| Official government-sponsored emigration from Japan to Hawai'i began in 1884 and shipments of Japanese with three year labor contracts continued for a decade. Almost a third of the twenty-nine thousand emigrants in this program came from three counties of Yamaguchi prefecture, an area that remained a prominent source of international labor migration until World War II. About half of the emigrants returned after their contracts expired, and well over half sent money back to their families, or creditors, in their Japanese hometowns. This dissertation examines the economic and social development of Yamaguchi prefecture, particularly southeastern Yamaguchi, through the lens of international labor migration.; Yamaguchi prefecture, though prosperous before the 1868 Meiji Restoration, was economically stagnant and politically quiescent by the 1880s. Oshima, Kuga and Kumage counties were among the poorest in Yamaguchi, which made them excellent recruiting areas for Hawaiian sugar cane plantations. Though anecdotal accounts of emigration suggest that the income returning from Hawai'i transformed these areas, economic statistics suggest that they barely kept pace with economic growth in the rest of Yamaguchi. Population figures show that the high emigration areas experienced substantial declines beginning in the mid-Meiji and continuing until the 1930s and 1940s. But there are some signs of lower poverty, and the outflow of labor reduced the population pressure on the area.; The influx of income may not have contributed to an economic boom in southeastern Yamaguchi, but it prevented the area from becoming depressed, and draining government resources or impeding the growth of the prefecture-wide economy. International emigration is generally neglected, even in local village histories of high emigration communities. This can be attributed partially to the continuity of international emigration with pre-modern labor migration practices known as dekasegi [sojourner migrant labor]. A more important reason for the neglect is the high mobility of the Japanese population in the Meiji era. People moved generally from low income rural areas to higher income urban areas, overseas or colonial possessions. This mobility is similar to international emigration in pattern and effect, exchanging excess labor for infusions of cash and capital, but not contributing to sustained rural growth. |
