Meiji-Era Advocacy of Japanese Immigration

[The New Japan of North America] Hokubei no shinnihon (also romanized Hokubei no shin Nihon)

Abe, Isoo

Notes: "A general treatment of the Japanese in America by a Waseda University professor and a Christian socialist. He views the exclusion movement as rooted in racial prejudice, looks for more emigration from Japan, and anticipates that the Pacific Coast will become the meeting ground for the East and West. The statistical data on Japanese agriculture and businesses are derived from the Nichibei Nenkan (Japanese American Yearbook), no. 1, 1905."—A Buried Past, 263.

In the late 19th century, Abe attended Hartford Theological Seminary, in Connecticut. In 1905, he took an opportunity to return to America, traveling from Los Angeles to Seattle. Based on his observations and experiences, Abe wrote this philosophical and political overview of the growing Japanese society in California. He predicted that as many as 6 million Japanese could find new homes in the US (p. 119). He devotes one chapter to women immigrants, and seems to have absorbed some of the ideas about independent women from the nascent Japanese feminist movement. He asks, "Why is it that our educated and refined women cannot go abroad for legitimate business?... I of course hope that the girls who come to the US will find a suitable spouse and marry, but I will not force them to do so" (Chapter 5; translation by your cataloguer).

For more on Abe, see chapter 3 of The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism by Sidney Xu Lu which compares Abe's views with two other leading Japanese thinkers about immigration.

[2], [6 leaves of half-tone plates], [2], 3, [1], 4, 216, 8 pages.

OCLC: 672848316 (Japan only). NB: A Buried Past 263 uses the Chinese character 之 in place of の for "no" in the title.

Edition + Condition: First edition. Despite apparently good sales (it was reprinted within months of this first printing), the book is quite scarce, with only the uncatalogued copy at UCLA referenced in A Buried Past identified in US libraries. A very good in original decorated wrappers missing a small corner piece from the front cover.

Publication: Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1905 (Meiji 38).

Item No: #363206

Price: $2,000