In the history of Japanese immigrants across Canada, Vancouver Riots were motivators towards changing the Canadian policies toward the Japanese immigrants, as well as the Japanese policies with respect to Canadian emigration. Similarly, this aspect becomes more important in a manner that it ushered in the establishment of other international relationships. This paper illustrates that the expectations developed by each of the countries had much involvement in ensuring that Canada and the Great Britain and United States complied.
A major reason the governments did not has many NIL interests in having to send people into other nations came about through an increase in occupation. Also, this led to the need to dealing with other internal problems across the 1868 Meiji Restoration while seriously considering emigration. On the other hand, the Meiji government made more concentrations of their efforts towards the Hokkaido colonization, Japan’s northern island, and the ex-Samurai class.
All these had lost their previous status through the 1868 Restoration and hence migrated and brought the environment (land) under cultivation. The government also issued migrants will all forms of protection and aid. The policy continued to motivate both economic and political necessities. In the political front, Hokkaido settlement had strategic relevance in advancing the agenda to the south and ultimate Russian expansion thrust. From the above, there was a consideration of effective relief measures towards the destroyed ex-Samurai classes. The policy’s economic motivation went on to send huge numbers of people as Japan's increasing population placed more pressure. However, the main effect did not have great significance. The other reason for which the government did not have interest towards emigration for early Meiji Era was that there was heightened the sensitivity to conditions subjected to the immigrant labourers on sugar plantations at Hawaii. The individuals immigrating in 1868 to Hawaii without gainful facilitation of the new government’s permission were treated as slaves. The Japanese government went on to send officials in protest of the government of Hawaii. For such reasons, the government had information of the happenings to on sugar plantation (in Hawaii) against the Chinese labourers.
Japanese government can consider the Vancouver Riot to be unprecedented incidents and one of its worst catastrophes. Due to this instantaneous response, the government of Japan was not seeking to express protest on the riot, but rather on showing its intention of leaving the matter to the government of Canada. Here, the Japanese followed the Japan Bureau of Commerce opinion expressed by Kikujiro Ishii. This was thought as a trusted institution to make good of the loss in the absence of the formalities that the Japanese demands had. The idea was to have a constant and friendly attitude to Japan from the Canadian government while the incident needed to be settled and without having to involve formal diplomatic avenues.
About the losses and damages sustained by residents of Japanese origin due to the Vancouver riot, the government of Japan presented Consul-General Nosse to request for compensation from the Canadian federal government. This was on the basis that the Japanese government had entitlement to claim damages resulting from a riot. In the season of Civilization and Enlightenment as well as Westernization, the catch phrases implemented by the government focused on the need of crossing to Canada through the Pacific Ocean. This was inspired the idea of promoting the Western countries as part of their success dreams.
However, this was perceived as an organized attack and opposition against certain classes of foreigners that were separately discriminated against from the natives and other foreigners. Therefore, it differed from other general civil disturbances. Even though the damages were not as broad, the issue was around the principle and future of relationships as compared to actual material loss. This illustrated how the government of Japan had trust on the Canadian government while holding friendly relations between Japan and Britain through the background of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. One of the reasons that Canada included in the destinations of the emigrants within the period is found from the government efforts of spreading education. On the other hand, the public became more informed of the Western nations like Canada as well as the United States irrespective of the emigrants making unclear distinctions between these two countries.
Within a period of close to ten years, the Japanese government had not instituted a policy of encouraging emigration. This brought many procedural hiccups when sponsoring the emigrants moving to Hawaii as the convention was a requirement as agreed with the Hawaii government. It stationed a number of officials across Hawaii helping the emigrant labourers send money back to the country. This illustrated that irrespective of the general public facing many factors from the people’s views, others advocated emigration on an expansionist theory basis. For this reason, the Meiji government became more negative for emigration.
Across the Japanese emigration history, the government of Japan did not show interest in establishing an answer. However, there were settlements in South America, Taiwan and Manchuria. Up to the heightening of anti-Japanese sentiments across Canada and the U.S. started to be shun away by the public toward in the nineteenth century, the authorities did not have a belief that having to send out emigrants could amount to one effective solution to country's economic or population problems. Emigrants to Canada did not have absolute numbers for attracting the Japanese government attention up to early the subsequent century.
The other important element in the Japanese policy change on emigration was the Britain situation. The occurrence of Vancouver Riot within the time ensured that Britain played critical important roles in having to support Japan in addressing the Japanese immigrant problem across Canada. It amounted to a start of irritation by the Japan aggressiveness in China and Manchuria. The Japanese government had to maintain its relations with Britain through encouraging friendly relations between Japan and Canada to help attain the goal. Lastly, the government of Japan was concerned of preserving the nation’s honour in the relations with associate nations. Japan did not tolerate immigration limitations as implicated by other governments as it would disgrace the honour. The main course of Japan was taking after Vancouver Riots, as a result, of restricting emigration on a voluntary basis. Therefore, the Japanese government settled on accepting the Canadian proposal while negotiating on immigration restriction with the Lemieux Mission.
There was a whole range of causes of the riots. The newspapers solely reported on the drastic rise of Japanese immigrants within Canada as the main cause. The explanation for the rise was because of laws enacted across the U.S from back in 1906 prohibiting entrance of the immigrants. The law especially focused on those who did not come directly from respective countries of nationality. The Japanese who aimed at reaching the U.S through Hawaii changed their areas of destination and settled in Canada. The economic conflicts also caused an increase of the poorly-paid labour even though it was not mentioned as the riot’s cause. However, it seemed that the real threat was that posed to the white labourers. Other newspapers established that the riot’s agitators were the Americans while insisting that the riot was due to the anti-Japanese fever starting from California. It was gradually expanding northward while other spasms of discrimination went against the aliens from the West Coast. Such reporting also helped the public from the Japanese origin to observe much faith within the government as well as the Canadian people. The government of Japan was aware of the mission’s purpose and did not condone it. The reception of the news developed by the decision of the Canadian government was that of sending the missions.
The Japanese government sent back messages instructing them to request the Canadian government to shun its plan of implementing the mission on Japan. Nosse met top government officials as a suggestion that it was a better policy in seeking to have different strategies. This is because there were poor chances of achieving success through an agreement with the Japanese proceedings for emigration restriction. The approach also ensured that the meeting did not make arrangements of the engagement’s nature in terms of restricting emigration. For this reason, Canada was not in a position of having the rights of requesting the government of Japan to restrict the overall emigration while Canada signed the Commerce and Navigation Angles Japanese Treaty.
Bibliography
Unii, Malcolm. Japan's Reaction to the Vancouver Riot of 1907. BC STUDIES, (Boston: Little, Brown, Winter 1983-84) no. 60
