A Home for Those Who Left
By MARTIN A. YAHIRO, M.D.
RAFU CONTRIBUTOR
Friday, Sept. 5, 2008

Memphis resident Martin Yahiro pays an inspiring visit to Japan’s Overseas Migration Museum.

Photos by MARTIN A. YAHIRO, M.D.
The exhibition hall at the Japanese Overseas Migration Museum in Yokohama houses a treasure trove of more than 1,500 historical exhibits, documenting the five eras of Japanese migration.

A display dedicated to the Japanese press and news
outlets overseas includes an early Rafu Shimpo staff photo.

Suitcases and luggage show the kinds of personal belongings the emigres took as they ventured to new lives in foreign lands.

The museum’s main entrance.

YOKOHAMA.–In my travels to the other side of the Pacific, I came cross the Japanese cousin–perhaps ancestor–of our Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

The Japanese Overseas Migration Museum or in Japanese, Kaigai Iju Shiroykan, is a fascinating museum that seeks to maintain ties with the scores of Japanese who left their homeland.

Just a few minutes’ walk from Yokohama’s Bashamichi train station, the museum is located on the second floor of the Japan International Cooperation Association, overlooking
Yokohama Bay. Fittingly, this is where Commodore Matthew Perry’s Black Ships opened Japan to the world and became the exodus terminal for Japanese to explore upon Asia and North and South America.

I entered the modern JICA building and climbed to the second floor location of the museum. The very polite receptionist greeted me with museum brochures (mostly in Japanese but one in English) and pointed the way to the exhibition hall, a treasure trove of more than 1,500 historical exhibits, documenting the five eras of Japanese migration from Japan.

The briefing hall provides an overview of the migration history of 760,000 Japanese from the early Meiji period around 1885 through 1972. A three-dimensional map of Japan graphically displays the origins of the Japanese migrants by prefecture: 109,893 left from Hiroshima, 89,424 from Okinawa, 76,802 from Kumamoto, 57,837 from Yamaguchi, 57,684 from Fukuoka, 32,853 from Wakayama, 26,874 from Hokkaido and so on. During the 1885-1894 period alone, more than 29,000 contract laborers or “kanyaku imin,” immigrated to the Hawaiian Islands.

I then strolled down the hall through the history of the four eras of overseas migration: the early period when a large efflux of Japanese immigrated to the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Philippines and Southeast Asia and then from there to the Americas; the era of decreasing immigration due to the increasing anti-immigration and anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S. that culminated in the National Origins Act of 1924; the era in which the Japanese immigration was interrupted during World War II and then the post-war immigration up through the 1970’s.

As I wandered through 100 years of history, I spoke with a kindly museum docent and was interested to learn that my great-grandfather immigrated to Hawaii from Fukuoka in 1885. He told me that in 1884, the King of Hawaii had asked the Emperor of Japan to allow laborers to go to Hawaii, which had been devastated by disease. At that time, 85 percent of Japanese were farmers and 60 percent didn’t own their own land so this was an attractive opportunity for so many Japanese.

The Japanese government had opened its borders to foreign travel in 1866, but only students, traders, menial laborers and acrobats had ventured from Japan for the next 20 years. Suddenly, with the Emperor’s blessing, the floodgates of migration opened and in the next 100 years, nearly 760,000 Japanese left seeking fortune abroad.

Yet, their ties to Japan remained strong and they sent their earned fortunes back home. About 60 percent of them eventually returned to Japan within 10 years of leaving. However, many of the Japanese “dekasegi,” or migrant workers, then immigrated to the mainland.

A large portion of the museum displays show what life was like in the ‘new world”–in Hawaii, South America and the U.S.–showing how the pioneers forged their new lives for future generations. There is a fascinating array of travel gear, turn-of-the century farm equipment and replicas of stores and homes of the immigrants. I even found a photograph of the staff of the Rafu Shimpo from the early days in a display of Japanese newspapers! The final exhibit is the Digital Migration Space where thousands of photographic images and other documents can be accessed.

Across the hall from the museum, JICA has an amazing library full of historical documents about Japanese emigrants. There are volumes of information on the Nikkei who went to each area of the world. For example, there were nine hardbound volumes related to the Japanese who went to Hawaii between 1885 and 1894–a wealth of materials, including short biographies of the travelers, numerous photo portraits of many of the migrants and copies of their work contracts with the sugar companies. There are even Nikkei baseball team rosters and team photos, newspapers and bulletins.

This fascinating collection of our own history–from the Japanese perspective–will truly amaze visitors. If you have any interest in exploring the history of the Nikkei–Japan’s first export–it all started here.

Acknowledgments: I appreciate the assistance of Dr. Eriko Fukuda who kindly interpreted for me during my visit.

The Japanese Overseas Migration Museum is located within the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, at the Yokohama International Centre: 2-3-1 Shinko, Naka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, 231-0001. Telephone: (45) 663-3257. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (closed Mondays.) Website (in Japanese): www.jomm.jp/