With a population already averaging three hundred to every habitable square mile, it is little wonder that the nation feels the need of extending her boundaries and to that end is trying to open up new territory to her emigrants.
Emigration began in 1885, when the King of Hawaii called for settlers in his island realm. Emigration societies were organized, under the control of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and to-day the men of Nippon greatly outnumber the whites. The Foreign Minister still has entire charge of the societies: he grants all passports, and sees to the proper distribution of the thousands who every year leave their own country to settle more or less permanently in other parts of the world. Many emigrants go to Manchuria, Korea and Formosa, some to the Malay Peninsula and Australia, a few to the Philippines, and an increasing number to Central and South America. But they are a home-loving people, and eventually three-fourths of those who go out, return to Japan to settle down once more with their families.
Greatly to Japan's mortification, her people have been repulsed in California. Professor Peabody of Harvard returned recently from a trip to the Orient, and had this to say on the subject: "We accept as citizens the off-scourings of Eastern Europe, and shut our door on the thrifty Japanese, whose colour may be no darker and whose descent may be from the same original stock. What nags the Japanese in the matter is the indirect insinuation of bad blood, the intimation that a people whose education is compulsory and self-help is universal may not prove as serviceable elements in a commercial democracy as the average of Syrians or Copts; that, in short, the Far East is intrinsically inferior to the Near East." He points out that after twenty years the Japanese hold only about one per cent. of the agricultural land in the State of California, and that there are five thousand less of them there now than there were three years ago, owing to a "Gentlemen's Agreement," by which Japan limits her emigration to the United States.
This land question came up after we left Tokyo, but it naturally interested us intensely. The Californians seem to fear the Japanese because they live so cheaply and work so hard that it is thought they may come in time to own the whole state.