Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887-1920 by Kazuhiro Oharazeki

Author:Kazuhiro Oharazeki
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2016-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

The Emergence of Anti–Japanese Prostitution Reforms in the North American West from a Transpacific and Comparative Perspective

During the Meiji period (1868–1912), prostitution became a major topic of discussion among middle-class reformers in Japan and Japanese immigrant communities in the American West. The existence of licensed prostitution in Japan came to light in 1872, during an international conflict between the Japanese and Peruvian governments over the treatment of Chinese indentured laborers carried to Yokohama on a Peruvian ship. Licensed prostitution was seen as conflicting with the international movement for the abolition of slavery and the campaign against the sexual exploitation of women in the industrial era. Since the first appearance of Japanese prostitutes on the west coast of North America in the late 1880s, Japanese consuls and immigrant leaders regarded prostitutes as stains on Japan’s international reputation and initiated an effort to remove them from Canada and the United States. Meanwhile, anti–alien prostitution movements also grew among Canadian and American reformers along with various reforms of this period, and the federal governments began to take steps to exclude alien prostitutes from their countries. As the Japanese began to settle in both countries in the 1910s, Japanese antiprostitution campaigns developed into community-wide projects in their struggles to deal with pressure from North American societies. By examining anti–Japanese prostitution forces in North America from the 1890s to the 1910s from a cross-national comparative perspective, one can see a major shift in the concerns of North American Japanese migrants from the country of origin to the country of settlement.

EARLY JAPANESE RESPONSES TO PROSTITUTION

Japanese consular officials and immigrant leaders were the earliest antiprostitution activists. Shortly after Japanese prostitutes began to appear in North American ports in the late 1880s, Sugimura Fukashi, the first Japanese consul in Vancouver, began to report on the arrival of Japanese prostitutes and procurers. In October 1890, Sugimura sent Tokyo a list of major Japanese brothel-keepers in Seattle, noting the presence of almost 150 prostitutes. Most of them crossed over the U.S.-Canadian border where inspection was lax, and Sugimura complained that he had no way of forbidding these “legitimate” travelers from making their way to the American side because they arrived at the ports as married couples with valid passports. He urged the Foreign Ministry to take immediate measures to prevent Japanese prostitutes from coming to Canada in order to prevent an increase in the number of prostitutes in the United States.1

The appearance of Japanese prostitutes quickly drew the Canadian and U.S. media’s attention. In March 1891, the Victoria Daily Colonist reported on U.S. officials’ attempts in San Francisco to prevent Japanese procurers from sending their women’s passports back to Yokohama to be reused in procuring Japanese women for prostitution.2 Next month, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on a police raid in Jackson Alley where the cribs “swarmed with disorderly, uncleanly, lawless element.” Japanese women “flew about, jabbering loudly, like a band of pursued magpies.” Of thirty-seven arrested as prostitutes, thirty-one were Japanese and five were white, and “[t]he Japs all gave half English, half Japanese names, such as ‘Jap Mary’ and ‘Jap Lizzie.

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