-
3. The Japanese Language School Controversy in Hawaii
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 The Japanese Language School Controversy in Hawaii Noriko Asato As several essays in this volume demonstrate, the history of Issei Buddhism was much more than a question of theological adaptation or a set of institutional histories. Rather, in many Nikkei communities, Issei Buddhism was part of a larger struggle for survival and Japanese Americans’ rights. We can see this most clearly in the power struggle between Buddhist and Christian Japanese language schools in Hawaii. This chapter offers a critical reading of newly unearthed primary sources to shed light on the importance of religious conflict as a key factor behind the emergence of the so-called Japanese language problem. Hawaii’s Japanese language schools were originally established in the 1890s to provide “Japanese national education” to the children of Japanese immigrants while their parents worked as temporary laborers in the territory. Within ten years, these schools—which were mainly administered in the early phases by Christian or Buddhist ministers and their missions—became focal points of conflict in the Japanese community. Within twenty years, as the Japanese increasingly stayed on in Hawaii, these schools became a point of contention in the larger Hawaiian community centered around the role of education in “Americanism,” in its linguistic, cultural, and religious senses. Indeed, by the 1920s, a “Japanese language school controversy” engulfed the Territorial Department of Public Instruction, the legislature, local courts, and eventually expanded into a federal Supreme Court case. This dispute would ultimately end in the 1927 Supreme Court decision favoring the Issei immigrants as having the right to educate Nisei, American children, despite the strenuous efforts by the Hawaiian territorial government and their Japanese American Christian allies to abolish the language schools. The five-year suit 46 noriko asato represented the Issei’s battle to establish themselves as members of American society while preserving their heritage.1 Hawaii’s Japanese school controversy is also important because it catalyzed the Japanese language school debate on the West Coast that so influenced Japanese Americans’ lives.2 The literature on Japanese American language schools in Hawaii (and related fields) reveals the complex social and political background to this controversy.3 Most of the available studies focus on the period after 1919, when Japanese language school control bills were submitted to the territorial legislature. Few scholars, especially those writing in English, have explored the genesis of Hawaii’s long school controversy in the period leading up to 1919. Furthermore, even though the role of religion in Hawaii’s Japanese education has been examined by several leading scholars, little of this is available in English.4 This study is built on these pioneering studies, but reexamines cited and previously unexplored primary materials to uncover the roots of the Japanese language school debate and finds that conflict between Buddhists and Christians to be one of key elements to the debate. This controversy shaped the perception of Japanese language schools as anti-American, which haunted Japanese Americans long after their Supreme Court victory. For example, during World War II, Japanese language schools were brought up as evidence of Japanese Americans’ disloyalty to the United States and was offered by the government as a rationale for the incarceration of 120,000 Nikkei, people of Japanese ancestry, in concentration camps—two-thirds of them being Nisei.5 In the late-nineteenth century, Japanese Christian and Buddhist priests followed Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. Both struggled to propagate their faith. Christian missionaries struggled to proselytize Issei, who were mostly Buddhists who saw Christianity as a forbidden and foreign religion.6 Buddhist missionaries arrived shortly after the Christian ones. Among the Buddhists , the Jōdo Shinshū Honpa Hongwanji sect had the most adherents in Hawaii because the majority of Japanese immigrants originally came from the Jōdo Shinshū strongholds of Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, and Fukuoka prefectures.7 However, Buddhist priests clearly regarded Christianity as the dominant religion in Hawaii: both whites and many Hawaiians viewed Buddhism as a barbaric cult of idol worship. First Christian and then Buddhist clergy established Japanese language schools and taught Japanese American children while their immigrant parents worked from dawn to dusk in plantations.8 The schools appealed directly to Issei parents’ primary concern—their children’s education—and were used by missionaries to attract Nikkei followers. White plantation owners were also key players in the school controversy. Planters initially regarded language schools as incentives [44.206.248.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:24 GMT) The Japanese Language School Controversy 47 for sojourning Japanese workers...