For these two chief reasons, and perhaps for many other minor ones, there arose the persistent social movement for Japanese exclusion in California, which first took definite shape in 1900, when a mass-meeting held at San Francisco for the express purpose of more rigidly excluding the Chinese, adopted a resolution urging Congress to take measures for the total exclusion of Japanese other than members of the Diplomatic Staff. Following this came the first of the anti-Japanese messages delivered by the Governor of California, and of the resolutions voted on by the State Legislature calling upon Congress to extend the Chinese Exclusion Law to other Asiatics. The climax of the movement was reached when, immediately after the earthquake, the Board of Education of San Francisco passed the “separate school order,” and Japan protested. A series of diplomatic negotiations followed, which finally resulted in the repeal of the school discriminatory order and the conclusion of the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” whereby Japan pledged herself to restrict the number of immigrants to the United States.
Leaving to a later chapter the detailed discussion of the result which the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” has brought about in the status of Japanese immigration, it will suffice to mention here that the agreement has faithfully and loyally been carried out by Japan, and that since then the Japanese problem has in fact ceased to be an immigration issue.
Twenty years of emigration attempts, chief of which we reviewed in this chapter, have resulted in failure in every case, and Japan’s effort to plant her race in other lands has proved futile. There are many causes for this failure, for which Japan is partially, but not wholly, responsible. But this is a matter which we shall more fully discuss in the next chapter. Excluded and maltreated wherever they went, the Japanese returned home with shattered hopes and wounded feelings, and the mooted question of population once more confronted them with intensified severity. Giving up as entirely hopeless the attempt at settling in places where the white races held supremacy, they now appear to have made up their minds to migrate towards the north, where climatic and economic disadvantages, together with political revolution in Eastern Europe, have freed the land temporarily from the strong white grip, offering the line of least resistance for Japanese.
CHAPTER VI
CAUSES OF ANTI-JAPANESE AGITATION
Modern Civilization.
The major cause of the agitation against Japanese in California must be attributed to modern civilization, which, with scientific devices, has conquered time and space and thereby destroyed the high walls of international boundaries. Indeed, had it not been for the steamboat, railroad, telegraph, and other civilized instruments, which bind the nations of the world into a composite whole, and modern industrialism, which civilization brought about and which in turn assisted in unifying the world, Japan for one would have remained a peaceful hermit nation, undisliked or unsuspected by any other. She, of course, has no reason to regret the adoption of European culture, which brought her untold values and happiness; but the fact remains that the present anti-Japanese agitation in California, as well as elsewhere in the world, would never have occurred had she not followed the lead of Occidental nations.