Propaganda is autocratic power in a democratic state; it is a subtle attempt at controlling social sentiment by influencing the people’s mind through its unconscious entrance. Freud teaches us that each of us is in a sense a complex of boundless wishes. We wish vastly more than our environment offers us; hence, most of our wishes have to be suppressed, thwarted. Now, propaganda appeals to this weakest part of man; it promises us an opportunity to satisfy our arrested wishes. “You are badly off, my friends,” a propagandist would say to honest laborers, “because the Japs are here to bid your wages down. We are trying to get rid of them for you, and for this we want your help.” A similar appeal can be made with immediate good results to almost all classes of people who have some unsatisfied wish—and all men do have such wishes.
Racial Difference.
It is clearly untenable, however, to argue that the Japanese agitation in California is wholly due to imaginary fear and aversion created in the minds of people by politicians and propagandists. The Japanese themselves are responsible for conditions which often justify some of the accusations, and which prompt exaggeration and misrepresentation. In the first place, the Japanese are a wholly different race, with different customs, manners, sentiment, language, traditions, and—not of least importance—of different physical appearance. Were these differences merely in kind, they would not be very repugnant, but when such differences involve qualitative difference they are particularly repulsive. It is, of course, impossible to pass judgment upon the relative superiority in all respects of things Occidental and Oriental; but western civilization naturally seems incomparably superior to American eyes. Mere difference of race alone gives no unpleasant feeling. When it is also a difference of quality, at least in appearance—and in this all must agree—it arouses our æsthetic repulsion.
Even if a man be of different race and as ugly as a Veddah from Ceylon, if he remains a solitary example, or one of a very limited number of his kind, he would not only not arouse our antipathy but would even stimulate our curiosity, and many of us would spend money to see his quaint customs and manners. But when his followers increase in number and establish themselves in our midst, and carry on the struggle for existence until they are in the way of fairly matching ourselves, we begin to be alarmed and unconsciously learn to hate them. This is an exaggerated illustration, but it is precisely the process which has been taking place in California relative to the Japanese. The fact that the Japanese are looked upon rather favorably in the East is because there they are comparatively few in number and are not competitors of the Americans in the struggle for existence.
Japanese Nationality.
To a certain extent, the anti-Japanese sentiment in California as well as elsewhere is accentuated by the national principles of the Japanese Empire. It has a system of government which for various good reasons is unique. It embraces many points that are considered, from the standpoint of the Anglo-Saxon, undemocratic. The smooth operation of democracy has been hindered by some inherent defect in the national system, by lack of experience in representative government, and by the influence exerted through an unconstitutional power represented by the elder statesmen. To make the situation worse, by means of unscrupulous journalism, the American mind is duly impressed with the assumed bellicose and Prussian character of the Japanese Empire, the hatred of which becomes anti-Japanese sentiment in general.
The Japanese Government, again, adheres to a policy of extreme paternalism with regard to her colonists abroad. It seems true that in case of an aggressive and military government it is from necessity the devotee of a pure race and a solidified population, as Mr. Walter Lippman stated.[10] At any rate, Japan does not wish her subjects to be naturalized nor does she encourage them to lose their racial or national consciousness. This is clearly seen in her policy of dual nationality (which we shall have occasion to discuss later), which aims to retain the descendants of the Japanese who are born in America, and hence are citizens thereof, as subjects also of the Mikado. It is likewise observable in the spirit of Japanese education, which is fundamentally nationalistic, as it was referred to in the second chapter. Such a policy of nationalism inevitably incites the suspicion of countries to which Japanese immigrants go, and discourages the people from making an attempt at assimilating the Japanese. This, together with their nationalistic training and education, renders the assimilation of the Japanese exceedingly difficult.
Modern Nationalism.
What accentuates the difficulty in the situation is that the countries which receive such Japanese immigrants also uphold a policy of nationalism, which runs full tilt against the “influx” of immigrants who do not readily become amalgamated or assimilated. The inflow of such a population, they claim, threatens and endangers the unity of the nation, and therefore it must be stopped or resisted. This is the capital reason which is being ascribed for the discriminatory effort against the Japanese in California by the leaders of the movement.