CHAPTER XXI

WHERE THE PROBLEM DOVETAILS

1

I have come now to the most delicate and most difficult task in the whole problem, that of the dovetailing of nations. Twice has this phase of the subject come before us: once when we met it in that welter of racial experiments, Hawaii and the South Seas in general; and again in that great outpost of the white race, Australasia. But in the one it is too localized, and the other too much in anticipation. In Hawaii it is hard to say which race has justly a prior right to possession; in Australia the problem is only imminent.

But in California and the entire West the impact of the two races of the Pacific has taken place. Nothing but a just solution can possibly be any solution at all. Let me therefore define the problem at the very outset, lest that which is really irrelevant be expected, or insinuate itself into the discussion.

Primarily, the problem of Japan in America is not a racial one. Primarily it is political, and hinges upon the rights of nations. Secondarily, it is economic, and only in so far as the political and economic factors are unsolvable can the problem become a racial one, and terminate in conflict. All attempts at handling the situation which do not take into consideration these two factors would be like crossing the stream to get a bucket of water. For nothing can be done without reciprocity, and reciprocity is the last thing that Japan would ever consent to, as it involves a transformation in her political philosophy and the relinquishment of her own position from the very outset. Hence, before we can even approach the consideration of facts in California, we must get clearly in mind exactly what Japan is doing within her own territories. Japan is the appellant. Japan demands that her people be given free entry the world over. We are not asking her to let our people enter Japan and her possessions as laborers and agriculturists. Hence, before she can make her plea at all rational, she must show that she herself is not discriminating in the identical manner as the one she objects to.

Now, in only one or two instances have I seen that question emphasized. In all the literature I have read emanating from Japanese sources, in the lectures of its propagandists here, I have never seen it faced fairly and squarely. The actions of Japan are ignored or glossed over. The protagonists of Japan in California--Americans, mind you--make of it purely an American issue, as though discrimination were a fault peculiar to ourselves. Two blacks don't make a white, but neither do two blacks quarrel with each other for being black.

The questions in the order of their importance then are:

Does Japan permit the free entrance of alien labor?

Does Japan permit the ready purchase by aliens of agricultural land?

Does Japan make the naturalization of aliens easy?

Does Japan permit the denaturalization of its people abroad?

Now, these are all political problems, for the simple reason that the very economic conditions of Japan make them unnecessary. That is, Japanese labor is essentially cheap labor, and owing to the great crowding there would be little likelihood of any great influx of Korean or Chinese labor were the bars not raised fairly high. And the bars are high. The number of Koreans admitted is greater largely because Koreans are now subjects of the mikado, but even they are kept in check by Japanese objections to their entrance, and conflicts between Japanese and Koreans are not unknown. Chinese are permitted to enter Japan only by special permission from the local authorities, as provided for in a regulation in force since 1899. Forgetting the two hundred and fifty years during which the doors of Japan were sealed; forgetting that even after the opening of Japan a foreigner had to obtain a special passport to travel from Kobe to Kyoto, a distance of forty miles inland; forgetting all the psychological factors that have by no means broken down the crust that still closes most of Japan to alien possession or acquisition, one is still amazed at this discrimination against fellow-subjects and Chinese, to whom the Japanese are in some essential way, at least, related.

But let us see what happens to these people when they do get in. Let me quote a statement in the bulletin of the East and West News Bureau, a Japanese propaganda agency located in New York.

In Japan proper the Korean laborers are estimated to number about 20,000. Compared with Japanese laborers they are perhaps superior in point of physical strength, but in practical efficiency they are no rivals of the latter. They feel that they are handicapped by strange environments and different customs, which partly account for their low efficiency. But experienced employers assert that the Koreans are markedly lazy, and that their work requires overseers, which naturally results of curtailment of their wages.

According to inquiries by the Osaka police on conditions among Korean laborers in the city, many of them have been thrown out of employment on account of the economic depression; that they are mostly engaged in rough work, such as carrying goods around or digging holes, etc., as unskilled laborers. It states that they are indolent and have no interest in work which requires skill and attention; they are simply contented as cheap laborers.

This quotation is illuminating in many ways. First, it strikes me as being anything but fair play on the part of Japanese in America to send out such discriminating and unkind accounts of a people whom they have now taken in as fellows in an empire, and whom they are "trying to assimilate." Secondly, it is not quite true, for Japanese manufacturers are going to Korea with their factories. If Korean laborers are efficient in Korea, why not in Japan? But the fact of the matter is that the Japanese, quite naturally, are not going to give the best jobs to Koreans with their own men round about.

Now let us see what the British Vice-Consul at Osaka has to say of Japanese labor, in a report to Parliament. Admitting that external conditions have much to do with the poor quality of the Japanese workman, and that in time and under better conditions he will improve, the vice-consul says: "The standard [of intelligence] shown by the average workman is admittedly low," while some of his sub-captions are: "Docility," "Apathy," "Cheerfulness," "Lack of Concentration," "Scarcity of Skilled Labor," and under the caption "Why Wages are Low" he says: "Labor is plentiful and inefficient."

It is seen, therefore, that the opinion of the vice-consul in the matter of the Japanese is similar to that of the Japanese in regard to the Korean; and so it goes. The point in the whole question, to my mind is, that Japanese discriminate as much against other races as they are discriminated against. Not until Japan lays low the chauvinistic notions about the superiority of the most inferior Japanese to the best foreigner can we expect that other nations will set to work to remove the obstacles toward a clear understanding.

In America the very reverse is true. No one ever asserts that the Japanese is inferior to a white man. What is said is that the white man is essentially an individualist who at maturity starts off in life by himself, whereas the Japanese is bound by all sorts of notions of ancestor-worship which submerge him completely in the group. Furthermore, as a group the Japanese are able to overcome the greatest odds that any individual can raise against them. The nature of that group-consciousness will be analyzed in the answer to some of the other questions.

2

But to return to Japan: That Japan has no occasion for fear of a serious invasion of aliens is evident from recent figures that show that there are only 19,500 foreigners there, of whom 12,139 are Chinese, 2,404 Britons, 1,837 Americans, 687 Russians, 641 Germans, and 445 French. These figures are, however, unreliable, and antedate the Russian Revolution. However, the question here pertinent is whether any of these would be permitted to engage in such industries as the Japanese engage in here; for instance, agriculture. That can be answered in the negative. The Japanese land law, however generous it may seem from mere reading of the statutes, does not extend that privilege to foreigners. The first proviso of the law is that the person desiring to own land in Japan shall be from a country wherein Japanese are permitted to own land. In other words, if America does not allow a Japanese to acquire land, no American can do so in Japan. As it stands, therefore, no Japanese can complain if American laws make a similar ruling. The second provision excludes from any and all ownership, in any and all circumstances, the Hokkaido, Formosa, Karafuto (Sakhalin), or districts necessary for national defense. Considering that every other inch of ground is held in plots of two and a half acres per farmer, to whom they are the beginning and end of subsistence, the privileges innocently extended are mighty short. The law virtually excludes all right to any agricultural lands that any foreigner might be able to avail himself of.

There is one kind of real property foreigners do wish to own, and that is property for business purposes. But they cannot own that, even; they may only lease it on long leases under conditions that are frequently a hardship and often enough insecure. They may lease land under the so-called superficies lease, but that means virtually evading the law, and is always expensive. Even ordinary leases are frequently encroached upon, as foreigners in the ports are only too well aware. While I was in Kobe, Japanese were forcing foreign business firms out of the former foreign settlement, which fully fifty years of white men's toil had converted from a worthless bit of beach land into one of the most up-to-date "suburbs" in the Orient, and which is now the best part of Kobe. This was done by calling in leases, by making the rents prohibitive, and by "buying out" foreign lease-holders at almost exorbitant rates, just as the Japanese buy out white men in California. One British druggist, Dr. Richardson, sold for $225,000 a corner plot for which he had paid $12,500. He made a great profit in the deal, but the process by which he, and others, were bought out is indicative of the methods of the Japanese. For behind many of the real-estate dealers was the Government, making loans at most favorable rates of interest with the sole object of getting back into Japanese control as much of the port plots as possible,--cost what it might. Even men of lifelong residence in Japan must form themselves into corporations with their wives and some Japanese as members, in order to own the land upon which their residences are built. Some of these cases I investigated for the "Japan Chronicle" and learned from the priest of the Catholic Church that pressure was constantly being exerted upon him to make him relinquish his hold upon the ground on which the church stands, because it is in the heart of the business section. He said he did not know how long he would be able to hold out against them.

How corrupt landlords may overstep the bounds is illustrated by a case reported in the "Chronicle" of February 10, 1921. The editor says:

The notorious Clarke lease suit is a case in point. This was a lease for twenty-five years, renewable for a further term of similar duration. A syndicate of Japanese was organized which purchased the land, knowing of the burdens upon it, with the hope of worrying the lease-holder either into paying more rent or into selling the lease for an inadequate sum. Suit after suit was brought in various names, until at last a court was found to give judgment raising the rent on the ground that taxes had increased and the value of surrounding properties had expanded since the lease was made. In justification of a judgment upholding this decision, the Osaka Appeal Court declared that there was a local custom in Kobe which permitted a landlord to raise the rent in certain circumstances. No evidence was produced in support of this contention, which was clearly against all contract law and rendered lease agreements meaningless. The result was that the gang of speculators who had banded themselves together to despoil a foreigner were successful. The holder of the lease was forced to sell and the syndicate profited greatly.

If the argument is raised that you will find bad people everywhere, and that one cannot take the poorest type of person and set him up as the example, let us recall the case of the Doshisha University. There, because of these selfsame land and property laws, The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions placed the million dollars' worth of property in the hands of Christian Japanese directors. Presently the Government brought pressure to bear upon these directors, and they yielded to their Government. In February, 1898, they virtually ousted the foreign owners, turned the institution into a secular college, and saw nothing dishonest nor immoral in the action. Japanese have of course come to a better understanding of the rights in such cases, nor am I trying to impugn the integrity of the "better-class" of Japanese. I am merely bringing evidence to prove that not only are Japanese laws with regard to the ownership of land by foreigners as discriminatory as those of California, but their interpretation is a serious handicap to aliens in Japan.

In America the fight is not to prevent Japanese from taking hold of land for business purposes, but to prevent them from monopolizing farming-lands, which, as Mr. Walter Pitkin has shown so clearly in his book, "Must We Fight Japan?" are rapidly passing out of American hands because of our vicious shallowness in agrarian matters. I am not as yet bringing up the question of fairness, justice, generosity, or the rights of over-crowded Japan. I am merely making parallels which seem to me telling.

3

Does Japan make the naturalization of aliens easy? As far as the letter of the law goes, there appears nothing in the eyes of a layman that might stand in the way of a man, already married and with children, from becoming a Japanese subject. There is no legal discrimination against any race or color. But notwithstanding that there now are 20,000 foreigners in Japan, and that the number throughout the years must have been much greater, there are on record only nine cases of foreigners having been naturalized between 1904 and 1913; two English, two American, five French; and ten cases of adoptions by marriage into Japanese families. These, to my knowledge, do not include men previously married. They are all cases of men who have married Japanese women, or of women who have married Japanese men. There have been 158 Chinese who became naturalized. This does not indicate that naturalization is easy--except by marriage--and the general consensus of opinion is that it would take a man fully fifteen years to become naturalized in the due process of law.

Furthermore, the restrictions attached to the acquisition of Japanese nationality take all the sweetness out of the plum, for even after you have gone through the regular processes and have been permitted to sit "amongst these gods on sainted seats," there are still exalted pedestals beyond your reach. You may not become a Minister of State, President, or Vice-President, or a member of the Privy Council; an official of _chokunin_ (imperial-appointment) rank in the Imperial Household Department; an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary; a general officer in the army and navy; president of the Supreme Court, of the Board of Audit, or of the Court of Administrative Litigation; or member of the Imperial Diet. Nor are the professions in all cases open to you.

However, this is a minor matter compared with that of the inability on the part of any Japanese to accept another nationality without official consent. If he resides abroad after his seventeenth birthday he cannot in any circumstances become a citizen of that other country unless he has completed his military service. Women may freely relinquish their nationality through marriage; not so men. If men are born abroad, they must make a voluntary request for denaturalization between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, but such other factors are involved that only a negligible number of American-born Japanese have ever attempted to rid themselves of their ancestral connections; and there is one case on record in which the Government refused on a technicality, for the child had applied for denationalization according to Western reckoning, whereas Japanese count the child's age as from the day of conception, not birth.

In view of this, then, there seems no point whatever in the fuss made about Japanese being barred from citizenship. Again, I am not discussing the advisability of this restriction, but merely trying to brush aside many of the webs that have been spun for the netting of sympathy. The relations between Japan and America are thus involved in an infinite number of petty political regulations on each side, and nothing but a complete sweeping away of all restrictions on both sides would ever assume even the semblance of justice. But how far is Japan ready and willing to go in this denationalization of herself? The most casual study of her nationalistic aims and aspirations answers that question.

That the problem is essentially a problem for Japan to solve is self-evident. That it is political and not racial, and that this political problem is rooted in Japan's economic condition, is likewise clear. For no nation loses its nationals except when the conditions at home are worse than those abroad, worse than those of the country to which her people wish to emigrate. Australia and New Zealand find it almost impossible to lure out British laborers, while Germany's desire for room was largely for the utilization of her mechanics and scientists and others whom she had trained in such large numbers that she hadn't enough work for them at home. Two changes in the structure of world economics have accentuated a condition of racial conflict which have hitherto been virtually non-existent. Religious and political conflicts have always obtained, but the color line has been drawn only in very recent times. As long as black and yellow people have been of a lower order and have been willing to serve the white, there was never any serious disorder between them. The color line is not marked even in Europe to-day, for the same reason that it is not marked in Japan. Europe is herself too crowded to be a desirable immigration station. Whatever the causes of conflict may have been, to-day it is clear that they lie in the endeavor on the part of white labor to maintain a better standard of living than Oriental labor has yet attained. And in exactly the degree to which certain Oriental labor groups have risen above others, the conflict becomes manifest,--to wit, the objection on the part of Japanese labor to Korean and Chinese coolies. No serious conflicts take place between Fijian laborers and Indian coolies, because the Fijian maintains his standard under competition, that being lower than the Indian's.

We have therefore to study the problem of Japanese in America, the so-called race conflict, not so much as it develops here but at its source, Japan. And there, if I read Japanese conditions aright, the problem is political and psychological in the main. Japan has come very far along material modernization; she has virtually stepped up to the front rank of nations. But the most casual observation reveals that that is only so in part, that the advance is made as a government, not as a people. That government is rooted in antiquated notions, is vicious in many of its aspects, and is opposed to even the most conservative developments of Western countries. That government refuses to recognize the social forces that are at work within Japan for the leveling upward of classes. And there is the rub.

4

Glancing over the history of the nineteenth century, we realize that all nations have passed through a continuous struggle of the masses for betterment of their conditions, political and social as well as economic. During the greater part of that century Japan lay dormant, its masses mentally mesmerized. The sudden impact of the West has stunned the people more than awakened them. Only part of the social body is coming to life,--a limb, an essential organ. To be generous, I might say the brain is working, though from many of the actions of Nippon that would seem doubtful. But certain it is that whether it is the brain or merely the spinal column, instead of limbering up the rest of the body as rapidly as possible, it is trying to retard it. Hence, the feverish condition of the country.

This is not mere speculation. As I have said, only such countries as have an inferior economic condition suffer from the exodus of their laboring people. That exodus takes place for several reasons. From Europe it has come because of the hunger for religious freedom, to escape political oppression, or merely to get a new start in life. And though we have few political or religious exiles in America from the Land of the Rising Sun, they come because of an unconscious desire for relief from Japanese social domination. I am convinced that that which most Japanese so prefer in America is that sense of individual freshness, that desire for individual expression, for freedom from the clutch of family and oligarchy. It is unconscious, and without doubt few Japanese when brought face to face with the issues would admit it, so deeply ingrained is the education and training at the hands of the political administrators. Only here and there is some such statement made, with an eye to the press and the galleries.

Were Japan to extend to the masses greater freedom, there would be plenty of work for them at home. There is scientific advancement to be made. Japanese are frightfully behind in the scientific habit. I have been told by a friend at one of our greatest institutions of medical experimentation that with but one exception the Japanese who come there have to be constantly dismissed for their incompetence. There was no anti-Japanese sentiment in the mind of the person who made this statement. Japanese still need generations of training to acquire the scientific spirit. Their historians prove this. In the business of life Japanese have plenty of work at home which could easily absorb all the man-power, both masculine and feminine, at their command, without the necessity of shipping any of it abroad. But the vulgar acquisition of wealth, the vulgar acquisition of political prestige in the world, the vulgar appeal for equality which no man or nation with true dignity and self-respect would mouth to the extent that Japanese officialdom has mouthed it, the vulgar wearing of its sensitiveness on its sleeve,--it is these with which bureaucratic Japan is preoccupied. While, at home, every effort on the part of Japanese to secure manhood suffrage, to arise to the dignity of true men, of which the masses are as capable as any race on earth, is discouraged. On the one hand pleading, in mendicant fashion, for racial equality abroad; on the other, refusal to give the people at home racial equality. On one hand it is asserted loudly that "The Japanese do not like to be regarded as inferior to any other people. In no country will they be content with discriminatory treatment";[1] on the other, Prime Minister Hara answers the demand for the franchise with the maudlin fear that it would break down "distinction."

[1] From the _Kokumin_, a leading newspaper.

So that the problem of Japan and the world is largely a political problem which she must face at home. Raising the standard of living; increasing the economic welfare of the masses; extending the rights of the people who are clamoring for it in sections, not only to the intelligent elements but down to the very _eta_; cleansing the social pores of the empire,--these will in themselves automatically solve the problem for the world. The people don't want conquest. They are not aggressive. But the misguided leaders,--there's the rub.

5

As to Japan in America--or, more specifically, the Japanese in California--the problem is for us to solve. I once heard an American sentimentalist who practises law, and hence assured an audience he ought to know what he was talking about, say that the trouble in California was that the Japanese will work and the American is an idler and won't work. Why he wasn't howled out of the auditorium I don't know. That America has reared this vast continent and made it one of the most productive countries in the world did not seem to enter the head of this lawyer. Yet the Japanese problem will not be solved by exclusion alone.

We hear constantly that the reason for the conflict is that Japanese as groups and as tireless workers are able to outwork Americans; and, in certain special types of industry, that is proved. But were the conditions made more acceptable to Americans in those industries, and were we to devise mechanical means of production suited to them, it would not be long before Japanese labor would find it extremely unprofitable to come here, just as it finds it unprofitable to go to Manchuria and Korea, where it has to compete with the cheaper Chinese and Korean labor. Laws and restrictions can always be evaded, and the price of vigilance is more costly than the gain. But those laws that are basic in the condition of life no man can evade.

The Gentlemen's Agreement has not worked because gentlemen themselves seldom work. It has not worked because it has denied America the right, as all nations claim it, to determine who shall or shall not come in. Gentlemen never exact such agreements from their friends. They realize that a man's home is his domain, to be entered only on invitation. Furthermore, the agreement is not mutually retroactive. It says that Japan has a right to decide the issue, and promises not to permit coolie labor to enter America. I shall not enter the statistical controversy as to whether flocks of Japanese have or have not evaded the agreement. An agreement such as that should be evaded, and was loose enough to make evasion simple. That is enough of an argument.

Japan pleads for room on account of the tremendous increase in her population every year. When a great appeal is made, the number is stated as 700,000 or 800,000, according to the emotional condition of the appellant. Professor Dewey contends that the Japanese Government, in its own records, admits to only some 300,000 or 400,000 a year. Whether the increase in California is or is not as stated, on one side or the other, matters little. Japan's grounds for appealing for room are sufficient. If the increase is so disgustingly large in Japan, it stands to reason that it would be as large, if not larger here, where economic opportunity makes increase possible and desirable. Every child born in America is a handle worth getting hold of. But on the other hand, it is also true that wherever Japanese better their standard of living their birth-rate falls, as with every race. In which case there is only one answer to Japan's appeal for more room: Better your standard of living and you will not need to invade our house. That disgusting process of breeding which aggressive nations indulge in should be decried from the house-tops. It is no great mark of civilization to breed like mosquitos. Mosquitos need to reproduce by the millions because their eggs are consumed by the millions by preying creatures. Civilization makes it possible for those born to survive. (See Appendix D.)

Some students of Far Eastern affairs, like J. O. P. Bland, urge that Japan has a right to the occupation of Siberia; and none will gainsay that. But the fact is that though free to go both to Korea and Manchuria, Japanese have not gone to these regions even to the extent of one year's increase in population during the last ten years. Where, then, is the argument? As has been shown, they do not go as settlers because cheap continental labor makes it unprofitable. They go as business-men, as the advance-guard of the empire, as the rear-guard of the army. No one has ever raised a voice against the migration of Japanese to these unpopulated regions--with the exception, perhaps, of the natives. But ever and always one feels the hand of imperial Japan behind each little man from the empire, and that hold on her nationals is the thing that vigorous nations resent, because it threatens to impair their status.

That is what California and the sixteen other states who share her views feel. They are conscious of some subsidy behind every extensive purchase of land. From somewhere Japanese get enough money to buy anything they want. It is always the paternalistic arm of the Government round every little son of Nippon, or the embrace of his family. That is where the problem begins and that is where it ends. If only some chemical substance could be discovered that, when poured over the Oriental, would separate him from the mass, he would be as good a fellow as can be found anywhere in the world. But that was what always irritated me in my relations with Japanese in Japan. I never met a man I liked but that in order to enjoy association with him I had to tolerate his group. If I started off anywhere with one, I soon had a retinue. That racial clannishness is to be found everywhere, but nowhere is it more sticky than in ancestor-worshiping Japan.

Consequently, in whatever manner the problem is finally solved here in America, one thing is agreed upon by both Japanese and anti-Japanese,--that those here will have to be redistributed over the country, their clannishness broken up. That is a problem which affects not only the Japanese. However, nothing that is now done should in any way be retroactive so as to deprive any single Japanese of the fruits of his labor. Whatever solution is found for the Japanese problem in America, one thing is certain,--that no war will ever be fought because of Japanese immigration to America. Japan, as has been shown, would have to readjust her own political thinking to such an extent as virtually to revolutionize conditions in Japan in order to make an issue of the citizenship problem and the matter of alien landownership here. Such a revolution would considerably reduce the scope of the issues, they would fall apart and virtually cease to exist.

If we are looking for the causes of a possible conflict in the Pacific, they must be sought not in California but in China. The dovetailing of the angle of our triangle in America is contingent upon the dovetailing of the angle of the triangle in Asia. The one in America can be dislodged only by a wrenching apart of the angle in Asia.

Japan's hegemony in Asia is a serious matter. Japan is an industrial nation now. She is entitled to access to unused resources in China. Propinquity accedes this, but propinquity precludes the necessity of submerging China in the process. The Open Door in China means peace in the Pacific. We leave it to time to determine what the walling up of that door would mean.