Gentlemen's Agreement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the general term, see Gentlemen's agreement

The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 (日米紳協約, Nichibei Shinshi Kyōyaku^?) was an informal agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan regarding immigration and racial segregation.

The Agreement was not a single document, but was a series of six diplomatic notes exchanged between Japan and the United States from late 1907 to early 1908.

The immediate cause of the Agreement was anti-Japanese racism in California, which had become increasingly xenophobic after the Japanese victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. On 11 October 1906, the San Francisco, California Board of Education had passed a regulation whereby children of Japanese descent would be required to attend racially segregated separate schools. At the time, Japanese immigrants made up approximately 1% of the population of California; many of them had come under the treaty in 1894 which had assured free immigration from Japan.

In the Agreement, Japan agreed not to issue passports for Japanese citizens wishing to work in the continental United States, thus effectively eliminating new Japanese immigration to America. In exchange, the United States agreed to accept the presence of Japanese immigrants already residing in America, and to permit the immigration of wives, children and parents, and to void legal discrimination against Japanese children in California schools.

There was also a strong desire on the part of the Japanese government to preserve the image of the Japanese people in the eyes of the world: Japan did not want America to pass a ‘Japanese Exclusion Act’ similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act. President Theodore Roosevelt, who had a positive opinion of Japan, accepted the Agreement as proposed by Japan as an alternative to more formal, restrictive immigration legislation.

The Agreement was later unilaterally abrogated by the United States with the United States Immigration Act of 1924.

[edit] References & additional reading

Daniels, Roger. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion. University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0520219503