Jenichiro Oyabe a Japanese Robinson Crusoe Intersections Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies 2009

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ROBINSON CRUSOE

JENICHIRO OYABEEdited by Greg Robinson and Yujin Yaguchi

Oyabe

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is is a fascinating memoir by a young Japanese who spent thirteen years (18851898) traveling to all parts of the world: the Kurile islands, China, Okinawa, Hawaii, the United States, Britain, Portugal, etc., before returning to his native country as a teacher and a Christian minister. Few in the world, least of all Japanese, would have seen so much of the world on their own. What he sawand, even more revealing, how he described what he sawadds to our understanding not only of late nineteenth-century Japans encounter with distant lands, in particular the United States, but also of the history of international travels, a his-tory that constitutes an essential part of the phenomenon of globalization.

Akira Iriye, harvard university

First published in 1898 and long out of print, A Japanese Robinson Crusoe by Jenichiro Oyabe (18671941) is a pioneering work of Asian American literature. It recounts Oyabes early life in Japan, his journey west, and his educa-tion at two historically Black colleges, detailing in the process his gradual transformation from Meiji gentleman to self-proclaimed Japanese Yankee. Like a Victorian novelist, Oyabe spins a tale that mixes faith and exoticism, social analysis and humor. His story fuses classic American narratives of self-creation and the self-made man (and, in some cases, the tall tale) with themes of immigrant belong-ing and whiteness. Although he compares himself with the castaway Robinson Crusoe, Oyabe might best be de-scribed as a combination of Crusoe and his faithful servant Friday, the Christianized man of color who hungers to be enlightened by Western ways.

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe is avored with insights on important questions for contemporary Americans: How does one become American? How is Asian American identity formed in response to the conditions of other racial groups? When and how did the Asian American model minority myth emerge? A new introduction pro-vides a provocative analysis of Oyabes story and discusses his years abroad in the context of his later career as a nationalist scholar and historian, placing the text within both American and modern Japanese history.

Greg Robinson is associate professor of history at the Universit du Qubec Montral.

YujinYaguchi is associate professor at the department of area studies, graduate school of arts and sciences at the University of Tokyo.

Cover art:Jenichiro Oyabe

Cover design:Santos Barbasa Jr.

Universityof HawaiiPressHonolulu, Hawaii96822-1888

ISBN

978

-0-8

248-

3247

-6

9780824832476

90000

www.

uhpres

s.haw

aii.edu

asian american studies / autobiography

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe

asian and pacific americantranscultural studies

Russell C. LeongGeneral Editor


Jenichiro Oyabe

Edited byGreg Robinson and Yujin Yaguchi

University of Hawaii Press

Honolulu

In association with UCLA

Asian American Studies Center

Los Angeles

2009 University of Hawaii PressAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America14 13 12 11 10 09 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oyabe, Zenichiro. A Japanese Robinson Crusoe / Jenichiro Oyabe. p. cm. (Asian and Pacific American transcultural studies) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8248-3247-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Oyabe, Zenichiro. 2. MissionariesJapanBiography. 3. JapaneseUnited StatesBiography. I. Title. BV3457.O8A3 2009 910.92dc22 [B] 2008039725

Designed by the University of Hawaii Press production staff

Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

Contents

An Introduction

by Greg Robinson and Yujin Yaguchi 1

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe by Jenichiro Oyabe

Preface 35Chapter I OriginChildhood 37

Chapter II Leaving Fathers House 43

Chapter III At Yezo Island 49

Chapter IV On to America 55

Chapter V Crossing Kurile Islands 61

Chapter VI On Russian Soil 66

Chapter VII Sent Back to Japan 71

Chapter VIII Wandering on the South Sea 78

Chapter IX At the Ryukyu Islands 85

Chapter X In the Chinese Empire 93

Chapter XI Voyage to America 100

Chapter XII Darkest America 108

Chapter XIII Light of America 117

Chapter XIV In American Schools 125

Chapter XV At the CapitalUniversity Life 134

Chapter XVI LecturerVisiting Europe 141

Chapter XVII Studying at New Haven 150

Chapter XVIII Vision of Future WorkOrdination 158

Chapter XIX Departure from America 165

Chapter XX At the Hawaiian IslandsReturn

to America 173

v

An Introductionby Greg Robinson and Yujin Yaguchi

The year 1898 saw the United States transformed from a con-tinental power into a Pacific and Asian empire. On May 1, just days after the U.S. government declared war on Spain, Admi-ral George Dewey launched an attack on Manila, and a full-scale invasion of the Philippines followed in July. In December, as a result of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War, the United States took over the overseas terri-tories of the defeated Spanish empire. In addition to seizing Puerto Rico and imposing a protectorate over Cuba, Washing-ton annexed Guam and occupied the Philippinessetting off another war with the Filipinos, who had risen to liberate their country. Meanwhile, in July, by means of a joint resolution of Congress, U.S. legislators pushed through the annexation of Hawaii, a takeover favored by the Islands ruling white oligar-chy but against the expressed will of most of its people.

The primary goal of such expansion was to build a bridge-head to Asia. By controlling these territories, Americans pro-vided themselves with a protected route by which to push their trade and influence into China (through the open door claimed by Secretary of State John Hay soon afterwards). They also sought to counter the growing power of Japan, which was itself building an Asian empire. In 1894 Tokyo successfully ne-gotiated with Britain to abolish extraterritoriality, a provision of earlier unequal treaties that had been claimed by subjects of Western powers for more than three decades. In the Sino- Japanese War of 18941895, Japan defeated China and took over Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaodong Penin-

1

sula in perpetuity (although it soon had to give up the latter as a result of a Triple Intervention by the Germans, French, and Russians). A decade after that victory, Japan would again emerge triumphant in the Russo-Japanese War and gain recognition as one of the important powers of the world.

It was in this climate of international expansion and Ameri-can interest in Asia, along with Japans emergence on the world scene, that a pioneering Asian-American memoir, Jenichiro Oy-abes A Japanese Robinson Crusoe, made its appearance.1 Oy-abes text relates his spiritual autobiography: his boyhood in Japan; his adoption by Ainu (Japanese aborigines) in the northern island of Hokkaido; his conversion to Christianity; his journey to enlightenment in the West; his arrival in New York and his dis-covery there by General Samuel Armstrong, founder of Hampton Institute; his education at Hampton, Howard University, and Yale University; and his subsequent work as a missionary.

The work charms by its picturesqueand picaresqueaccount of the authors adventures. Like a Victorian novelist, Oyabe spins a tale that mixes faith and exoticism, leavened with social analysis and humor. The authors story of his en-counter with a racist barber in New York, soon after his ar-rival in the country, displays a notably light touch (plus a fine ear for American speech):

After a few weeks I went into a barber shop to have my hair

trimmed. Aee, John, git out from here. Oi dont cut a China-

mans hair! I was scorned by the old barber. I told him that I

was not such a man, but a Japanese. Ou, ye Javanese, a coun-

try of lots coffee! All right; sit dan, my goot fellar. (113)

Still, the chief fascination of Oyabes work lies in his narra-tive of his gradual development into a Japanese Yankee, a story that fuses classic American narratives of self-creation and the self-made man (as well, in certain cases, the American tradi-tion of the tall tale) with the literature on immigrant assimila-

2 Introduction

tion and belonging. Although Oyabe compares himself with Robinson Crusoe, that great castaway of English literature who discovers God in his forsaken state, Oyabe is hardly marooned and left to face local savages. Rather, he presents himself as a man who consciously chooses his destination, the United States, in search of salvation and the education that will make possible his future mission to the savage Ainu. Oyabe might thus be said to represent a combination of Robinson Crusoe and his faithful servant Friday, the Christianized man of color who begs to be enlightened into Western ways. Similarly, the authors con-version and the pilgrimage of faith he makes to the United States are driven as much by a desire to absorb American culture and its middle-class values as the Christian religion, which he re-gards as inextricably intertwined. In this sense, Oyabes story can best be seen as a tale of an Asian taking on whiteness, that is, successfully claiming the status and rights of the domi-nant group based on various physical and cultural signifiers, in-cluding religious affiliation, class, and respectability.

The original books front pages sum up Oyabes mission of reconciling his Japanese and American selves. Opposite the title page (where Robinson Crusoe appears almost twice as large as A Japanese) appears a graphic expression of his double con-sciousness: A photograph of Oyabe shows him wearing haori and hakama (Japanese mans coat and pants). Yet his pose, look-ing slightly to the left with a pen in his hand, and the props sur-rounding him in the imagethe high-backed chair with elabo-rate finials and carved designs, and a large book on the tableare all reminiscent of European Old Masters portraits of men of status.2

A counterpart of this double consciousness is Oyabes un-stable identity. Like Woody Allens hero Leonard Zelig, he is a chameleon who continually reshapes himself to merge with his surroundings. According to Oyabes account, wherever he travels he succeeds in blending in and finding acceptance. When he comes into contact with Ainu people in rural Hok-

Robinson and Yaguchi 3

kaido, he ends up being adopted by a chief and offered a lead-ership role in the tribe. When he travels to study with Confu-cian philosophers in China, he notes, I became a real China-man (97). At Howard University, he is adopted by school President Jeremiah Rankin and renamed Isaiah. During the year he studies at Yale University, he enters the brotherhood of men, and happily joins campus activities; in a fascinating passage, he describes his joy in playing basketballthen a newly invented sportand his pleasure at hearing a fellow stu-dent say. That Jap plays like a regular tiger (156).

Unlike Zelig, however, Oyabes fashioning of his identity is a self-conscious, rather than an instinctive, process. As we shall see, Oyabe is not always truthful about himself. He carefully selects the information he offers to fit the interests and preoccu-pations of his readers, and he invents or overstates various achievements. Thus, in teasing out meanings from the text, the reader must pay particular attention to silences, for the author is as interesting for what he withholds as for what he says. To give the most striking example, although the two colleges where Oyabe received his education, Hampton Institute and Howard University, are predominantly black institutions, he nowhere discusses his experience with African Americans. Similarly, he is reticent about his individual connection with Native Americans, despite his claimed interest in their lives and education. Yet if Oyabe generally elides discussion of racial minorities, he repeat-edly uses race as a yardstick to trace his own development. The story thus prefigures current-day debates over Asian-American identity: Are Asians white or black? How do they see them-selves alongside other racial groups?

Before we examine Oyabes work more closely, it is useful to consider the audience he was addressing. A Japanese Robin-son Crusoe was brought out by Pilgrim Press, the publishing arm of the Congregational Church. The old Puritan church became heavily invested in the late nineteenth century in evan-gelizing and missionary work among minority groups. Its chief

4 Introduction

effort was the funding of the American Missionary Associa-tion, which opened five hundred schools for African Ameri-cans in the South during Reconstruction, and which operated Hampton Institute, Fisk University, and other black colleges. Pilgrim Presss offerings reflected this interest. Within a year of Oyabes memoir, for instance, the press published William Deloss Loves book Samson Occum and the Christian Indians of New England, Dleevan Leonards The Story of Oberlin, E. Theodora Crosbys With South Sea Folk: A Missionary Story, and John C. Holbrooks Recollections, which included his tale of a mission to Great Britain in behalf of the southern freed-men. A Japanese Robinson Crusoes prime audience, by in-ference, was thus northern white Americans interested in the role of the Christian mission among the weak and the needy in the United States and abroad. Although this readership held fairly enlightened racial views, at least by the standards of a period when lynching was at its height and racial segregation was law in the South, its members tended to be imbued with the superiority of Christian and middle-class culture.

In A Japanese Robinson Crusoe Oyabe consciously targets this audience. Throughout the book, he repeatedly stresses his attachment to Christianity, and he identifies white Christian men like Samuel Armstrong and Jeremiah Rankin as his men-tors and heroes. Although Oyabe says he was born a heathen, he claims, rather doubtfully, that he was inspired from his early days by his chief impulse to become an anti-idolater (40).3 Furthermore, appealing to an audience interested in saving the savage races by introducing them to a higher civilization, Oyabe casts himself not only as a beneficiary of white goodwill but as a potential contributor to similar mission work in Japan. He likewise seeks approval from his readers by portraying him-self, in classic American style, as a vigorously self-willed and in-dependent man. The impulse of my nature, he writes, has al-ways been to do what I want[ed] to do, vehemently, and to complete it thoroughly from the beginning to the end (153).


The only guides he relies on to make his decisions are Ezra Smiles Self Help and the Father in heaven. Every major deci-sion and action described in the bookfrom saving the Ainu, leaving Japan for the United States, to deciding to study at Hampton and Howardhe attributes to God and to his own autonomous will.

Not only is the content of A Japanese Robinson Crusoe adapted to the specific audience Oyabe had in mind, it also re-veals his intense desire to identify himself with that audience, to experience whiteness. He argues that anyone who knows thoroughly the true American society would never forget its charming, modest, generous, patriotic, and friendly people (113). Little by little, my heart was converted to Americanism while living in the United States (123). He considers America his adopted home and writes as if that home had willingly adopted him as well, noting that Samuel Armstrong called him my son, while Dr. and Mrs. Rankin called him my boy, my Isaiah (47, 151). He reports happily that at Yale University the students made no distinction of race and had no idea of race prejudice in their minds (122, 155). Yet Oyabe expresses his own share of prejudice. On the one hand, he praises the American melting pot and denounces racial discrimination. Skin color, he insists, is irrelevant. Instead, he declares, The difference in mind and thought of each race chiefly depends on the religion in which they believe (123). On the other hand, Oyabe identifies exclu-sively with American-born white Protestants and explicitly dis-tances himself from other groups of people. He refers to lower-class people and recent immigrants from old Europe as repre-senting Darkest America. Similarly, although his goal in com-ing to America is to obtain education in order to return to Japan and establish a school for the Ainu, the aborigines in the Ori-ent, he disdains them as a good-natured but stupid people (159, 50), and desires to train them only for manual labor. Moreover, his interest in the aborigines of North America is limited, and he shares white paternalist views of their capacity, praising the

6 Introduction

approach of the Indian schools. Even as he lauds America for giving citizenship rights to all (he refers only indirectly to the exclusion of Chinese, whom he calls an isolated, independent race), Oyabe condescendingly portrays the African Americans and Jews who claim such citizenship (117).

Oyabes desire for identification with the dominant white group and his disdain for minorities stand in notable contrast to the views of another Japanese, Kanzo Uchimura, who migrated from Hokkaido to seek enlightenment in America during the same period, and who produced a spiritual autobiography pub-lished a few years before Oyabes. It is likely, given their com-mon trajectories, that Oyabe had read or knew of Uchimuras work, and the two memoirs exhibit undeniable similarities. Like Oyabe, Uchimura describes how he began by idolizing America, based on his experience with missionaries abroad, as a thor-oughly Christianized and saintly society (Uchimura referred to the nations universal Hebraism) and then became disillu-sioned following his arrival in the United States by his contact with pickpockets, cheats, and immoral activities. However, Oyabe concludes from his experience that the dishonest people he meets are not true Americans, but a low class of recent im-migrants, who are comparable to blacks as a naturally slavish and depraved people. In contrast, Uchimura analyzed and de-nounced at length the racial prejudice he saw in New York and other places, especially toward Chinese immigrants.4

Most importantly, Oyabes wish to connect himself with the dominant white group causes him to reshape and conceal his actual history. Although the two years Oyabe spent at Hampton occupy only six pages of his book, he makes clearboth by what he says and does not sayhis developing sense of white-ness. He is generous with praise for his teachers and for General Armstrong, whom Oyabe describes as caring for him and pay-ing his tuition (the text refers to the General as Christlike, in tones that anticipate the paean to Armstrong by Oyabes Hamp-ton predecessor, Booker T. Washington, in Up From Slavery,


published three years later).5 Yet he fails to acknowledge the presence of the 521 African-American students at Hampton, even though he shared classes and worked alongside them on the school farm. For example, Jas. H. Payne, from Hinton, West Virginia, was Oyabes next-door neighbor in the dorm and was assigned the same tasks on the school farm under the same su-pervisor, so the two presumably worked closely together every day.6 Nevertheless, the only clue Oyabe gives as to the racial composition of the industrial school and his workmates comes in his account of working in the fields and being mistaken for a black farmer by visiting Japanese officials (129). Characteristi-cally, Oyabe does not recognize that the mistake is rooted in their race-based assumptions about manual laborers, but trum-pets it as a sign of his own assimilation to his surroundings.

Similarly, Oyabe obfuscates details of his life at Howard. As with Hampton, he speaks only of his professors and of President Jeremiah Rankin, a Congregational minister to whom he de-votes an even more affectionate tribute than the one he offers to General Armstrong. He presents himself as the Doctors pet, Rankins companion and protg: he recounts how Rankin took him along on his various travels, including to the White House, and how under Rankins sponsorship he was accepted for mem-bership in an elite white church.7 Oyabe deliberately crafts his memoir to insinuate that he lived in the Presidents house (139, 163) and in the books original edition even inserted a photo-graph of Rankin and his wife relaxing on what looks like the porch of their residence to buttress that impression. In reality, however, Rankins pet lived not with the presidents family but with the African-American students studying at Howard. According to a school record, Oyabe resided in the schools Clark Hall for three years, rooming with an African-American student from South Carolina.8

Oyabe is as reluctant to associate himself with Native Amer-icans as he is with African Americans. Indeed, he offers back-handed praise to Europe over the United States because of its

8 Introduction

freedom from the presence of both groups: Tramping through England is wonderfully interesting and amusing. There are no negroes to insult, neither wild Injuns to shoot as in the New World (144). Furthermore, while he claims to be engaged in intensive study of Native Americans at Yale, he entirely sup-presses the life experiences he shared with actual Native Ameri-can students at Hampton. In 1889 when Oyabe arrived at Hampton Institute, 133 Indians were already studying there. Native Americans actively participated in various school events, although their living quarters were separate from those of the rest of the students. Some, including a group of Kill Crow Indi-ans, worked on the same school farm as Oyabe under the same supervisor.9 Oyabes silence about Native American students at Hampton is clearly not accidental. Rather, he reveals in his auto-biography that when applying to Howard University (itself a predominantly African-American institution, although one that did not share Hamptons Native American student body), he wrote to President Rankin: How can I learn Christian civiliza-tion among these wild Indians? (132).

Meanwhile, at a time of endemic anti-Chinese prejudice and rising nativist antagonism toward Japanese immigrants on the West Coast, Oyabe shows little interest in identifying himself with his fellow Asians. He has nothing much positive to say about the Chinese he met in China or in New Yorks China-townthe latter he treats in superficial and racist terms by re-counting a visit to an opium den where white women mixed pro-miscuously with their Chinese boyfriends. Moreover, Oyabe never mentions that at Hampton he lived in Academy Hall, where he shared Room 37 with two other students from Japan, Seijiro Saito and Genta Sakamoto, and a Chinese student, Loo Kee Chung. Sakamoto and Saitos later recollections about their time at Hampton suggest that all four Asian students were close. Yet Oyabe chooses not to refer to his roommates in his autobi-ography and presents himself as though he had been the only Japanese student then studying at Hampton.10 Nor does he men-


tion the Japanese or Korean students with whom he studied at Howard, even though they, too, were present in significant num-bers.11 Even in recounting his time at Yale, Oyabe makes only a single glancing allusion to the presence of other Japanese, ob-scuring the presence, for example, of such figures as the future Japan Communist Party leader Sen Katayama, whom Oyabe met at the Divinity School.12

Notwithstanding his efforts to construct himself as a sharer of white middle-class Christian values and to distance himself from the rest of the nonwhite population, Oyabes nar-rative equally testifies to his desire to retain his Japanese iden-tity. This may have been something of a marketing decision; after all, Oyabe earned money over the summers during his college years by putting together various lectures in which he presented himself as Japanese. (According to contemporary newspaper accounts, Oyabe spoke on Buddhism and Japanese culture, or about Japans foreign policy and the Sino-Japanese War. He wore Japanese attire and used a magic lantern to show slides.)13 The popularity of his lectures suggests that it was the image of an Americanized Japanese man that most at-tracted his audiences. Still, Oyabes narrative suggests that his adherence to a Japanese identity was something more than a ploy. While he describes how his heart was fixed upon America as his adopted home, he also mentions the Oriental mind and Eastern custom (126) ingrained in him, and re-mains adamantly Japanese. Significantly, he dedicates his au-tobiography to his parents back in Japan, whom he terms his first and best teachers (33).14

Oyabes curious passage into whiteness and his reflexive distancing of himself from other groups can perhaps be seen most clearly in his decision to go to Hawaii. Once he had gradu-ated from Yale Divinity School and been ordained a Congrega-tional minister, Oyabe relates, he tried to plan what to do next. He first read about Hawaii in a California newspaper (the Is-lands then made up an independent republic ruled by a small

10 Introduction

oligarchy of whites who had deposed the native Hawaiian mon-archy and undertaken a vigorous propaganda campaign to se-cure annexation by the United States). The article warned of the threat posed by the large numbers of Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii who were bringing their idols and heathen customs to this country (160). Unfamiliar with the endemic anti-Asian prejudice on the West Coast, Oyabe is clearly unable to grasp that the journalist, in denouncing the menace posed by the heathen Japanese, was actually using religion as a signifier for racial difference and targeting him, too, as undesirable. He immediately requests and receives a post in Hawaii, where he would be a missionary for Christianity among his countrymen and repel the threat that alternative religious views representas he says, his goal was to defend my benefactress, America, from the dangers of Buddhism (160).15 Almost as soon as his boat arrives in Hawaii, however, he realizes his error. He is cha-grined to discover that Christianity is already widespread in the Islands, and that Hawaii can defend America as a strong for-tress without any assistance from a Japanese-blooded little Yan-kee like myself (175).

Oyabe hardly mentions in his memoir the two years he in fact spent in Hawaii, as pastor of a Christian church in Paia, Maui. During this time, he bonded most closely with the Is-lands white population and became popular through his lec-tures on Japan. In contemporary letters, he expressed strong prejudices toward other groups. For example, in a note sent to his white supervisor, Oliver P. Emerson, in Honolulu, Oyabe claimed that, second only to Africans, the native Hawaiians were the worlds laziest people.16 He must have found con-necting with the Japanese on the plantations little easieral-though the elite Hawaiian Gazette noted at the time of his departure that Oyabe had been most successful in his pro-fession among his countrymen of Paia, his memoir expresses nothing but disgust at seeing low-class Chinese and Japa-nese worshipping their idols (173) and remains tellingly silent


about the difficult and exploited condition of Asian planta-tion workers.17

* * *

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe appeared in print in June 1898. Ads trumpeted the book as by a Japanese author; illustrated by a Japanese artist. The book did not attract much in the way of sales or attention, however. Critics from the daily press largely ignored it, while mainstream and denominational week-lies offered mixed critiques. The New York Independent, com-bining praise with a note of skepticism, commented, If this books contents are the record of truth, and we are assured they are, Mr. Oyabe, the author, is a very remarkable young man. It is long since we read a personal story of more immediate inter-est.18 The Outlooks reviewer noted that the book was an in-teresting account of the authors life, but only partly bore out its quite fascinating title.19 The Congregationalist, praising the pleasant little volume for the stories it furnished on Gen-eral Armstrong and Dr. Rankin, concluded, It is an artless, graphic, and picturesque account of his career, thus far largely one of wandering and adventure, animated by the purpose to reach this country and acquire an education in order to be of use to his fellowmen. . . . His history shows that he possesses an unusual amount of enterprise, courage, and intelligence, and points to the probability of a future of great usefulness and possibly of distinction.20 The Missionary Herald added an ori-entalist note: There are few books written by Japanese which more clearly portray the characteristics of that versatile, un-stable, easily moved people. In many respects the life and expe-rience of this young man represent Japanese life and character and method of thought.21

Within six months of publishing his memoir, Oyabe decided to return to Japan. Before departing, he stopped off for a few weeks in the Seattle area, where he spoke to a Tacoma Daily News reporter who found him playing basketball: He was

12 Introduction

dressed in the dark blue sweater of Old Eli and with his slender form and oriental features formed a quaint picture of an Ameri-canized Japanese.22 Curiously enough, the article made no men-tion of A Japanese Robinson Crusoe. Yet Oyabes comments, like the description of his appearance, nevertheless pointed to the multiple identities and self-fashioning that lay at the heart of his book: Oyabe told the reporter of his reluctance to leave America, where he felt at home, to go back to Japan, where he felt himself a stranger. Yet he spoke of his wish to be useful to his fellow Japanese, and he extolled the qualities of the Japanese in America. In an extended passage, he demonstrated his gift for self-invention, as well as self-aggrandizement:

He has made social science his chief study in America, taking

both his degrees in that branch. His intention is to accept a

professorship which has been offered him in one of the large

Japanese universities, and will there expound the lessons of

economics learned in far-off America. Why did I leave

home? Because I believe a student who studies in a foreign

land will get a better and broader conception of the work he

is doing and of life in general. There are many Japanese in

America now attending the universities. At Yale there were

16. They all live separately in order to learn the English lan-

guage. There is also a Japanese professor of psychology at

Yale, and two Japanese professors at the Chicago University,

so you see our people can teach the white man something.

After graduating in 1895, Mr. Oyabe went to Honolulu,

where he taught in a Japanese and English school for one year.

He was especially invited by the Hawaiian government to fill

the position. With this practical knowledge of teaching he is

now going to accept a more responsible position in Japan.23

Revealingly, in addressing a secular newspaper audience Oyabe makes no mention of his schooling at Hampton or Howard, his ordination, or his interest in the Ainu. He care-


fully conceals both his theological studies and mission work in Hawaii. The fact that Oyabe had been brought to Hawaii by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association and apparently never taught school does not prevent him from making claims of of-ficial government sponsorship. His story of being invited to take up a professorship in Japan is equally undocumented and doubtless unfounded.

* * *

The story of Oyabes life after A Japanese Robinson Crusoe forms an odd counterpoint to his narrative. Upon returning to Japan in early 1899, Oyabe was offered the position of minis-ter at Yokohama Congregational Church, where he remained until 1901. He married Kikuyo Ishikawa, and they had a son, Masayoshi (a.k.a. Seigi) and a daughter, Isako. Around the same time, he took up lecturing with an Ainu aid society to raise money for education of the Ainu. Oyabes American ex-perience, especially one of the techniques he had learned at Hampton Institute and later used in his lectures, came in handy in his work: the use of photographsespecially before-and-after imagesto sell a product. When he gave a speech in Tokyo in 1900 to attract financial support for his plan to establish an industrial school for the Ainu, he discussed the technique of photographing Native Americans before and after their education, and indicated that such visual evidence proved that the education was effective for the natives.24

In 1901 Oyabe served as translator and guide to the Ameri-can anthropologist Hiram Hiller on Hillers research trip among the Ainu.25 After Hiller departed, Oyabe built a model Ainu vil-lage and school in Abuta, Hokkaido, which he attempted to op-erate on the model of the manual and agricultural education fea-tured at Hampton.26 Despite sponsorship by many prominent Japanese, including members of the imperial family, Oyabe found that realizing his dream project was not easy. The school was beset with problems from the start. Local Japanese residents

14 Introduction

were skeptical about the prospect of educating the Ainu, and Ainu parents were reluctant to entrust their children to Oyabe, whose school they regarded as an outgrowth of Japans colonial-ist policies in Hokkaido.

Oyabes own self-righteous demeanor and elitist prejudices did little to build a relationship between the school and the community. In a 1903 open letter to friends at Hampton, he revealed, In my young heart I thought that the Hampton School came out as easily as the asparagus from its root. But now I understand that the price of the Institute is the price of the heart and blood of that old soldier [General Armstrong]. If he were living, I wonder what he would say to me, for I am doing the same line of work as the general did. I am trying to save and educate the helpless race in this country.27

In 1909 Oyabe suddenly gave up his Ainu school and re-turned to Tokyo, where he took a job teaching history and En-glish language at the Koten Kokyujo (Imperial Classical Literary College), a seminary for Shinto priests. Around the same time, he assembled a collection of Ainu riddles, with the Ainu lan-guage transliterated alongside the Japanese, which he called Ainu Nazo Shu. The book was not published until 1911, when it appeared with an introduction in English by the American an-thropologist Frederick Starr. Some years later, after taking the national exams for English translators, Oyabe became a profes-sional translator and served in that capacity with the Japanese Armys expeditionary force in Siberia in 19191920. He was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Emperor for his service.28 Meanwhile, he moved from orthodox Christianity to advocacy of a Christian-Shinto syncretism.29

Around this same time, Oyabe switched to historical writ-ing, and his unorthodox interpretations caused minor sensa-tions in Japan. The first of the flamboyant theses he proved to the Japanese public was that the great Mongolian warrior Genghis Khan was in fact the Japanese samurai Yoshitsune Minamoto, who had fled Japan in the late twelfth century to


escape an assassination attempt by his older brother, the first Minamato Shogun.30 Oyabes book on the subject became a best-seller in Japan, in part due to an endorsement by Prince Tokugawa, heir to the deposed shogunate. The Christian Sci-ence Monitor nevertheless reported that Oyabe (who it as-serted had travelled extensively in Russia, Mongolia, Man-churia, and Europe over many years amassing evidence) had created an absurd fantasy in arguing that Genghis Khan was actually Japanese. The proof he advances is rather flimsy, and leads to the belief that nationalistic pride is the principal mo-tive actuating the Japanese author.31

The same nationalistic strain was also evident in Oyabes next full-length book, the 1929 study Nihon Oyobi Nihon Ko-kumin no Kigen (Origin of Japan and Japanese). This work al-legedly grew out of a visit to Shanghai that Oyabe made on be-half of the Japanese Army. Assigned to evaluate the sources of Western influence on Japan, Oyabe focused on the contribution of the ancient Hebrews to the development of Japanese civiliza-tion. He principally argued that the various religious customs and the names of several towns in Japan showed that the Japa-nese were descended from one of the lost Jewish tribes. In one of the essays, for example, he contended that traditional Japanese wrestling (sumo) sprang from the great ancestor Israel who wrestled with the Angel and that the reference in Genesis 30:8 to Rachel wrestling with her sister and prevailing corresponded with the ancient Japanese practice of womens wrestling.32 One contemporary Japanese scholar described his theories as simple-minded, and they have been widely ridiculed by later scholars.33

Despite Oyabes praise for America and his description of himself as a Yankee, he seems never to have revisited the coun-try once he moved back to Japan. Ironically, his son Masayoshi Oyabe moved to the United States in 1920 to study (taking the name Joe) and remained the rest of his lifeaccording to fam-ily legend, father and son had a falling out, which may have dis-suaded the elder Oyabe from returning. His increasingly nation-

16 Introduction

alist outlook, combined with feelings of resentment over the hostile treatment of Japanese immigrants in the United States, may also have influenced his views. A postcard Oyabe wrote to one of his former teachers at Hampton more than twenty years after he left the United States suggests his sentiments. At the time, white nativists throughout the United States were declar-ing Japanese immigrants immutably foreign and racially unas-similable, and calling for a complete halt to Japanese immigra-tion (one which would be enacted in 1924). The card Oyabe sent was a photo of the Japanese battleship Mutsu, one of the largest and most powerful battleships in the world upon its completion in 1921. Above the photo, Oyabe wrote proudly, Such ships are all made by our own Japanese people. Then he followed, rather abruptly and aggressively, Do you think that we are also an in-ferior race?34

In fact, by the 1920s A Japanese Robinson Crusoe and its author were all but forgotten in the United States. The book never established itself inside Japanese-American communities, and it was unknown in Japan (the first Japanese edition was not pub-lished until 1991, in a version translated by Toshihiko Ikuta, the husband of Oyabes granddaughter). In a final irony, just months after Oyabes passing in 1941, the hopes he had expressed in the book for peace and goodwill among the nations were dashed, as war broke out between the two countries he called home. The Christian nation the author had so praised for its dedication to brotherhood and lack of color prejudice confined his son and his grandchildren in camps on account of their race.

* * *

What are readers to make of A Japanese Robinson Crusoe now, more than a hundred years after its publication? More than an individuals adventure, it is an evocation of a distant era. Middle-class Americans in 1898 were intrigued by Japan, then still a little-known country to most, and by its plucky and attractive little people (as the young Eleanor Roosevelt


described the Japanese shortly thereafter).35 The japonist descriptions of Lafcadio Hearn caused a sensation in Ameri-can literary circles and ushered in a series of popular exotic (and feminine) representations of Japanese by Asian American writers, notably Yone Noguchis pseudonymous novel The American Diary of a Japanese Girl (1903) and the works of Winifred Eaton, who passed for Japanese and wrote novels under the pen name Onoto Watanna. Meanwhile, as Ameri-can military dominion extended over the Pacific and the na-tions social and political elites responded to Rudyard Kiplings call to take up the white mans burden, the story of an Ori-ental coming to the United States and absorbing Western Christian ways reinforced the comfortable belief in a univer-salistic mission and the role of the United States as a beacon of enlightenment to Asia.

At the same time, Oyabes memoir represents an important primary text for understanding the significance of race in Japa-nese history, most notably in the authors discussion of life in Meiji-era Hokkaido. Although the Japanese had long claimed and informally controlled that northern island, full-scale coloni-zation did not begin until the establishment of a Colonization Commission (Kaitakushi) in 1869. In the years that followed, the newly restored imperial government actively pursued poli-cies meant to transform Japans northern frontier, renamed Hokkaido, by opening up land for agriculture, building infra-structure such as roads, ports, and railroads, and encouraging immigration. As a result, the ethnic Japanese population, ini-tially confined mostly to the southern part of the island, grew from about 63,000 in 1854 to more than a million island-wide by 1903.36 The indigenous Ainu suffered greatly under the rapid and massive expropriation of their land by these colonizers. The Japanese viewed them as a backward race whose language, cul-ture, and social organization all had to be replaced with the more civilized Japanese system. The policy of forcible assimi-lation imposed during the latter half of the nineteenth century

18 Introduction

resulted in displacement and poverty for many Ainu, the impact of which remains tangible to this day.37

Oyabes interest in the Ainu paralleled Japans efforts to colonize and rapidly develop the northern island. In an age of Social Darwinism, he believed that the Ainu were fated to die out; his interest in Ainu archaeology derived in part from his belief that once the Ainu were gone these relics would become extremely valuable. Nevertheless, he argued that it was the re-sponsibility of a civilized and stronger race to try to the extent possible to halt the demise of the weak and helpless race. Just as Samuel Armstrong of Hampton Institute, for example, had ar-gued that his mission was to provide education for not only Afri-can Americans and Native Americans but also all those who need [the schools] help, Oyabe attempted to use what he had learned from his white teachers and friends in the United States to help and civilize the Ainu through education.38

A Japanese Robinson Crusoe thus offers insights into how various educated (and presumably enlightened) Japanese coped with the prevailing racial paradigms of the late nineteenth cen-tury, a time when fixed conceptions of racial hierarchy posi-tioned whites as the most advanced and powerful race, while Asians were supposed to be of lesser quality. In their quest to become as civilized and responsible as their white counterparts, the Japanese discovered their own native tribes and devised their own version of the white mans burden, a racial paradigm that allowed them to position themselves at the top through pater-nalistic benevolence, but at the expense of considering what the indigenous population truly needed. While Oyabe, for his part, seems to have been sincerely concerned about the fate of the Ainu, it is important to note that he also had a vested interest in helping them, because their image as savage and stupid ab-origines in need of help allowed him to project himself as a civ-ilized savior. Oyabe wrote numerous letters to his teachers and friends at Hampton, explaining how he had modeled his Ainu school in Hokkaido on their program and was attempting to do


the same line of work as they were. A racialized Ainu even provided Oyabe a means to assert a positive racial identity against the Americans. In a letter he wrote to the anthropologist Hiram Hiller, Oyabe argued that the Ainu are the degraded sons of the Caucasian race, just as American Indians are the ori-gin of Orientals.39 Thus, just as the Americans were helping their native people who had an oriental origin, Oyabe, who emphasized his oriental-ness in his autobiography, could argue that, in turn, he was helping indigenous people who shared the same ancestry as his white teachers.

Finally and most importantly, A Japanese Robinson Crusoe forms the first chapter of a continuing Asian-American narra-tivethe presentation of Asian immigrants as the model mi-nority, people of color who accept the subordinate social role allotted to them, do not openly challenge the racial status quo, struggle quietly to better themselves through hard work, and as-similate voluntarily into mainstream American culture. We have suggested how Oyabe is complicit in fashioning this image. Throughout the text, he underlines his remarkable adaptability and talent for assimilation. Ironically, at the outset of his mem-oir he is open to Asian culture and outraged at racial prejudice, but as he progresses down his path, this talent leads him to iden-tify with the dominant white group and in the process, he takes on an increasingly supremacist and bigoted view of civiliza-tion, and embraces conventional Victorian social attitudes; this emerges most starkly in his assertion of womens inferiority and his opposition to womens education.

In this sense A Japanese Robinson Crusoe can best be un-derstood as forerunner to the writings of the cosmopolitan Issei, that is, members of the disparate group of Japanese immi-grant intellectuals who arrived in North America (often as stu-dents) at the turn of the century, lived outside ethnic communi-ties, and prided themselves on their connection to white Ameri-cans. In the decades following the appearance of Oyabes mem-oir, even as nativist pressure to exclude Japanese immigrants

20 Introduction

peaked on the West Coast and spread throughout the nation, westernized writers such as Masuji Miyakawa, Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami, Macaomi Yoshitomi, Toyokichi Ieyenaga and Ya-mato Ichihashi published books and articles in English (and, more rarely, French) that touched on the Japanese question. In these works, directed at an elite white audience, the authors simultane-ously defended Japanese immigrants and put themselves forward as equal players in public dialogues about race and citizenship.

Although none of these writers referred to Oyabe or his book, the positions they took were reminiscent of A Japanese Robinson Crusoe. They deplored the simplistic race-based classification of Japanese as inferior and praised Japanese im-migrants and their capacity for citizenship, even as they ex-pressed occasional disdain for white ethnic immigrants, Chi-nese, and blacks. For instance, Masuji Miyakawa, the first ethnic Japanese attorney admitted to the U.S. bar, praised de-mocracy as a bridge between disparate classes, yet qualified his support along elitist and racist lines:

In America, one in any profession receives credit for what he

does. If he is dishonest, and has a tendency to revert to his

ancestral life in the top of a tree the moment the employer is

out of sight . . . or in any way to appear antagonistic to the

customs of society, he must suffer the consequences, be he

Negro or Chinese.40

The journalist and publicist Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami even surpassed Oyabe in proclaiming himself a Japanese Yankee. In his 1914 book, Asia at the Door, he spoke as an American and echoed nativist thought. Thus, he maintained that immigra-tion restriction is one of our sovereign rights, referred to im-migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as racially infe-rior to old-stock Americans, and disparaged Chinese as ideal servants, hatchet men, and gamblers. Conversely, he in-sisted that Japanese were a civilized and progressive nation,


and for that reason should not be singled out for discrimina-tion, but included among admissible races. He extolled Japa-nese immigrants capacity to become quickly Americanized, and pointed with pride to the offspring of white-Japanese in-termarriages as appearing white.41

These writers likewise built on Oyabe in proposing that so-cial distinctionsand fitness for citizenshipshould be based on levels of civilization, rather than on biological factors. However, instead of urging Asians to convert to Christianity, like Oyabe did, as a visible sign of civilization, they championed modernity and invited their white audience to embrace a more democratic and cosmopolitan vision of American culture. In light of the eras dominant Jim Crow thinking, this position had progressive implications. Indeed, despite their elitist prejudices against African Americans (and Chinese), in their rejection of race-based hierarchies, the Issei writers bore a certain resem-blance to the African-American intellectuals of the period whom W. E. B. DuBois dubbed the talented tenth. As early as 1898, the same year that Oyabes work appeared, editor K. Sano of the San Francisco journal Japanese American Voice (a.k.a. The Chrysanthemum) declared that Japanese immigrants should be allowed to naturalize on the grounds that Japan had modern-ized its ancient civilization . . . demonstrated her progressiveness as a people, and was opening its territory to foreigners.42 Masuji Miyakawa declared that the road to full citizenship for Japanese (and by extension any other) immigrants lay not in their ethnic origin but in being more modernmore cultured and respect-ablethan Americans:

An individual Japanese . . . cannot be called great and re-

spectable simply because his nation is great and respect-

able. . . . [W]hen he leaves that great country of Japan and

lands in this country . . . [h]e must here prove the very great-

ness of Japanese individuality to the people of the civilized

universe, that he can speak the English language better than

22 Introduction

others, that he is more law-abiding than the others, more en-

lightened in idea and his conception of things American than

the others, and that he is educationally, intellectually, mor-

ally, and industriously much stronger than the others.43

Even Kawakami, who recommended that entry into the United States be limited to only the better type of immigrants from both Europe and Asia, insisted that the acceptability of indi-viduals be based in part on democratic thinking: No man is worth while who does not respect himself and the race of which he is a member. Neither is he a desirable member of the democracy who cherishes prejudice against other races.44

In sum, Jenichiro Oyabes work is many-sided, like the man himself. Although it encapsulates the particular moment of its creation, it foreshadows many future works, and not just those by Japanese immigrants. Oyabes gift was to express, in idiosyncratic but readable fashion, the problem of modern lifehow to adapt to rapid large-scale changes in ones sur-roundings and reconcile the various contradictory strands of individual identity. Oyabe himself, it seems, was not altogether successful in achieving his goal of becoming a Japanese Yan-kee. He closed his book without any clear idea of his future and sailed back to Japan soon after its publication, never to return. Perhaps it is the very incompleteness of his work and its lack of a neat resolution that give the book such a contem-porary and accessible feel and impel a new reading of it.

* * *

We conclude by thanking some of the people who have played a vital part in helping us discover Jenichiro Oyabe and bring his voice back into print. We both owe particular gratitude to Eiichiro Azuma, who literally brought us together, knowing of our common interest in Oyabe, and provided incisive sugges-tions and criticism. We also offer thanks to Masako Ikeda of University of Hawaii Press, who shared our enthusiasm for this


work and gave us the contract for this new edition, and to the anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments led us to improve our introduction. We also thank Nicole Sandler for her work in retyping the manuscript. Yujin Yaguchi wishes to single out Ed Crapol, Koji Deriha, Sheila Hones, Daniel Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Adria Katz, Margaretta Lovell, Erika Sunada, and Mari Yoshihara for their support. Greg Rob-inson wishes to thank Tom Coffman, Elena Tajima Creef, Craig Howes, Erika Lee, Sunyoung Lee, Takeya Mizuno, Gary Oki-hiro, Heng Wee Tan, Duncan Ryuken Williams, and Frank Wu.

notes

1. Oyabes is arguably the first full-length English-language memoir by an Asian about its authors life in the United States. Numerous memorials and collections exist on the lives of Chinese immigrants during the nineteenth century but there are few Eng-lish-language works, apart from Yan Phou Lees 111-page book When I Was a Boy in China (1887), which speaks only in its final pages about the authors experiences in America. Yung Wings My Life in China and America deals with an even earlier period but was published in 1909. See Xiao-Huang Yin, Chinese American Literature Since the 1850s (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000). The unnamed (and doubtless spurious) Chinese au-thor of As a Chinaman Saw Us supposedly began his essays on America life in 1892, but did not publish anything until 1904. Nor are there many earlier examples of autobiographical literature by Japanese immigrants. Joseph Hecos autobiography, The Narra-tive of a Japanese, published in Tokyo in 1895, is adapted (at least in part) from his 1863 Japanese-language edition, and Tel Sono, a Japanese-born woman lawyer, published a 66-page pamphlet, The Japanese Reformer, in 18911892. Shosuke Satos 1886 study History of the Land Question in the United States contains no account of the authors life. Shiukuchi Shigemis A Japanese Boy (1889), deals only with the authors childhood in Japan. Sada-kichi Hartmanns 51-page Conversations With Walt Whitman

24 Introduction

(1895) is a critical study. Kanzo Uchimuras 1895 memoir, pub-lished concurrently in New York as The Diary of a Japanese Con-vert and in Tokyo as How I Became a Christian, is largely about Japan but includes some discussion of the authors years in America.

2. Oyabes mentor at Hampton, Samuel Armstrong, would have vigorously opposed the decision to wear haori and hakama. A strong proponent of assimilation policy, Armstrong believed in the importance of a thorough adoption of white American cus-toms by his Native American and African-American students. This meant living exactly like the white teacherssharing the same lan-guage, religion, marital relationships, education, conceptions of labor, housing, hairstyle, and clothing. For an overview of the edu-cation of Native American children by white Christians in the nineteenth century, see Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Pol-icy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 18651900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), pp. 265291.

3. This was apparently a not uncommon trope among Chris-tian converts, no doubt in response to Protestant stereotypes about heathens. For example, Tel Sono states, My good father never worshipped idols, neither would he allow me to do so. The Japanese Reformer, p. 2.

4. Kanzo Uchimura, The Diary of a Japanese Convert (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1895), chapter 6.

5. Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiogra-phy (New York: Doubleday, 1901), pp. 5455.

6. Hampton Institute Discipline Record 18891890.7. Oyabe was able to parlay his membership into a close con-

nection with an elite circle of local ministers. A newspaper article of the period, recounting the stellar cast of clergy who took part in the dedication of the Womens Christian Temperance Union mis-sion in the interracial slum of Willow Tree Alley, mentioned that one of the most interesting talks was given by Isiah Koyabe [sic], a Japanese student of the Howard university. A second article, re-counting a lecture by Tel Sono, who was returning to Japan to found a school, noted that Koyabe [sic] had presented the church with portraits of Dr. Rankin and of Tel Sono. Redeeming the Al-leys, Washington Post, May 28, 1892, p. 4; Madame Tel Sonos


Farewell, Washington Post, January 2, 1893, p. 2. These are pre-sumably some of the crayons Oyabe mentions in his book.

8. Howard University Catalog of the Officers and Students, Howard University Library. See the years for 1891, 1892, and 1893.

9. Southern Workman, August 1889, p. 88. The name of the supervisor for each student is listed in Hampton Institute Disci-pline Record 18891890, Hampton University archives.

10. Letter, Seijiro Saito to Rev. H. B. Frissel, January 18, 1904, Hampton University Archives. The room of each student is indicated in Hampton Institute Discipline Record, 18891890.

11. No Color Line There, Washington Post, March 16, 1903, p. 4.

12. On Katayama, see Hyman Kublin, Asian Revolutionary: The Life of Sen Katayama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964). A comparison of the life trajectories of Katayama with that of Oyabe is intriguing. Both men converted to Christianity and sought education in the West, finishing their studies at Yale (where they are both pictured in a surviving class photograph). Both ended up returning to Japan and working as missionaries with marginalized groups, but Katayama embraced revolutionary internationalism while Oyabe, as discussed in this introduction, was attracted by nationalism.

13. Illustrated Lecture on Japan, Washington Post, April 29, 1894, p. 10, Amusements of the Orangeites, New York Times, June 17, 1894, p. 15.

14. The one secondary source available on Oyabe in Japa-nese, Zenjiro Dois biography, Yoshitsune Densetsu wo Tsukutta Otoko [The Man Who Created the Yoshitsune Legend] (Tokyo: Kojinsha, 2005), states that Oyabes father was Zennosuke Oyabe (18411896), a judge/prosecutor. Apparently after the deaths of his mother and grandmother in 1879, Oyabe first went to Tokyo to join his father and studied at a private school called Genyo Gi-juku (pp. 3848).

15. Oyabes resolution must indeed have been speedy. On June 3, 1895, at the time of his Yale graduation, Oyabe was listed as undecided as to how he wished to spend his next year. Caps, Gowns, and Hoods, New York Times, June 3, 1895, p. 9. Yet,

26 Introduction

an article that appeared in The Congregationalist barely two weeks later mentioned that Oyabe had already left for The Sand-wich Islands via the Hawaiian Evangelisation Association to work with Japanese there. See The South, The Congregational-ist, June 20, 1895, p. 975.

16. Letter, Jenichiro Oyabe to Oliver P. Emerson, October 9, 1895. Oyabe file, Hawaii Mission House Museum Archives, Ho-nolulu, HI.

17. Maui Election, Hawaiian Gazette, October 5, 1897, p. 6.18. Book Review, The Independent, July 28, 1898, p. 262.19. Miscellaneous, The Outlook, July 9, 1898, p. 639.20. Biographical, The Congregationalist, July 14, 1898, p.

53. 21. Books Received, The Missionary Herald, vol. 95, no. 9

(September 1899): 383. 22. Will Teach in Japan, Tacoma Daily News, December

7, 1898, p. 5.23. Ibid. In the interview, Oyabe proffered an analysis of

Japanese-American trade which proved prescient in at least one regard. I believe there is going to be a great trade between Amer-ica and my country, continued Mr. Oyabe. We need many things that you have. Japan is progressing and will progress much faster in the future. . . . I wish Americans would learn to like Japanese green tea. It is very expensive, but it is ever so much better than any of these ordinary brands.

24. Hokkaido Mainichi Shimbun [Hokkaido Daily News], August 22, 1900, p. 1.

25. For an account of the voyage, see Adria H. Katz, An Enthusiastic Quest: Hiram Hiller and Jenichiro Oyabe in Hok-kaido, 1901, in William W. Fitzhugh and Chisato O. Dubreuil, eds., Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People (Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithso-nian Institution in association with University of Washington Press, 1999), pp. 162167.

26. Richard Siddle, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 84. Oyabe continued to overstate his achievements. In 1905 he introduced himself to a visitor as Chief of the Education Society for Hokkaido Aborigines and


U.S. Doctor of Literature. The Japanese Calendarium: Bronis-law Pilsudski in Japan, http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/inoue/calendarium/02calendarium-e.html; website accessed 12/01/06.

27. A Missionary to the Ainu, Southern Workman, Decem-ber 1903, pp. 600601.

28. Zenjiro Doi, Yoshitsune Densetsu wo Tsukutta Otoko, p. 206.

29. See J. Victor Koschmann, review of David G. Goodman and Masanori Moyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 23, 2 (Summer 1997): 464.

30 Jenichiro Oyabe, Chingis Han wa Minamoto no Yoshit-sune Nari [Genghis Khan was Minamoto no Yoshitsune] (Tokyo: Toyama Shobo, 1924). Curiously, Oyabe mentions in A Japanese Robinson Crusoe (45) his reading of an earlier book that presents the same thesis.

31. Genghis Khan is called Japanese, Christian Science Monitor, December 6, 1924, p. 10.

32. Jenichiro Oyabe, Nihon Oyobo Nihon Kokumin no Kigen [The Origin of Japan and the Japanese] (Tokyo: Kosei Kaku, 1929), p. 315; Jenichiro Oyabe, Not JewBut Hebrew Should be the Racial Name! Israel Messenger, April 1, 1934. Oyabes thesis was the most visible of a progression of works con-necting Japanese with Jews. See, for example, Thomas W. Plant, The Japanese: Who Are They? (Haverhill, MA: Destiny Publish-ing, 1938). The significance of these books for Japanese history is discussed in Iwao Matsuyama, Uwasa no Enkin Ho [Analyzing Rumors] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997), pp. 283304; David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), pp. 6672.

33. Hideo Nishioka and W. Egbert Schenk, An Outline of Theories Concerning the Prehistoric People of Japan, American Anthropologist, vol. 39, no. 1 (January 1937): 30. Another au-thor, Carl Etter, calls Oyabes ideas seemingly plausible but ut-terly fantastic. Carl Etter, Ainu Folklore: Traditions and Cul-ture of the Vanishing Aborigines of Japan (New York: Kessinger Pub., 2004 [1949]), p. 211.

34. Jenichiro Oyabe to M. J. Sherman, July 12, 1892, Hamp-

28 Introduction

ton University Archives. (The ascribed year obviously is a mistake because the Mutsu was not completed until 1921.)

35. Eleanor Roosevelt, letter to Franklin Roosevelt, February 1904, cited in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), p. 182.

36. John A. Harrison, Japans Northern Frontier: A Prelimi-nary Study in Colonization and Expansion with Special Reference to the Relations of Japan and Russia (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953); Fumiko Fujita, American Pioneers and the Japanese Frontier: American Experts in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994).

37. Richard Siddle, Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan, p. 84.

38. Armstrong argued that nothing in the charter or original thought had limited the target of the schools work to one race. Rather, he argued that the school existed for those who need its help; chiefly therefore, at first and at present, for the Negro of the South. But from the earliest years, other races and lands have been now and then represented here. Southern Workman, August 1889, p. 88.

39. Jenichiro Oyabe to Hiram Hiller, July 3, 1903. The Uni-versity Museum Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadel-phia, PA.

40. Masuji Miyakawa, Powers of the American People, Congress, President, and Courts According to the Evolution of Constitutional Construction (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1908), p. 34.

41. Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami, Asia at the Door (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1914), pp. 142, 129.

42. K. Sano, Can the Japanese be Naturalized in America? The Chrysanthemum, vol. II, no. 3 (February 1898): 15. In 1897, a year before, K. T. Takahashi, a Montreal-based Issei, penned a pamphlet in Canada that turned familiar nativist arguments on their head by directing them against Americans. Takahashi urged white employers in British Columbia to favor Japanese immigrants, who intended to stay and build Canadian society, over white American migrant workers who would take their earnings and re-turn south! K. T. Takahashi, The anti-Japanese Petition: Appeal


in Protest Against a Threatened Persecution (Montreal: Montreal Gazette Press, 1897).

43. Masuji Miyakawa, Powers of the American People, p. 251.44. Kiyoshi Karl Kawakami, Asia at the Door, p. 84.

About the edItors

Greg Robinson is associate professor of History at Universit du Qubec Montral. His books include By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001) and A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Yujin Yaguchi is associate professor in the Department of Area Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. His books include Gendai Amerika no Ki wado (Tokyo: Chukoshinsho, 2006), co-edited with Mari Yoshihara, and Hawai no rekishi to bunka (Tokyo: Chuko-shinsho, 2002).

30 Introduction


Jenichiro Oyabe, M.A., B.D.Howard University, Yale University, etc.

To the memory of my father and mother

My first and best teachers,

This book is gratefully inscribed.

Preface

The kingdom of Nippon, says St. Xavier, is the delight of my soul. And to one whose ideas have been trained in accor-dance with the habits of European civilization, Japan is indeed the land of surprises; not, however, the country, but its people. But how can a foreigner know about them? Of course, by reading their biographies, that is, by means of written lan-guage, must be the answer. But, in the first place, must the foreigner learn our language, or shall we study his? The first is more difficult than the last, as the Japanese is a language lim-ited to that island empire exclusively, while the English or French is almost universal. So, then, in this book let my imper-fect English triumph over my own mother tongue.

My object in composing this work is partly to secure the attention and interest of the young people. For I see some dangers arising from the effect of the wonderful progress of this country in the development of machinery, and from the tremendous power of money. These two are most convenient substances, and have saved a great deal of time and of human labor. But, on the other hand, they corrupt the hearts of many of the younger generation; leading them to seek after pleasure, luxury, and a life without labor. The Japanese Crusoe will tell them that there is nothing which can be bought without a price; even for the Gospel one must pay faith and devotion.

Another reason for this publication is that, in the social and religious gatherings to which I have been invited during my stay in America, I have always been asked by my friends, how I happened to leave Japan, what strange experiences I had during

35

my roving, and how I was converted? When I was a student in the United States, I disliked to tell others in public about my early adventures. But now I have no objection whatever to relate the story of my wandering life, if there be any benefit in it for others. Moreover, it would be disloyal for me to bury myself in the far East, keeping my unique experience to myself and the les-son of it hidden. So I propose to write out my story for the use of aspiring young people in the future. If any one who reads this narrative shall find any lesson of warning or of inspiration in my checkered life, and so take it as a compass for his life voyage, I shall be truly rewarded.

I entitle this book A Japanese Robinson Crusoe because my wandering life much resembles that of the fictitious Robin-son Crusoe. The difference between the old and the new Crusoe consists in this, that the former drifted away unintentionally to a desolate island, while the latter wandered purposely from is-land to island, looking for a land of saints, and finally reached the shores of America, leading there, during nine years, a strug-gling life in pursuit of a higher education.

I take this opportunity to extend most sincere thanks to these kind friends for their generous assistance during my wan-derings: President J. E. Rankin, D.D., LL.D., of Howard Univer-sity; Rev. S. M. Newman, D.D., of Washington, D.C.; the late Gen. S. C. Armstrong, LL.D., of Virginia; Prof. L. O. Brastow and Prof. G. E. Day, of Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Rev. Secretary O. P. Emerson, Hon. W. F. Frear, Rev. E. G. Beckwith, D.D., Hon. A. F. Judd, LL.D., of Honolulu; and many others.

Jenichiro OyabeNew Haven, Connecticut

January 1898

36 Preface

C h a p t e r I

OriginChildhood

Early one summer evening, when the air was pure, the earth moist, and graceful old pine trees, waving in the breeze, were playing their peculiar music together with the surges roar on the cragged beach, Shipwreck! Shipwreck! Fire! Fire! came the sudden shout from the simple-hearted fishermen who had been mending their nets on a peaceful shore.

While these men were preparing a life-boat, several strange black vessels rushed amid circling clouds of smoke into the bay. Soon the stars and stripes were flung to the gentle wind, and the sailors boldly cast anchor in waters where no foreign vessels ever lay before.

These vessels were a squadron of well-equipped ships under the order of the American expedition to Japan in 1853; and they were commanded by a gallant United States naval officer, Mat-thew Calbraith Perry, the younger brother of the hero of Lake Erie, [Oliver Perry].

In those days most people in Japan believed that Nippon, the Land of the Rising Sun, was the only divinely blessed coun-try in the world. So the formidable appearance of the powerful foreign steamers greatly surprised the self-conceited sons of the Mikado. With the chief of the feudal lords, called Shogun, the United States made a treaty, and afterward, though slowly, other countries followed the U.S. example. These treaties, however, did not receive the sanction of the Emperor, but were negotiated by the Shogun independently. Thereupon the imperialists were stirred with intense wrath against the Shogun. A civil war fol-lowed, bringing ruin and desolation. After the memorable battle

37

of Fushimi, the Shogun made peace with the Emperor, and for-mally resigned his office. About the same time, the Emperor died at the old Capital. The young Crown Prince was thereupon de-clared sole sovereign, and the whole empire was placed under his direct rule. The old imperial palace, which had been the resi-dence of many Mikados, was removed to Tokyo, formerly Edo. The old record of dates, which had been used for many centu-ries, was at once changed to the European calendar. An excel-lent system of civil and commercial law was adopted from Euro-pean countries. Post-offices, a national bank, and a school sys-tem were established. Newspapers were printed and circulated for the first time; the coast was made bright with lighthouses; the first railroads were opened, telegraphs connected the impor-tant cities, and many other features of Western civilization, in-cluding the latest army and naval improvements, were copied.

In those busy days of new Japan, amid its earliest scenes of splendor, I was born in Akita, in the province of Dewa, on the twenty-third day of December, in the third year of Kieo, accord-ing to the old Japanese calendar. My great grandfather was of noble descent. He was the prince of Mogami in the province of Uzen. My grandfather was a soldier and a noted teacher of fenc-ing, though later he was adopted into a worthy merchant family in Akita. My father was more cultured and had a profound knowledge of law and politics. In his early boyhood he was sent to a Buddhist high priest to obtain philosophical knowledge.

One day he was called home on account of his fathers sud-den illness. When he arrived, he found his father in bed and dan-gerously ill. The father grasped the hand of his son, and said: I was born of a noble family, but in my boyhood I was treated very unkindly by my parents. So, one day, leaving a letter for my father, I departed from my fathers palace without his permis-sion. My desire was to go to Satsuma to find the best teacher in philosophy. On the way to that province my money was stolen by a highwayman. I became a helpless wanderer and was res-cued by a noble-looking traveler. The gentleman advised me to

38 Chapter I

come with him to his house. I thought he was of the Samurai class, so I followed. But after I arrived at his house, I found that he was a wealthy business man. Soon I was adopted as his son, and was obliged to marry his daughter.

As he spoke, the tears ran down his face and he was almost overcome by emotion. Still he continued, But in the first place, I was mistaken in thinking my father cruel and lacking in affec-tion; for was there ever a parent who did not love his own chil-dren? My father, the prince, chastised me because he wished me to be a wiser and better son in the future. My present repen-tance, however, is too late. But take this as an example for your-self. Correct your best beloved child for his own benefit. For no man can understand the true meaning of a gratification unless he pays the proper price: It should be the outcome of toil in his early years. Above all, let not your son, as an offspring of my noble family, ever disgrace it.

After giving many such instructions, the poor fugitive princes soul was at rest and his body returned to dust. I real-ized eventually that his last words are the very cause of my own long wandering life.

My father devoted himself to studying the laws and politics which had been newly introduced to our country from the West. His name became known to the regent of Iwasaki, and he was invited to the palace as a civil adviser. Shortly before the civil war broke out my father advised the regent to obey the orders of the Mikado. But his suggestion was not accepted. My father re-tired from his office and devoted himself again to study.

His silent cottage life was like a hermits, and even my mother had no idea what his desire for the future was. She often asked my father to undertake some practical work, in-stead of digging at the pages of books. But he did not pay any attention to her requests nor change his mind. His habitual reticence enervated my mother and caused the sickness which led to her death at the early age of twenty-four. I was then only five years old. Immediately after her death I was taken to my

OriginChildhood 39

grandmothers house, because it was too much for my patri-otic father to take care of his young boy himself.

At about this time political troubles occurred between the governments of Japan and Korea. A warlike spirit filled the empire. My father could no longer remain in his humble cot-tage. Why do I sit here and study in quiet? he said. This is the time to give my life for my country! He started for Tokyo, the capital, leaving his aged mother and myself at home.

Soon my good grandmother sent me to a common school where my fathers close friend was principal. The schoolmaster was very kind and was, indeed, a father to me. He paid special attention to my progress in all branches of knowledge. But again there came a painful trial, the death of my grandmother. Though I depart from you, yet my soul will live with you until you become a man, were her last words to the unfortunate boy, myself. I was then taken and lovingly raised by my aunt.

Although I was born into a heathen family, it was my chief impulse to become an anti-idolater, and this came from the death of my grandmother. In the beginning of her last sickness the doctors said that she could not live more than a week. As soon as I heard this I determined to pray to the gods for her life, and even to sacrifice my own, since in Japan there is the religious ceremony of offering the suppliants life for that of the sick per-son. It was a cold winters day when I got up at one or two oclock in the morning to worship in a dozen Shinto temples and come back home before the people were up. I bowed down and worshipped the gods while the priests poured many bucketsful of cold water upon my body according to the Shinto custom.

But all my prayers were in vain, as the idols gave no answer to them. Finally, my sick grandmothers breath was gone. My patience was dead. I said to the idols: You have eyes, but can-not see; you have ears, but cannot hear; of what good are you? From that time on, I did not worship Shinto or Buddhist idols.

One day we, the schoolboys, went to the yard of a large Buddhist temple. When I saw the stone and bronze idols in the

40 Chapter I

yard, I told my playmates that the idols were not gods, and those who worship them would have severe punishment from heaven. I bade the boys break them in pieces, perhaps in the same man-ner suggested in the book of Psalms: Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potters vessel. Without waiting for any one, I went up to a large stone idol and pushed it backward with my full strength. It was thrown to the ground and broken into pieces by its heavy weight. This so pleased the other boys that they all followed my example and tried the same thing with each of these idols.

Just as we were leaving the yard, we saw two priests coming toward us, so we all ran homeward, but, unfortunately, two of the youngest got caught. The next day, an old and dignified priest came to my house and told my aunt that I was the leader of that notorious sport of breaking the idols in the temple yard. The priest asked her to pay the full expense for the damage.

My aunt was very angry with me. She sent me to the house of her country relative, a Buddhist priest, for punishment. While I was there I had good opportunity to study Buddhist philoso-phy under the guidance of the priest.

The village was situated at the foot of a high mountain. Once a rumor went through the village that there was a living god in that mountain. The hunters and mountaineers told me often that they saw the living god clothed with grass and leaves. I did not believe the story, for my conclusion was that gods were spirits and have no shape like man.

One day, out of curiosity, I went up the mountain without speaking of it to my priest. I missed the road, and so climbed through forests, resting in caves at night and seeking after the living god in the day. And, of course, I found out that it was nonsense.

During my absence, however, the priest and his people were looking for me all through the village, without success. They thought that while I was swimming in the river, I had met death by drowning. So the priest employed a dozen small

OriginChildhood 41

boats and men with fishing-nets to search the water for my supposed dead body. In the midst of this great confusion and trouble I came home weary and disappointed. When I saw the terrified priest, he exclaimed: Where have you been all these days? And what will you do next I wonder? I think I must pun-ish you this time. Back to your aunts house!

He then sent me to my aunts with a servant. When I re-turned home my aunts patience was already exhausted, but she welcomed me heartily and the very next day sent me off to a government school. There I enjoyed the study of Western art and science, and after four years, I was graduated.

42 Chapter I

C h a p t e r I I

Leaving Fathers House

Most miserable and worthy of the most profound pity is such a being as a foster-child. I met again with inex-pressible suffering in the sudden death of my good patroness, the aunt.

In those days, I had a desire to come to the capital and to devote myself to higher studies. So I took my share of the prop-erty, to which I was entitled on the death of my mother, and started for the city of Tokyo, a distance of more than three hun-dred miles. I walked all the way. As soon as I arrived at the capi-tal, I entered a government school under the care of my cousin, who was then a resident in that city.

While in Tokyo, I read an article in a newspaper one day and learned that my father had been one of the judges in the Supreme Court in Osaka for several years and was now situated in Aizu, in the northern province. I did not know anything about my fa-ther until that time; for though he filled so high an office, he had never sent me or my relatives any letters because, he said long afterward to a friend, I was afraid to spoil my sons independent thought by encouraging him to entrust himself entirely to me.

Soon I wrote and asked him if I might live with him and study law under his direction. He answered me with a long, af-fectionate letter, and with some money for my travel expenses, and bade me come as soon as possible.

It was a snowy day in November when I started for Aizu, passing over high mountains and crossing rivers without expe-riencing any difficulty, so overcome was I by the intense hope of seeing my long-forgotten father.

43

When I reached the city I could not find my fathers resi-dence. I wandered here and there, and at last I came to a quiet part of the town where I found a middle-aged gentleman stand-ing near the gateway of a house.

Please tell me, where is the residence of Judge Oyabe? I inquired of him.

Judge Oyabe? The gentleman repeated my words and looked at me very closely.

Yes! The judge is my own father, I went on with a tone of pride.

Ho! Ho! Is this then my only son Jenichiro? he said, his eyes now filled with tears. Hand in hand, speechless for surprise, we entered the house.

The very next day my father began to teach me the philoso-phy of Confucius and old Chinese poetry. For, at that time, he claimed, European literature and science were developed only objectively, while Oriental literature was more subjective. He in-structed me every day with most wonderful zeal. Very often, when we came to discuss certain philosophical questions, our bright lamp burned even until morning. One evening, as he was interpreting for me the First Book of Confucius, he stopped at one chapter for quite a while, and read it again and again very thoughtfully. The following is a translation of the verse:

Men are partial where they feel affection and love; partial where they despise and dislike; partial where they stand in awe and reverence; partial where they feel sorrow and compassion; partial where they are arrogant and rude. Thus it is that there are few men in the world who love, and at the same time know the bad qualities of the object of their love, or who hate, and yet to know the excellence of the object of their hatred. Hence it is said, in the common adage, A man does not know the wickedness of his son; he does not know the richness of the growing corn.

My father kept a long silence. I could not imagine what was happening in his mind; but after that day, as I remember, he treated me coldly, as if I were a stranger.

44 Chapter I I

Besides the heavy tasks of the lessons, my father gave me a daily duty, which was to feed his little canary bird. One morn-ing I forgot to feed the bird. The next day, when he found the little creature struggling with hunger and thirst in the cage, he summoned me immediately, and put me into a wardrobe, and locked the door for a whole day without giving me any food or water. When I was released, he said to me very tenderly:

If your love and kindness do not reach even to such a small bird, how can you sympathize with men? But you must not be like that bird, which lives in a cage and depends upon its owners care. Because some day when I give my life to my country, you must surely suffer from the very next day.

My father began to think that it was not very wise to edu-cate his son in such a country place. He now wished for me to see the wide world in which the most successful men have had their training. So he tried to put me away from him, and asked several of his friends in Tokyo and Osaka about a good school for his motherless boy, myself.

But in those days he did not tell me anything about his plan. So I did not understand exactly what was in my fathers mind. But I could see by his manner that he wished to send me away somewhere. I thought that I was too poor a scholar and had not ability enough to succeed my honorable father, and therefore he was discarding me from his family.

My heart was filled with sorrow and I cried like a child, in the most unhappy state of my life since the death of my be-loved mother. I thought all earthly hopes were vain; and at the same time, there came to me the thought of leaving my father and devoting my life to the Ainu, the uncivilized race of Japan, like the Indians of America.

After some weeks, I read a book called The Revival of Yoshitsune, the story of a Japanese prince who fled to Tar-tary and became the world-renowned Genghis Khan, as the Japanese and Chinese scholars believe. My heart was strongly fixed and my young desires prompted me to follow in the track

Leaving Fathers House 45

of that old, distinguished hero. Thus, from that time, I devoted myself wholly to the study of books adapted to my plan, such as natural and physical geographies, and some agriculture books instead of my regular lessons in philosophy and law. Of course, this all was unknown to my father.

One morning after my father had gone out to the courthouse to his official duties, I took my books to study as usual. Just as I was copying the maps of Manchuria and Siberia, my father sud-denly came home, on account of some illness. As soon as he no-ticed the strange books around me, he exclaimed: What are you trying to do now? Are those Confucius great books of philosophy?

But I kept my silence. He suspected that I had not spent time on my lessons during his absence every day.

What is the meaning of this, and what have you to say? repeated the indignant father, his anger increasing with every breath. Do you think that I am a blind man? Certainly, if you keep on in this way, you can never be my noble forefathers successor!

Then he rushed into my room and threw my desk and bookcases on the ground, and tore all my books into pieces.

Now speak! What have you to say about this? he repeated.

Still I did not say anything, but stood before him like a figure carved in marble.

Listen! If you have nothing to say, I will give you two questions from which to choose: First, will you devote yourself hereafter strictly to my orders? Second, will you do your own pleasure in your own independent way?

He bade me give him a definite answer the next morning. Then he walked slowly out of my room, leaving me to make my decision.

Our proverb says, A fathers love will be known after the son becomes the father of a child. I was too young yet to know the true, loving heart of my father. That night I could not sleep

46 Chapter I I

at all. In my wakeful hours I prayed for the first

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Jenichiro Oyabe a Japanese Robinson Crusoe Intersections Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies 2009