Imingaisha

Between 1894 and 1908 imingaisha, emigration companies, were the only means by which large groups of Japanese workers could obtain passage to Hawaii from Japan. These companies signed contracts with 125,000 men and women, promising them steady work in Hawaii with guaranteed wages for three years. For fifteen years these private emigration companies controlled the flow of Japanese emigrants to Hawaii. This book describes the life in Japan these emigrants left behind, some temporarily and others permanently, and what became of them once they arrived in Hawaii.

While many books have been written about this subject, Imingaisha is the first to place the motivations and actions of the emigrants in proper historical context. Alan Moriyama, fluent in both Japanese and English, has used a vast array of Japanese archival material on emigration and studied recent Japanese scholarship on the topic. He is also one of the very few to use oral history sources to present a balanced view of Japanese migration to Hawaii.

Imingaisha describes the government in Japan at the time, the growth of private enterprise during the Meiji period, and the specific contributions Japanese emigrants made to the modernization of their home country. The book also delineates the roles the Bureau of Immigration, the Japanese consulate, and the emigration company representatives played in Hawaii's immigration process; and it explains how the Japanese community in Hawaii confronted government and private institutions to secure a better life in the islands.