japanese government never envisioned permanent labor emigration to the United States or elsewhere. During the 1870s and 1880s, the Foreign Ministry was intent on seeking revisions to the unequal treaties which had been imposed upon Japan by the Western powers. The government began to exercise strict control over the departure of laborers” (Ichioka, Issei, 4). 15. “Hakkan no ji,” Hawaii shokumin shinbun, no. 1, May 7, 1909, 1. Hawaii shokumin shinbun asserts that the word shokumin in the title of the newspaper indicates that the time had already changed from one of sojourning to one of permanent settlement. When Enomoto Takeaki (1836–1908), minister of foreign affairs, founded the Iminkyoku (Immigration Bureau) in 1891, he defined permanent settlers as shokumin (teijū imin), or settled immigrants, slightly different from the meaning of its synonym, shokumin (written with one different character, which means “colonialism”). Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin, 112. Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisutokyō undōshi, ed. Dōshisha University jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo (1991), 11. 16. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 56. Immigrants already residing in the United States, however, were still permitted to sponsor family members for immigration. 17. Ichioka, Issei, 4.

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18. “Zaibei Nihonjin gakkō haishisetsu ni tsuite,” Hawaii shokumin shinbun, January 29, 1912. 19. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin, 124. 20. Although Ichioka does not specify the date of Shiga’s visit, except that it was after 1913, it was most likely after he visited Hawai‘i in 1914; Ichioka, Issei, 203–204. The curb on Japanese immigration imposed by the Gentleman’s Agreement found its first legal expression in the Alien Land Law of California, which was passed in 1913 then revised in 1920. This prolonged campaign of antagonism toward Japanese immigrants culminated in the socalled Japanese Exclusion Clause in the bill of 1924, which singled out Japanese for exclusion from the United States. 21. Abe Isō, Hokubei no shin Nihon (Hakubunkan, 1905), 37. 22. “Rengō kyōikukai to gojin no kibō,” Hawaii shokumin shinbun, September 22, 1909. 23. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 56. 24. “Hawai kyōiku to Nihonjin,” Hawaii shokumin shinbun, August 20, 1909, 3. 25. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 56. 26. Sōga Keihō, Gojūnen no Hawai kaiko, ed. Gujūnenkan no Hawai kaiko kankōkai (Honolulu: 1953), 169. 27. Okumura Takie, Taihēyō no rakuen (San’eidō shoten, 1926), 164–165. Most Japanese children attended both local public schools and Japanese schools. In reference to the former, it is worth noting that Marion Scott, the founder of teachers’ colleges in Japan, became principal of the first public school in Hawai‘i, Honolulu High School (presently McKinley High School) from 1885 to 1919, after returning to the United States. This was the only public high school in Honolulu and had a predominantly Japanese student body. In The Life of Mr. M. M. Scott (Fukuoka: Fukuoka University of Education, 1989), Hirata Munefumi provides a detailed account of Scott’s constant support for the Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i. Shiga also refers to Scott as the “best friend of Japanese immigrants” in Hawai‘i. Hirata maintains that by the time Scott moved to Honolulu, he was very well versed in Japanese lore, customs, traditions, and sentiment. His public sympathy for Japan led him to become a kind of unofficial ambassador for Japan to the Hawaiian Islands. When anti-Japanese sentiment spread in Hawai‘i and California, Scott not only spoke out on behalf of the Japanese but endeavored to mediate any racial conflicts. For these services, the Japanese government conferred on him the Order of the Rising Sun of Fourth Grade on May 17, 1912. Hirata, Life of M. M. Scott, 3–7. Shiga Shigetaka, “Nihon to Hawai no rekishiteki kankei,” “Kirinuki chō” 2:30. 28. “Hawai kyōiku to Nihonjin,” Hawaii shokumin shinbun, August 20, 1909, 3. 29. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin, 169–170. 30. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 63. 31. Ibid., 56–59. 32. Ibid., 57. 33. The Kin’yōkai was founded in 1911 as a kind of reading club engaged in organizing cultural events such as public lectures. Sōga, Gojūnenkan no Hawai kaiko, 257. 34. Sōga moved to Hawai‘i in 1894; ibid.



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35. Ibid., 259. 36. Shiga Shigetaka, in Sōga, “Shiga sensei kōen” (Talks by Shiga Shigetaka), “Kirinuki chō” 2:2. 37. Ibid., 2:3. 38. Twelve to thirteen students fainted during the exercise every day. Shiga Shigetaka, “Aomegane shiromegane” (1912), “Kirinuki chō” 2:9. 39. Shiga Shigetaka, in Sōga, “Nihon ni kankei aru Hawai rekishi” (History of Hawai‘i in relation to Japan), “Kirinuki chō” 2:15; “Sekai no Nihon” (Japan in the world), “Kirinuki chō” 2:8. 40. Sōga, Gojūnen no Hawai kaiko, 257–259. 41. Ibid. 42. Shiga Shigetaka, “Bei hondo oyobi Hawai zairyū Nihonjin no kyōiku” (Education for the Japanese on the U.S. mainland and Hawai‘i), SSZ 1 (1928): 400–401. Miwa Kimitada, “Crossroads of Patriotism in Imperial Japan: Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927), Uchimura Kanzō (1861–1930), and Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933)” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1967), 338. 43. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 57. The Maui committee also sought Shiga’s advice on educating their children. 44. Shiga, in Miwa, “Crossroads of Patriotism,” 339. 45. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin, 132. Shiga’s colleague professor at Waseda, Abe Isō (1865– 1949), also commented that, given the fact that all U.S. representatives with whom these intellectuals met were pro-Japanese, “little was gained.” Abe Isō, “Hainichi mondai to rōdō mondai” (Anti-Japanese backlash and labor issues), Rikugō zasshi (Universe) 411 (1915): 13. 46. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin, 132. 47. Shiga Shigetaka, “Zaigai dōhō shitei no kyōiku mondai” (Education for overseas Japanese), “Kirinuki chō” 2:37–38; “Kaigai hatten no konponteki shisō,” Nōgyō sekai, in SSZ 1 (1928): 316–317. 48. Shiga Shigetaka, “Kaigai hatten wa giron yorimo jikkō nari,” SSZ 1 (1928): 256; “Zaigai dōhōshitei no kyōiku mondai,” 37–38. 49. Okumura Takie, Taihēyō no rakuen, 210. Okumura believed that antagonism toward Japanese was caused by the immigrants’ sojourning mentality, their unwillingness to invest both financially and emotionally in Hawaiian culture. Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisutokyō undōshi, ed. Dōshisha University jinbun kagakubu (1991), 135. Prior to both his trips to Hawai‘i, Shiga criticized the imperial education system for only having recommended theories without demonstrating practical applications. For example, there were a large number of newspapers and magazines concerned with foreign diplomacy—110 magazines alone were dedicated to this topic—but none of them offered advice as to how to conduct a mission. He argued, “Japan has grown into a country with a swollen head full of armchair theories.” At a seminar organized by the Ministry of Agricultural and Commercial Affairs in 1915, Shiga reiterated that one practical application was superior to one hundred theories, and nothing could be less useful than discussion without follow-up practices: “Having observed a large circulation of so-called ‘diplomatic magazines,’ I sincerely hope that the theories in these magazines will be replaced with practical

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recommendations”; Shiga Shigetaka, Sirarezaru kuniguni, SSZ 6 (1926): 433–434; “Kyokujitsu shōten no seishin” (Japanese spirit), Shinkoron (1911): 32; “Bentō ni kayu o motekuru Ninomiyashū: Chochiku ken’yaku no bōkokushugi” (The Ninomiya style austerity: The destruction of Japan), Shinkoron (1911): 148. 50. Shiga Shigetaka, “Zaigai dōhōshitei no kyōiku mondai,” 37–38. 51. See Gavin, Shiga Shigetaka, 204–205, for details of the forty individuals. 52. Shiga extolled the bravery of men in these battles, particularly that of James Bonham of the Alamo (1836) and of a loyal samurai, Torii Sune’emon (?–1575) of Okazaki clan in the Battle of Nagashino (1575). A replica of the monument is kept at the Okazaki castle, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Nagy, “Remembering the Alamo Japanese-Style,” 5. Shiga brought the monument from his hometown, Okazaki. “This monument only represents my humble personal effort to show my admiration and reverence for the heroic deeds enacted here and the noble men who gave their lives so willingly for the principle for which they stood. The Japanese people have nothing to do with the matter, but in a larger sense my action may be taken to symbolize the feeling of the Japanese nation for the United States.” Shiga, in Nagy, “Remembering the Alamo Japanese-Style,” 3. 53. Nakahama Manjirō (1827–1898), a fisherman from Nakahama village (in Shikoku), was rescued by an American whaling ship in 1841 and was educated in the United States. He returned to Japan in 1851 and worked as an interpreter upon Commodore Perry’s arrival. He is known for his loyalty to those who helped him in the United States. Shiga, “Nihon ni kankei aru Hawai rekishi,” “Kirinuki chō” 2:15. 54. Shiga Shigetaka, “Zaigai dōhōshitei no kyōiku mondai,” “Kirinuki chō” 2:36. Sōga, Gojūnenkan no Hawai kaiko, 263. 55. Shiga Shigetaka, “Egawa Tarōzaemon sensei” (Mr. Egawa Tarōzaemon), SSZ 2 (1928): 404–406; “Zaigai dōhō shitei no kyōiku mondai,” “Kirinuki chō” 2:38. 56. Shiga, “Bei hondo oyobi Hawai zaiyū Nihonjin no kyōiku,” SSZ 1 (1928): 401–402. 57. Shiga, “Kirinunki chō” 2:36. 58. Ibid., 36–37. 59. Shiga Shigetaka, “Bei hondo oyobi Hawai zaiyū Nihonjin no kyōiku,” SSZ 1 (1928): 406–407; “Zaigai dōhōshitei no kyōiku mondai,” “Kirinuki chō” 2:38. 60. Shiga Shigetaka, “Taiheiyōgan ni okeru Nihonjin” (The Japanese on the Pacific Coast of the United States), SSZ 1 (1928): 399; “Bei hondo oyobi Hawai zaiyū Nihonjin no kyōiku,” ibid., 408. Ichioka maintains that some immigrant educators were wary of promoting “parochialism” among Nisei youngsters and did not give unqualified support to the rescript. They interpreted the rescript as broadly as possible and advised their associates to focus on its universal precepts. Ichioka, Issei, 202. 61. Shiga Shigetaka, “Taiheiyōgan ni okeru Nihonjin,” SSZ 1 (1928): 391–398. 62. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi, 4, 31–40. Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo kyōiku, 64–66. 63. Okita, Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi, 4.



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Bibliography Abe Isō. Hokubei no shin Nihon (A new Japan in the U.S.A.). Hakubunkan, 1905. ———.“Hainichi mondai to rōdō mondai” (Anti-Japanese backlash and labor issues). In Rikogō zasshi (Universe), 411. 1915. ———. Sanji seigenron (Birth control). Jitsugyo no Nihon, 1922. First Annual Report of Sapporo Agricultural College. The Kaitakushi, 1877. Gavin, Masako. Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927): The Forgotten Enlightener. London: Curzon Press, 2001. ———. “Anti-Japanese Sentiment and the Responses of Two Meiji Intellectuals.” East Asia International Quarterly 21.3 (2005). Gotō Kyōfu. Waga kyōdo no umeru sekaiteki sengakusha Shiga Shigetaka sensei (Shiga Shigetaka: An international forerunner from our hometown). Keigansha, 1931. “Hakkan no ji” (Inaugural address). Hawaii shokumin shinbun (Newspaper for Japanese settlers in Hawai‘i), no. 1, May 7, 1909. “Hawai kyōiku to Nihonjin” (Education in Hawai‘i and the Japanese), part 3. Hawaii shokumin shinbun, August 20, 1909. “Hikozō Hamada.” Hyōgoken jinbutsu jiten. Vol. 1. Hyogo: Nojigiku bunko, 1966. Hirata Munefumi. The Life of M. M. Scott. Fukuoka: Fukuoka University of Education, 1989. Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisutokyō undōshi (History of Christian campaigns in the United States). Dōshisha University jinbun kagakubu kenkyūjo ed., 1991. Ichioka, Yūji. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants 1865–1924. New York: The Free Press, 1988. Inoue Tetsujirō. Kokumin dōtoku gairon (Outline of the national morality). Sanseido, 1912. Ishii Ryōichi. Population Pressure and Economic Life in Japan. London: P. S. King & Son, 1937. Mamiya Kunio. “Abe Isō to imin jinkō mondai” (Abe Isō and his view on emigration and the population crisis). Shakai kagaku tōkyū, 1993. Minamoto Shōkyū. “Shigetaka Shiga 1863–1927.” Geographers Bio-bibliographical Studies 8 (1984). Miwa Kimitada. “Crossroads of Patriotism in Imperial Japan: Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927), Uchimura Kanzō (1861–1930), and Nitobe Inazō (1862–1933).” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1967. Nagai Mansuke, ed. Meiji Taishō shi (A history of the Meiji and Taishō eras). Kuresu shuppan, 2000. Nagy, Margit. “Remembering the Alamo Japanese-Style: Shigetaka Shiga’s Monument as Tribute to the Alamo Heroes.” San Antonio, TX: Our Lady of the Lake University of San Antonio, 1989. Okita Yukuji. Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi (Educational history of Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i). Kyoto: Minerva shobo, 1997. Okumura Takie. Taiheiyō no rakuen (Paradise of the Pacific). San’eidō shoten, 1926.

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———. “Nihon oyobi Nihonjin ga tayotte mote ikubeki hōshin” (The best solution for Japan and the Japanese). Osaka Mainichi shimbun, in SSZ 1, 1928. ———. “Nihon shihan kyōiku no ganso Sukotto sensei no raichō ni tsuite” (Professor Scott’s return to Japan). SSZ 2, 1928. ———. Sapporo zaigaku nikki (My student days in Sapporo), part 1. SSZ 7, 1928. ———. Sapporo zaigaku nikki (My student days in Sapporo), part 2. SSZ 8, 1928. ———. Shirarezaru kuniguni (Countries unknown to Japan). SSZ 6, 1928. ———. “Taiheiyōgan ni okeru Nihonjin” (The Japanese on the Pacific Coast of the United States). SSZ 1, 1928. ———. Zoku sekai sanui zusetsu (World landscapes—Continued). SSZ 6, 1928. ———. “Watashi no gakuseijidai” (My student days). SSZ 8, 1929. Sōga Keihō (Yasutarō). “Kirinunki chō,” vol. 2 (1912–1961). In Rare Hawaiian Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. ———. Gojūnenkan no Hawai kaiko (Fifty years of memories of Hawai‘i). Gojūnenkan no Hawai kaiko kankōkai ed., Honolulu, 1953. Toyama Toshio. Sapporo nōgakko to Eigo kyōiku (Sapporo Agricultural College and English education). Shibunkaku, 1992. Webb, Judge. Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Austin: Von Brockman, 1915. “Zaibei Nihonjin gakkō haishisetsu ni tsuite” (Thoughts on termination of Japanese schools in the United States). Hawaii shokumin shinbun, January 29, 1912.

C hap t e r 8

Buddhism at the Crossroads of the Pacific Imamura Yemyō and Buddhist Social Ethics Moriya Tomoe

The ideals and political life of the United States depend ultimately and absolutely upon the Christian American home. True Americanization can not bloom in a Buddhist Oriental household. —Vaughan McCaughey, Superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction

Inevitably one comes across the name of Imamura Yemyō (1867–1932) when studying the history of Japanese immigrants and Buddhism in Hawai‘i. Imamura was in charge of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, affiliated with Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha (commonly known as Nishi Hongwanji, headquartered in Kyoto, Japan), a Japanese Pure Land Buddhist denomination. Nevertheless, he is only mentioned in detail in Louise Hunter’s study entitled Buddhism in Hawaii, on which most of the postwar studies still heavily depend.1 What Hunter has shown us in her work is an image of Imamura and Buddhism quite different from the way contemporaries of Imamura depicted him. One may question why such a change in interpretation took place. Perhaps it was that her study was written with the advent of Asian American studies, when a great deal of attention was positively paid to Asian religions and cultures in the United States. On the other hand, Lori Pierce recently examined this religion from a perspective of “ideological features of race” to uncover Imamura’s philosophy together with that of a haole Buddhist, Ernest Hunt, and nicely coined a term, “hybrid Buddhism,” to describe their collaborative presentations of Buddhist Americanization.2 However, during the Americanization movement, mainly in the 1910s and 1920s in Hawai‘i, the English-speaking media in the Islands criticized Buddhism and Shinto as being “un-American” or even “anti-American.” Daniel Weinberg described this sort of nativistic press agitation as one that “reviewed and denounced



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[these Japanese religions] as antithetical to Americanism,” because Americanizers in Hawai‘i “vigorously espoused the doctrine that to be a ‘true,’ one hundred percent American was synonymous with being a Christian.”3 Such labeling of Buddhism, however, does not sufficiently explain why the Honpa Hongwanji Mission promoted “Americanization” and established the English Department, which later developed into the International Buddhist Institute (hereafter the IBI) in 1929. The IBI and the Young Buddhist Association (hereafter the YBA, originally named the Young Men’s Buddhist Association) on the Islands eventually cohosted the Pan-Pacific YBA Conference in 1930.4 Although this chapter deals with these activities, its main purpose is to investigate Imamura Yemyō’s ideas from the standpoint of acculturation rooted in the Buddhist teachings. By examining his ideas in connection with the activities in the late 1920s and early 1930s, this essay will uncover what the previous studies have neglected—namely, the importance of his writings in both Japanese and English—and analyze them from a historical background of a Buddhist foreign mission in the Pacific Rim. The Foreign Mission of Japanese Buddhism There have been quite a few historical studies of the prewar Japanese Buddhist foreign mission, mainly in Asia, written largely in Japanese and to a lesser extent in English, whereas those of the mission to North America (including Hawai‘i) are mostly written in English, but relatively few in Japanese. As for studies on the modern Japanese Buddhist mission in English, they mostly revolve around Zen,5 whereas in the case of Jōdo Shinshū, or Shin Buddhism, they are almost nonexistent.6 Owing to the history of Japan’s invasion of Asian countries, new access to particular area studies by responsible scholars can occur, and conducting this area of research requires scholars, particularly Japanese, not only to collect newly found primary materials and documents as the basis for a historical study, but also to be sufficiently conscientious when dealing with the Japanese Buddhists’ war responsibility. These Buddhist denominations established foreign missions in the late nineteenth century, mostly during the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), and they had close ties with Japanese imperialism. As the editors of a recent edition of Eastern Buddhist state, “The role of Japanese Buddhist monks, clergy, and temple institutions in promoting the war effort surely remains a significant topic in the study of Buddhist traditions in Japan.”7 Regarding studies of the Asian missions of prewar Japanese Buddhism, I should like to mention Fujii Takeshi’s work as an overall analysis of this field and its academic situation in Japan. Although admitting the necessity for ethical approaches on the part of scholars, Fujii points out that the “normative”8 approaches, when overtly applied, may limit further development of this field of study. Instead,

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he suggests a focus on such topics as individual priests’ ideas about Buddhism, their understanding of nationalism in relation to this, and so on, which would exemplify the various aspects of the respective foreign propagation.9 The Japanese Buddhist institutions called their own activities kaikyō (lit. opening of the [Buddhist] teachings), though they often followed the Japanese immigrants in order to continue to conduct the same rituals as in their homeland, and hence it was inevitable that these missions were cynically called, at the same time, tsuikyō (lit. the teachings following [immigrants]).10 Their main destinations were primarily China, Manchuria, Korea, and Taiwan, where Japanese expansionism was taking place, followed by the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and North and South American continents, and eventually the Kurile Islands, Southeast Asia, and Micronesia. While Harumi Befu regards this “human dispersal” from 1868 to 1945 as having been made possible by the territorial expansion or colonization in those regions, he also describes various historical experiences of the Nikkei diasporas.11 A study of foreign propagation of Buddhist denominations needs to examine the diversity of activities and patterns of acculturation due to the differences in the host cultures and their political relations with Japan. Although covering the whole mission is not my primary concern here, this present study of the Hawai‘i mission, with comparisons of the characteristics of its activities with those of East Asian countries, may show most contrasting approaches for the prewar foreign mission of Japanese Buddhism.12 The Hawai‘i Mission Among these regions where the “human dispersal” took place, Hawai‘i holds a unique position, particularly in regard to the Buddhist mission. For instance, a report from all the foreign missions submitted to their headquarters in the 1909 fiscal year included tables of their activities, showing that the kaikyōshi, or ministers, in the United States and the Territory of Hawai‘i conducted religious services for various types of attendees at temples or plantation camps. While the Chinese mission consisted of services and sermons for Japanese civilians and military officers, the American one (including in Hawai‘i) consisted of services for only civilians due to the lack of military officials.13 As is widely known, Hawai‘i witnessed thousands of Japanese immigrating from Japan in the latter half of the nineteenth century until the number had grown to about 40 percent of the population of the entire Islands by the 1920s. Most of these Japanese were assigned to sugar plantations owned by the “Big Five.” A large number of these immigrants came from southwest Japan, and Tetsuden Kashima points out that numbers of passports issued by Japan show that 63 percent of the immigrants during 1889–1903 came from Hiroshima, Kumamoto, Yamaguchi, and



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Fukuoka prefectures, which were “Jodo Shinshu [sic] strongholds in Japan.”14 According to Arimoto Masao, those from these predominantly Jōdo Shinshū prefectures accounted for 96.2 percent of all the Japanese immigrants to Hawai‘i between 1885 and 1894.15 Oddly enough, however, the Nishi Hongwanji Headquarters in Kyoto was reluctant to dispatch missionaries to Hawai‘i until 1889, when Kagahi Sōryū, a Shin Buddhist minister from Ōita prefecture on the island of Kyūshū, volunteered to go there. There was also an eagerness for a foreign mission to Hawai‘i among young Buddhists in Japan who claimed that the headquarters should seriously consider that the migrant workers on those distant islands had to live without any consolation from Buddhism, though apparently yearning for it.16 In this way, owing mostly to a petition addressed to Nishi Hongwanji from lay Buddhists in Honolulu, and partly through the efforts of Kagahi, in 1897 the headquarters in Kyoto finally sent a “scout” to investigate the conditions on the Islands. In the following March, a veteran minister, Satomi Hōni, was officially appointed as the first Kantoku, or Director of the Mission.17 It is assumed that the reason why the Hongwanji Headquarters in Kyoto displayed reluctance in starting a foreign mission in Hawai‘i, compared to East Asian countries, was due to the former’s economic and political disadvantages. Compared with the plantation workers in Hawai‘i, who were kept under “semi-servile”18 conditions with a lower income than other immigrants of different ethnic origins, the Japanese in East Asian colonies enjoyed a much better standard of living and a higher social status. One can also find an apparent difference between Asian and Hawai‘i missions due to the presence of the Japanese military and chaplaincy in the former area. As Imamura recollected, Kyoto tended to support exclusively the East Asian missions in terms of financial and personnel affairs, which inevitably forced the Hawai‘i Mission to become “independent and self-supportive” from the beginning.19 Apart from these political/economic reasons, a doctrinal controversy concerning the propagation of Buddhism in a Christian country, caused by Kagahi’s explanation to the administrators at the headquarters, created a stir. He tried to persuade them by saying that Amida (Skt. Amitābha) Buddha, the supreme figure in Pure Land Buddhism, had to be “identified as being the same as the Christian God, [which] might have been overlooked as a hōben, an expedient means necessary to propagate Buddhism in a Christian society.” This suggestion consequently aroused disapproval, including that of his mentor and father-in-law, Tōyō Engetsu, who expressed “his vehement opposition.”20 It is probable that Kagahi’s oversimplified analogy could have been regarded as heterodoxy by those in authority in Kyoto at that time, because Christianity had been prejudicially depicted as jakyō, or an evil religion, from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century.

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However, what this all means is that the Hawai‘i mission was started and maintained by the religious enthusiasm of lay members and ministers, not by military or political interests. This is the conspicuous feature of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii.21 The Christianization of Hawai‘i Henry Judd of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association urged, in a 1920 speech, “In the year 1915 there were 89 Buddhist and six Shintoist priests in the Territory. Today there are 97 Buddhist and eight Shintoist priests. Every time we hear the booming of the temple bells, we are reminded of this process of repaganization.”22 This quotation illustrates the apprehension Christians felt over the growing numbers of Buddhist temples that had been built in plantation camps and the emergence of Buddhist activities on the Islands; they also shared the confusion between Buddhism and Shinto commonly found among the Americanizers.23 To better understand Judd’s anxiety, it is useful briefly to review the history of Christianity in Hawai‘i. Unlike China and Korea, whence Buddhism had been brought to Japan, Hawai‘i had already been almost totally Christianized by American Protestant missionaries from 1820, who were mainly sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), established in 1810.24 As is well known, they were involved in the political, educational, and financial matters of the kingdom, which eventually resulted in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani led by the descendants of these American missionaries in 1893. These events were followed by the birth of the Republic of Hawai‘i the next year, which was later annexed to the United States in 1898. Although these missionaries often required drastic cultural and political changes of the Hawaiian people due to their confidence in the superiority of American culture, as well as the abolition of what was then called “idolatry” and their conversion to Christianity, it was also true that they tried, according to their conscience, to protect the Hawaiians from economic and sexual exploitation by European and American merchants.25 The policy of the ABCFM in the nineteenth century was under the guidance of Rufus Anderson, who served as correspondence secretary (1832–66) and whose “three-self theory”—namely self-supporting, self-governing, and selfpropagating—stressed the following process of the foreign mission: (1) training converted indigenous people to become able pastors; (2) securing independence for indigenous churches; and (3) the eventual departure of missionaries from the countries concerned.26 In other words, Anderson stressed preaching only the Gospel, and therefore separated missionary activities from secular ones. It was, in this sense, considered contrary to the policy of the ABCFM for its mission to become involved with the politics of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the education of indigenous Hawaiians, until 1866, when Nathaniel Clark replaced Anderson.27



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The Hawaiian Evangelical Association (HEA, a.k.a. the Hawaiian Board), the successor of the ABCFM in Hawai‘i, was organized in 1853, and its missionaries were there to spread the Gospel among Japanese immigrants as well. As for the HEA’s propagation, however, Yoshida Ryō, in his analysis of the Japanese Christian community in Hawai‘i, points out the “paternalistic” control the HEA exerted over the Japanese Christians, due to the fact that it supported the Japanese church financially by paying the salaries of its evangelists, and more important, only American missionaries could administer the sacrament, regardless of vital and self-supportive church activities conducted by the Japanese Christians. Such a racial division of labor reveals a twofold aspect of Christianity in Hawai‘i—that is, a “benevolent side that unconditionally helped educate the ‘pagans,’” and a “racialist side to exclude Japanese as an inferior race.” This situation discouraged some Japanese Christians, in particular the lay members, and eventually led them to establish their own churches in 1902 in order to free themselves from the HEA’s control.28 The relationship between the HEA and the Japanese Christians, nevertheless, was not always hostile. Okumura Takie, the pastor of Makiki Christian Church, and a member of the Japanese Section of the HEA, cosigned a statement of the HEA objecting to the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association’s support for Buddhist organizations in 1920.29 During his educational campaign, Okumura wrote: “The attitudes of the Japanese clerics toward Sundays are extremely problematic. They hold such noisy festivals, like Sumo wrestling tournaments or dance shows at temples and shrines without any religious or spiritual significance, by calling them Buddha installation ceremonies. . . . As Japanese living in a Christian country, they should refrain [from erecting temples and shrines], not to mention those who bring in heathen and evil religions (inshi jakyō) that have already been prohibited in Japan, disclosing these ugly superstitions before foreigners [i.e., Americans], which is indeed a shameless act.”30 His son, Umetarō, who served as an informant for the Office of Naval Intelligence, was “likely responsible for some of the ‘information’ that influenced the federal survey [of education in 1919],”31 which resulted in showing the suspicion of Buddhism. This religious and social background explains the difficulties the Japanese Buddhist organizations experienced in the early twentieth century, as well as the root of anti-Buddhism propaganda, combined with xenophobic reactions that regarded the Japanese Buddhists as “pagans” who disseminated “idolatry.” Imamura Yemyō: A Buddhist from Japan It was under such historical circumstances that a former English teacher in Fukui and Tokushima prefectures, Imamura Yemyō, was assigned to carry out missionary activities in 1899. Owing to Director Satomi’s illness, Imamura, in his thirties, took

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over and was appointed director the following year, then was reappointed as Sōchō, or Bishop, in 1918, a position he held until his sudden death in December 1932. During this period, he endeavored to transform the Shin Buddhist tradition, to which most of the Japanese immigrants belonged, into an Americanized form. Imamura’s early life prepared him for the challenges that faced the Buddhist community in Hawai‘i.32 Imamura was first enrolled in Futsū Kyōkō (later reorganized as Bungakuryō, present-day Ryūkoku University) in Kyoto, which taught liberal arts, and later Keiō University in Tokyo, where he majored in English literature. His activities at Futsū Kyōkō should be considered as the nurturing place for his democratic ideas, based on Buddhism. Also, at that time, learning English exposed students of the Meiji era to the latest liberal ideas. In the Hanseikai zassi,33 a magazine Imamura edited with his classmates at Futsū Kyōkō, he criticized contemporary Buddhism in the East as being like the “private property” of priests and claimed that Buddhism and its institutions should be “common property belonging to all of us, both laity and clerics.”34 Such criticism on the hierarchical nature of Buddhist institutions was commonly found among young reform-minded Buddhists in modern Japan, and although Imamura did not leave the temple institution as some radical Buddhists did, it is safe to say that the infusion of democracy in his youth may have opened his mind to the ideas of Americanism. Although Imamura saw his own mission as one of Americanizing Buddhism, others saw him and other Buddhists in quite an opposite way. A Christian clergyman wrote an article on the Japanese-language school problem in 1921, part of which read: “Inevitably the existence of these schools teaching Japanese and especially the leaning of the Buddhist institutions towards Japan offered a golden opportunity to the exaggerated nationalistic spirit that followed the [first world] war.”35 This is just one of many typical views of Buddhism in Hawai‘i during the Americanization drive at that time, and hence it is not so astounding to find present-day scholars of Buddhist history describing Imamura as a “nationalist” when dealing with him as a leader of a major Buddhist organization. One study depicts him as follows: “The Shin leadership tradition in the United States (especially in Hawaii, but also the mainland) was closely tied to the nationalist policies of the Honganji [sic] in Japan. . . . The overseas Shin leadership understood the ‘Japanese cultural heritage’ (including State Shinto) as inseparable from modern nationalism.”36 Although it does not offer us direct proof as to how the Shin ministers in Hawai‘i connected “State Shinto” to the “Japanese cultural heritage,” as well as to Buddhism, we can observe here that this kind of confusion of Japanese Buddhism with Shinto still exists. Apart from this, Imamura was also known as a mediator between the planters and Japanese laborers. According to Ronald Takaki, while the plantation managers regarded Imamura’s messages of “cooperation and respect for order” as valuable



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for “stabilizing the influence on their workers,” Imamura “realized that [he] could secure planter support and financial assistance for their religious activities.”37 Commenting upon his intervention in the 1904 strike, Hunter writes that “Imamura’s mediation in the settlement of the strike was duly noted and commented [upon] by the American press,” and that he considered his unsuccessful intervention in the 1909 strike as an example of “the Japanese-Buddhist concept of nimmu, which obligated a man to perform his job honestly and to the best of his ability with no questions asked.”38 In other words, Imamura was more inclined to maintain order than to support the strikes at the plantations in the first decade of the twentieth century. However, later in a Hawaii hōchi article on January 1, 1920, Imamura commented on a strike currently under way that it was natural for the sugarcane workers to ask for pay raises because of the accelerating cost of living in those days. In the “Kaikyōshikai gijiroku,” or Minutes of the Ministerial Committee in 1920, we can find Imamura’s proposal “not to break up the labor union,” and in the Minutes of the Giseikai or Congress in 1927, his suggestion that ministers consider how and what they could best offer their lay members instead of “exploiting them.”39 What made Imamura change his attitude so positively toward the strikes and the labor union? To discover this, we should examine his understanding of Buddhism, which has been neglected in previous scholarship, to find the driving force behind his thoughts and endeavors. Imamura’s Concern for Social Issues The actual missionary activities that Imamura created came about through a constant process of trial and error, sometimes conflicting with the opinions of other Issei leaders or the wider American public. According to Hawai kaikyōshi, his typical daily work and that of his fellow ministers during this pioneer period consisted of the following: conducting funerals, preaching before demoralized and drunken workers (many of whom were young bachelors) at wretched plantation-owned housing in the camps, writing letters or documents for those who were illiterate, teaching English at night schools, and running Japanese schools for children. With only a few temples at the beginning, ministers had to travel to each camp to give sermons to plantation workers, who were sometimes offensive toward them, as they were too busy gambling among themselves. Because the majority of them were working under such miserable conditions, and had fallen into despair, having so little money and little hope of returning to their homeland, hollow-sounding sermons only irritated them.40 Therefore, it took several months before both immigrants and ministers could grasp what each other truly felt and meant. However, once the relationship of mutual trust was established, the workers

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turned to listen to what Imamura and others had to say. This can be seen in an incident of 1904 when the Waipahu plantation strike took place and he was called upon to mediate after the unsuccessful negotiation by Okumura Takie. As a result of Imamura’s talk, the angry workers finally calmed down and returned to work. In addition, the planters recognized the influence of “Bishop Imamura’s successful intervention” in connection with work efficiency and hence saw the benefit of keeping Buddhist temples at the plantations. They began to support building temples near Japanese camps, and this was the beginning of the building boom for such places in Hawai‘i.41 On the other hand, Imamura made a comment on the increasing standard of life of the Japanese immigrants in a Nippu jiji article on December 12, 1908, as follows: I have made a tour around these islands lately, and have found the standard of life of Japanese laborers by no means low. . . . This is quite a change as compared with conditions of several years ago. The change is accounted for by the fact that the laborers are gradually becoming resident and settled labor from transient labor, which they were before. Consequently they care more for their health and for the satisfaction of human desires than for saving money. . . . The standard of life of Japanese laborers is not inferior to that of other laborers.42

Imamura now seemed to acknowledge the need laborers had to take action to receive higher wages. Likewise, a pamphlet written by the Zōkyū Kiseikai, or the Higher Wage Consummation Association, about the 1909 strike, entitled “The Higher Wages Question,” pointed out that whereas Christians did not bear the expenses of constructing a church or a preaching place, the Buddhists bear all expenses themselves. In the construction of their churches and places of worship the Buddhists have expended some hundred thousand dollars, and they are bearing current expenses of $50 per month on average in each place. With the increase of women and children, these churches have to be enlarged in capacity and increased manyfold in number and improved in quality. These items of labor’s expenditure were not included in the determination of [the] original wages schedule, and as the present one is based upon the original wages schedule suited to contract laborers, there are entirely new burdens on laborers for which no provision was made. . . . The present and prospective needs for adequate and decent places of worship for the plantation’s labor are something which should be provided for in determining the wages of the laborers.43

Imamura had earlier called Shin Buddhism a heimin kyō, or a religion for ordinary people, and described that it never despised plantation workers for their



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illiteracy and lower economic and social status from the early period of his missionary work.44 According to Imamura, at the strike he spoke from a “religious point of view,”45 explaining before an emotional crowd that “laborers are the first ones to be saved by Amida Buddha.”46 In this sense, his religious talks, although “neither eloquent nor persuasive,”47 probably gave a great deal of consolation to them, and hence many workers accepted Imamura. The high frequency of plantation strikes and statements, as in the pamphlet, however, most likely made him realize that supporting the union-management cooperation policy could ignore an unfair wage system and racist policies at these plantations and thus ran counter to the egalitarian tenet of the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha. The turning point came when Imamura failed to stop the 1909 strike, the first well-organized one, involving most of the large plantations on O‘ahu. His concept of the obligation to perform one’s job without question did not deter this strike, and this fact obviously raised questions in his mind about the fairness of his “religious point of view,” as a result of which he came to support the strikes more favorably for the sake of the betterment of working conditions. However, such an unusual way of dealing with them in favor of the laborers in terms of Shin Buddhist teachings would have been seen as Marxist-oriented, or even heterodoxical, by his counterparts in Japan, particularly after the government-fabricated Kōtoku Jiken, or so-called High Treason Incident of 1910–11, in which all twenty-six Marxists and anarchists involved were arrested and immediately sentenced to death, though most of their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Among the accused were four Buddhists, one of whom was executed.48 Due to the government’s constant oppression of socialists and communists, not very many priests and ministers, regardless of their denomination, supported labor movements, as the majority was inclined toward a capital-labor cooperation policy and condemned egalitarian ideas or socialism as expressions of a dangerous ideology that promoted “evil equality.”49 For a person in charge of the Hawai‘i Mission, therefore, to deal positively with the labor movement would have risked one’s social status in Japan, and hence we can see the significance of Imamura’s support for the strikes and the labor union in Hawai‘i. Imamura also supported the well-known 1920 strike, a highly organized and large-scale one in which both Filipino and Japanese labor unions cooperated. In a Hawaii hōchi article of January 1, 1920, he maintained that the time had come for people who did not work on the plantations to show their support for the strike, though he pointed out that it should remain within the limit of demanding better economic conditions to avoid further political disputes. As we can find in a Nippu jiji article of January 23, 1920, the religious leaders of the Japanese community, both Buddhist and Shintoist, except for Japanese Christian clerics, signed a letter soliciting the planters for higher wages and better working conditions for their plantation workers.

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The Americanization of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii As is well known, the Japanese schools in Hawai‘i were originally founded to educate Japanese children under the same curriculum as in Japan. Issei parents, who hardly comprehended English, wanted their Nisei children to be educated under such a system, as most of them still intended to return to Japan in the near future. However, after Hawai‘i was annexed to the United States, these children in the territory began to attend American public schools. Moreover, by the 1910s, as increasing numbers of Japanese immigrants started settling in Hawai‘i or on the U.S. mainland, the community slowly became more Americanized, and hence it was inevitable that the Issei leaders and parents conceded that such schools should be reformed into foreign-language schools that would accord with the American public school system.50 It was during the 1909 strike that Tsunoda Ryūsaku arrived in Honolulu as the principal of the Japanese High School (Hawai Chūgakkō),51 affiliated with the Honpa Hongwanji Mission. After graduating from Tokyo Senmon Gakkō (presentday Waseda University) and working at Min’yū-sha in Tokyo, he attended a Christian seminary, Dōshisha Shingakkō (present-day Dōshisha University) in Kyoto, and studied privately under Shingonshū priests. This education allowed him to learn about both Buddhism and Christianity before going to Hawai‘i.52 The Japanese High School was established for Hawai‘i-born Nisei children who had graduated from elementary Japanese-language schools. Under Tsunoda’s guidance, together with support from Imamura, both the Japanese-style curriculum and the school system were readjusted to correspond with the American public school system. Tsunoda noted in a Hawaii shokumin shimbun article on April 10, 1911, that he chose new textbooks with the idea of educating these young Japanese Americans to become a “bridge between Japanese and American cultures.” Such a hope for the bilingual Nisei children was common among the Issei Japanese, who had endured serious economic and social hardships due to racial prejudice. Imamura, on the other hand, gave a talk before a Japanese audience in Tokyo in July 1912 on the educational activities at this newly established school. Its goal was to “promote Japanese national spirit” yet, unlike the Japanese curriculum, to enhance the practical skills of “speaking fluent Japanese”; hence the school mainly taught Japanese, Japanese literature, geography, and history.53 The Nisei students were perceived as Americans by the American public, but their parents wished to treat them as Japanese with the national spirit of Japan and that of “loyalty to the emperor and patriotism” (chūkun aikoku).54 Amid such conflicts, Imamura was also well aware of the criticism of the Hongwanji schools as being “un-American” due to a divided loyalty.55 Imamura’s pro-Japanese inclination seems to have been stronger than that of Tsunoda, but the bishop gradually turned to the universal



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aspects of the Buddhist teachings.56 Honda Chie discovered that the Honpa Hongwanji embraced the Americanization process, and Imamura’s ideas reflected the changes as well. The Hongwanji-affiliated language schools joined the Japanese Education Society and adopted the textbooks edited by the society from 1917, and the Honpa Hongwanji Mission edited several volumes of original textbooks that taught cultural and familial values that accorded with those of the dominant society and Buddhist tales, and also replaced the parts mentioning the emperor or Shinto.57 The Honpa Hongwanji Mission published an English tract, The Essence of Japanese Buddhism, written by Tsunoda in 1914 with a preface by Imamura that reads: “[To] my great regret, [Buddhism] has so often been grossly misrepresented to the public, that some of them often speak slightingly of our faith as if it were a form of superstitious idolatry, and of our educational work as a system of bigoted nationalism that lays a stumblingblock [sic] in the way of Americanizing our people. . . . In order to avert such fatal results and turn them into right understanding and sympathetic appreciation, which are the root of mutual respect and love, I have long been thinking to publish the sketch of our creed and of our educational system in English, and asked Mr. Tsunoda to take up the task.”58 Tsunoda defined Shin Buddhist teachings in a unique way, which can be summarized under the following five points: (1) the compassion of Amida Buddha is equally shared whatever one’s nationality or ethnic background; (2) emphasis is placed on the importance of lay people; (3) the embrace of a democratic principle that resists any chance of hierarchical order; (4) tolerance toward other religions or creeds; and (5) the usage of the indigenous tongue in the concerned area.59 In sum, he stressed that with these features Shin Buddhism should be able to take root in Hawai‘i and America permanently. This tract, along with English sermons at the newly established English Department of the mission, gave the English-speaking Nisei a clearer understanding of Buddhist teachings that would be “welcomed by the rising [Nisei] generation as the services [became] more meaningful and understandable.”60 Besides this, the Hongwanji Mission started carrying out a democratization process throughout the whole institution, becoming gradually more “layman-controlled” as each year passed.61 For instance, the first Ministerial Committee of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission was held in 1908, and was reorganized as a congressional body called “Giseikai”62 that consisted of both ministers and representatives of the laity in 1923. In this way, the Americanization process of the Hawai‘i Mission continued during the late 1910s and 1920s. Duncan Williams points out that the Americanization programs in Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland preceded the one promoted by the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA) and that, particularly in Hawai‘i, Imamura’s

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work “exemplified a movement within Japanese-American Buddhism to distance itself from the Japanese Buddhist establishment.”63 However, such efforts on the part of the Japanese were depicted in the media as being “un-American” or even “anti-American.” This was the period of the “100 percent Americanization” drive, when even halfway acculturation of the Japanese was perceived as showing a divided allegiance to America. As Eileen Tamura points out, the crusade in Hawai‘i against Japanese immigrants can be compared to the Americanization campaign on the U.S. mainland against southern and eastern European immigrants, whose religious affiliation was Catholic.64 In July 1929, when a British Buddhist, Ernest Shinkaku Hunt, who was then in charge of Honpa Hongwanji’s English Department, was invited as a guest to a conference of Christian and Buddhist dialogue, a couple of people there refused even to shake hands with him. As the outraged Christian clerics who “[hated] Buddhists” were about to leave the conference room, Hunt stepped aside from them and left, saying, “You are of greater importance at this meeting than I. I am the one who will leave.”65 It is noteworthy that the English Department, amid such criticism throughout this time, eventually developed into the Hawai‘i Branch of the IBI in 1929. This nonsectarian Buddhist institution was established at the request of a Chinese Buddhist monk, Taixu, who happened to be staying in Honolulu in 1928 and visited the Honpa Hongwanji Mission. The IBI started publishing the Hawaiian Buddhist Annual, which contained articles by Mahāyāna and Theravāda Buddhists from around the world.66 The English Department, of which Ernest Hunt and M. T. Kirby were in charge, was founded in 1921. Although Kirby left Hawai‘i in 1927, Hunt remained there to teach Buddhism to the Nisei generation, as well as to solicit “the cooperation of Buddhists abroad.”67 His English sermons were profoundly appreciated by many young Nisei Buddhists. In an interview, a Hawai‘i-born Nisei woman told of Hunt’s deep interest in social work and his enthusiasm for teaching Buddhism to Nisei children. Her sincere belief in Buddhism, which she discovered through his sermons, enabled her to keep the Buddhist faith even after moving to California after World War II.68 Buddhist Social Ethics Imamura published a book on Buddhist democracy along with an antiwar message in 1918, and another on ideas of religious freedom in 1920. Hunter, in her book, describes Imamura’s 1918 work as “a puzzling one,” and it “did more to confuse than to clarify the Hongwanji’s position.”69 While Imamura’s ideas might seem confusing ostensibly, one needs to probe deeper to reveal their meaning. This quote is an example of what Imamura wrote: “We Buddhists believe that in this world as



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well as in the ideal world of Amita [sic] there are no absolutely determined values or particular things that cannot be reduced to some other terms, and therefore that autocracy does not unconditionally exclude democracy, nor does democracy [unconditionally exclude] autocracy, they are after all two aspects of a thing which is in itself above such opposites.”70 One can speculate that Hunter’s puzzlement originated from her assumption that democracy in the American political system was the standard. Imamura’s optimistic view on “autocracy,” from the perspective of an Asian Buddhist tradition, may well be considered parallel to King Aśoka’s reign in India. This is not peculiar only to Japanese Buddhists, but is also found in a well-known Sri Lankan Buddhist, Anagarika Dharmapala, or in the Burmese history of Buddhist “mental culture” and its relations to politics—just to mention but two.71 Further, imperial Japan witnessed the so-called Taishō democracy movement from the mid-1910s to the 1920s, at a time when the contemporaneous American society was being overwhelmed by the xenophobic Americanization movement. Besides this, we should remember that when Imamura said, “This principle of equalization exists in each of us, and as far as this alone is regarded we are all autocrats and at the same time we are all democrats,”72 he was questioning the exclusionist double standard in those who were propagating so-called democracy without contemplating their own unfair treatment of immigrants. In this sense, his understanding of Buddhist democracy did not originate from the existing political system but was based on Buddhist ideals, hence inclusive and not absolutist when dealing with people of different creeds. Pierce states that “Imamura’s vision of Americanization differed markedly from that of the most conservative elements of the Haole community who sought to Americanize the Nisei through Angloconformity. . . . His perception of Americanization was more in line with the cultural pluralist model of assimilation that envisioned America as a land that was enriched by cultural diversity.”73 Imamura, therefore, summarized “Americanism” in his essay on religious freedom as follows: (1) it is apparently against Americanism to exclude other religious creeds in the name of Americanism; (2) Americanism is not a complete ideology but is constantly developing, and therefore it does not fit into a lifeless order of things but rather is in the process of evolving toward change or adapting to new circumstances; (3) Americanism is not a pure, unmixed, and exclusive ideology but inclusive and comprehensive, just like a vast expanse of ocean that hundreds of rivers flow into, or the sky, which holds thousands of stars.74 For Imamura, this kind of perception of Americanism could be found in the history of the United States, which had produced new philosophies such as the American pragmatism of William James or John Dewey, and he paid close attention to these for their evaluation of pluralism and empiricism that denied authoritarian ideas. Although not

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clearly mentioning their names, Imamura probably ridiculed the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Sons of the American Revolution by equating them with the “Japanese style” of respecting anything old and hereditary, and believing that they were parallel to those popular scholars in Japan who “disseminate implausible opinions about whatever in the ancient Japanese Shinto myth in a pompous manner, but such are outdated even in Japan now.”75 It should also be noted that Imamura sought religious freedom for Buddhists in a Judeo-Christian country. He maintained that, because of the religious pluralism existing in a country that prided itself on having a Constitution that ensured religious freedom, “it is nonsensical to discriminate against someone because of his or her religious affiliation.”76 In other words, by invoking America’s own tradition of religious freedom, Imamura tried to enlarge the range of religions to include Japanese-American Buddhism. Imamura’s antiwar message published during World War I, although hardly mentioned in previous studies, is highly significant. He starts his 1918 book with the following: “How long are we yet to be groaning in agony under the terrible pressure of the world-war?”77 In its preface, he quotes a famous phrase from the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, which reads, wherever the Buddha goes, it is not necessary to use any weapons of war.78 Concerning the time of publication, this book was meant to be an appeal for peace from a Buddhist standpoint. He wrote that, in Buddhism, “Caste distinctions were abolished, all the brethren in the faith stood on equal footing. . . . As a sort of corollary to the spirit of universal brotherhood, Buddhism strongly declares against war. Avarice, antagonism, disharmony, self-aggrandizement, and other evils which go to make up the motives of any war are singularly absent in the history of Buddhism.”79 Such antiwar appeals were also found among other contemporary Buddhists in Japan. For example, Takagi Kenmyō, a Shin Buddhist minister who was arrested and imprisoned over the Kōtoku Incident, wrote in 1904: “We have never heard that beings in the Land of Bliss have attacked other lands. Nor have we ever heard that they have started a great war for the sake of justice. Hence I am against war (with Russia). I do not feel that a person of the Land of Bliss should take part in warfare.”80 Also, a Sōtō Zen Buddhist in Japan, Inoue Shūten, stated in a progressive Buddhist journal, Shin Bukkyō (lit. New Buddhism) in 1911: “War is the greatest sin, whatever the name be given to it. . . . An act of war is in itself sinful; consequently, there should not be judgment of justice or injustice according to its purpose and motivation.”81 This journal was mailed to Hawai‘i, circulated among the Japanese Buddhists on the Islands, and was checked out at the YBA library as well.82 Through these connections, we have found that Japanese Buddhists both in Japan and Hawai‘i had a deep concern for the problems in society, which motivated them to become engaged in what was happening in the actual world.



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Conclusion Mainstream Japanese Buddhist foreign missions in the Asian-Pacific area followed a path of rising nationalism, and their services were conducted mainly for Japanese immigrants, and not so much for the local people. This high esteem for politicizing such missions was due to their close connection with political authority and low religious motivation. On the other hand, the Hawai‘i Mission was in a unique situation because it was not involved in the headquarters’ political and economical interests, and therefore the system of self-support gave it a free hand to create a new paradigm of Americanization and to start new projects at its own expense. The propagation of English, a powerful board of lay people, and an ideal of Buddhist democracy developed there. It should be noted that Imamura Yemyō had also planned to establish a Buddhist seminary to train American-born, English-speaking ministers in the United States, and this dream was realized both in Hawai‘i and on the mainland in the post–World War II period.83 Although Imamura initially supported Japanese nationalism at the turn of the twentieth century, he gradually changed his position and began to emphasize the necessity for Americanization, which was, for him, a cosmopolitan outlook recognizing both American and Japanese cultures as equal. What gave him such a stance was his perception of Buddhist history, in which the universal teachings of Buddhism could bloom in each country according to its particular culture. He saw that these teachings had traveled from India to Japan and finally crossed the Pacific, and in this respect, Buddhism in America was fortunate in having inherited the accomplishments accumulated by Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhists, and also added a new vision to it. In sum, we can assume from the case of Japanese Buddhism in Hawai‘i that clashes with foreign religions arose from within the receiving society when they were regarded as challenging the established “civil religion”84 of that particular society. It may sound paradoxical, but through this experience, Imamura learned to give relative evaluation to both Japanese and American cultures and consequently stand aloof from politics. While he declared his antiwar feelings during World War I, he also stressed extending religious freedom to Buddhists in America, where at that time only Judeo-Christian religions possessed such freedom.

Notes Although Imamura’s first name is spelled “Emyō” in the Hepburn style, I have chosen to use “Yemyō,” which is commonly used by the scholars of Japanese-American studies.

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I would like to thank Jon Davidann and Peter Lait for proofreading and helping to edit an earlier draft. Ama Toshimaro and Togami Muneyoshi assisted me with insightful information regarding Shin Buddhism and its history. Dr. Alfred Bloom and Bishop Thomas Okano of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii (then also director of the Buddhist Study Center) gave me invaluable advice at the Crossroads Conference in 2001. The former Bishop Chikai Yosemori’s support was indispensable to my study on Imamura and Buddhism in Hawai‘i. I am also grateful to anonymous readers for their constructive suggestions. I would like gratefully to mention that a part of this study was supported by generous grants from the Kanagawa Foundation for Academic and Cultural Exchange, the Niwano Peace Foundation, Ralph A. Gallagher Grants of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and Grant-inAid for Young Scientists from the Monbu Kagakushō (Category B, No. 16720014). Portions of this chapter appeared earlier, in a different form, in the following: Moriya Tomoe, Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō: 20 seiki shotō ni okeru Nikkei shūkyō no bunka hen’yō (Tokyo: Gendai Shiryō Shuppan, 2001); “The Impact of Cross-Cultural Expansion of Religion: A Case Study of Pure Land Buddhism in Early Twentieth Century Hawaii,” Annual Report of the Institute for International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University 3 (2000): 147–56; “Discourses on ‘Americanization’ and ‘Tradition’ in Issei and Nisei Buddhist Publications,” paper read at the Issei Buddhism Conference, September 5, 2004, University of California, Irvine. Epigraph: Vaughan MacCaughey, “Some Outstanding Educational Problems of Hawaii,” School and Society 213 (1919): 102. 1. Isao Horinouchi, “Americanized Buddhism: A Sociological Analysis of a Protestantized Japanese Buddhism” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 1973); Tetsuden Kashima, Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Organization (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977); Eileen H. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generations in Hawaii (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Paul David Numrich, “Local Inter-Buddhist Associations in North America,” in American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, ed. Duncan Ryūken Williams and Christopher S. Queen (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999). 2. Lori Anne Pierce, “Constructing American Buddhisms: Discourses of Race and Religion in Territorial Hawai‘i” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai‘i, 2000), x, 224. 3. Daniel Erwin Weinberg, “The Movement to ‘Americanize’ the Japanese Community in Hawaii: An Analysis of One Hundred Percent Americanization Activity in the Territory of Hawaii as Expressed in the Caucasian Press, 1919–1923” (M.A. thesis, University of Hawai‘i, 1967), 72. 4. For details of the International Buddhist Institute and the Pan-Pacific YMBA Conference, see Moriya, Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō. 5. Brian A. Victoria, Zen at War (New York: Weatherhill, 1997); Nam-lin Hur, “The Sōtō Sect and Japanese Military Imperialism in Korea,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26/1–2 (1999): 107–34; Christopher Ives, “The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Modern Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26/1–2 (1999): 83–106; Christopher Ives, “Protect the Dharma, Protect the Country: Buddhist War Responsibility and Social Ethics,” Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 33/2 (2001): 15–34.



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6. A few exceptions are Galen Dean Amstutz, Interpreting Amida: History and Orientalism in the Study of Pure Land Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997); Moriya, Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō; Ama Toshimaro, “Towards a Shin Buddhist Social Ethics,” Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 33/2 (2001): 35–53. 7. “Editors’ Note,” Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 33/2 (2001): 14. 8. Fujii Takeshi, “Senzen ni okeru Bukkyō no higashi Ajia kan: Kenkyūshi no saikentō,” Kindai Bukkyō 6 (1999): 12. 9. Ibid., 19–20. 10. Kojima Masaru and Kiba Akeshi, eds., Ajia no kaikyō to kyōiku (Kyoto: Ryūkoku Daigaku Bukkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1992), 7–8. 11. Harumi Befu, “Globalization as Human Dispersal: From the Perspective of Japan,” in Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, ed. J. S. Eades, Tom Gill, and Harumi Befu (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2000), 21–22. 12. I shall only deal with the East Asian missions due to the limitation of materials at present. According to Kiba Akeshi of Ōtani University, almost all the prewar documents at both Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji Headquarters in Kyoto were destroyed right after World War II, presumably for fear of investigation by the General Headquarters. My sincere appreciation goes to Professor Kiba. Kiba Akeshi, interview by the author, Ōtani University, Kyoto, March 28, 1998. 13. “Meiji yonjūni-nendo Shin, Bei, kaikyōhyō,” Archives, Hongwanji Shiryō Kenkyūjo, Kyoto, Japan. 14. Kashima, Buddhism in America, 6. 15. Arimoto Masao, Shinshū no shūkyō shakaishi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1995), 377–78. 16. “Hawai no dendō ni tsuite,” Hansei zassi 8/9 (1893): 19. 17. Hongwanji Shiryō Kenkyūjo, ed., Hongwanjishi, vol. 3 (Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha Shūmusho, 1969), 424–26. 18. Department of Labor and Commerce, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 66, Third Report of the Commissioner of Labor on Hawaii (Washington, DC: GPO, 1906), 375. 19. Imamura, Hawai kaikyōshi, 28–32. 20. Ruth M. Tabrah, “A Grateful Past, A Promising Future,” in A Grateful Past, A Promising Future: Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii 100 Year History, 1889–1989, ed. Centennial Publication Committee (Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, 1989), 9; Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 44–45. 21. Concerning such religious enthusiasm of the pioneer Issei Buddhists, Honpa Hongwanji Mission was not the only one. Rather, it was a common characteristic of Hawai‘i and North American missions, shared by other denominations. I owe a great deal to the participants at the Issei Buddhism Conference for their insightful presentations and comments. The Issei Buddhism Conference, University of California, Irvine, September 3–5, 2004. 22. Judd, “The Repaganization of Hawaii,” 187. 23. Weinberg, “The Movement to ‘Americanize’ the Japanese Community in Hawaii,” 73. 24. Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, vol. 1: 1778–1854: Foundation and

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Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1938; reprint, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1968), 100–103. For further details of the foreign mission of the ABCFM, see Clifton Jackson Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810–1860 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). 25. Alexander G. M. Robertson, “Missionaries Who Entered Government Service,” in The Centennial Book: One Hundred Years of Christian Civilization in Hawaii, 1820–1920 (Honolulu: The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 1920), 43; Kohiyama Rui, “Kaigai dendō to sekai no Amerika-ka,” in Amerika shakai to shūkyō, ed. Mori Kōichi (Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Mondai Kenkyūkai, 1997), 111–14. 26. Kohiyama, “Kaigai dendō to sekai no Amerika-ka,” 114. 27. Unlike Anderson, Clark allowed missionaries to conduct educational, medical, or other social work activities together with religious activities. See Yoshida Ryō, “Sōgōka suru Amerikan bōdo no dendō jigyō: Nihon shinshutsuki no kyōha kyōryoku, kyōiku, shuppan katsudō o taishō shite,” in Rainichi Amerika senkyōshi: Amerikan bōdo senkyōshi shokan no kenkyū, 1869–1890, ed. Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūjo (Tokyo: Gendai Shiryō Shuppan, 1999), 7–11. 28. Yoshida Ryō, “Honoruru Nihonjin kyōkai no shinkō hyōgensha tachi,” in Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisutokyō undōshi, ed. Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūjo “Kaigai Imin to Kirisutokyōkai” Kenkyūkai (Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1991), 381–95, 406–7. Yoshida stresses the importance of social action that the laity undertook in order to eliminate the discrimination against them and to “raise the social status of the Japanese [immigrants],” which was contrary to the Japanese clergy (ibid., 405, 409). 29. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 108; Noriko Asato, “The Genesis of the Japanese Language School Controversy in Hawaii: Buddhist and Christian Conflict,” paper read at the Issei Buddhism Conference, University of California, Irvine, September 4, 2004. 30. Okumura Takie, Hawai ni okeru Nichibei mondai kaiketsu undō (Honolulu: Okumura Takie, 1932), 75–76. Compared to this book, the English version does not reveal so many detailed commentaries on the Buddhism and Shinto. See Takie Okumura and Umetaro Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problem: A Campaign to Remove Causes of Friction between the American People and Japanese (Honolulu: n.p., 1927), 4. 31. Noriko Asato, “Mandating Americanization: Japanese Language Schools and the Federal Survey of Education in Hawai‘i, 1916–1920,” History of Education Quarterly 43/1 (2003): 28. See also Okumura Takie, Hawai ni okeru nichibei mondai kaiketsu undō; Takie Okumura and Umetaro Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problem; Umetaro Okumura, “The Japanese in Hawaii,” in The Centennial Book: One Hundred Years of Christian Civilization in Hawaii, 1820–1920 (Honolulu: The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 1920); Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 108–84; Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 15, 155. 32. For more details, see Moriya Tomoe, Yemyo Imamura: Pioneer American Buddhist, trans. Takeshita Tsuneichi (Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 2001). 33. This later changed its name to Hansei zassi, and eventually became known as Chuō kōron, a popular magazine covering general topics.



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34. “Imamura Yemyō, Bukkyō seinen no shūgōtai o yōsu,” Hanseikai zassi 9 (1888): 32. 35. Doremus Scudder, “Hawaii’s Experience with the Japanese,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 93 (1921): 113. 36. Amstutz, Interpreting Amida, 80. 37. Ronald T. Takaki, Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835–1920 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983), 108–9. 38. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 72, 91. 39. “Dai jyūsankai kaikyōshikaigi yōkō,” August 4–7, 1920; “Dai gokai giseikai,” August 6–8, 1927, Archives, Department of Religious Studies, University of Tokyo. 40. Imamura Yemyō, ed., Hawai kaikyōshi (Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Hawai Kaikyō Kyōmusho, 1918), 25–30; Jane Michiko Imamura, Kaikyo, Opening the Dharma: Memoirs of a Buddhist Priest’s Wife in America (Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 1998), 101–3. 41. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 69–72. 42. Quoted in Department of Labor and Commerce, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 94 the Fourth Report of the Commissioner of Labor on Hawaii (Washington, DC: GPO, 1911), 738. 43. Quoted in Department of Labor and Commerce, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 94, 740–41. 44. Imamura, Hawai kaikyōshi, 26–27. Although this expression was cited from a book published in 1918, he had already described Shin Buddhism as “heimin-teki no ichi shinkyō” (lit. a new kind of religion for ordinary people), in his article, “Shuku shūso gōtan-e” in the May 1901 issue of the Dobo, a monthly publication of the Honolulu YMBA; reprint, Hawai Honoruru Hongwanji, ed., Chōshōin ibunshū (Honolulu: Hawai Honoruru Hongwanji, 1937), 9 (page citations are to the reprinted edition). “Chōshōin” is an honorific Buddhist title for Imamura. 45. J. M. Imamura, Kaikyō, Opening the Dharma, 104. 46. Imamura, Hawai kaikyōshi, 42. 47. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 72. 48. Yoshida Kyūichi, Nihon kindai Bukkyōshi kenkyū (Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten, 1998), 401. 49. Victoria, Zen at War, 50. For reactions of Buddhist denominations to this incident, see ibid., 38–53. 50. For a detailed study on the Nisei education, see Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity. 51. Although chūgakkō literally means “junior high school” in Japanese, the prewar Japanese educational system had a different school year, hence this four-year institution was rather similar to “high school” under the American public school system. 52. Utsumi Takashi, “Tsunoda Ryūsaku no Hawai jidai: 1909 nen no tofu zengo o megutte,” Waseda daigakushi kiyō 30 (1998): 124, 128–51; Utsumi Takashi, “Tsunoda Ryūsaku no Hawai jidai sairon: 1909–17 nen no taizai kikan o chūshin ni shite,” Waseda daigakushi kiyō 31 (1999): 92–109. 53. This speech was made at the Mita Enzetsukai (Mita Oratorical Society) of Keiō

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University. Imamura Yemyō, “Hawai ni okeru Nihonjin no kyōiku,” Keiō gijuku gakuhō 169 (1912): 25–26. 54. Ibid., 26. 55. Ibid. 56. Moriya, Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō, 108–14. 57. Honda Chie, “Dainiji sekai taisen-mae no Hawai ni okeru Jōdo Shinshū Honpa Hongwanji no Nihongo gakkō: Honoruru o kyoten to shita fukyō katsudō to no kanrende,” in Amerika no nikkeijin: Toshi, shakai, seikatsu, ed. Yanagida Toshio (Tokyo: Dōbunkan, 1995), 188–90. 58. Imamura Yemyō, introduction to Riusaku Tsunoda, The Essence of Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: The Advertizer Press, 1914), 5–6. 59. Tsunoda, Essence of Japanese Buddhism. 60. Katsumi Onishi, “Second Generation Japanese and the Hongwanji,” Social Process in Hawaii 3 (1937): 47. 61. Nakano Takeshi, “Hawai Nikkei kyōdan no keisei to hen’yō: Honpa Hongwanji kyōdan to nikkei komyunitī,” Shūkyō kenkyū 248 (1981): 65. 62. “Dai ikkai giseikai ketsugi yōkō,” June 28, 1923, Archives, Department of Religious Studies, University of Tokyo. 63. Duncan Ryūken Williams, “Camp Dharma: Japanese-American Buddhist Identity and the Internment Experience of World War II,” in Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 196. 64. Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity, 56. 65. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 157. 66. Ibid., 164–66; Moriya, Yemyo Imamura, 52–55. 67. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 166. 68. Agnes Kaji, interview by the author, July 27, 2000, Berkeley, California. I appreciate Ms. Kaji for her kindness and valuable comments. 69. Hunter, Buddhism in Hawaii, 105. 70. Imamura Yemyō, Democracy according to the Buddhist Viewpoint (Honolulu: The Publishing Bureau of Hongwanji Mission, 1918), 26–27. 71. Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, 3rd ed. (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 122; Gustaaf Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999), 6–9. 72. Imamura, Democracy according to the Buddhist Viewpoint, 21. 73. Pierce, “Constructing American Buddhisms,” 93. 74. Imamura Yemyō, Beikoku no seishin to shūkyō no jiyū (Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Hawai Kaikyō Kyōmusho Bunshobu, 1920), 13. 75. Ibid., 30, 56. 76. Ibid., 24–26.



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77. Imamura, Democracy according to the Buddhist Viewpoint, 88. 78. For an English translation of this phrase, see Louis O. Gómez, trans., The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light: Sanskrit and Chinese Versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutras (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996), 215. 79. Imamura, Democracy according to the Buddhist Viewpoint, 8–9. 80. Takagi Kenmyō, “Yo ga shakaishugi,” trans. Robert F. Rhodes, The Eastern Buddhist 33/2 (2001): 56–58. 81. Inoue Shūten, “Heibon kiwamaru heiwaron,” Shin Bukkyō 12/12 (1911): 1108. For more details on Inoue, see Moriya Tomoe, “Social Ethics of ‘New Buddhists’ at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Suzuki Daisetsu and Inoue Shūten,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32/2 (2005): 283–304. 82. Moriya, Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō, 55. 83. The Honpa Hongwanji Mission recently established the Pacific Buddhist Academy, the first Buddhist high school in the United States, in August 2003. For more details on Buddhist seminaries in Hawai‘i and the mainland, see J. M. Imamura, Kaikyō, Opening the Dharma. 84. Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96/1 (1967): 1.

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“Hawai no dendō ni tsuite.” Hansei zassi 8/9 (1893): 19. Honda Chie. “Dainiji sekai taisen-mae no hawai ni okeru Jōdo Shinshū Honpa Hongwanji no Nihongo gakkō: Honoruru o kyoten to shita fukyō katsudō to no kanren de.” In Amerika no Nikkeijin: Toshi, shakai, seikatsu, ed. Yanagida Toshio, 173–97. Tokyo: Dōbunkan, 1995. Hongwanji Shiryō Kenkyūjo, ed. Hongwanjishi. Vol. 3. Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha Shūmusho, 1969. Houtman, Gustaaf. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999. Hunter, Louise H. Buddhism in Hawaii: Its Impact on a Yankee Community. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1971. Hur, Nam-lin. “The Sōtō Sect and Japanese Military Imperialism in Korea.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26/1–2 (1999): 107–34. Imamura, Jane Michiko. Kaikyo, Opening the Dharma: Memoirs of a Buddhist Priest’s Wife in America. Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 1998. Imamura Yemyō. “Bukkyō seinen no shūgōtai o yōsu.” Hanseikai zassi 9 (1888): 22–26. ———. “Hawai ni okeru Nihonjin no kyōiku.” Keiō gijuku gakuhō 169 (1912): 22–29. ———. Introduction to Tsunoda Riusaku, The Essence of Japanese Buddhism, 5–8. Honolulu: The Advertizer Press, 1914. ———. Democracy according to the Buddhist Viewpoint. Honolulu: The Publishing Bureau of Hongwanji Mission, 1918. ———. Hawai kaikyōshi. Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Hawai Kaikyō Kyōmusho Bunshobu, 1918. ———. Beikoku no seishin to shūkyō no jiyū. Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Hawai Kaikyō Kyōmusho Bunshobu, 1920. Inoue Shūten. “Heibon kiwamaru heiwaron.” Shin Bukkyō 12/12 (1911): 1107–14. Ives, Christopher. “The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Modern Japan.” Journal of Japanese Religious Studies 26/1–2 (1999): 83–106. ———. “Protect the Dharma, Protect the Country: Buddhist War Responsibility and Social Ethics.” The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 33/2 (2001): 15–34. Judd, Henry P. “The Repaganization of Hawaii.” Friend 89 (1920): 187–97. Kashima, Tetsuden. Buddhism in America: The Social Organization of an Ethnic Religious Organization. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. Kohiyama Rui. “Kaigai dendō to sekai no Amerika-ka.” In Amerika shakai to shūkyō, ed. Mori Kōichi, 95–127. Tokyo: Nihon Kokusai Mondai Kenkyūjo, 1997. Kojima Masaru and Kiba Akeshi, eds. Ajia no kaikyō to kyōiku. Kyoto: Ryūkoku Daigaku Bukkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1992. Kuykendall, Ralph S. The Hawaiian Kingdom. Vol. 1, 1778–1854: Foundation and Transformation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1938. Reprint, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1968. MacCaughey, Vaughan. “Some Outstanding Educational Problems of Hawaii.” School and Society 213 (1919): 99–105.



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Moriya Tomoe. “The Impact of Cross-Cultural Expansion of Religion: A Case Study of Pure Land Buddhism in Early Twentieth Century Hawaii.” Annual Report of the Institute for International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University 3 (2000): 147–56. ———. Yemyo Imamura: Pioneer American Buddhist. Trans. Takeshita Tsuneichi. Honolulu: Buddhist Study Center Press, 2000. ———. Amerika Bukkyō no tanjō: 20 seiki shotō ni okeru Nikkei shūkyō no bunka hen’yō. Tokyo: Gendai Shiryō Shuppan, 2001. ———. “Discourses on ‘Americanization’ and ‘Tradition’ in Issei and Nisei Buddhist Publications.” Paper read at the Issei Buddhism Conference, September 5, 2004, University of California, Irvine. ———. “Social Ethics of ‘New Buddhists’ at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study of Suzuki Daisetsu and Inoue Shūten.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32/2 (2005): 283–304. Nakano Tsuyoshi. “Hawai Nikkei kyōdan no keisei to hen’yō: Honpa Hongwanji kyōdan to Nikkei komyunitī.” Shūkyō kenkyū 248 (1981): 45–72. Numrich, Paul David. “Local Inter-Buddhist Associations in North America.” In American Buddhism: Methods and Findings in Recent Scholarship, ed. Duncan Ryūken Williams and Christopher S. Queen, 117–42. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999. Okita Yukuji. Hawai Nikkei imin no kyōikushi: Nichibei bunka, sono deai to sōkoku. Kyoto: Minerva Shobō, 1997. Okumura Takie. Hawai ni okeru Nichibei mondai kaiketsu undō. 4th ed. Honolulu: Okumura Takie, 1932. Okumura Takie and Umetaro Okumura. Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problem: A Campaign to Remove Causes of Friction between the American People and Japanese. Honolulu: n.p., 1927. Okumura, Umetaro. “The Japanese in Hawaii.” In The Centennial Book: One Hundred Years of Christian Civilization in Hawaii, 1820–1920, ed. The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 74–76. Honolulu: The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 1920. Phillips, Clifton Jackson. Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1810–1860. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. Pierce, Lori Anne. “Constructing American Buddhisms: Discourses of Race and Religion in Territorial Hawai‘i.” Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai‘i, 2000. Robertson, Alexander G. M. “Missionaries Who Entered Government Service.” In The Centennial Book: One Hundred Years of Christian Civilization in Hawaii, 1820–1920, ed. The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 31–43. Honolulu: The Central Committee of the Hawaiian Mission Centennial, 1920. Scudder, Doremus. “Hawaii’s Experience with the Japanese.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 93 (1921): 110–15. Tabrah, Ruth M. “A Grateful Past, A Promising Future.” In A Grateful Past, A Promising Future: Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii 100 Year History, 1889–1989, ed. Centen-

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nial Publication Committee, 1–120. Honolulu: Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii, 1989. Takagi Kenmyō. “My Socialism” (Yo ga shakaishugi). Trans. Robert Rhodes. Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 33/2 (2001): 54–61. Tamura, Eileen H. Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generations in Hawaii. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Tsunoda Riusaku [sic]. The Essence of Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: The Advertizer Press, 1914. U.S. Department of Labor and Commerce. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 66, Third Report of the Commissioner of Labor on Hawaii. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1906. Utsumi Takashi. “Tsunoda Ryūsaku no Hawai jidai.” Waseda daigakushi kiyō 30 (1998): 121–74. ———. “Tsunoda Ryūsaku no Hawai jidai sairon: 1909–17 nen no taizai kikan o chūshin ni shite.” Waseda daigakushi kiyō 31 (1999): 91–124. Victoria, Brian A. Zen at War. New York: Weatherhill, 1997. Weinberg, Daniel Erwin. “The Movement to ‘Americanize’ the Japanese Community in Hawaii: An Analysis of One Hundred Percent Americanization Activity in the Territory of Hawaii as Expressed in the Caucasian Press, 1919–1923.” M.A. thesis, University of Hawai‘i, 1967. Williams, Duncan Ryūken. “Camp Dharma: Japanese-American Buddhist Identity and the Internment Experience of World War II.” In Westward Dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia, ed. Charles S. Prebish and Martin Baumann, 191–200. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Yoshida Kyūichi. Nihon kindai Bukkyōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1959. Reprint, Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten, 1992. Yoshida Ryō. “Honoruru Nihonjin kyōkai no shinkō hyōgensha tachi.” In Hokubei Nihonjin Kirisutokyō undōshi, ed. Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūjo “Kaigai Imin to Kirisutokyōkai” Kenkyūkai, 377–416. Tokyo: PMC Shuppan, 1991. ———. “Sōgōka suru Amerikan bōdo no dendō jigyō: Nihon shinshutsuki no kyōha kyōryoku, kyōiku, shuppan katsudō o taishō shite.” In Rainichi Amerika senkyōshi: Amerikan bōdo senkyōshi shokan no kenkyū, 1869–1890, ed. Dōshisha Daigaku Jinbunkagaku Kenkyūjo, 1–53. Tokyo: Gendai Shiryō Shuppan, 1999.

C hap t e r 9

In the Strong Wind of the Americanization Movement The Japanese-Language School Litigation Controversy and Okumura’s Educational Campaign Mariko Takagi-Kitayama

Starting in the mid-1910s, a strong wind of Americanization blew through the United States. Between 1871 and 1910, more than twenty million new immigrants arrived from eastern and southern Europe and some Asian countries, bringing with them their own languages, religions, and lifestyles. As America took part in World War I, a strong sense of nationalism emerged. Americans felt an urgent need to build one solid America. “One nation, one language under one flag” became the motto. These Americanization campaigns spread among Americans, targeting ethnic groups clinging to their traditions. Hawai‘i was a focus of Americanization. When the islands became a U.S. territory in 1900, Japanese immigrants and their children already comprised about 40 percent of Hawai‘i’s population, while the number of Caucasians was less than 20 percent. It became a crossroads of different ethnic groups, including the Japanese. The Japanese adhered to their own language and culture, and worshipped in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines based on precepts very different from Christianity. Numerous language schools were established to teach their native language to the children of Japanese immigrants, the Nisei. In the eyes of white society leaders, the Japanese were not adopting the “American way of life.” Americanizers criticized the language schools strongly for imbuing the young Nisei, American citizens by birth, with Japanese culture and nationalism. These schools were viewed as an obstacle to Americanization. Eventually, Hawai‘i’s leaders resorted to legislation to control the language schools. These leaders wanted foreign residents to speak, behave, and live like “Americans.” From the viewpoint of the Japanese immigrants, however, the Americanization pressure was unacceptable. They were unwilling to abandon their language and culture. The leaders of the Japanese community reacted to these legislative

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measures in two ways. A group of residents, headed by Japanese-language newspaper Hawaii Hochi owner and chief editor, Frederick (Fred) Makino Kinzaburo, took the bold step of filing a lawsuit to challenge Hawai‘i’s legislation controlling the schools.1 Other Japanese leaders regarded the litigation as radical. They wanted to discuss solutions to the Japanese-language school controversy with the white elite politicians and businessmen. The leaders of this anti-litigation, or moderate, group advocated cooperation to satisfy both sides. One of the influential leaders, the Reverend Okumura Takie of Makiki Christian Church, himself one of the first founders of a language school, accused the litigation group of injuring American feelings and adding to tensions between Japanese and Americans.2 In the 1910s, he had spent time in California and observed strong anti-Japanese movements. Fearing that similar feelings might emerge in Hawai‘i, he started his own educational campaign to Americanize Japanese residents in Hawai‘i. In order to eliminate sources of friction, including litigation, he told Japanese residents to abandon the litigation, which he considered un-American. He undertook an educational campaign to convince Japanese in Hawai‘i to Americanize themselves. In order to study the different ways in which Japanese residents in Hawai‘i responded to Americanization in the 1920s, this essay focuses on the genesis and development of the litigation campaign and on Okumura’s educational campaign, particularly on its leaders and supporters. I will pay special attention to class orientation, and to the relationship between class background and divergent views about appropriate behavior for the Japanese community in Hawai‘i. This chapter relies on the valuable research that has been done on “Americanization” in Hawai‘i,3 the Japanese-language school issue,4 and the educational campaign of Okumura.5 To discover how the campaigners interpreted their activities, I will closely examine Nihongo Gakko Shoso Jusshunen Kinenshi, 1927–1937 (10th Anniversary Special Issue for the Victory of Japanese Language School Litigation), published by Hawaii Hochi in 1937, and the reports of the educational campaign by Okumura and his son. Japanese workers began immigrating to Hawai‘i on a large scale in 1885,6 where they began their life on sugar plantations. After going through two major strikes on O‘ahu in 1909 and 1920, “an increasing number discovered that town and village life not only meant more freedom but more money.”7 From 1921, they were no longer the largest group on the plantations, as they found employment in the city of Honolulu or in smaller towns. However, regardless of higher pay, they still belonged to the working class. Hawai‘i in the 1920s consisted of two conspicuously divided social classes: an upper class that monopolized economic/political/social power, and a lower class comprised of a large number of working people on plantations and in the cities and towns who were struggling to climb the social ladder to become middle-class.8 Those in the top class of elites were powerful white (haole)



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politicians, successful businessmen, ministers, educators, and others in respected occupations. Looking closely at the inner structure of Hawai‘i’s Japanese immigrant community, we see that it consisted of a small group of community leaders and working-class people. In the late nineteenth century, the ministers of various Buddhist sects became leaders of the plantation workers. Bishop Imamura Yemyo of Honpa Hongwanji was one of the most influential leaders because Hongwanji had the most followers. Japanese medical doctors, Christian ministers, school principals and teachers, newspaper editors, and small-business owners came to Hawai‘i, although their numbers were small. Also there were the consul general of Japan and his staff, representing the Japanese government. They were sometimes unsympathetic to the welfare of ordinary working-class immigrants. These diplomats, who rotated back to Japan after a few years, did not stay long enough to share the feelings of the plantation workers and looked down upon the immigrants as lower-class. When major sugar strikes occurred, they and many local Japanese leaders disapproved of them, while other Japanese leaders spoke on behalf of the working class. In 1909, Japanese plantation workers on O‘ahu struck for higher wages and better working conditions under the leadership of Soga Yasutaro, Tasaka Yoshitami, Fred Makino Kinzaburo, and Negoro Motoyuki. The first two were editors of Nippu Jiji, a Japanese vernacular newspaper, and the latter two were the main leaders of the Zokyu Kisei Kai (Higher Wage Association), a labor organization of O‘ahu Japanese sugar workers. They successfully mobilized the workers, using the words “Yamato damashii” (Japanese national spirit) as a motto. However, the planters easily hired non-Japanese strike breakers, and when the four leaders were arrested and sent to jail, the strike failed. Eventually, wages were raised and working conditions improved. This Japanese-only strike left the impression on plantation owners and managers that Japanese laborers would continue to be militant because they were unassimilated Japanese nationals. The consul general of Japan and the intellectual and business elite of the Hawai‘i Japanese community who opposed the strike also feared the negative impact on U.S.–Japan relations. The gap between the pro- and anti-strike groups proved later to be wider than it first appeared. By the 1910s, due to the enactment of the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907– 1908,9 more Issei changed from sojourners to permanent settlers in Hawai‘i. Single men working hard to save enough to return home came to realize that it would not happen very soon. The Gentlemen’s Agreement also barred them from moving to the U.S. mainland for higher pay. More Japanese women, including “picture brides,” made it possible for Issei to start families and stay permanently. As the Nisei population dramatically increased from about 4,800 in 1900 to 49,000 in

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1920,10 the number of Japanese-language schools sharply increased to provide the necessary language education to Nisei children, jumping from only 11 language schools in 1900, to 120 in 1907, and 135 in 1915.11 The shift in the Issei’s intention to settle in Hawai‘i led to changes in the content of Japanese school education. As sojourners the Issei wanted their children to keep up educationally with their counterparts in Japan for the day when they would return there. Therefore parents wanted the Japanese schoolteachers to provide Japanese “national” education in the early years. Prior to 1917, Nisei children used textbooks compiled by the Japanese Ministry of Education, bowed in the direction of Japan on the emperor’s birthday, and even recited the Kyoiku Chokugo (Imperial rescript on education). Once the Issei had decided to settle in Hawai‘i, they wanted their children to become good Americans of Japanese ancestry, with a command of both the English and Japanese languages and cultures. In the mid-1910s they came to feel the impact of the Americanization movement and feared that Hawai‘i’s Japaneselanguage schools would be attacked. Thus, in 1914, to cope with this pressure, the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai (Japanese Educational Association of Hawai‘i) was organized by the school principals and teachers to unify over 130 schools.12 In 1917, the Kyoiku Kai published their own textbooks with content suitable for Hawai‘i-born Nisei and decided to teach only the Japanese language and moral lessons, eliminating Japanese patriotic lessons and adding new lessons to encourage Japanese to become loyal Americans, who would nonetheless also cherish their Japanese heritage (Takagi 1987), as one can see in a lesson from the sixth-grade reading textbook: “Do not forget the strong points of the Japanese nation; preserve the good traits; and so conduct yourselves that you will be esteemed by all races in America. Future American citizens, do not bring a stain upon the name of the fatherland and do not disgrace your ancestor’s name.”13 The new lessons retained an emphasis on filial piety. The Issei parents and teachers agreed on what should be taught as the most appropriate education for the Nisei. However, these reforms went unnoticed, and the direct and indirect effects of anti-Japanese laws in California began to seriously affect Hawai‘i. On January 4, 1919, a proposal for the legislative measure to control the language schools appeared in an article in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser (later, Honolulu Advertiser).14 A control bill15 was introduced in March in the Territorial House, followed by another bill to further regulate the schools.16 To protest the proposals, mass meetings of each regional branch of Hawaii Kyoiku Kai were held throughout the islands. The organization submitted a petition to the legislature explaining “the basic aims of such schools to educate the children to be good American citizens capable of understanding both the English and Japanese languages.”17 The Chinese communities who had their own language



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schools also supported efforts to defeat the regulation proposal.18 As a result, the bills were defeated. In May 1919, a new development emerged at the request of the governor and superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction to the U.S. Department of Education to investigate the foreign-language schools in the islands. In October, a report strongly “recommended abolition, rather than control of the language schools.”19 In February 1920, Japanese and Filipino sugar workers struck for pay raises. In Hawai‘i’s labor history this strike came to be recognized as a milestone, because for the first time workers from two different ethnic groups worked together in a strike. The workers struck because the post–World War I economic boom of the sugar industry was not reflected in their wages. During this long strike from February to July, the Japanese community again split into two groups—namely, the radical pro-strike group and the moderate anti-strike group. The consul general of Japan, the business elite such as Soga, who owned Nippu Jiji, and Christian ministers including Okumura opposed the strike. To some white elite Americanizers, the strike was interpreted as “a Japanese conspiracy”20 to take over the sugar plantations, and to “Japanize” Hawai‘i, reinforcing the image that the Japanese were unassimilable.21 The negative image resulting from the strike further affected the language-school issue. Under the pressure of Americanization, Hawai‘i’s Japanese community coped with continuing territorial legislation to control the Japanese-language schools. Increasingly restrictive and financially unviable imposed burdens that threatened the existence of the schools could be tested as to their constitutionality. Beginning in 1920, these laws and related regulations were challenged in a prolonged litigation of injunctions and appeals until their resolution in favor of the schools by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927. In order for the Japanese community to file legal action, however, they needed a strong organization, sufficient funds, high morale, and a good understanding of litigation. Anti-Japanese feelings stirred up during the 1920 dual-union strike had fueled the white community’s eagerness to submit new proposals to regulate the language schools. After the strike finally ended in July, a new bill was introduced in November in a special session of the legislature. Its provisions placed the schools under the Department of Public Instruction,22 called for the purchase of permits to operate the schools, required teachers to pass standard English tests, with violators subject to a twenty-five-dollar fine, introduced a rule that no classes would be held in the morning before the hours of regular public school, and limited instruction to one hour per day, including Saturday.23 This time the Japanese community did not challenge the bill because of the strain from the long strike. They also had become sensitive to the accusation that in general the Japanese were militant and unas-

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similable. The bill became Act 30 in November 1920 and went into effect on July 1, 1921.24 The provisions of Act 30 had been proposed by a group of Japanese elites, including Soga and Okumura, as a compromise. The leaders and teachers in the language schools showed sincere interest and intent by complying with the new law. The teachers willingly attended workshops sponsored by the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai in order to pass standard tests in American history and institutions, democratic ideology, and the English language. As a result, most teachers passed the qualification test.25 Nevertheless the territory attempted to further regulate the schools. In 1922, the Department of Public Instruction issued supplementary regulations, which included the successive elimination of kindergarten to fourth grades.26 The Issei grew concerned that eventually the schools would be abolished altogether. Noting the concern of the Issei, Fred Makino Kinzaburo advocated in his newspaper, Hawaii Hochi, that they should stand up and test the constitutionality of the new regulations, because he believed that they were against the U.S. Constitution. Moved by the earnestness of Makino and the other Hawaii Hochi editors, a group of Issei finally filed a shiso (test case) in court. The lawsuit started when four Honolulu Japanese-language schools filed for an injunction in December 1922. They were Palama Independent School, Toyo Gakuen, Chuo Gakuin, and Kalihi Japanese Language School.27 During the lawsuit, the language-school organizations played the role of a communications network for what became an emerging social movement within the Japanese community. The existence of 144 well-established Japanese-language schools and the umbrella organization, Hawaii Kyoiku Kai, facilitated the work of the emerging challengers. But the Japanese community was divided about whether to file the case, resulting in the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai losing its leadership and disbanding during the litigation years. The litigation group now needed a new organization and formed the Shiso Kisei Kai (Test Case Association) with delegates chosen from each school in favor of litigation. The opinion leaders were the editors of Hawaii Hochi. Owner and chief editor Fred Makino Kinzaburo developed the idea of the test case, and editors Haga Kusaka and Terasaki Teisuke led the parents of the schoolchildren to litigation. The Hawaii Hochi served as a source of information and as a network. Hochi articles defined and reinforced the concept of “litigation” to the Japanese community. Conversely, Nippu Jiji, a rival press, and its owner and editor, Soga Yasutaro, strongly opposed the litigation, arguing that the Japanese should not litigate against the territory. Jiji editors wrote that the litigation would portray a bad image of Hawai‘i’s Japanese and consequently cause diplomatic friction between Japan and America, and there was concern that those schools which joined the litigation might have



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their property confiscated. Therefore, the readers of both newspapers found it very difficult to decide whether or not to join the litigation. At each language school, executive members, teachers, and parents discussed the litigation. Once a majority voted to join, one to two delegates were sent to the Shiso Kisei Kai. The Shiso Kisei Kai was a bottom-up type of organization, as was the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai, and maintained a direct relationship with interested persons in the Japanese community. The litigation group of the first four schools found it difficult to increase its member schools at first. The next school in Honolulu to join, Kakaako Language School, formed two factions, with one faction joining the Shiso Kisei Kai.28 After the Clark Bill was submitted on March 21, 1923, which included an annual assessment of a dollar head tax on each student, six more Honolulu schools joined, increasing the members to eleven schools. They were six Honpa Hongwanji–affiliated schools: Fort Gakuen, Moiliili Japanese Language School, Waikiki Japanese Language School, Hawai‘i Chugakko/Jogakko, Palama Gakuen, and Mānoa Japanese Language School. At the same time, five influential white lawyers who supported the litigation formed a legal advisory group. The most diligent was Joseph Lightfoot, a former territorial attorney general, and a longtime close personal friend of Makino. He had worked with Makino ever since Makino became deeply involved in the 1909 Japanese plantation workers’ strike. Makino had consulted Lightfoot on how to fight the territorial legislation on Japanese-language schools long before he took legal action. Also in the group were attorney J. B. Poindexter, later governor of Hawai‘i; S. C. Huber, former U.S. district attorney; James Coke, later territorial supreme court judge; Samuel Kemp, later territorial attorney general; and former judge Bert Lightfoot, son of the general counsel.29 Thus, the litigation group consisted of powerful lawyers, Makino and Hawaii Hochi editors as opinion leaders, and Shiso Kisei Kai, an organization supported by parents and others in the Japanese community. In order to file a test case against the territory, a large amount of money was required, an estimated $20,000 to $30,000. With only four schools, fund-raising seemed almost impossible, and these schools initially hesitated to file a suit because of lack of funds. During the first seven months, only eleven schools participated throughout the territory, and the Shiso Kisei Kai delegates had great difficulty collecting funds. Every participant later admitted that the Shiso Kisei Kai delegates from the first four schools had contributed enormously from their own finances to start the organization. They were impressed by the selfless spirit of Attorney Lightfoot and the opinion leader Makino. According to Yamane Uichi, a delegate of the Shiso

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Kisei Kai from Kalihi Japanese Language School, Lightfoot told the delegates when he first met them: “Even five cents is OK with me. If you cannot pay, I do not mind. After you get many schools involved in the litigation and you have enough money, then, pay me.”30 Touched by his words, they decided to “use as much personal money as they had.”31 The litigation was regarded as a big risk from the beginning, and the risk became even greater when the anti-litigation group spread a rumor that the school buildings and property of pro-litigation participant schools would be confiscated. Some believed this rumor and felt uneasy about the litigation activity. However, once they were in, no school dropped out of the litigation.32 The delegates of the Shiso Kisei Kai were advised to collect funds from each member of their own school. At Kalihi School, remembered Yamane, each member paid ten dollars and raised a large amount in a short time for a small school.33 Toyo Gakuen, however, had a hard time raising money. Ito Torazo, the chief treasurer at Toyo, and fellow worker Tonouye Yasuzo literally went from door to door visiting each household in the school district, but there were also a number of people in the neighborhood who opposed litigation. Ten years after the victory of litigation, Ito confessed that he had asked the regular treasurer at the school to lend him a few hundred dollars for the test case, because the Shiso Kisei Kai urged him to pay the dues quickly. Tonouye also recalled that when they visited each house, some said, “I do not pay even one cent to the litigation.”34 The Shiso Kisei Kai delegates went to many other schools to urge them to join, but the majority remained bystanders. The treasurer of the Shiso Kisei Kai, Nakayama Denzo, recalled the unfriendly attitude of Japanese banks in those early days. When the organization wanted to deposit funds in a bank account, Yokohama Shokin Ginko and Sumitomo Ginko refused. Finally, Chuo Taiheiyo Ginko (Central Pacific Bank) accepted the deposit. “Those banks that turned us down might [have been] thinking that our litigation was rebellious behavior toward the government.”35 But when the Clark Bill requiring an annual one-dollar assessment per pupil was submitted to the territorial legislature in March and signed into law as Act 171 on May 2, 1923, it provoked a strong protest among Issei parents.36 Only then did the Hongwanji-affiliated schools join the litigation, because Bishop Imamura, head of the Hongwanji Mission Board, finally gave his approval. Next, in June came the dramatic news that the U.S. Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional the prohibition of teaching foreign languages in private schools in states such as Nebraska, Ohio, Iowa, and twenty-one other states. Finally the number of schools joining the Hawai‘i litigation increased to eighty seven (60% of total) in August 1923.37 Some people still stayed out because they truly believed that the litigation would injure the feelings of Americans and would lead to tensions in U.S.–Japan relations, and were really afraid of losing their property as the rumor said they might.



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Later, Kawamura Taizo of Palama School, one of the first delegates of the Shiso Kisei Kai, recalled in 1937: “By the time the new schools came to our side, we already had raised about $7,000 for funds. However, after the Hongwanji joined, the amount increased sharply, and relieved the treasurers of the Shiso Kisei Kai very much.”38 Although the final amount is not clear, it is safe to assume that it exceeded the initial estimate. Two years later, in 1925, the legislature passed another even more restrictive bill as Act 152. Private schools could not hold classes until they paid annual fees and obtained permits to operate, and could not petition the courts for alleged injustice in the enforcement of this law.39 By 1925, the initial 1922 lawsuit was still not resolved because of numerous injunctions and appeals. Although the pro-litigation schools closed their doors in compliance, Makino and the litigation group immediately bypassed the territorial courts and filed a petition for an injunction in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu. This unexpected flank attack caught the territorial government off guard.40 On July 21, 1925, the district court judge imposed a temporary injunction and advised that the case be referred to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.41 In March 1926, the Court of Appeals sustained the district court judge’s decision, and declared the Hawai‘i law to control the foreign-language schools unconstitutional. The territorial government then took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously on February 21, 1927, that the territorial law was indeed unconstitutional, and that “by virtue of the fact that private schools are operated by private funds, the operation thereof is the right and privilege of the operators and that no one has the right to interfere with the rights of parents to educate their children.”42 It further stated that laws should be equitably applied to all residents of the United States, regardless of race. It was an unforgettable and joyful moment for the litigation leaders and members, Attorney Lightfoot, and the advisory committee. When the Hawaii Hochi had described the litigation campaign at the end of 1922 and publicized the idea of the lawsuit to the Japanese community, “Makino claimed that the operation of private language schools was the prerogative of parents, and that oppressive control measures were nothing but restriction on human rights and freedom of education.”43 For Makino and the editors of Hawaii Hochi, the litigation meant “fighting for their right,” and that was their understanding of the American way. In their view, by filing the case, Japanese immigrants demonstrated their “Americanness” and assumed that white Americans in Hawai‘i would stop despising the Japanese and using “illegal” pressures.44 In 1937, many of the Shiso Kisei Kai members contributed paragraphs to the Nihongo Gakko Shoso Jusshunen Kinenshi and expressed their true feelings in the midst of litigation. Hasegawa Tomizo of Kalihi Japanese Language School said,

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“We stood up, we even ran a risk, because it was not a personal problem but a public one. We could not do it without sacrificing ourselves. We did it because we thought about the future of language schools.”45 Nishigaya Masakichi, a school official of Chuo Gakuin, recalled the meeting of sixteen Honolulu delegates summoned by the then consul general, Yamazaki Keiichi, when they decided to pursue the litigation. Nishigaya endorsed the litigation along with the delegates of three other schools. He thought, “If Chuo Gakuin had not declared for litigation, other schools would have been too afraid to stand up, as Chuo Gakuin was the largest language school on Oahu, with 1,300 students and 480 parents’ association members.”46 Kochi Fumio, also of Chuo Gakuin, recalled that the consul general strongly opposed litigation and tried to persuade them not to support the legal action: “Even the Consul General could do nothing to change the firmly determined people’s minds. We stood up against the Consul General’s will.”47 According to Akaboshi Yasuji, of Moiliili Japanese Language School, “we stood firm for justice because it was a man’s duty. It was not something we could refrain from doing by considering how the others felt about us.”48 Ibaraki Koyata of Waikiki Japanese Language School, who had worked hard to protect the Japanese-language schools, stated: “It was a movement to be carried on at the risk of the existence of the Yamato race. It was a movement of a man’s duty, and a movement to establish your rights in the country where you lived. Even if we should lose our property for this movement, it would have been accepted.”49 Although the consul general was regarded among Hawai‘i’s Japanese as a superior representing Japanese government, these Shiso members dared to oppose his will. As passionate members they believed that what they were doing was right and just. These members intended to live in Hawai‘i for their lifetimes and to work out a plan to influence their future and that of their children, whereas the consul general was most likely to return to Japan after a few years. Shiso Kisei Kai members also commented on interference by anti-litigation proponents. Kondo Tokusuke of Kakaako Japanese Language School recalled the hardship when the school literally split into two factions. He suffered a sharp decline in his barbershop customers and said, “Many did not join the litigation because of the rumor spread by the anti-litigation group that even the litigation members’ property would be confiscated.”50 Shioi Taroku from Kalihi Japanese Language School recalled, “There was rather a small number of pro-litigation members because many believed the threatening propaganda of being sent to prison, or having your property confiscated.” Yamane Uichi and other delegates from Kalihi School who visited the parents’ houses door-to-door said that persuading them to join was a hard job.51 These comments show that the litigation members felt uneasy due to criticism and the spread of false information by the anti-litigation group; but



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perhaps precisely because of such criticism they were able to maintain a sense of solidarity and to share the same fate. The Hongwanji-affiliated schools faced the strongest criticism from white elites because they were believed to have been teaching Japanese patriotism to Nisei children. Especially Bishop Imamura Yemyo considered the lawsuit carefully before joining it. Imamura wanted to demonstrate that the criticism was based on a misunderstanding of Buddhism. At the same time, he wanted to prove that the restrictive laws, which were rumored to have been written in order to crush Buddhist influence, were illegal. Imamura, however, could predict that if his schools took rash action in joining the litigation, it would surely invite more criticism. He knew that the parents and school officials at many schools had voted for the litigation at a very early stage and some supporters were irritated with Imamura’s “prudent” behavior. Without Imamura’s approval, however, they could not yet join the suit. After learning about an assessment of one dollar per student in the Clark Bill, Imamura decided that the litigation group had a better chance to win, considering the unfairness of the bill.52 During the process, people like Dr. Nishijima Eitaro, a school official of Hongwanji-affiliated Fort Gakuen, tried to persuade Imamura to stand up for litigation right away. Dr. Nishijima later commented, “the lawsuit was not something you could do without taking a risk of losing everything. I used to say, if they take all our property away, let us go back to our country.”53 The bishop, on the other hand, as the top executive of the Hongwanji Mission, could not jeopardize the temples and their properties because a lawsuit against the territory was a huge gamble. Thus, those who stood up to protect the language schools did so while feeling uneasy about the possibilities of losing school and personal property, and perhaps going to jail. But they took the risk, because the opinion leaders and legal advisers assured them that their action was absolutely right for the future of their children. About a month after the lawsuit was won, Makino spoke clearly about the significance of the test case and the language-school issue for the Japanese in Hawai‘i in a speech at an assembly on the campus of Chuo Gakuin to an audience of over five thousand gathered to celebrate their victory. The title of Makino’s speech was “Did We Hurt the Feelings of the English-Speaking Society?” He said: The Americans feel it only proper that we took the action we did. The Americans are only too well cognizant of the fact that it is the right of the people living in a free democracy to advocate their rights guaranteed under the Constitution and to seek legal clarification of doubtful points in the enforcement of laws. The Americans are not giving the Test Case a second thought. They believe in sports-

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manship and they shake hands and become good friends after a violent fist fight. It behooves us, who live in this country, to understand the characteristics of the Americans. Individuals and organizations alike must never forget to stand up for their rights and freedom. But we must not become selfish or irresponsible in our actions because of our victory. We ask that the Japanese schools cooperate with the Territorial government officials to strive to raise good American citizens capable of understanding both the English and Japanese languages.54

The speech thus argued that filing the lawsuit to protect their rights and freedom was the American way, implicitly suggesting that the Japanese in Hawai‘i had adapted to the American way of thinking. On the other hand, the intellectual and elite classes of the Japanese community had wanted to prevent the litigation because they believed that it would injure the feelings of white Americans in Hawai‘i and have a harmful effect on the future of the Nisei generation. A strong anti-litigation proponent, Consul General Yamazaki Keiichi, took the lead at a meeting on December 9, 1922, when he subtly pressured those in attendance to draft a statement, published with the signatures of fourteen volunteers with the name Nihonjin Yushi Kai (Group of Japanese Volunteers). The statement said: “We oppose the litigation because it would cause disadvantages to Japanese-language schools and schoolchildren as well as injuring the feelings of Americans and Japanese.”55 One of the signers, Dr. Harada Tasuku, who taught at the University of Hawai‘i from 1920 to 1932, wrote in the Nippu Jiji: “I hope you refrain from thoughtless behavior. . . . Cooperation is the best strategy to beat the anti-Japanese clout. It is the best way for the future of our Japanese children.”56 Soga Yasutaro, owner and chief editor of Nippu Jiji, also a strong anti-litigation leader, believed in maintaining good relations with Americans in Hawai‘i and feared the litigation would bring some disadvantage to Nisei children.57 They publicized their opinions in Nippu Jiji. At the same time, the two English newspapers, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, took anti-Japanese positions. Reverend Okumura, a Christian pastor, also opposed the litigation strategy. He was the main proponent of an educational campaign to “Americanize” Hawai‘i’s Japanese. In the midst of the litigation struggle, he started his educational campaign, because he believed it was a huge mistake for a group consisting of only Japanese to challenge territorial laws. Reverend Okumura Takie’s Keihatsu Undo (Educational Campaign) was very different in its approach from the Japanese-language school litigation campaign. His strategy was to convey his own idea of “Americanization” to ordinary Japanese residents. It was also a counteraction against the “collective action” of the litigation campaign, which he regarded as “a mistake.” This controversy and the 1920



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sugar strike led him to embark on his campaign in an atmosphere of growing antiJapanese sentiment. By 1920 Okumura had lived in Hawai‘i for twenty-six years and had seen the Issei change their lives from sojourners to settlers. Having observed the strong anti-Japanese movement in California, he hoped that Hawai‘i would not become a second California, fearing it might lead to the deterioration of U.S.–Japan relations. He came to believe that Japanese residents should adapt themselves to American lifestyles while retaining the good points of Japanese culture, and that maintaining cooperation and harmony was most important. Okumura wrote: The root of all problems between the two peoples [American and Japanese] lies in the mistaken fundamental ideas of Japanese. They constantly harp on their traditional “Yamato Damashii,” and endeavor to solve every problem with that spirit. Some even look upon the training of children, born in these islands, as an act of gross disloyalty to the country of their forefathers. We felt that unless these mistaken ideas are eradicated, no solution of problems which vitally concern two peoples in Hawai‘i can be worked out, and in order to destroy these false ideas we entered upon a campaign of education, beginning in January, 1921.58

Before beginning his campaign, Okumura gained the support of sugar company executives, a banker, the current and two former governors, and other prominent political leaders and businessmen in Hawai‘i,59 because he was afraid he would be misunderstood by the Americans when he and his son began the campaign.60 Okumura also wanted the Japanese government to understand his plan. Up until then, among ordinary Japanese in Hawai‘i, he had been criticized—in his mind unfairly—as unpatriotic and a traitor to Japan. He was disliked because he had not aided the strikers who had lost a place to live during the Japanese strikes and even received death threats in letters. In Tokyo in July 1920, he met with an acquaintance and influential retired businessman, Viscount Shibusawa Eiichi, and Dr. Harada Tasuku, then a professor at the University of Hawai‘i, and spoke about his campaign at a banquet of the Nichi-Bei Kankei-Iin Kai (Japan-America Relation Committee), which later passed a resolution endorsing his plan.61 In his talk he made it clear that he would work hard to prevent Hawai‘i from becoming a second California, explaining that anti-Japanese sentiment was increasing in Hawai‘i. But he added that the Japanese in Hawai‘i must bear responsibility for the strong feelings against them. Okumura then spelled out what he saw as some of the sources of the problem. (1) He criticized the persistent adherence to Japanese manners and customs among the Japanese in Hawai‘i. (2) Although America was a country of religious freedom, Okumura, a Christian minister, thought that Americans in

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Hawai‘i would not sit quietly by and see Hawai‘i being paganized by temples and shrines. (3) It was inconsistent that Japanese children who should be taught to be good Americans were continuing to be taught Japanese ideas and values.62 (4) Seventy-five percent of the offenders in illicit liquor traffic and a majority in gambling were Japanese. If these sources were eradicated, the Japanese question would be solved once and for all.63 Next, Viscount Shibusawa arranged for Okumura to meet Premier Hara and Foreign Minister Uchida. As a result, Okumura received enthusiastic support from Japanese politicians and business representatives. It is clear that the endorsements from influential figures in both Hawai‘i and Japan contributed the success of his campaign. Okumura Takie and his son Umetaro started this unique campaign in January 1921. The Okumuras avoided mass meetings, “for the effect of such meetings would be injurious rather than beneficial.”64 Instead, the two traveled from plantation to plantation. They first sought the assistance of the plantation manager in selecting a group of about ten to twenty “key” Issei whom they could rely upon.65 Then these key Issei were persuaded to give pledges. The strategy of the campaign was to encourage the Issei to discard their mistaken ideas, such as “Once a Japanese, always a Japanese”; to urge them to adapt to American customs and manners; to make them realize that the education or training of children to be good and loyal citizens of Hawai‘i and America was not an act of disloyalty to their home country or their forefathers; and to encourage them to take the initiative in bringing about a peaceful and lasting solution to all problems.66 These key Issei were easily persuaded to become supporters. Those who pledged were then asked to bring their friends to meet Okumura. In the first three years from 1921 to 1923, 3,122 pledges were collected.67 The Okumuras published a mimeographed progress report, which was sent to influential Americans in Hawai‘i and on the mainland, such as the U.S. president and U.S. congressmen, and to powerful politicians and businessmen in Japan, such as the prime minister, the foreign minister, Viscount Shibusawa, and those concerned with the Japan-America Relations Committee. From 1921 to 1925, the Okumuras consistently and patiently continued their educational campaign. Satisfied with his initial purpose of educating the Issei, the Reverend shifted the target of his campaign to the Nisei, whom he felt were vulnerable to criticism from Americanizers because the majority of Nisei children held dual citizenship as American and Japanese citizens. Because they retained Japanese citizenship while living in the United States, Americans doubted the loyalty of Nisei. As a result, the Nisei appealed to the Japanese government to exempt them from the required Japanese nationality.68 Although the Japanese government decided in 1924 to amend the Nationality Act, allowing Nisei to renounce their citi-



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zenship if they so desired, the U.S. government delivered the Japanese in Hawai‘i a body blow by enacting the 1924 Immigration Act excluding further immigration of Japanese, labeling them “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”69 In targeting the Nisei, Okumura’s new plan consisted of three objectives: to encourage Nisei to renounce their Japanese nationality, to inspire them to exercise their voting rights, and to persuade them to become an integral part of agricultural business in Hawai‘i.70 Okumura wanted the Nisei to be a group of “decent, respectful, and loyal” American citizens, to be 100 percent American without dual citizenship, and to be capable of exercising their right to participate in politics. He also wanted Nisei to enjoy agricultural work in the sugar industry, because he believed it was the only business that could provide a large number of job openings for the growing Japanese population in Hawai‘i. Moreover, in order to train Nisei leaders, Okumura started the New Americans Conference in 1927, which he regarded as separate from the educational campaign. The latter ended in 1930, but the New Americans Conference continued until 1941. In order to visit every plantation throughout the territory, Okumura could not carry out his campaign with only his income as minister of a Christian church. He was successful in receiving not only moral but monetary support from outside the Hawai‘i Japanese community. Elite Americans, the Castles and the Cookes of Hawai‘i, and Viscount Shibusawa and other political and business leaders of Japan all supported Okumura’s campaign financially. Although the total amount raised between 1921 and 1925 is not clear, it is known that Viscount Shibusawa on two occasions personally sent 1,000 yen to Okumura.71 In addition, members of his Makiki Christian Church supported the principle of his campaign and allowed him to spend a week to ten days a month traveling to the other Islands, where Christian friends offered transportation and places to stay.72 Their contribution, although not large, enabled the Okumuras to carry out the campaign. Okumura wrote later that his educational campaign was criticized in the beginning for seemingly opposing the labor movement and propagating Christianity. In the words of his opponents, he was “trying to break the labor unions on plantations,” and his campaign “is a new method of publicizing Christianity.”73 He expected that it would take ten years to accomplish his objectives because of all the criticism, but the result was more satisfactory than he had expected. The number of pledges from sympathizers demonstrated that many of Hawai‘i’s Japanese were determined to cooperate and work for Hawai‘i’s prosperity. As the campaign progressed, the attitude of Hawai‘i’s Japanese toward him changed, and he considered it an accomplishment that they no longer viewed him as a traitor to Japan.74 In the Nisei phase of the campaign over the next five years, Okumura claimed that his influence with Japanese politicians had played a role in the 1924 revision of the Japanese nationality law that allowed the Nisei to relinquish their Japanese

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nationality. Okumura wrote, “Many Nisei completed the renunciation of Japanese nationality with my help.”75 As to political participation, he believed the most important right was suffrage, and he urged the Nisei to vote. “Today the number of votes cast by the Nisei increased to over 6,000 and they were elected as County supervisors and Territorial legislators,” he wrote with satisfaction in 1930. His suggestion, however, that Nisei to return to agriculture from the towns was unpopular among the Issei generation, who criticized Okumura for trying to turn the Nisei into farmers like the Issei. Later he justified himself by writing that he did not intend to limit the Nisei to only plantation work but to encourage them to become independent self-employed farmers. However, his idea of keeping the Nisei within the realm of agriculture shows Okumura’s elitist viewpoint. Plantation managers were even more blunt in assessing the prospects of their workforce. According to Lawrence Fuchs, one plantation manager said, “Every penny we spend educating these kids beyond the sixth grade is wasted!” “An understatement,” replied the other manager. “Public education beyond the fourth grade is not only a waste, it is a menace. We spend to educate them and they will destroy us.”76 As these statements show, the white owners and managers of the plantations saw the dangers of educating plantation children. They predicted that education would awaken them to their situation on the plantations; keeping them uneducated might also keep them on the plantation. Although Okumura’s “back to agriculture” advocation was not intended to limit the Nisei to sugar plantations but to make them self-employed farmers, Okumura’s idea was surely very convenient for the elite white owners of the huge sugar plantations and, in reality, tended to support the continuing power of Hawai‘i’s white oligarchy. Regarding labor conditions on the plantations, Okumura later commented that a by-product of his campaign was capital-labor cooperation. When the Okumuras visited the plantations, they occasionally found Japanese laborers dissatisfied with their working conditions and wages. They persuaded them not to strike, but went to talk to the managers to ask for improvement of the working conditions. According to Okumura, their mediations were successful. Okumura feared that a capital-labor confrontation would escalate into a racial confrontation between American and Japanese; it harbored the possibility of becoming a race war. Thus he valued capitalist-labor cooperation greatly. He stated, “The fact that the Japanese did not join the Filipinos, in the Filipino workers’ strike in 1924, meant that our campaign was effective.” This attitude was in complete contrast to Makino, who defended the right of the Filipino workers in the Hawaii Hochi.77 One objective of Okumura’s educational campaign was to remove the causes of anti-Japanese feelings toward Hawai‘i’s Japanese. The betterment of U.S.–Japa-



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nese relations came first because he was part of the elite class of Hawai‘i’s society. For Okumura, Soga Yasutaro, and Harada Tasuku (the anti-litigation group), the litigation campaign was “unacceptable” because it could damage the U.S.–Japan relationship by injuring American feelings. Instead, Okumura advocated the “American way of life” among Japanese residents. What he meant by “living American” was that they must dress like Americans and develop American cultural habits. It included the language they spoke and the religion they believed in. But Okumura did not equate Americanization with accepting everything American. He highly valued the Japanese traditional Bushido spirit and encouraged Japanese to retain it in themselves. He wanted the Issei and Nisei to become integrated into American society by fusing the strong points of Japanese cultural values with American habits. Unlike for the litigation group, “living American” for Okumura did not include challenging white elites, because he believed that doing so would lower the reputation of the Japanese and might affect U.S.–Japan relations negatively. In addition, as a Christian, Okumura undertook an ardent attack against the Buddhistaffiliated language schools, especially the Honpa Hongwanji schools. Because Okumura was a Christian pastor and his campaigns included Christian proselytization, we can see why he discouraged the support of these Buddhist schools. For the Nisei’s own welfare, Okumura wanted to train them to become good American citizens through his New Americans conferences. He, like the prolitigation group, carried out his own campaign “for the future of the Nisei.” In an interesting paradox, the pro-litigation group acted on what they saw as the good of the Nisei in a totally different way from that of the anti-litigation group and Okumura’s educational campaign. While the goal of both the pro-litigation group and Okumura and the anti-litigation group was seen by them as the betterment of the Japanese community in Hawai‘i, their approaches were completely opposite and clashed with one another. Conclusion In the strong wind of Americanization, Hawai‘i’s white leaders, many with an idea of Anglo-American conformity, targeted the Japanese-language schools and used legislation to regulate them. A group of Issei, afraid that these schools would be abolished, filed a legal suit against the Territory of Hawai‘i to test the constitutionality of the legislation. The pro-litigation group, led by Makino and Lightfoot, challenged the laws of the Territory of Hawai‘i by using their American democratic right to legal action. They regarded the laws on foreign-language schools as unfair, and wanted to prove that point through the legal process. The leaders of the pro-litigation group believed

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that taking legal action would demonstrate their Americanism and they might be able to stop further discrimination toward the Japanese community. They showed courage by taking the risk of losing everything in working for the future of their children. For the pro-litigation members, rejecting the unequal and undemocratic treatment being shown toward them was very important.78 It was a meaningful fight of a minority with subordinate status. It showed that Americanization for them meant standing up for their rights. During the 1910s–1920s when Anglo-led Americanization was predominant, the successful redefinition of Americanization by some of the very groups targeted for Americanization, such as these Japanese activists in Hawai‘i, was highly unusual. Therefore, the fact that the pro-litigation group won the case was epoch-making. On the other hand, Okumura’s educational campaign represented the attitude of the elite of the Japanese community. Challenging the territorial government was not acceptable, because it would cause friction between America and Japan. Okumura favored an approach where the Japanese sugar workers would not challenge unequal treatment and subordinate status. The idea of Americanization held by Okumura, other elites of the Japanese community, and the consul general of Japan was to live like Americans and cooperate with authorities. This was the type of Americanization that the top elite of both Hawai‘i and Japan wanted the lowerstatus groups to accept. They valued stable relations between two countries more than the individual democratic rights of ordinary people on the bottom rung. The case of the Japanese in Hawai‘i struggling to adapt to the American way of life was neither new nor unique in the United States. Other ethnic minorities fought over the same issue. In the late nineteenth century, African-American educator Booker T. Washington founded a vocational school for African Americans, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and admonished the students to accept agricultural and vocational training instead of fighting for equal rights as a way to cooperate in the segregated society of the South. He believed that African Americans should attain economic strength first before striving for social equality. Like Okumura, he believed that cooperation would achieve more benefit than opposition and resistance. Not surprisingly, Washington was favored by American elite politicians and his school gained financial support. However, other African-American leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois criticized Washington by calling him “Uncle Tom.” DuBois, like Makino and the litigation group, believed that only through active resistance could African Americans achieve their civil rights. By examining the Americanization problem in Hawai‘i’s Japanese community by considering class background and divergent views within the community, one can see that the Japanese in Hawai‘i struggled to define their role and meaning in this new land in much the same way as other ethnic minority groups in America such as the AfricanAmerican community.



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Notes 1. Hawaii Hochi was established in 1912 by Makino Kinzaburo and became one of the two most influential vernacular newspapers in Hawai‘i’s Japanese community. The other influential paper was called Nippu Jiji, first started as Yamato Shimbun in 1885. Its owner and editor, Soga Yasutaro, took part in the 1909 Japanese strike on O‘ahu plantations with Makino as a strike leader. After the 1909 strike, Soga and Makino disagreed with each other and worked in different factions, Soga participating in a moderate faction whereas Makino leaned toward somewhat more radical ways. 2. The Reverend Okumura Takie established one of the first Japanese-language schools in Hawai‘i in 1896. He wanted the Nisei children to learn proper Japanese as he found the neighborhood children speaking a mixed language. In 1902, Okumura organized Makiki Christian Church and worked as a missionary among the Japanese immigrants. 3. For example, see Eileen Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), and Dōshisha University, 1920 nendai Hawai Nikkeijin no Amerikaka no Shoso (Americanization of the Japanese in Hawai‘i in the 1920s) (Kyoto: Dōshisha University, 1995). 4. For instance, see Okita Yukuji, Hawai Nikkei Imin no Kyoikushi (History of education of Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i) (Tokyo: Minerva Shobo, 1997); Ann Halsted, “Sharpened Tongues: The Controversy over the Americanization of Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1988); and Takagi Mariko, “Moral Education in Pre-war Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii” (MA thesis, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1987). 5. See Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity; Gail Nomura, “The Debate over the Role of Nisei in Prewar Hawaii: The New Americans Conference, 1927– 1941,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 15 (Spring 1987): 95–115; and Shimada Noriko, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi: Nichibei Kankei kara Mita Hawai ni okeru Hainichi Yobo Keihatsu Undo (Okumura Takie and Shibusawa Eiichi),” Nihon Joshi Daigaku Kiyo 43 (1994): 39–56. 6. The first Japanese immigrants to Hawai‘i arrived in Honolulu in 1868, and they were called Gan-nen-mono. They complained of the harsh working conditions, and around half of them returned to Japan. After about twenty years, the first Kanyaku Imin (government contract laborers) arrived in 1885. 7. Lawrence Fuchs, Hawaii Pono: A Political History (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1961), 121. 8. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, there was a very small number of people in Hawai‘i who could call themselves the middle-class. 9. With this agreement, the Japanese government stopped issuing passports to laborers. Japanese immigrants already in Hawai‘i were barred from moving to the U.S. mainland in accordance with this agreement. See Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1991), 16; and Ozawa Gijo, ed., Hawai Nihongo Gakko Kyoikushi (History of Japanese language education in Hawai‘i) (Honolulu: Hawaii Kyoiku Kai, printed in Japan, 1972), 42.

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10. Hawaii Hochi, Hawai Hochi Sokan 75 Shunen Kinenshi (75th anniversary special issue of Hawaii Hochi) (Honolulu: Hawaii Hochi, 1987), 213; hereafter Hawai Hochi, 1987. 11. Franklin Odo and Kazuko Shinoto, Zusetsu Hawai Nihonjinshi, 1885–1924 (A pictorial history of the Japanese in Hawai‘i, 1885–1924) (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1985), 131. Also available in English. 12. An inaugural ceremony was held in February 1915. The Buddhist-affiliated schools, Christian-affiliated schools, as well as the independent schools became members of the Hawaii Kyoiku Kai. Consul General Arita Hachiro, Bishop Imamura Yemyo, the Reverend Okumura Takie, and Nippu Jiji ’s Soga Yasutaro were in attendance at the ceremony. The Reverend Okumura delivered a speech. Emphasizing that they should give the Nisei a genuine language education, not a Japanese national education, he even hinted that education in the Hongwanji-affiliated schools was not proper in the United States. See Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakko, 56–63. 13. Hawaii Kyoiku Kai, Nihongo Tokuhon (Japanese Reading Textbooks) (1917), vol. 6. 14. The opinion of A. F. Judd, the vice president of a big company, appeared in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, which proposed, in essence, that schools operated by parents be placed under the supervision of the Territorial Department of Public Instruction, and that unlicensed teachers not be allowed to teach. Compilation Committee for the Publication of Kinzaburo Makino’s Biography, ed., Life of Makino Kinzaburo (Honolulu: Hawaii Hochi, 1965), 43. 15. Lorrin Andrews introduced the bill on March 10. It was based on Judd’s proposal, mentioned above. 16. This proposal was called “Bill to Limit Qualifications of Foreign Languages School Teachers” and was introduced in the Territorial Legislature on March 20. 17. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 45. 18. John Hawkins, “Politics, Education, and Language Policy: The Case of Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii,” in Don Nakanishi et al., eds., The Asian American Educational Experience: A Source Book for Teachers and Students (New York: Routledge, 1995/1978), 34; Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 230. 19. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 42. 20. See Masayo Duus, Nihon no Inbo: Oahuto Daisutoraiki no Hikari to Kage (Japanese conspiracy: Two sides of the great strikes on the island of O‘ahu) (Tokyo: Bungeishunju, 1991). 21. The anti-Japanese movement in California reached Hawai‘i, and the image of Japan as a strong military power created fear among Americans there that Japan might invade the Islands. 22. All the textbooks used at foreign-language schools were also to be under the supervision of the Department of Public Instruction. 23. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 45. 24. Harry Irwin, asked by the Chamber of Commerce on October 10, presented the bill in the House of Representatives on November 12. Hearing that Irwin was preparing the bill, eighteen conservative Japanese representatives voluntarily drafted the school regulation



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bill for themselves and took it to the Chamber of Commerce on November 15. The bill written by Japanese volunteers was affirmatively voted on in the Chamber of Commerce and submitted to the legislature. At the legislature, the bill was modified a little and immediately signed into law (Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 239). The group of conservative Japanese included Mori Iga, Soga Yasutaro, Okumura Umetaro, and Imamura Yemyo (Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakko, 121–122). 25. Five hundred and nine Japanese, 18 Korean and 25 Chinese instructors passed the qualification test, although out of those, 219 Japanese, 9 Korean, and 11 Chinese were required to take the test again to receive the full qualification (Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 241). 26. In February 1922, the new textbook compilation committee was organized. All fifteen members were nominated by then Consul General Yada. Eight of them were principals and vice-principals of language schools, in addition to Okumura, Soga, Mori, Harada, and others who would later become anti-litigation proponents. In August, Hawaii Hochi reported that the joint committee of these members, with five Americans, came up with the new regulation proposal (Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 241–242). 27. There were various kinds of Japanese-language schools. Usually the schools without any religious affiliations were named Nihongo Gakko (Japanese-language schools) including place-names. Many Buddhist-affiliated schools were named Gakuen, usually with place-names. Chuo Gakuin was the largest Japanese-language school that had an original curriculum for Nisei to learn the Japanese language, and had become well known in the Japanese community. 28. Kakaako Japanese-language school once had about 580 students and 250 parent association members. When the school was divided on this matter, the pro-litigation faction of the school had just over 70 students and 21 parents. In the beginning the pro-litigation faction kept the school building, and the anti-litigation faction immediately organized a different school. But then they tried to take over the former Kakaako building where the pro-litigation group’s classes were in session. With the help of Attorney Joseph Lightfoot, this confrontation was taken to court and became another court case. 29. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 51–52. 30. Hawaii Hochi, Nihongo Gakko Shoso Jusshunen Kinenshi, 1927–1937 (10th anniversary special issue for victory of Japanese language school litigation, 1927–1937) (Honolulu: Hawaii Hochi, 1937), 37; hereafter Hawaii Hochi, 1937. 31. Ibid., 67. 32. Ibid., 139. 33. Moreover, Yamane remembered the occasion when they needed even more extra money. At Kalihi school, the principal had changed his mind after the decision was made for pro-litigation, and he resigned from the school. He even urged other teachers to follow him, and others also resigned. Without teachers, the school could not function. The school officials asked a Hawaii Hochi editor to come to the school as acting principal. However, he was arrested because he did not have a teaching license. The Kalihi school committee had to bail him out, which was an extra expenditure and burden for them. In addition, Yamane spent his personal money to ask legal advice from attorneys Kemp and Coke. Their answers

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were all the same as Lightfoot’s. In other words, they advised Yamane that Japanese should not be reserved and hold back: “You can win if you are determined to go to Washington D.C.” 34. Hawaii Hochi, 1937, 94. However, then chief executive of Toyo Gakuen, Yamazaki Tokutaro, said in 1937 that they collected $500 to $600 much more easily than they had expected. This comment contradicts other members of Toyo Gakuen officials. 35. Hawaii Hochi, 1937, 76. 36. Right after the submission of the Clark bill, six schools joined the litigation group, as mentioned previously. 37. At that time, there were other foreign-language schools, such as Chinese and Korean ones. The number of those schools was small, but they were also subject to the new territorial regulations on foreign-language schools. The leader of the Chinese community in Hawai‘i submitted a petition directly to the governor not to sign the Clark bill (Hawaii Hochi, 1937, 17). 38. Hawaii Hochi, 1937, 78. 39. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 68. 40. Ibid. 41. Roland Kotani, The Japanese in Hawaii: A Century of Struggle (Honolulu: Hawaii Hochi, 1985), 53. 42. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 61. 43. Ibid., 47. 44. Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 246. 45. Hawaii Hochi, 1937, 82. 46. Ibid., 99. 47. Ibid., 127. 48. Ibid., 87. 49. Ibid., 90. 50. Ibid., 125. 51. Ibid., 101. 52. Ibid., 151–152. 53. Ibid., 88. 54. Compilation Committee, Life of Makino Kinzaburo, 66. 55. See Ozawa, Hawai Nihongo Gakko, 128. Yamazaki summoned the language-school delegates and tried to persuade them by no means to file suit against the territory. Hawaii Hochi criticized this behavior: “Japanese in Hawaii pay respect to the Consul General, not as an individual but as a Japanese official. We do not think Yamazaki understands Hawaii’s situation after living here only a year. He is not experienced enough to give advice to the older people who have lived in Hawaii for over twenty years. . . . Stop the dirty way of summoning the people in the name of the Consul General and form an opinion as a private person” (Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 250). 56. Nippu Jiji, April 24, 1923. 57. Soga Yasutaro (Keiho), Gojunenkan no Hawai Kaiko (My fifty years’ memories in Hawai‘i) (The Osaka Kosoku Printing Co., 1953), 352.



Japanese-Language School Litigation Controversy 239

58. Takie Okumura and Umetaro Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problem: A Campaign to Remove Causes of Friction between the American People and Japanese (Honolulu: n.p., 1921), 2. 59. Kotani, Japanese in Hawaii, 55. 60. Takie Okumura, Oncho 70 nen (Seventy years of divine blessings) (Honolulu: n.p., 1940), 127. 61. Kotani, Japanese in Hawaii, 54. 62. Okumura was the founder of one of the first Japanese schools in Hawai‘i, but as Japan–U.S. relations deteriorated he came to believe that keeping Japanese education in Japanese-language schools would not be a good idea. 63. Okumura, Oncho 70 nen. 64. Okumura and Okumura, Hawaii’s American-Japanese Problem, 13. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 13. 67. Okumura, Oncho 70 nen, 129. 68. Until 1916, the Nisei children born to Japanese immigrant parents automatically became Japanese nationals and Japanese nationality law did not provide them with a way to renounce their nationality. In 1916, Japan changed the law to enable Nisei to do so. However, male Nisei of seventeen years and over were not allowed to renounce Japanese citizenship without fulfilling their military service. The Japanese 1924 Nationality Act stipulated that Nisei children could obtain Japanese nationality only after their parents registered them as Japanese. Teruko Kumei, Gaikokujin wo meguru Shakaishi (Social history of alien residents) (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 2000–2002). 69. Very few Nisei actually renounced their Japanese nationality in the year of 1924. See Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 51. 70. As for what he did before mapping out the campaign for the Issei in 1921, Okumura went back to Japan to meet with Viscount Shibusawa and other high-ranking government officials of Japan in June 1925 and asked their support for the new phase of campaign to start in 1926. 71. Shimada, “Okumura Takie to Shibusawa Eiichi,” 45. Okumura raised $10,000 for the YMCA building in Honolulu in 1917. 72. Okumura, Oncho 70 nen, 140. 73. Ibid., 129. 74. Ibid., 130. 75. Ibid., 133. 76. Fuchs, Hawaii Pono, 263. 77. Hawaii Hochi, 1987, 198. 78. Some Issei litigation group members later commented that they could not stand the pressure from the legislature, because they were proud to be of the Yamato race. This implies that they interpreted the legislative pressure as a way the white elite had chosen to look down on them, something their pride could not accept.

Contributors

Tomoko Akami, Ph.D., is senior lecturer and head, Centre for Asian Societies and Histories at The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Jon Davidann, Ph.D., is professor of history and director of International Exchange and Study Abroad Programs at Hawai‘i Pacific University in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Masako Gavin, Ph.D., is associate professor of Japanese language and coordinator of East Asian studies at Bond University in Robina, Gold Coast, Australia. Paul Hooper, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of American studies at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Michiko Ito, M.A., is Japanese studies librarian at the University of Kansas. Nobuo Katagiri, L.L.D., is professor of international relations at Gumma Prefectural Women’s University in Gumma, Japan. Hiromi Monobe, Ph.D., is assistant professor at the Institute for Language and Culture, Dōshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Moriya Tomoe, Ph.D., is associate professor of Asian North American religion and Modern Japanese Buddhism at Hannan University in Osaka, Japan. Shimada Noriko, M.A., is professor of history and coordinator of the American Studies Program at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo, Japan. Mariko Takagi-Kitayama, Ph.D., is professor of American studies at Aichi Gakuin University in Aichi, Japan. Eileen H. Tamura, Ph.D., is professor of education at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Index

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 196–197 Americanization, 5, 20, 43, 46, 111–112, 114–115, 119, 121–122, 124, 126, 130– 134, 146–152, 156–158, 160–161, 163– 166, 171, 175, 192–193, 198, 202–205, 207, 217, 218, 220, 221, 228, 233, 234 Annexation of Hawai‘i, 1, 4, 15, 126 Anti-Japanese immigration, 71–73, 76, 88–89, 96–98, 103 Anti-Japanese sentiment, 5, 113–114, 122, 126–127, 151, 158, 172, 175, 179–180, 229 Anti-litigation, 135, 148, 218, 224, 226, 228, 233 Atherton, Frank C., 19, 28, 32–33, 44–46, 52, 56, 71, 114, 119–122, 124, 126–127, 131–132, 137 Baldwin, Harry A., 125, 136 Boas, Franz, 45–46 Bryan Conciliation Treaty, 74, 76 Buddhism, 114–115, 147, 149–150, 161–163, 165, 192, 194–200, 202–208, 227 Bushido ethics, 51, 182, 233 California Alien Land Law, 151, 156 Carter, Edward C., 30–34, 53, 56, 57, 59 Castle, George P., 124, 231 Castle and Cooke, 45, 119 Chōnosuke Yada, 120, 123 Christianization, 148, 161, 196 Christians/Christianity, 5, 31, 42, 48, 50– 52, 54–55, 112, 114, 120–121, 146–148, 151, 153, 155, 157, 160–162, 164–165,

176–177, 193, 195–198, 200–202, 204, 206–207, 217 Chuo Gakuin, 222, 226–227 Clark, William, 174, 180 Clark Bill, 223–224, 227 Condliffe, John, 27, 54–55, 104 Consul General of Japan, 209, 221, 234 Cooke, Charles, 124, 231 Croly, Herbert, 22–23, 25–26, 35 Davis, J. Merle, 50, 52–54, 88 Dean, Arthur L., 21–22, 45, 62 Department of Public Instruction, 134, 153, 192, 221–225 Dobo, 147, 150, 161, 165 Dōshisha University, 121, 128, 202 Ebina Danjo, 48, 51, 128 Educational campaign, 122, 151, 197, 218, 228, 230–234 Eurocentrism, 22–23 Farrington, Wallace, 21, 45 Foreign-language school law, 152–153 Geneva Protocol, 68, 73 Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907–1908, 5, 9, 106, 113, 150, 219 Great Britain, 14, 28, 72, 76, 79–81, 84, 86–87, 103, 126 Great Depression, 28, 42, 159 Haole elite and community, 123–125, 130, 132, 135–136, 138, 148–150, 152, 155, 157, 160, 162, 164, 205, 218

244

Hara Takashi, 17, 126, 157 Harada Tasuku, 114, 122, 128, 177, 228–229, 233 Hawaii Hochi, 135, 137, 147, 154, 199, 201, 218, 222–223, 225, 232 Hawaiian Evangelical Association, 196– 197 Hongwanji, a.k.a. Honpa Hongwanji Mission, 114, 123, 146–147, 150–151, 153, 155, 160, 165, 192, 195–196, 202, 204, 208, 219, 223–225, 227, 233 Honolulu Advertiser, 129, 220 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 129, 228 Imamura Yemyo, 114–115, 146–166, 192– 193, 195, 197–208, 219, 224, 227, 236–237 Immigration Act (1924), 3, 158, 231 Immigration law, 18, 25, 27, 72, 97–98, 105–106, 113, 152, 158–159, 162 Imperial Rescript on Education, 171–172, 220 Institute of Pacific Relations conference of 1925, 21, 44–45, 97, 106–107 Institute of Pacific Relations conference of 1927, 20, 22–23, 96, 103, 106–107 Institute of Pacific Relations headquarters, 18, 28, 31–33, 45, 54, 70 Institute of Pacific Relations research projects, 27, 33, 50, 52–53, 59 International Buddhist Institute (IBI), 147, 193 International Secretariat of the Institute of Pacific Relations (ISIPR), 14, 18, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33 Internationalism, 2, 19, 20, 42–44, 47–50, 56, 59, 60, 70, 115 Issei, 5, 113–114, 120–122, 124–129, 131– 139, 151, 157–158, 160, 163, 165, 171, 175–176, 199, 202, 208, 219–222, 224, 229–230, 232–233 Japanese American Relations Committee, 71–72, 126 Japanese Christians, 50, 52, 54, 176, 197 Japanese Consulate, 127–130, 132, 134–135, 156

Index

Japanese Council of the IPR (JCIPR), 23, 26–27, 33–35 Japanese Educational Association of Hawai‘i, 172, 177, 220 Japanese enlightenment movement, 49, 52, 148, 150–151, 155–159 Japanese expansionism, 47, 194 Japanese Foreign Ministry, 56, 114, 137 Japanese imperialism, 45, 193 Japanese Institute of Pacific Relations (JIPR), 23, 69, 70, 72, 74, 77, 82–85, 88–90 Japanese-language schools, 4–5, 114, 120, 123, 125, 133–137, 147–148, 150, 152– 153, 157, 162, 166, 202–203, 217, 220– 222, 225–228, 233 Japanese migration, 3, 5, 16, 18, 27 Japanese Ministry of Education, 125, 150, 176, 220 Japanese nationalism, 48–49, 123, 131, 135, 207 Japanese Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 48, 52, 150 Kalihi Japanese Language School, 222, 224–226 Katō Kanji, 17–18, 34 Kellogg-Briand Pact/treaty for renunciation/pact of, 10, 68–70, 73, 77–83, 85–90, 97 Kimono, 51, 164 Kōtoku Incident (Kōtoku Jiken), 201, 206 Lawsuit of 1922, 135–136, 218 League of Nations, 5, 9, 13, 19–20, 22–24, 34, 43, 48, 56, 68, 72, 75–78, 83–84, 88–90, 103, 165 Lightfoot, Joseph, 223–225, 233 Makiki Christian Church, 120, 146, 148, 155, 164, 176, 197, 218, 231, 235 Makino Kinzaburo (Fred), 135–137, 139, 147, 152, 218–219, 222–223, 225, 227, 232–234 Manchuria, 9, 34, 48, 51, 53–55, 60, 70, 72–73, 77, 79, 80–81, 85–87, 89–90, 154, 162, 165, 194



Manchurian Incident, 51, 85, 89–90, 165 Monroe Doctrine, 54–55, 75, 77, 79 Mori Iga, 114, 122, 128 Nasu Hiroshi, 104–106 National Diet, 147, 166 Nationality Act, 156, 230 New Americans Conference, 137, 160, 163, 231, 233 Nine Power Treaty, 17, 57, 73 Nippu Jiji, 129, 136–137, 200–201, 219, 221–222, 228 Nisei, 2, 4, 112–114, 116–117, 119, 122, 125– 126, 131–134, 136–137, 146–147, 150– 152, 154, 156–163, 165–166, 171–172, 175–177, 179, 181–182, 202–205, 208, 217, 219–220, 227–228, 230–233; Americanization of, 119, 131 Nitobe Inazo, 48, 51–52, 55–56, 179 Okumura Takie, 114, 119–122, 126, 130–135, 137–139, 146–166, 176–177, 197, 200, 217–218, 230–234; Americanization plan of, 121, 126; educational campaign of, 121, 126, 128, 130, 137, 218, 221–222, 228–230 Okumura Umetaro (son of Okumura Takie), 131, 133–134, 158, 197, 230 Pact of Locarno, 68–69, 73–75, 77–78 Pan-Pacific conference, 18, 19, 20, 25, 29 Pan-Pacific Union, 5, 19–21, 31, 70–71 Pearl Harbor, 6, 9, 15–16, 25, 35, 59 Picture brides, 113, 156, 175, 219 Plantation, 1, 3–4, 19, 112–113, 119–120, 122, 124–126, 128, 131, 133, 148, 150, 152, 154–155, 158–160, 174, 194–196, 198– 201, 218–219, 222, 230–232 Plantation strike (1909), 199–202 Prince Fushinomiya (1858–1923), 147–148, 178 Pro-litigation, 135–136, 224–226, 233– 234 Protestant, 120–121, 124, 196 Russo-Japanese War, 16, 18, 71, 156, 173, 177, 182

Index 245

Saitō Sōchi, 23, 176, 177 Samurai, 120, 147–148, 155, 158, 164, 166, 182 Sawayanagi Masataro, 49–50, 103–104 Scharrenberg, Paul, 89, 102, 105, 107, 124, 127 Scott, Marion, 174, 180 Shibusawa Eiichi, 52, 71–72, 91, 98, 114, 120–122, 126–128, 130–132, 137–138, 146, 149, 155–159, 166, 229–231 Shiga Shigetaka, 114, 171, 183 Shotwell, James T., 73–78, 82–83, 88–89 Shotwell proposal, 76, 78 Sino-Japanese War, 16, 27, 33–34, 53, 56– 57, 171, 193 Soga Yasutaro, 114, 122, 129, 131, 134–138, 177–178, 181, 219, 221, 222, 228, 233 Sovereignty, 47, 87, 99, 104, 107 Sugar industry, 1, 3, 119, 123–124, 133, 138, 154, 174, 221, 231 Sugar strike, a.k.a. O‘ahu Sugar Strike (1920), 123, 125, 129, 146–147, 152, 154, 219, 229 Taft, William Howard, 16, 127 Takayanagi Kenzo, 72, 75, 77, 84–85, 99 Tanaka cabinet, 70, 78–79, 82, 85–86, 89 Third Institute of Pacific Relations conference, 55–56 Toyo Gakuen, 222, 224 Tsurumi Yusuke, 55, 104 Uchida Yasuya, 80–81, 123, 126, 129–130, 230 United States Supreme Court, 137, 153, 221, 223–225; decision of 1927, 137, 153, 195, 221, 223–225 Washington Conference, 13, 16–17, 22, 25, 68, 73 Washington system, 68, 73, 80 Western imperialism, 43, 47 Wilson, Woodrow, 13, 16, 43, 47, 73; Wilsonian idealism (internationalism), 10, 43–44, 48 World War II, 2, 4, 15, 53, 115, 204, 207

246

Yale Club, 18, 25–26 Yamakawa Tadao, 58–59, 77 “Yellow peril,” 4, 16, 157 Yoshino Sakuzo, 48, 52 Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), 147, 154, 163–165

Index

Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 5, 10, 19, 23, 25, 30–31, 46, 48, 50–52, 60, 70, 120, 148, 150, 157; YMCA missionaries, 50–52

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