Kaoru Ueda

Masako Iino

Yasuo Sakata

The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century

On a Collision Course

Martin Lukanov

On a Collision Course: The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Kaoru Ueda and published by the Hoover Institute Press, presents us with five hitherto untranslated academic articles by the Japanese preeminent scholar on migration and immigration studies, Yasuo Sakata. Though dating from the beginning of the 1990’s and, at least when it comes to the first two, coming from different publications, the texts present a very cohesive and in-depth history of the Japanese migration from the end of the Tokugawa shogunate to the first years of the Meiji Period, focusing on the dekasegi laborers and the major instances of anti-Japanese and anti-Asian accidents and political sentiments in the country. 

Being a translated academic volume on a topic as specific as the history of Japanese migration to the United States of America, On a Collision Course does not suffer from many of the problems of similar volumes such as complex and difficult to understand translation or incomprehensible logic. Though undoubtedly very dense and sometimes difficult to follow for non-specialists, the elegant and simple translation by a team of bilinguals and the coherence of the presented material, makes the book incredibly informative and interesting to read. 

Although focusing on a period more than a century ago, I believe that Yasuo Sakata’s volume cannot have come at a better time as it shows that the systematic racism towards non-whites in America is something that has originated more or less with the creation of the country and that the current views and sentiments of the government and the majority of its people are nothing else but continuation of the practices from the end of the 19th century. If anything, it shows that America was never and will never be a country made out of immigrants in the truest sense, but only one made by white immigrants.

On a Collision Course The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century

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