Chapter two

I just finished the second chapter of our reading in Takaki. My emotions are mixed. His points are stimulating, but I'm left with confusion as to what he really wants us to think.

A couple times Takaki mentions the experiences of his relatives relative to whatever it is that he is talking about at that moment. I'm not sure what to make of it. At first I feel like it takes away from the point that he's trying to make. This chapter is about population composites of the different Asian nationalities that immigrated to the United States and Hawaii in the mid/late 1800s and early 1900s. Randomly exemplifying his relatives as if they must be included offsets his well written history. The purpose, I'm assuming, was to bring it "closer to home", like "this happened, really, I promise". I can believe numbers and I am also tempted to believe what he writes, but including these examples bothers me for some reason.

You might say I'm missing the point, but I also think that Takaki was clouding what he was already writing eloquently. The "facts" speak for themselves. Asian men were hired as contractors for plantation work in Hawaii and California by western business. Women were not needed only until it became apparent that men that have their sexual needs met tend to get along and work more efficient, thus the influx of wifes/ females. Its harsh and its not pretty, but businessmen used other people's dire situations to coerce them into a "better" life that wasn't much different from the life they left.

Takaki makes it clear that in most cases immigrants were going to better instead of worse. But what is the difference between more worse and the most worst? Its clear that the United States and Hawaii were beacons of hope for those impoverished in transitioning states such as China and Korea. Japan was eager to push its workers out, making sure only the best were allowed to leave in order to show the rest of the world the superiority of the Japanese over their neighbors. Takaki doesn't say that directly, but its implied simply because every emigrant from Japan was interviewed researched by the Japanese government prior to departure. That fact is the most interesting to me. We are also informed that no Asian people were forced to come to the United States and Hawaii, they came on their own accord. Obviously, they were in dire situations and in some cases were obligated to repay debts through labor in the foreign, lands but it is quite clear there was no slave trading occurring. The only real tragedy, in my mind, was the subjugation of women to prostitution through the lies of "emigration salesman". There is nothing more wrong than a young woman being tricked into a live of enslaved prostitution. Takaki rightfully hangs on this point, making sure to tell us the proportion of woman who were prostitutes in each countries emigrating population.