Until recent years, no record was kept of the number of Japanese immigrants arriving in Canada and consequently the development of the movement cannot be accurately traced. The Canadian census of 1901 shows that 4674 persons born in Japan were in the Dominion at that time; 4415 were in the Province of British Columbia, the rest being scattered in the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. After that year the number of Japanese immigrants coming to Canada gradually increased, and when the United States placed restrictions on the influx of Japanese from Hawaii, and the latter began to seek entrance into Canada, the number grew considerably and soon caused serious concern to the people of Western Canada. It was estimated that in 1907 the Japanese domiciled in Canada had reached eight thousand. Determined opposition soon arose among the western provinces, and protests were sent by the Canadian Government to Hawaii and Tokyo requesting them to control the sudden immigration tide. An agreement was reached in 1908 between Japan and Canada by which the number of passports to be granted in any one year to Japanese emigrating to Canada was limited to four hundred. In this way the question was satisfactorily settled.
Canada's treatment of the Asiatic races lawfully admitted has been marked by leniency. She has extended to the Orientals the privilege of naturalization and of securing homesteads. Even in British Columbia, the center of anti-Oriental agitation, the Japanese and Chinese are permitted to conduct business and cultivate land on an equal basis with British subjects in Canada. They may own land, both urban and rural, and in provinces other than British Columbia they are entitled to voting privileges when naturalized; only in that province the Orientals are not allowed to cast ballots, though free to become citizens. It is reported that there are 13,823 Japanese residing in Canada to-day, engaged in fishing and logging and sawmill industries, as well as in agriculture.
For some years past a number (about six thousand) of Japanese immigrants has been sent every year to Brazil in compliance with the request of the Republic. They have been mostly engaged on coffee plantations in Sao Paulo. The colonization is still in an experimental stage, and it is a little premature to forecast its future at this time. Altogether about twenty thousand Japanese immigrants have gone to the South American Republic.