The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1905-01-03

The following article concerning the
Japanese, in Hawaii appears in the Los
Angeles Times of recent date:
Probably not one American in nun
dred-certainly not one in twice that
number east of the Sierra Nevadas ana
Cascades-is aware of the fact that in
our young Pacific territory, Hawaii
the purely japanese population is not
only largely in excess of every other
including the native kanaka, but al
most equal in number to all other ma
tionalities combined. Some political
capital was made of the presence of so
many Orientals at the time of the an
nexation agitation by those in opposl-
Ntion. and any faint impression of the
fact that may remain on the public
mind was probably received from the
newspaper discussions Of the measure
at that time. While opposition on this
ground was not sufficiently potent to
prevent annexation altogether, it did
prevent admission of foreign-born Jap
anese to citizenship, and of course with
American sovereignty came an end to
his importation as a contract laborer.
Notwithstanding these restrictions,
and, perhaps, partly as a result OF
them, there exists in the islands today
nearly every phase of lower Japanese
life that one will encounter in the
course of a considerable sojourn in old
Nippon. That only the lower strata of
Japanese life, are represented is attrib-
utable to the fact that over 99A per
cent of those of that nationality in Ha-
wall are of the laboring and merchant
classes.
The daily life of these is undoubtedly
a truer reflection of the life led by their
ancestors of the Japan that is now no
more, than will be observed in that of
their brethren of today in the more
enlightened portion of the island en-
pire.
The Hawaiian laborer, brought most
ly in the course of the ten years end
ing in 1898, came from the country dis
tricts of northern Japan, and until his
arrival at the port of departure, usu-
ally Kobe, had lived untouched by the
surgng life of the Japanese renais-
sance. New Japan was to him sealed
book, and he was landed in Honolulu
before the pulse of progress that has
stirred to a new life the people of the
Land of the Rising Sun began to beat
in his veins, and severed by an ocean
from those influences that must ulti-
mately have reached him in the re-
hottest corner of his own country, he
has naturally continued to follow the
precepts and customs set for him by
another place and generations; not
other than those of the father and
mother that reared him, back among
the wind and hood-shaken valleys of
the rocky Kamatagas.
So it happens that by the reefs and
palms of our tropic islands, fishing
their waters and filling their fields, ex-
lists this racial anomaly; an unciViliz-
ed fragment of now civilized nation,
bringing children into the world that
are granted rank, suffrage and citizen
ship with the most favored of either
nation.
Even in the second generation, it is
only after the effect of a half-score
years or more of American schooling
make themselves felt, that a sympathy
for the new" either in Japan or Ha-
wall is apparent For the 100000 and
more OF the original inportatiOns of
labor it is still to the methods and
customs and contrivances of a dead, or
nearly dead, Japan that they look in
4 their daily routine of work and play,
Man and woman still walk with a step
saf jerk and mince from the impediment
OF narrow-skirted kimono and clOg-like
zori Their diet is still of fish and vege-
BILE; imported japanese rice in prefer
ence to the island product, even though
It cost them more, and the dried matu
of the Inland Sea rather than the fresh
mullet and olu of the waters about
their adopted home. Always they turn
from the sweet-voiced Kanaka with
his tuneful ukulele, to the jangle of the
samisen and the whining gutturals OF