Item No: #362398 [Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori. Shiro Fujioka.
[Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori
[Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori
[Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori
[Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori

A Journalist Protests Decades of Anti-Japanese Policies

[Why the Japanese in America Look to Mexico] Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori

Notes: The title of this book translates literally as "Guide for Japanese Immigration to Mexico", which is misleading, hence the supplied translation which better explains the purpose of the book. In the late 1920s, following a succession of racist and anti-Japanese laws passed in the US Congress and in California, Japanese Americans began discussing moving to Mexico. As the author writes in his introduction, the "proposal for 'going down south' [to Mexico] is not only a national policy of Japan, but also a policy for the development of our compatriots in the U.S."

The bibliography A Buried Past II (item no. 1500) describes this book as "identical" to item no. 153, Fujioka's 1927 book, "Pioneers of Japanese Development" [Minzoku hatten no senkusha]. While your cataloguer is reluctant to contradict the editors of that indispensable bibliography, Fujioka's two books are not "identical". The present work is some 275 pages shorter, and it does not have plates. Pioneers of Japanese Development is primarily an anthology of newspaper articles, while the present work is structured thematically. If the text is taken from newspapers, it is done without citing any sources. The two books do seem to share similar appendices of translations of US and Mexican laws on immigration and immigrants.

The present book seems to present a distillation of Fujioka's ideas, developed over many years working as a journalist. In the introduction he writes, "There are many people in the world who discuss the Japan-U.S. problem, but I think there are relatively few who know the details of the process from the beginning." He suggests that most Japanese Americans want to get on with their lives despite discrimination. Fujioka disagrees with that approach. "The issue of immigration may be said to be a problem of the dead past, but the issue of the second generation [Nisei] is a problem of the living present and the future."

Fujioka traces the history of Japanese immigration, the implementation of anti-Japanese laws at the federal and state (mostly California) level, the Japanese government's acquiescence to the US position under the Gentleman's Agreement to voluntarily restrict immigration and the ban on picture brides, California's Alien Land Laws, and the efforts to regulate Japanese-language schools. Fujioka also describes the efforts of Japanese Americans to resist and ameliorate punitive legislation.

Hokubei Mekishiko imin no shiori would appear to belong to the canon of American protest literature.

Fujioka Shirowas born in Aomori-ken, Japan in 1879. He first visited the United States in 1897. He graduated from Waseda University and attended Columbia University for a time before pursuing a career as a newspaper reporter and author. He settled in the US about 1908. He was interned at Rohwer during the Second World War. His son Teruo was killed in France fighting with the Nisei 442nd Combat Team.

[4] 6, 10, 343 [3] pages.

OCLC: 43692334 (University of Hawaii). While Fujioka's Pioneers of Japanese Development is widely held, this volume is quite scarce. See Fujioka's obituary in the Dec. 23, 1957 Stockton Evening Record and A Buried Past 787 for biographical details. Translations by your cataloguer.

Edition + Condition: First edition. Red cloth spotted and faded to pink, apparently in reaction to contact with the publisher's cardboard slipcase. Else near fine.

Publication: Tokyo: Dobunsha, 1931 (Showa 6).

Item No: #362398

Price: $2,500