Why Us Too? Japanese Views of Immigration and Racial Exclusion in Australia: Australian Historical Studies: Vol 55 , No 4 - Get Access

Why Us Too? Japanese Views of Immigration and Racial Exclusion in Australia: Australian Historical Studies: Vol 55 , No 4 - Get Access



Australian Historical Studies Volume 55, 2024 - Issue 4: Themed Issue: Opening Australia’s Multilingual Archive

Why Us Too? Japanese Views of Immigration and Racial Exclusion in Australia

Tomoko Horikawa &
Rebecca Suter
Pages 669-687 | Published online: 30 Oct 2024
Cite this article
https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2024.2353156


Abstract

This article examines the Japanese-Australian debates over immigration and racial exclusion over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By examining the development of collective national identity in Japan and by drawing on archival materials in Japan and Australia, including official correspondence between the two countries and policy-related primary source materials such as internal government correspondence and parliamentary debates, it shows how the local discourse on national identity in both Japan and Australia was an important factor in what would be Japan’s heated response to the issue of Japanese exclusion under the auspices of White Australia.


Notes


1 See, for example, Asada Sadao, ‘Nichi-bei kankei to imin mondai [Japanese-US Relations and Immigration Question]’, in Demokurashii to nichi-bei kankei [Democracy and Japanese-American Relations], ed. Saitō Makoto (Tokyo: Nan’undō, 1973); Aruga Tadashi, ‘Hainichi mondai to nichi-bei kankei [The Question of Japanese Exclusion and Japanese-American Relations]’, in Senkanki no nihon gaikō [Japanese Foreign Policy between Wars], eds Aruga Tadashi and Iriye Akira (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1984); Minohara Toshihiro, Hai-nichi iminhō to nichi-bei kankei [Japanese Exclusion Legislation and Japanese-American Relations] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002).


2 Thomas Sowell, Migration and Cultures: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 116.


3 A.T. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion, 1896–1923 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1964), 163.


4 Ibid.; D.C.S. Sissons, ‘The Immigration Question in Australian Diplomatic Relations with Japan, 1875–1919’, paper presented to the Australian New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, 43rd Congress, Brisbane, May 1971; D.C.S. Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australia-Japanese Relations 1871–1971’, in Japan and Australia in the Seventies, ed. J.A. Stockwin (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972); Takeda Isami, ‘Haku-gō seisaku no seiritsu to nihon no taiō: kindai ōsutoraria no tai-nichi kihon seisaku [The Establishment of the White Australia Policy and Japan’s Response: Modern Australia’s Basic Policy towards Japan]’, Kokusai seiji [International Politics] 68 (1981): 23–43; Neville Bennett, ‘Japanese Emigration Policy, 1880–1941’, in Asians in Australia: The Dynamics of Migration and Settlement, eds Christine Inglis et al. (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992); Neville Bennett, ‘White Discrimination against Japan: Britain, the Dominion and the United States, 1908–1928’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (2001): 91–105.


5 Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1923); Charles Price, The Great White Walls Are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australia, 1838–1888 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974); Kenneth Rivett, ed., Australia and the Non-White Migrants (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975); Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850–1901 (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1979); James Jupp, Immigration, 2nd edn (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998); A.T. Yarwood, Attitudes to Non-European Immigration (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1968).


6 Andrew Markus, Australian Race Relations, 1788–1993 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994); Henry Reynolds, Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and the Land, 2nd edn (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Henry Reynolds, North of Capricorn: The Untold Story of Australia’s North (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003); David Hollinsworth, Race and Racism in Australia (Katoomba, NSW: Social Science Press, 1998); Ann Curthoys, ‘Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy’, in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, eds Laksiri Jayasuria et al. (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2003); James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Keith Windschuttle (in The White Australia Policy (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2004)) and Matthew Jordan (in ‘Rewriting Australia’s Racist Past: How Historians (Mis) Interpret the “White Australia” Policy’, History Compass 3, no. 1 (2005): 1–32), in contrast, deny the role of racial ideas such as racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism in policy’s formation and instead stress cultural, economic and political reasons.


7 In Australia, the ‘Yellow Peril’ referred to the fear that Australia’s European population and their continent would be swamped by the teeming millions of Asians or ‘yellow races’. See Neville Meaney, ‘Australia and Japan: The Historical Perspective’, in The Japanese Connection: A Survey of Australian Leaders’ Attitudes towards Japan and the Australia-Japan Relationship, ed. Neville Meaney (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1988), 18; Neville Meaney, The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901–14: A History of Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1901–23, Volume 1 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), 50–2, 72, 123. Studies which examine Australia’s perception of Asia and Japan include Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 and Windschuttle, The White Australia Policy.


8 See Asada, ‘Nichi-bei kankei to imin mondai’; Aruga, ‘Hainichi mondai to nichi-bei kankei’; Minohara, Hai-nichi iminhō to nichi-bei kankei.


9 D.C.S. Sissons, ‘Karayuki-San: Japanese Prostitutes in Australia 1887–1916 – Part I’, Historical Studies 17, no. 68 (1977): 323–41; D.C.S. Sissons, ‘Karayuki-San: Japanese Prostitutes in Australia 1887–1916 – Part II’, Historical Studies 17, no. 69 (1977): 474–88; D.C.S. Sissons, ‘The Japanese in the Australian Pearling Industry’, Queensland Heritage 3, no. 10 (1979): 8–27; Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1996); Keiko Tamura, Michi’s Memories: The Story of a Japanese War Bride (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2001); Pamela Oliver, Empty North: The Japanese Presence and Australian Reactions 1860s to 1942 (Darwin: Charles Darwin University Press, 2007); Pamela Oliver, ‘Japanese Relationships in White Australia: The Sydney Experience to 1941’, History Australia 4, no. 1 (2007): 05.1–05.20.


10 Minohara, Hai-nichi iminhō to nichi-bei kankei, 5.


11 Sean Brawley, White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America, 1919–1978 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1995), 2.


12 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 12.


13 Ibid., 17.


14 Bennett, ‘Japanese Emigration Policy’, 26.


15 Bennett, ‘White Discrimination against Japan’, 94.


16 Sissons, ‘The Immigration Question’, 38.


17 Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australia-Japanese Relations’, 194.


18 Yūichi Murakami, ‘Australia’s Immigration Legislation, 1893–1901: The Japanese Response’, in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s–1950s, eds Vera Mackie and Paul Jones (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Department of History, 2001), 45–69, 66.


19 Mackie and Jones.


20 Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘The Plasticity of Identity under Anarchy’, European Journal of International Relations 15, no. 1 (2009): 37–65, 49.


21 See W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1990), 26–34; Tomoko Okagaki, Logic of Conformity: Japan’s Entry into International Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 51–6.


22 Shogo Suzuki, Civilisation and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society (New York: Routledge, 2009), 114–39.


23 For the original text of the Charter Oath, see Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s website: https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/others/detail/1317933.htm (accessed 30 April 2024).


24 One of the biggest of them was the Iwakura mission led by Iwakura Tomomi, one of Japan's most influential statesmen of the nineteenth century, where a large group from the Meiji leadership toured America and Europe for twenty-two months from 1871 to 1873.


25 See Beasley, 54–120; Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 371–413; Elise K. Tipton, Modern Japan: A Social and Political History, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2008), 39–58.


26 Fukuzawa Yukichi, Bunmeiron no gairyaku [An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation], vol. 1, 22–3. Accessed via Keio University Library Digital Collections: https://dcollections.lib.keio.ac.jp/ja/fukuzawa/a23/77 (accessed 30 April 2024).


27 Hidemi Suganami, ‘Japan’s Entry into International Society’, in The Expansion of International Society, eds Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 195; Susumu Yamauchi, ‘Civilization and International Law in Japan during the Meiji Era (1868–1912)’, Hitotsubashi Journal of Law and Politics 24 (1996): 1–25, 9–11, 24.


28 Published in the Japanese newspaper Jiji Shimpō, 16 March 1885.


29 Ibid.


30 Suzuki, Civilisation and Empire, 140–76.


31 Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (London: Routledge, 1998), 89; Shogo Suzuki, “Japan's Socialization into Janus-Faced European International Society”, European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (2005): 137–164, 150.


32 The Treaty of Portsmouth, which formally ended the Russo-Japanese War in September 1905, granted Japan the control of Korea; the Russian leasehold over the Liaotung Peninsula; Russia’s railroad and mining rights in southern Manchuria; and sovereignty over the southern half of Sakhalin Island (Karafuto). However, as a result of US intervention, Japan was denied indemnity to pay for the expenses of the war. The peace settlement angered the Japanese public and provoked popular protests and mob riots: see Shumpei Okamoto, The Japanese Oligarchy and the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 165–223.


33 Shimazu, 89–102.


34 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 12; Bennett, ‘Japanese Emigration Policy’, 26; Bennett, ‘White Discrimination against Japan’, 94; Sissons, ‘The Immigration Question’, 38; Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australia-Japanese Relations’, 194; Asada, ‘Nichi-bei kankei to imin mondai’, 164; Aruga, ‘Hainichi mondai to nichi-bei kankei’, 70.


35 Bennett, ‘Japanese Emigration Policy’, 24–6.


36 Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australia-Japanese Relations’, 195; Sissons, ‘The Immigration Question’, 21.


37 For correspondence between Japanese provincial and central authorities, John Miller and British authorities, see Nihon gaikō bunsho (Japan’s Foreign Policy Documents, hereafter cited as NGB), 1883, 440–9.


38 Asada to the Governor of Kanagawa prefecture, 6 August 1883, NGB-1883, 444.


39 When 520 Japanese labourers arrived to work on sugar cane plantations in north Queensland in 1893, it provoked hostile comments in the press and the Parliament: see The Worker, 8 July 1893. The Worker was a newspaper affiliated with the Australian Labor Party and published in Brisbane between 1890 and 1974. For comments made in the Queensland Parliament, see Queensland Parliamentary Debates (hereafter cited as QPD), Legislative Assembly, Wednesday, 28 June 1893, 136–44.


40 Nelson to Marks, 21 March 1894, NGB-1894, vol. 2, 652. When Japan first sought official representation in the Australian colonies, it appointed Australians with a Japanese connection as honorary consuls for the purpose of protecting the rights of its citizens and advancing its interests. Alexander Marks became Japan’s first consul in Australia in 1879, and by the late 1880s his consular responsibilities covered the colonies of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and ‘Van Diemen’s Land’. Following Tokyo’s appointment of Japanese career consuls to Queensland in 1896 and New South Wales in 1897, Marks’ role was reduced to that of consul of Victoria.


41 Hayashi to the Governors of Hyōgo and Wakayama prefectures, 13 July 1894, NGB-1894, 659.


42 Imperial Ordinance No. 42 of 1894. For the text, see NGB-1894, vol. 2, 619–22. Two years later, in April 1896, the Japanese government passed the Emigration Protection Act and the regulations became a law.


43 Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu and Home Minister Inoue Kaoru to Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, 12 February 1894, NGB-1894, vol. 2, 618–19.


44 Ibid., 619–22.


45 They did not, however, have any effect on reducing Japanese emigration to the mainland, as most Japanese working at sugar plantations on mainland Queensland were recruited by emigration companies with proper contracts of employment. Such emigration was not restricted by the Emigration Protection Regulations. See Sissons, ‘The Immigration Question’, 26.


46 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 5–18.


47 Willard, 109; Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 7–8.


48 In his discussion of Australia’s reactions to the Japanese victory of 1895, A.T. Yarwood shows how the Australian colonial leaders were concerned about the prospect of Japan interfering with the colonies’ immigration policies to protect its citizens from racial discrimination and tried to prevent this situation, even though there was no urgent need to do so. See Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 6–8.


49 Takeda, ‘Haku-gō seisaku no seiritsu to nihon no taiō’, 23–5; Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 5: Willard, 109–10.


50 Ian Ruxton, ed., The Diaries of Ernest Satow, British Minister in Tokyo (1895–1900): A Diplomat Returns to Japan (Raleigh, NC: Lulu Publishing, 2010), 183.


51 New Zealand also passed the Coloured Immigration Restriction Act in 1896.


52 Katō’s note of 25 November 1896, enclosed in Under-Secretary, Great Britain, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) to Under-Secretary, Great Britain, Colonial Office (hereafter CO), 30 November 1896, reporting Salisbury’s conversation with Katō of 25 November 1896, The National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter cited as TNA): CO 201/620; Katō’s interview with Salisbury on 25 November 1896 was also described in Katō’s letter to the Foreign Minister, Ōkuma Shigenobu, on 29 November 1896, NGB-1896, 915–17.


53 The conversation between Katō and Salisbury during the meeting of 1 September 1897 was recorded in the confidential letter from Katō to the Foreign Minister, Ōkuma Shigenobu, of 2 September 1897, NGB-1897, 605–9.


54 In his confidential memorandum to Foreign Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu of 5 October 1897, Katō expressed his frustration with the British government and his determination to seek exemptions for Japanese citizens from the operation of the bills and to block Royal Assent to these bills in their original forms. Katō to Ōkuma, 5 October 1897, NGB-1897, 618–22.


55 This letter has been quoted by many scholars, including A.T. Yarwood, D.C.S. Sissons and Naoko Shimazuto, who argue that the Japanese government’s objection to the Australian colonies’ immigration restriction legislation stemmed from its desire to preserve Japan’s national pride and prestige, suggesting that the same attitude continued into the early twentieth century. For example, by comparing Katō’s 1915 comment on the 1913 immigration crisis in California with Katō’s 1897 letter, Shimazu observes that the Japanese government’s attitude ‘had hardly changed since 1897’. See Shimazu, 79–80; Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australian-Japanese Relations’, 199; Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 14–18.


56 Katō to Salisbury, 7 October 1897, TNA: FO 46/548. Also quoted in Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 14; Sissons, ‘Immigration in Australian-Japanese Relations’, 199; Shimazu, 80.


57 This was partly due to Japan’s strong objection to these colonial bills. At the same time, Britain did not want any legislation which overtly discriminated against the Empire’s people of colour, particularly Indians. See Bennett, ‘Japanese Emigration Policy’, 29.


58 Eitaki to Aoki, 19 August 1899, NGB-1899, 710.


59 Eitaki to Barton, 3 May 1901, NGB-1901, 791–2; National Archives of Australia (hereafter cited as NAA): A8, 1901/203/1 (Correspondence with H. Eitaki; Acting Consul General for Japan, with reference to the Immigration Restriction Act, and admission of Japanese subjects).


60 NGB-1901, 791–2; NAA: A8, 1901/203/1. An informal agreement, or so-called ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’, was Japan’s favoured solution for problems concerning restriction of Japanese immigration. Under this formula, the Japanese government agreed to voluntarily regulate the emigration of its citizens, while being afforded most favoured nation treatment regarding the right of entry. In this way, Japan could at least maintain the appearance of being accorded equal treatment with European nations. This was the nature of the agreements Japan reached with the United States in 1907 and with Canada in 1908.


61 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 26.


62 In the original bill, Clause 4 (a) defined a prohibited immigrant as any person who failed to pass a test in the English language, in contrast to the colonial test in a European language.


63 Eitaki to Sone, 7 August 1901, NGB-1901, 804–5.


64 Eitaki to Sone, 30 July 1901, NGB-1901, 797–8.


65 Ibid.


66 See, for example, comments by William McMillan and J.C. Watson, CPD, House of Representatives Official Hansard, No. 36, 1901, Friday, 6 September 1901, 4626–7 (McMillan), and 4636–8 (Watson).


67 Eitaki to Barton, 16 September 1901, NGB-1901, 823–6.


68 Ibid., 823–6, 846–9.


69 Hayashi to Lansdowne, 7 October 1901, NGB-1901, 853–4.


70 In 1902, the pearl-shelling industry bases in Thursday Island, Darwin and Broome became the sole exceptions to the policy of excluding indentured coloured labour. The objection that the practice violated the principle of the White Australia policy was raised and Royal Commissions were ordered by the Queensland and the Commonwealth governments. However, the investigators at Thursday Island and Broome reported that owners of pearl luggers would be ruined if they had to pay the high wages necessary to attract white men to the work and recommended that exemptions be granted from the dictation test to allow the introduction of coloured labourers on condition of compulsory repatriation on expiry of contract. See Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 96–7.


71 The alliance committed each of the parties to ‘come to the armed aid of the other and wage war in common’ should either be attacked by more than one power in order to ‘maintain the status quo’ in the Far East. For the full text of the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of Alliance, see William Macmahon Ball, Australia and Japan (Sydney: Thomas Nelson, 1969), 9–11.


72 For a detailed discussion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, see Ian Nish, ‘Australia and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1901–1911’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 9, no. 2 (1963): 201–12; Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires 1894–1907 (London: Athlone Press, 1966).


73 S.H. Roberts, ‘History of the Contacts between the Orient and Australia’, in Australia and the Far East; Diplomatic and Trade Relations, ed. I. Clunies Ross (London: Angus and Robertson, 1935), 25; Meaney, The Search for Security in the Pacific, 116–17; Henry P. Frei, Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 83.


74 The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1902; The Age (Melbourne), 14 February 1902.


75 Ibid.


76 Asahi Shimbun, 31 March 1902. Prior to this, in February 1902, various newspapers praised the Canadian central government for advising the provincial government of British Columbia to amend the anti-Japanese immigration legislation which it had passed during the previous parliamentary session. See Asahi Shimbun, 16 February 1902; Jiji Shinpō, 16 February 1902; Yomiuri Shimbun, 17 February 1902.


77 Nemoto’s question was endorsed by more than thirty fellow Lower House members. See ‘Question regarding the exclusion of Japanese in the Pacific area’ submitted by Nemoto Tadashi, 6 March 1902, the 16th Japanese Imperial Diet Proceedings, Kanpō (Japanese Government Official Gazette), Meiji 35th year (1902), vol. 27, 575.


78 Ibid., 573.


79 In his telegram of 13 March 1902 to the Japanese Foreign Minister, Komura Jutarō, Eitaki insisted that Japan should urge the British government to disallow the Immigration Restriction Act under Section 59 of the Commonwealth Constitution Act. Komura immediately instructed the Japanese Minister in London, Hayashi Tadasu, to approach the British government. See Eitaki to Komura, 13 March 1902, NGB-1902, 738; Komura to Hayashi, 19 March 1902, NGB-1902, 738–40.


80 See Australian Government, Federal Register of Legislation, Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, Section 59, https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013Q00005 (accessed 30 April 2024).


81 These facts were referred to in the confidential letter from Hayashi to Komura, 18 June 1902, NGB-1902, 751–2.


82 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 174 (ch. 2, fn. 33).


83 For the full text of the announcement on the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette of 5 September 1902, see NGB-1902, 758–9.


84 See Australian Government, Federal Register of Legislation, Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1905, https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C1905A00017 (accessed 30 April 2024).


85 For a discussion of Australia’s concessions to Japanese citizens under the White Australia policy, see Tomoko Horikawa, ‘Australia’s Minor Concessions to Japanese Citizens under the White Australia Policy’, New Voices in Japanese Studies 12 (2020): 1–20.

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Funding
This article is associated with funding by Australia Research Council Discovery Project DP210101981 ‘Opening the Australian Multilingual Archive’. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.