JAPANESE.
The kimonoed figures of the Japanese women and girls shambling gaily along form an attractive part of Honolulu’s street life. Here they enjoy a social liberty undreamed of in their native land, and the taste of it may be said to have gone to their heads. Few young women even of the economically independent families are held to the rigid regime which Japanese custom prescribes; and while here and there a girl comes through her school course with the same ideals of freedom which the American girl has come to accept as a matter of course, on the majority of Japanese girls it has had a much more violent reaction.
They are the fighters among the women wage-earners of the city, as are the men among those of their own sex, although ably seconded in this respect by the Spanish. The latter, however, are present in such small numbers that they do not play an important part in the life of the city. The Japanese who come to Hawaii are almost entirely peasants and speak a patois. As wage-earners they have bettered themselves immeasurably. Those with whom I have spoken are enthusiastic about the opportunity here. They are slowly drawing away from the plantations and are concentrating in the pineapple fields and small truck farms near the city. A number of them told me that the discrepancy between the cost of living and wages in Japan was rapidly bringing about an acute condition of affairs—that women and girls were being ground up like chaff in the industrial enterprises of their native land.
One finds few Japanese families in the tenements, the majority of small shopkeepers living in the cottages back of their stores. The tenements have their quota of Japanese, of course, but this is almost entirely made up of single men or of couples newly married.
The generation which has been educated in the public schools—as well as in their own Japanese schools for the children attend both—is highly spoken of by both instructors and employers. Their privilege to vote will make their dual citizenship a matter which will soon require final adjustment.
The women who are entering now come as picture brides; and whereas a generation ago few Japanese children were born in Hawaii, abortionists abounded among them, the past five years has brought a change and families of at least moderate size are now the rule and are found in every part of the community, characteristically assimilating everything educational and commercial.
In the Japanese, as in the Chinese home, one fails to find the supposed rice and tea diet of the Oriental family. Unlike the Chinese wage-earners’ families who eat no vegetables but rice and the dried mushrooms from the Orient, the Japanese are very fond of cabbage, turnips, and all kinds of beans, and eat a great deal of all, as well as of rice. Fish, fresh or dried, is also a favorite article of food.
The women are not strong physically, but perform hard and exhausting work, keeping up through sheer force of spirit—the national philosophy: Bushido.
CHINESE.
Only since the breaking up of the old dynasty and the establishment of the republic—with its votes for women—have Chinese girls and women become wage-earners outside of the home. Their entrance into the occupations has been effected by a phalanx of women and girls of all ages, from the grandmother of fifty or more down to seven and eight year old children.