Early Guide to Coming to America

[Guide to America] Tobei annai

Katayama, Sen

Notes: This is one of many guides to studying and immigrating to the United States by Katayama Sen published under a variety of similar titles with somewhat different content.

Katayama spent a dozen years in the United States, returning to Japan in 1896. He discovered socialism while in America and became one of the founding members of the Socialist party in Japan. He saw emigration to the United States as an opportunity for the Japanese working class and founded the Tobei Kyokai (the Going to America Association) and published a magazine devoted to the subject.

This volume explains what immigrants can expect on the ship passage across the Pacific and the kinds of jobs available to immigrants. Katayama offers specific advice for students and entrepreneurs, as well as providing an account of his time in the US, as both a student and a worker. Typical of many of Katayama's books, he also reprints letters from other Japanese immigrants, including someone he refers to as a "struggling student." The appendix offers some basic tips on the English language, especially details that might trip up a novice, like abbreviations.

At the front and back of the book are ads aimed at immigrants, including notices for Japanese tailors who will make Western-style clothing, life insurance, freight forwarding, and a hotel in Yokohama, near the docks.

1, [1], 2, [8], 122, 11, [11] pages.

This is probably a revised version of A Buried Past, 116. The colophon indicates this book was first published in 1901 (OCLC 672477056, published in two volumes), but the pagination and likely the content was revised over time.

Edition + Condition: Fourteenth printing. Cream colored printed wrappers somewhat discolored, but generally very good.

Publication: Tokyo: Tobei Kyokai, 1906 (Meiji 39).

Item No: #362535

Price: $1,250