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Chapter One A Socio-historical Overview of the Japanese Presence in Peru 1. Masterson and Funada-Classen 293, 238. The authors note that the attempt to set up the first Japanese immigrant colony in Latin America in 1897 in Chiapas, Mexico failed as a result of “poor planning,” but that some of the colonists stayed in Mexico (293). In 1899, Peru became the first Latin American country with “a significant Japanese settlement” when 790 Japanese male contract laborers arrived in Peru to work on the coastal sugar plantations. The authors cite statistics from the 1989 Peruvian census, which broke down the Japanese population in Peru as follows: 45,644 Peruvians of Japanese ancestry. Okinawa had the largest number from any one prefecture with 21,253, or almost half the total (235). The projection for the future population of Peruvians with Japanese ancestry from the 1989 census was 56,123 for 2016 (238). The authors indicate that Japanese Foreign Ministry statistics of 80,000 Japanese in Peru in 1999 are much higher. They explain that the “projections of the census may have been too conservative . . . and the criteria for defining ethnic Japanese different that those of the Foreign Ministry. Still, Peru is the second leading Japanese community by population in Latin America” (238). See Masterson and Funada-Classen’s note 23 on p. 324, which cites Morimoto’s book Población de origen Japonés 212. Masterson and Funada-Classen add that the 1989 census did not include the number of mainly Sansei who went to Japan to work as temporary workers (238). The Asociación Peruano Japonesa in Lima estimates there are 50,000 Peruvian Nikkei in Peru, including a fifth generation of Japanese descendants 5 Jan. 2011, Web. The census statistics taken after 1989 do not provide a detailed breakdown of population by Japanese ancestry. 2. In the sixteenth century, some Japanese left Japan when sizeable trading settlements were established in Southeast Asia. In 1635, as part of its National Seclusion Policy, the Tokugawa Shogunate forbade the return of Japanese from abroad and prohibited all emigration from Japan until 1866 (Westney 200). In the 1850s, however, Japanese migration abroad had already started with student and official travel, and growing numbers of Japanese emigrated in the 1870s. It was not until the 1880s that the Japanese government gave its approval for labor migration, beginning with Australia and Hawaii (Dresner 1). 3. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry and his US naval squadron arrived in Japan to initiate relations between the two countries. In 1854, Perry returned to Japan and pressured the Tokugawa Shogunate into signing the US– Japan Treaty of Amity and Friendship (Kanagawa Treaty) to open the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate. Japan also signed treaties with Britain and Russia. In 1856, Townsend Harris arrived in Shimoda as the first US consul to Japan. In 1858, Japan signed the US–Japan Treaty of Amity and Commerce, which was followed by similar treaties with Britain, Holland, Russia, and France known as the Ansei or “unequal treaties.” These treaties stated that additional ports had to Notes 255 256 be opened to foreigners and to foreign trade. For further information, refer to Janet Hunter’s book The Emergence of Modern Japan: An Introductory History since 1853 and Amelia Morimoto’s book Los japoneses y sus descendientes en el Perú. 4. Starting in the 1850s, student and official travel was categorized as Japanese free or non-commercial emigration abroad and was subject to few regulations. Dresner indicates that since many Japanese students traveled independently , it was difficult to say how many returned to Japan or how long they remained overseas. According to Dresner, student travel was valuable because it contributed to “Japanese political and intellectual history” (28). 5. Waswo observed that modernization became a major issue of debate in the 1880s and 1890s by a “self-conscious new generation” that believed it represented Meiji youth (92–93). This new group of Japanese youth born in the 1850s and 1860s was educated under the new system and had studied the works of Tocqueville, Spencer, Mill, Rousseau, Carlyle, and Hegel. Unlike members of the older generation, these young leaders saw the need for modernization and argued that the best way to accomplish it was a “Japanese path to modernity that did not necessarily preclude Western values” (Waswo 93). 6. Dresner points out that the first “sanctioned migration of Japanese labor overseas” was to Thursday Island, Australia, and not to Hawaii. These emigrants were pearl fishers (13...