The Student Houseworkers in the Historyof Early Japanese Emigration to the United States

Abstract

Japanese youth of the Meili period were passionate in devoting themselves to the creation of a new Japan. The long period under a feudal system was over. Released from ahost of feudal constraints, people felt free as never before. In this atmosphere, many youths began to have lofty ideas about their future. Risshin Shusse (success in life) became their byword. Besides personal success, however, they also desired for Japan to become wealthy and strong. But the country had not yet been sufficiently developed to allow most of them to satisfy their ambition at home, For those who wished to rise, higher education offered the means, but in Japan such education was beyond the grasp of most poor students.
As Western studies became increasingly popular, people began to learn of and to become interested in conditions in the West. Among the Western nations, the United States, especially, became well-know in Japan as a nation of democracy and opportunity for all. Japanese who had been restrained by the class system and limited opportunities at home were now eager to seek new ways of living that offered freedom and independence. America, which was enloying a good reputation with the development of its industries and education, reportedly had good working and educational conditions. Ambitious students were soon crossing the Pacific in large numbers to take advantage of the promises of the American dream.
The failures and experiences that students experienced, once they arrived in America, may provoke some laughter, but their struggles to acculturate to the new environment were also often sad. For all their struggles, however, a vast number failed to complete their studies and thus became losers in their own eyes and in those of many others. Although they had been induced to come to America by the words of freedom and equality, cultural differences proved too much an obstacle to overcome.
In America where the woman's position was relatively high, students from male-dominant Japan found it humiliating to do housework under the supervision of women. Their humiliation sometimes resulted in a repulsion towards America that helped keep them out of the society, slowed their aeculturation, and made them less desirable in the eyes of those who accepted the American norm. But regardless of failures, setbacks, frustration, and alienation, the Japanese students who came to the United States during the Meiji period were important. Those who succeeded in their studies returned to Japan not only with degrees and valuable expertise, but also with knowledge of the Westen world that was to help Japan overcome the legacy of Tokugawa isolation. Moreover, they served as pathbreakers for countless other Japanese students who have come to the United States in more recent times, lessening the problems that the latter were to face in the process.
These students also had an impact on the growing Japanese-American community in the United States. As an educated, ambitious group, they provided leadership and spokesmen for their less educated countymen who worked as laborers in agriculture and at other jobs. Those who failed to complete their studies and return with honor to Japan, sometimes remained to becorne important in the Japanese-American communities of Califomia. They provided an important part of the leadership of these communities down to the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941. Thus, ambitious students who had wanted to help reshape Japan in the end contributed not only to that, but also to the building and shaping of the new community of Japanese-Americans that was growing up on the eastern shore of the Pacific. Their total impact clearly outweighted their numbers.