The Journal of San Diego History
California and Washington.
Teaching Mikadoism attempts three difficult tasks: first, the book describes a
narrow slice of the history of Japanese language schools in Hawai’i, California and
Oregon by focusing on eight years of public debate. Second, the author attempts
to “reframe” the controversy by comparing and linking the situation in these three
locations. Finally, the book expands our understanding of Japanese American
history by providing more insight into the Issei (first) generation of immigrants
by utilizing Japanese language resources, particularly newspapers, periodicals,
and the reports of the Japanese consular authorities in the United States and the
Territory of Hawai’i. In order to fulfill these aims, any historian would require a
volume of double the length and twice the density. Teaching Mikadoism succeeds in
introducing these problems but not in resolving these issues.
The book is arranged into four substantive chapters, two of which focus on
Hawai’i and two of which describe developments in California and Washington.
In each case, Asato argues that the controversy over language schools was
symptomatic of a larger political battle between the Nikkei (Japanese) and white
American communities. The attacks on language schools were an excuse to
advance more far reaching efforts to control the political and social advancement
of the Japanese community.
Asato describes two facets of the language school debate in Hawai’i: the
internal struggle between Buddhists and Christians in the Japanese community
to control language schools and how the battle over language schools became
a part of federal efforts to oversee education in order to promote and enforce
assimilation. In the second chapter, Asato focuses on the 1919 Federal Survey of
Education which led to the passage of Act 30 (later overturned by the Supreme
Court) which made foreign language schools subject to control by Hawai’i’s
Department of Public Instruction. The national attention garnered by this survey
and the campaign for Act 30 influenced the way that Asian exclusionists in
California framed the debate over language schools in that state. Exclusionists
in Washington then copied Californians, using the vague threat of “mikadoism”
to fan the flames of bigotry and gain support for white control over Japanese
language schools.
Each case is an intriguing example of how the forces behind Asian exclusion
movements manufactured the controversy over schools to further other political
goals. In Hawai’i, Territorial authorities, plantation owners, and religious groups
vied for influence over the Japanese community, the largest single ethnic group
in the islands. In California, exclusionists saw control of the schools as a way to
thwart the growing economic power of the Japanese community in the agricultural
industry. And although the Japanese population was relatively small, the white
community in Washington seemed to take a preventive approach, attempting to
keep the Nikkei from gaining any power as they had in California and Hawai’i.
Asato covers no new ground in this work. As she acknowledges, the study
of Japanese language schools has been the subject of numerous theses and
dissertations and is a standard part of the teaching of Japanese American history.
She adds to our knowledge by working with Japanese language documents and
thereby introducing new perspectives to the historical record. This is evident in
her descriptions of the reactions of the Issei and the role of the Japanese consular
officials in these controversies. This is valuable, elementary historical work which