Post for Feb. 26th, 2007

For this reading, we studied chapter 10 of Takaki entitled "Pacific crossings: seeking the land of money trees". It basically described the lives of Japanese immigrants throughout the 1800's and into the 1900's and their struggles with customs that have been around for centuries. One of the customs that was most discussed in this chapter was the idea of arranged marriage and the purpose of children in Japan. According to Takaki, there were to be three children in an ideal Japanese family; "One to sell, one to follow, and one in reserve". The daughter was the one to "sell", the eldest son follows in his fathers footsteps and the one in reserve is in case something happens to the eldest son.
Takaki goes on to talk about the workforce of Japanese in Hawaii in growing sugar cane. With the influx of labor migrating east, it was more profitable to devote their energy towards one cash crop that was successful. Immigration actually regulated on how many people of the Chinese culture and Japanese culture could immigrate because the Japanese had so many people coming east that it threw off the proportion of Chinese. It was put into effect that 2/3 of immigration coming east must be Chinese and 1/3 could be Japanese
The main question that came to mind during this chapter was that the Chinese and Japanese work force was in essence a type of slavery. Why was there no emphasis on equality for these people but more emphasis towards African American slavery? One answer could be that it was less obvious for people in the most populated area's to realize what was going on. It was rare for people on the east coast to meet a person from the Asian continent. However, in a time where fighting for racial equality was so important, it does not make a lot of sense that this type of cruelty still continued, even though they were paid workers, but poorly at that.
In my opinion the chapter shows that even after the "end of slavery" there were ways around it so that cheap labor could be bought. Immigrants in this time were a large reason for the success of the United States, but little is known of the Chinese and Japanese struggle on the west coast. luckily, authors like Takaki brought these struggles to the forefront by writing books like this.