Gentleman's Agreement

The Gentleman's Agreement was an agreement by the Japanese government to curtail the number of immigrants to the United States in 1907. The agreement came about in light of growing anti-Japanese sentiment on the West Coast, particularly California, and [Page 274]concerns about Japan's growing power in East Asia by policy makers in Washington.

Diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan commenced in 1854 when Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to trade with the West after more than two hundred years of isolation. U.S–Japan relations throughout the middle of the 19th century were indifferent. During the 1860s, Japan had been undergoing internal change, culminating in the Meiji Restoration, as the United States was embroiled in its civil war. Neither country was in a position to compete with the other. The United States, though a growing industrial power, maintained its traditional distaste for European power politics, and Japan was at the mercy of European extraterritorial privileges.

By the 1890s, however, the international balance of power had changed. Having won a decisive victory over Spain in 1898, the United States acquired a small colonial empire, consisting of islands in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, most notably, the Philippines. In the same year, the United States annexed Hawaii, a strategic location from which to fuel its navy. At the same time, Japan's rise from an isolated country to an emerging power in Asia astounded the West. In 1895, Japan defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War, resulting in the annexation of Taiwan and growing influence in Korea. In 1905, the Japanese navy resoundingly destroyed the Russian navy in the Russo-Japanese War. Such developments prompted the U.S. Navy to add Japan to its list of potential enemies in 1907 and to draft a war plan titled War Plan Orange. The view of each other as rivals in the Pacific set the tone in future dealings between both countries, particularly in immigration.

The first Japanese immigrants were student laborers, who arrived in the United States during the Meiji Restoration. Their original intention was to learn English, acquire a skill, and return to Japan to apply the skills they had learned in the United States. When they arrived in the United States, they found work as domestic servants. According to the 1890 U.S. census, there were 2,039 Japanese residents, of whom 1,147 were in California, particularly in San Francisco. Between 1882 and 1890, 3,475 passports were issued by the Japanese government, of which 1,519 were issued to private students. Many of the students who left Japan came to the United States for a variety of reasons, ranging from the lack of opportunities at home to escaping conscription. By 1900, 24,000 Japanese were residing in the United States, with the number of arrivals increasing yearly.

Between 1900 and 1908, 140,000 Japanese entered the United States, about an average of 15,000 per year. The white population of the West Coast, particularly California, was alarmed at such numbers and perceived this large influx as a prelude to an invasion. Like the Chinese laborers before them, the white population of California resented the Japanese for working for far less money. On March 1, 1905, the California legislature passed a resolution urging the limitation of Japanese immigrants, characterizing them as “immoral, intemperate, quarrelsome men bound to labor for a pittance.” In California, groups such as the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, formed in May of that year, advocated the exclusion of Japanese immigrants to California, based on the model of the Chinese Exclusion Act that was passed in 1882. President Theodore Roosevelt, who had been mediating a resolution to the Russo-Japanese War, was exasperated at the tactless language of the California legislature. However, further outrages against Japanese immigrants continued.

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