Read the article and answer Two questions with three paragraph  -Humanities

Your team will be assigned a chapter from Franklin Odo’s Voices from the Canefields and prepare four pieces of writing based on that chapter. -First, you will write a paragraph (or less) that you would include in a United States history textbook based on your chapter. -Second, you will write one to two paragraphs that you would include in an Asian American history textbook based on your chapter.
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3
Despair and Defiance
Ame wa furidasu yō—
Sentaku wa nureru
Sena no ko wa naku
Manma kogeru
A sudden downpour
Drenches the laundry
Baby on my back sobs—
And the rice just burned
I
n the rough-and-tumble world of sugar plantations at the turn of the
twentieth century, the largely bachelor world of the issei was fraught
with social dislocation. To ensure some semblance of family and community life, the Japanese government had mandated that women make up
at least 20 percent of all contract laborers. As a rising “modern” nation,
Japan was determined to avoid the negative perception of Chinese communities on the West Coast of the United States, where men outnumbered
women by nearly twenty to one, and prostitution, drugs, and gambling
allegedly ran rampant. This strategy largely succeeded, but with serious
unintended consequences. By 1900 there was every indication that the
Japanese ethnic community had sunk deep roots into Hawaiian soil with
a large and growing population. The Japanese American community could
boast Buddhist temples and Christian churches, newspapers, cultural
groups, medical institutions, schools, merchant associations, and highly
diversified occupational opportunities. All this occurred while the haole
elite planned for a Japanese labor force that would return to Japan rather
than creating a new racial “problem” in Hawai`i. Yet conditions in the
rural plantation camps and urban Honolulu were raw and rough. Workers
lived in less than rudimentary housing conditions, wearing threadbare
clothing, at best, and living in simple shacks or senningoya (long sheds
housing many people). Bathhouses were in the open, and men walked to
and from these Japanese-style ofuro completely nude, while many women
wore only underskirts.
The holehole bushi cover a range of topics and provide important commentary on many of these difficult conditions. While they do not provide
39
a comprehensive review of immigration and plantation work and life, they
are among the most passionate and lively commentaries of issei life extant.
Although we can safely assume that most of the holehole bushi originally
and spontaneously composed and sung on the plantations have since been
forgotten, the surviving songs include themes that warrant our attention.
The despair of Japanese immigrant workers mired in appalling conditions
gave rise to some of the same reactions emanating from the slaves of the
Americas. Indeed the very creation and singing of holehole bushi in tedious
and solitary work or in unison in the fields, or otherwise in the comfort of
teahouses, accompanied by musicians and lubricated by quantities of sake,
was also an expression of defiance—the refusal to submit meekly to persistent disrespect and degradation. Those who gave in to despair were
unlikely to have had their voices heard––even those who simply recorded
their terrible ordeals may be considered blessed beyond the fate of those
who simply disappeared from history. For Japanese Americans, there is a
special need to attend to the individuals who vanished, who did not return
to family villages in Japan “bearing a victorious banner” (hito hata) or “clad
in silk embroidery” (nishiki), who do not have graves tended by dutiful
descendants, who do not have entries in family memoirs, and who do not
have their names on recognition plaques hanging in universities, museums,
libraries, or highways. We have no idea how many songs existed at any
given point in time and what other subjects may have surfaced. Many of
the holehole bushi, like folk songs everywhere, simply disappeared because
people stopped singing them. The existing holehole bushi lyrics provide a
glimpse into that historical void.
For some, especially the women who arrived as brides meeting grooms
who were unknown quantities and whose lifestyles were completely unanticipated, the despair could begin immediately upon arrival. A poignant
image evoked by one song comes from a “picture bride” who languishes in
the immigration station while awaiting her husband:1
Watash’ya kurō wo
Sennin goya yo
Nushi ni au no mo
Ima nanuka
My hardship begins
In this long immigration barrack
Waiting for my husband
Today marks one full week
This woman had probably agreed to a marriage as traditionally sanctioned in Japan and been accepted into her husband’s family by being
entered into its koseki tōhon (family register). That formality allowed
her to enter the United States as a spouse, although, as we will see, she
may well have used this as a device to defy U.S. immigration restrictions
and immigrate as a laborer. But after a long steamship ride, most likely
in steerage, she is disappointed by the failure of her new husband to
claim her at the immigration station and has been in the senningoya for
a week.
For the first few decades after their arrival in Hawai`i, workers toiled six
days a week, ten hours a day in the fields and twelve hours in the mills,
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Voices from the Cane Fields
with no vacation time or sick leave. Workers interacted mostly with the
luna, their immediate supervisors, not the haole managers or plantation
owners, who were at the top of the plantation hierarchy. The luna threatened, harassed, and at times beat the workers. Workers who broke any of
the myriad rules governing their behavior on the job or in the community
were hustled off to a local court and plantation justice. Punished by fines
for the slightest infraction, the issei soon learned that the courts functioned to enforce discipline on the plantations rather than to dispense
justice. Indeed, for many violations, three days in jail appeared to be the
standard punishment. In preparation for their jail term, they brought their
plantation store–issued red blankets:
Asu wa korokoro yō—
Mikka wa kimari
Akai mōfu de
Karabōshi.
Tomorrow I go to court
I’ll get three days for sure
Might as well bring my
Red blanket
One picture bride, Sogi Nami, commented, “If the Japanese took a case to
court we knew we would not win the case because we couldn’t speak English
to make ourselves understood. We just had to bear the suffering even if it
was unreasonable.”2 Conditions certainly improved after the annexation
of Hawai`i to the United States; but the protection of the U.S. Constitution
was often spotty and arbitrary, and the court system consistently favored
the plantations well after World War II.
Plantation workers regularly petitioned the Japanese consul general to
intervene on their behalf by negotiating with plantation owners for better
treatment or pay. There were occasional long marches, sometimes overnight, from plantations to the consulate in Honolulu for direct appeals, but
the workers were invariably turned away by the Japanese authorities. Sogi
Nami commented, “I wouldn’t say it positively but it seems the Japanese
government had deserted their own people. . . . I wonder what kind of policy
it was to ignore those who were having trouble in a strange country. I think
the Japanese government should have checked on the situation. . . . We were
treated like animals. . . . We were inferior to the chickens and pigs of today.”3
In the face of illicit plantation activities, such as gambling, the Japanese
government was nowhere to be found. Instead a Christian missionary, Takie
Okumura, took the lead in confronting gangs and organizing issei community leaders to clean up the district. Consequently Okumura received
thinly veiled death threats from gangs like the Hinode Kurabu. One of the
Hinode newsletters hinted that Okumura should be especially careful on
“dark, moonless nights.” The Japanese government was concerned only to
the extent that it sent official investigators and admonished workers, in fits
of nationalistic exhortation, to refrain from losing their hard-earned money
to the Chinese gambling houses.4
Indeed the despair felt by the immigrants is a consistent theme throughout
their long history of confrontation with the powerful planters and their
disappointment in ineffective and corrupt government officials:5
Despair and Defiance
41
Dekasegi wa kuru kuru
Hawai wa tsumaru
Ai no Nakayama
Kane ga furu
The workers keep coming
Overflowing these Islands
But it’s only middleman Nakayama
Who rakes in the dough
Once a high-ranking samurai official under the Tokugawa Shogunate,
Nakayama Jōji became chief inspector of the Japanese section of the Hawaii
Bureau of Immigration.6 In addition to a hefty salary from the Hawaiian
government, Nakayama extorted money from the issei. For example, he
demanded a fee from the workers for wives arriving from Japan, until he
was ordered to desist by the Hawaiian government.7 Another historical
figure, Andō Tarō, was the Consul General from Japan in the 1890s. His
tenure was marked by general dissatisfaction on the part of Japanese
immigrants:
Hizamoto ni bakuchi
Mameya wa sakan nari
Ome ni mienu ka
Kuraki andon
Gambling right under your nose
Whorehouses thriving
Can’t see any of this
Dark lantern8
Figure 3.1 Jōji Nakayama, n.d. Nakayama arrived on the first boatload of
government contract workers. He was the despised head of the Japanese
section of the Hawaiian government’s Bureau of Immigration because he
ignored pleas for support from the issei workers and instead used his
office to extort money from them. He was a former high-ranking samurai
and a Meiji government functionary serving in many posts. Photographer
unknown.
42
Voices from the Cane Fields
Given such shabby treatment from officials of their own Japanese government, the immigrants had a special term for themselves; rather than imin
(immigrants), they sometimes used the clever rhyme kimin (rejected or
abandoned subjects).
The harsh conditions of plantation life were embodied in the worst of
society’s evils, best summed up by male immigrant commentators as sake,
onna, bakuchi (alcohol, women, and gambling).9 These evils were easily
obtained by workers seeking to cope with plantation life. Designed to keep
workers docile and keep out “troublemakers,” the plantations’ police systems welcomed gangs providing alcohol, prostitutes, and gambling opportunities. By contrast, immigrant advocates, labor organizers, and Japanese
journalists were clearly identified as the worst of the troublemakers. Thus,
from the very first boatload of workers from Japan, the issei made or bought
alcohol on the plantations from almost anything they could find. Contract
laborers arriving after 1885 found plenty of resources to brew or distill
alcohol for consumption. Indeed anything with sugar or starch could be
fermented or distilled for alcohol of varying strengths. Later, when pineapple plantations became commonplace, pineapple “swipe” became notorious. Bootleg liquor was common well into the days leading up to World
War II.10 From the first boatload of issei to arrive in Hawai`i, alcohol provided a tempting escape for workers tethered to the simultaneously tedious
and brutal cycle of sugar work. For example, the first boat from Japan
included a thirteen-year-old, hard-drinking teenager named Ichigoro,
nicknamed Mamushi-no-Ichi or “Ichi the Viper.” Ichigoro may not have
been so unusual; most of the 944 workers were miserable misfits in the
fields. Perhaps this was unsurprising since so many had been recruited
from the streets of urban Yokohama:11
Ame ga fur’ya neru yō—
Tenki nara yasumu
Sora ga kumoreba
Sake wo nomu
Let me sleep if it rains
Rest when it’s pleasant
And when clouds fill the sky
Let me drink my sake
The workers did not have to leave the plantations to find prostitutes or
gambling. Some plantations allowed professional gamblers on their properties to conduct nightly sessions. On paydays, gangs based in Honolulu
sent teams of gamblers and prostitutes into more remote plantation
camps. Several organized Japanese gangs operated with impunity, allegedly having bribed the police, and organized well over two hundred prostitutes and several hundred pimps, gangsters, and professional gamblers.
Gambling was legendary on the sugar plantations.12 Indeed gambling
has a long and storied history in Japanese culture, and the issei certainly
did more than their share to perpetuate this aspect of their heritage.
Gambling has been a powerful force in Japanese and Japanese American
culture, evolving from at least feudal Japan to the experiences of the issei
and their descendants. In fact “lots” of gambling, along with weekly movies
from Japan, was the only organized form of entertainment available,
recalled Iwasaki Shigeto.13 Because plantations provided their own security
Despair and Defiance
43
Figure 3.2 Celebration of first sake brewed in Hawai`i, branded
Takarajima or “treasure island,” 1908. The company, Honolulu Sake
Brewery and Ice Co., innovated refrigerated conditions because the
Islands lacked Japanese winters needed for production. Photographer
unknown.
forces, county or city police officers did not interfere. Gambling was a pervasive problem among the issei on the American mainland as well.14
Matsumura Tomoji, who learned holehole bushi after arriving in Honolulu in 1907 to work on the Aiea Plantation, a few miles outside Honolulu,
sang these songs while performing holehole work. He remembered the
games, conducted every night beginning at 6 p.m. and ending promptly at
9 p.m. Four or five long wooden tables were set up, and so many kerosene
lanterns hung from tree branches that it made the scene “look like a city.”
Chinese gamblers, who brought their operations directly onto the plantation premises, shouted “Hare hare,” the Japanese equivalent of “Place
your bets,” as they rolled the dice. Men stole precious cash, hidden by
their wives, in order to indulge in the games.15 Sometimes they gambled
away all the cash available:
Sanjūgosen de yō—
Mōketa kane wo
Yoru wa hare hare de
Mina torare
The 35 cents I earned
Working all day long
At night playing “hare hare”
Gambled it all away
For example, on the island of Kauai, Baishiro Kaneshiro toiled on the
Kilauea Plantation but periodically took sabbaticals of about six months
to gamble full time: “When I won, I would pay for my cook charge first of
all. If not, I had to borrow money [to eat].”16
44
Voices from the Cane Fields
Gangs also went to the plantation camps seeking women who had been
disillusioned with life or their new husbands and tempting them with new
“opportunities” or simply kidnapping them. One song was written about
the Hinode Kurabu gang and its practice of kidnapping plantation wives:
Hinode kurabu wa
Oni yori kowai
Wahine torarete
Kane made wo
The Hinode Gang
More terrifying than demons
They take our women
And even our money
Here it appears that the composer/singer is upset with gang members for
taking his wife but that taking his money was salt in the wound! The Japanese term kurabu was derived from the English “club” and is now generally used in a benign sense, as a club or fraternity or social group; in the
earlier context, however, the word signified a group with manifestly sinister intent and behavior. The Hawaiian word wahine is invariably used in
these lyrics to mean “wife” or “lover.”17
Prostitution flourished in the period between 1894 and 1900, when private contract companies in Japan supplied laborers for Hawaii’s plantations.18 Conditions in Hawai`i produced both the more refined geisha in
the ryōriya (teahouses, restaurants) as well as the prostitutes working the
Figure 3.3 “Gambling for Japanese” (Nihonjin bakuchijo), ca. 1910. This
was probably part of a carnival in Honolulu and may have been operated
by a notorious gang, the Banzai Club. “50 bucks a chance” probably
referred to 50 yen. Photograph by L. E. Edgeworth.
Despair and Defiance
45
plantations and the urban areas of Honolulu and Hilo.19 The earliest
ryōriya was probably the Tanzantei, or Sandalwood Mountain Restaurant.
Early Chinese called Hawai`i “Sandalwood Mountain” because it supplied
so much of the fragrant wood prized in China for incense. Tanzantei was
established in Honolulu in 1891 by Okamura Hirokichi, from Yamaguchi
Prefecture. The name was most likely designed to attract Chinese clients
since, in 1891, there were still relatively few issei in Honolulu. While clients came from all ethnic groups, many were Chinese. Some Chinese men
married native women, but immigration exclusion had relegated many
Chinese workers to perpetual bachelorhood, and prostitutes were often
their only recourse for sexual release. By 1900 there were about ten restaurants and brothels in Honolulu, mainly located in a district bordered
by the waterfront, Nuuanu, River, and Pauahi Streets in Chinatown; all
were destroyed by the great Chinatown fire of 1900.
The Chinatown fire was intentionally set to combat the bubonic outbreak; the Native Hawaiian term for the bubonic plague was mai Pake
(Chinaman’s disease). The image of Chinese and Chinese American society as filthy breeding grounds for disease was well developed in the United
States before 1900. Race and medical science were seriously intertwined
at the time. “Filth and Chinatown” became tropes for conflating “race and
place” as boundaries of “racial geography.”20
As noted in one holehole bushi, gambling was an ongoing tragedy that
continued even after the Chinatown fire, which burned out not only residents but also numerous gangs engaged in prostitution and gambling.21
Pesuto was Japanese (pest) for the bubonic plague; shufu is Japanese for
“the capital”:
Shufu no Nihonjin wa yō—
Pesuto de yakare
Ima wa chi-ha ni
Mata kogare
The Japanese in Honolulu
Burned in the plague
Now scorched again
Gambling at chi fa
Chi fa is a lottery, of Chinese origin, still played, with lucky balls being
plucked from about fifty chances. Gamblers bet on balls with certain Chinese characters, like the “numbers” rackets in the West. The house used
tongs or chopsticks to pluck winning entries from a bowl or vase. Typical
characters included traditional virtues like “righteous” and “virtuous.”22
After the Chinatown fire of 1900, it did not take long for the gangs to
regroup and resume the business of prostitution. With Honolulu’s former
Chinatown area being redeveloped by haole authorities, the gangs simply
created another red light district in Iwilei, between Honolulu and Pearl
Harbor:23
Tsuki ni ichido no
Honoruru kayoi
Hana no Ibirei
Niku no ichi
46
Voices from the Cane Fields
On our monthly trek
To Honolulu for
The “flowers of Iwilei”
Marketplace of flesh
Figure 3.4 The Chinatown fire of 1900, as seen from Nuuanu Avenue in
Honolulu. Over seven thousand people lost their homes, about half of
whom were Japanese immigrants. Several holehole bushi describe the
anger of the immigrants, whose plight was ignored by Governor Sanford
Dole. Photograph by H. R. Hanna.
After the fire, and until Prohibition, the number of restaurants and
brothels increased to about thirty; some were very elegant, including the
Mochizuki in Waikiki, and all remained open through the night. The
women who provided entertainment were retained through the geisha
kumiai and ryōtei kumiai, guilds for geisha and restaurants. During the
early 1900s there were about fifty geisha in Honolulu, half of whom were
second-generation nisei. All were intensively trained in Japanese music
and dance. Fees, or hanadai, as they were also called in Japan, were 3 dollars for one to two hours and 5 dollars for a party engagement. Some geisha
were able to perform at four or five parties in one night. Their clients were
resident issei and visitors from Japan—merchants, seamen, journalists,
bankers, and staff from the consulate. Clients who neglected to pay were
not rare, so enterprising (or desperate) former clients became collection
agents.24 These clients were among the elite of issei society in Hawai`i.
While the geisha were not considered prostitute …
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