Since 1639 Japanese had been forbidden to travel abroad by the Sakoku (seclusion) policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate government. After the coming of the U.S. Commodore Perry's ships to Japan in 1853, the government yielded to pressure from the surrounding foreign countries, including the U.S., and allowed its citizens to go abroad for the purpose of study or trade. In 1868, the first year (gannen) of the Meiji Era, some 190 Japanese contract laborers were shipped to Hawaii and Guam by an American broker without explicit government approval. They were called Gannen-mono ("first year people"). They were put under severe working conditions, contradictory to their expectations, and only a part of the workers were said to have returned home safe. In 1885 some 1,000 people emigrated to Hawaii as official emigrants (kan'yaku imin). In the following years, Japanese emigration expanded to various countries, including North America. Japanese emigration to Latin American countries started when the ship Kasatomaru left Kobe for Brazil with some 800 people on board. Today the greatest number of Nikkei (Japanese descent) people live in Brazil, followed by Peru, Argentina, and Mexico. Today some descendants of these Japanese emigrants have come back to Japan to work and experience the culture of their parents or grandparents.

As the Japanese emigrants spread all around the globe, they produced and left a variety of evidence of their lives, full of hardships, struggles, homesickness and pride for the home country. As the Issei (first generation emigrants) grew old and died, these precious historic materials were scattered and lost. Since the late 1970s, as the 100th anniversary of the first official emigration to Hawaii was approaching, studies of Japanese emigration became popular and scholars started to call for the immediate action of the government, saying that the country had to do something about these historic records which otherwise would be completely lost forever. In 1983 a group of Diet Members visited Sao Paulo, Brazil, and they recognized that collecting these historic materials on Japanese emigration should be a national undertaking and that it should be done by the National Diet Library (NDL) as the sole national library, whose mission is to preserve all the records of Japanese people's intellectual activities, whether inside or outside the country. Thus the NDL started to collect materials on Japanese emigration in 1984.

Prior to the formal start of the NDL's acquisition activities, the Kishi Collection and Nireki Collection had been purchased, and the Yamamoto Collection donated. These together comprise the core of the NDL's Imin Shiryo (emigrants' collections). From FY 1984 to 1990, the NDL carried out a 7-year Acquisition Program for Materials on Japanese Emigrants to South and Central America. Several staff members were sent to Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Dominica, Ecuador, and Venezuela. They collected materials on the following policy: If there are facilities such as libraries or museums collecting materials on Japanese emigrants in the country, the materials collected thereby should be preserved by the facilities of the respective country. In the above case, if there was only one copy of the material, the NDL made a photocopy or microfilm of the original material; and if there were duplicates, the NDL asked the owners for donation.

The 7-year program was extended to 1992, and during the course the Hara Collection was added as a donation from the Hara Family. From 1993 the target of the program moved to the North America. The acquisition program for materials in North America started from Hawaii. Currently the NDL is microfilming the materials collected by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

The NDL's collection on Japanese emigration amounts to about 5,100 titles of monographs, magazines, documents, etc., and 1,100 rolls of microfilms, as of November 2004. It consists of the following:

1) Kishi collection: Owned by Yoshio Kishi. About 1,700 volumes of monographs on Asian immigrants in the U.S., mainly in English. 

2) Nireki collection: Owned by Hisakazu Nireki. About 200 volumes of monographs, magazines, etc. on Japanese emigrants in Brazil, mainly in Japanese. It also includes the diary of Mr. Nireki which covers the period of the end of the World War II, during which the Japanese in Brazilian colonias fought against each other over their home country's victory-or-defeat (kachi-gumi make-gumi).

3) Yamamoto collection:Owned by George Yamamoto. About 600 volumes of monographs on Japanese emigrants in Hawaii, in Japanese or English.

4) Hara collection: Owned by Noboru Hara, a Japanese trader in Argentina. 1,366 bags of documents and 18 boxes of other related materials including samples of buttons and cloth. This collection includes the hand-written accounting books, ledger sheets, and other materials related to the Mr. Hara's trade business.

5) Other materials collected by NDL staff sent overseas.

They include many personal documents, diaries, photographs, cassette and video tapes recording personal narratives. They also include government records such as boarding lists of emigrants. The collections from the UCLA include the records of a Japanese Relocation Camp during World War II, "Manzanar War Relocation Center Records 1942-1946."

These materials on Japanese emigration can be seen in the Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room by prior reservation except that Western-language monographs of the Hara collection are stored in book stacks with other ordinary books and are available at the Book Counter. 

Materials on Japanese emigration owned by the NDL can be searched by the following catalogs and bibliographies:

Catalogs

1) Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan Tokubetsu Shiryoshitu Shozo Imin Kankei Shiryo Mokuroku = Catalog of Materials Related to Japanese Immigrants Collected by the Special Materials Room of the National Diet Library (in Japanese) March 1997.

2) Card catalogs of the Kishi Collection, Nireki Collection, Yamamoto Collection and Hara Collection*, available in the Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room. 

*Western-language monographs of the Hara Collection can be also searched on the NDL-OPAC.

3) Catalogs of Collections from the UCLA, etc.

Available in the Modern Japanese Political History Materials Room 

Bibliographies 

Materials on Japanese immigrants and descendants in Hawaii and North America / edited by Jin Shigeji. Reference Service and Bibliography, No. 47 (Mar. 1997), 48 (Oct. 1997), 52 (Mar. 2000), 54 (Mar. 2001), 58 (Mar.2003). This is an annotated bibliography on the above subject including the materials not owned by the NDL.

Reference

Umi wo watatta Nihonjin / Makio Okabe. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2002.

(NDL call no.: DC812-G182)