Japanese Pride, American Prejudice
Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924 Immigration Act
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10042019 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John N Tsuchida (California State University, Long Beach, corresponding author), Izumi Hirobe |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 267 |
| Publication date | 2002-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2700880 |
| OpenAlex | W2480526388 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Under the hypothesis that “non-governmental groups can influence American foreign relations,” Izumi Hirobe investigates how religious and business groups tried in the 1920s and 1930s to repair U.S.-Japanese relations damaged by the Japanese Exclusion Act of 1924 by amending the law to give Japan a nominal immigration quota. He conducted exhaustive research, examining voluminous English and Japanese sources including personal papers and religious, civic, and business organization records. Throughout the book, the author quotes profusely from editorials in American and Japanese newspapers, leaders in the anti-Japanese and pro-Japanese groups in the United States, American and Japanese politicians and diplomats, and Japanese military brass and right-wing leaders, as well as religious and business leaders. He does so, however, without critically evaluating the relative weight and importance of these comments and statements in the appropriate national and international context. Hirobe's omewhat excessive and repetitive verbatim quotations initially give the reader an impression that the anti-American movement in Japan after the passage of the 1924 immigration law was so intense and widespread as to cause a war eventually between the two nations, or that the church and business groups' pro-quota campaigns were so effective that Congress might modify the law. The author, however, abruptly makes anticli-mactic statements such as “the anti-American protests did not expand into a mass movement”; Sidney Lewis Gulick “adhered to the new policy [of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America] by dropping his campaign for the quota”; and Wallace Alexander, a pro-Japanese businessman, “decided to refrain from participating in any new aggressive pro-quota activities.”
Context (archaeology · Immigration · Newspaper · Political science · Prejudice (legal term · Pride · Sociology · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law
| Citations per year | 0.16 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2007 - 2024 (18) |
| Highly cited | No |