Unlike today, when overseas travel is by plane, in the past, it was common for people to travel by sea from Japan, an island nation. People who immigrated to North and South America also had to travel by ship for a long time before finally arriving in a foreign land.
Countless people boarded large passenger ships from Yokohama and Kobe. If you go to the Nippon Yusen Historical Museum near the port of Yokohama, you can find materials that explain what the ships that carried these immigrants were like at the time, but there are not many books that focus on the theme of immigrant ships. Perhaps the only book that has been published is "The History of Japanese Immigration as Seen through Ships: From the Kasato Maru to Cruise Ships" (Yamada Yoshio, Chuko Shinsho, 1998).
As the Japan Society for the Study of Immigration suggests, immigration is studied from various angles, but the author of this book, Yamada Yoshio, is not an immigration researcher; rather, he is an expert who belongs to the Japan Maritime History Society, an academic society that conducts "historical research on the humanities and technology related to ships, navigation, water transportation, and fisheries."
In the afterword, Yamada writes that when he attempted to tackle the history of emigrant ships, he noticed that there were very few descriptions of them in the relevant historical documents, and he felt it was puzzling that there was so little interest in emigrant ships, which served as a bridge to a new land, in the history of immigration.
However, he felt he understood the reason for this after reading "Soubou." "Soubou" is a trilogy of novels written by Tatsuzo Ishikawa about immigrants to Brazil, and the first part, published in 1935 (later becoming the first part), won the first Akutagawa Prize that same year.
In Part 2, Yamada comes across the following passage: "For all the immigrants on this ship, the 45 days of the voyage were almost a blank page in their lives. Their goal was the farmland of Brazil, and life on board the ship until they reached there was simply meaningless. It was a boring period in which all that mattered was that they were strong and reached the other side." Yamada says, "Indeed, for many of the immigrants, life on board the ship may have been a blank page in their lives."
It is true that most of the immigrants were not wealthy, and they were rocked about in third-class cabins, which could hardly be described as comfortable, so there was little interest in immigrant ships and they probably never spoke about them. However, it was ships that transported immigrants from the very beginning of immigration. Ships and immigrants are inseparably linked, and since ocean routes themselves were supported by the large demand for transporting immigrants, the author considers immigrant ships, as part of the history of passenger ships, to be linked to the history of immigration.
The fate of ships changes with war
Overall, the book focuses mainly on immigration to South America and immigrant ships, but it also provides detailed explanations of what kind of ships were used, what routes they took, and how they operated, what the long voyage was like, what the facilities on board were like, and how people prepared for the voyage...
First, let's talk about the famous immigrant ship, Kasato Maru. In 1908 (Meiji 41), the first contracted immigrants from Japan to Brazil, 160 or so families, and 781 people, boarded the Toyo Kisen Kasato Maru, and the history of this ship is very interesting. As expected from an expert in maritime history, the explanations of the ships that appear are very detailed.
The Kasato Maru was launched in the UK as the passenger and cargo ship Potosi, and was later sold to the Russian Volunteer Fleet Association, where it underwent additional work and became the volunteer ship Kazan. Its home port was Odessa (Ukraine), and it was used on the Odessa-Nagasaki-Vladivostok route. When the Russo-Japanese War broke out, it was anchored at Port Arthur, where the Russian Pacific Fleet was holed up, but after the fall of Port Arthur it was seized by the Japanese Navy, and renamed Kazan and renamed Kasato Maru. It is said that Toyo Kisen, which operated immigrant ships, borrowed it from the Ministry of the Navy and used it on the Far East-West Coast of South America route.
Although not to this extent, the cargo-passenger ships that served as immigrant ships traveled to ports around the world, changing their routes and roles, and after completing their roles, they were forced to respond to the approaching war. Some, like the Buenos Aires Maru and the Argentina Maru, were transformed for military use and to promote national prestige.
Like the Kasato Maru, many ships that served as immigrant ships to South America ended up being used to transport military goods.
"Some were transformed into special naval vessels. The Sansu Maru and the Rio de Janeiro Maru were converted into submarine tenders, and the Argentina Maru was commissioned as the aircraft carrier Umitaka. All of the ships fell victim to the war and sank to the bottom of the sea," the author concludes in the book's chapter, "Immigrant Ships during the Heyday of Immigration to Brazil."
Emigrant ships (cargo and passenger ships) carried Japanese people who crossed the seas to foreign lands, filled with anxieties and hopes, but immigration came to a halt when the war occurred and all ships came under state control. As they navigated the Pacific Ocean and other areas of Japanese influence at the time, they were attacked by submarines one after another, and approximately 2,700 ships sunk as wartime wrecks.
Route around the Earth
The first group of Japanese immigrants overseas were the group known as the Gannenmono, who emigrated to Hawaii in 1868. This was followed by a group from the Aizu clan led by Prussian Henry Schnell, a military advisor to the clan, who settled west of Sacramento in California and founded the Wakamatsu Colony.
They traveled on foreign sailing ships and steamships, but later, "government-contracted immigration" to Hawaii began through government agreements, and Japanese and American ships were used. When the era of private-contract immigration began, with immigration companies acting as the intermediary instead of government contracts, the first ship to be used was the chartered ship Aikoku-maru, but at that time many of the ships purchased from overseas were old and worn.
When contract labor was prohibited by law, the era of immigration to America by free travel began, and in 1896 (Meiji 29), Nippon Yusen opened a regular route between Hong Kong, Japan, and Seattle, and the newly emerging Toyo Kisen opened a route to San Francisco. However, anti-Japanese sentiment grew after this, the number of travelers decreased, and immigrant ships were affected. So immigration companies turned their attention to South America, and routes to South America became more active.
This book closely traces the history of sea routes and immigrant ships to South America, including Brazil and Peru. Emigration to South America was temporarily suspended during the war, but resumed after the war. The first immigrant ship to South America, the Sakura Maru, crossed the Pacific Ocean from Yokohama to Peru in 1899 (Meiji 32), did not stop at any ports during its voyage of over a month.
From there, there were several routes to South America: one that crossed the Pacific Ocean, stopped off in North America, then went south to Peru or Chile, another that stopped off in North America, passed through the Panama Canal on the way to the Atlantic Ocean, and reached Brazil or Argentina; and another that stopped off in Japan, stopped off in Singapore, headed west, passed through Kenya in Africa, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach the South American continent. In any case, immigrants, especially those to South America, finally reached their destination after a long voyage from east to west.
As time went on and the environment on board ships improved, long voyages became less of a burden, but originally, third-class cabins were stuffy, with beds made from silkworm racks, ventilation only provided by natural ventilation and electric fans, and almost no privacy.
There were also incidents of epidemics occurring during the voyage, some resulting in deaths. This book provides detailed descriptions of the facilities on board the ship and life during the voyage. The hardships and anxieties aboard the ship are immeasurable. However, the days of struggle that began in a new land likely caused the experiences on board to be forgotten. It is easy to see why there are so few records of immigrant ships.
© 2022 Ryusuke Kawai
