VS Overseas Migration

Japanese Overseas Migration Museum is an unique museum. It is in Minato Mirai area in Yokohama and managed by JICA, Japan International Cooperation Agency.
I have visited the museum for business before, but not watched their exhibition yet.
That's why I went to watch it recently. I could study the history of Japanese immigrants very well.

Japanese started to go overseas for working or studying at the end of Edo period, the middle of 19 centuries. Before then, Japan was almost closed to foreign countries, and most Japanese were inhibited to go abroad by Edo government.
After they were permitted to go overseas, first, they went to Hawaii for working.
Some went there to get much money. Some tried to study more progressive knowledge in America. At that time, Hawaii was a dream land for Japanese.
Japanese government didn't seem to encourage the people to go overseas at first, because they thought Japanese people were treated like a slave by American, but soon later it tried to help people go there. They realised the experience in the developed country was useful.

Japanese made their own community in Hawaii, and some of them went to other cities in North America soon.
As we can easily guess, the rapid increasing of Japanese immigrants caused strong reaction in America at that time.
They saw Jap a dangerous-being.
In an early last century, Anti Japanese Immigrant Law was adopted in United States. Therefore, Japanese stopped going there.
But soon, they changed their dream land. The new dream land was the south American countries.
Japanese government assisted people to go there very much, and the people made a new communities there.
Of course, the reaction to Japanese immigrant had happened there too, but it was weaker than the one in U.S.
That's why Japanese communities in South America are bigger than in North America.

Most Japanese don't know or forget the existence of Japanese immigrants living overseas. We lost the relationship with them. Why?
One of my customer (He is investigating the history of Japanese immigrant) explained me that Japanese family structure is the reason.
He says that the category of "family" is very small for Japanese. So, we seem to lose social relationship with our relatives easily.
Actually, my grand father's brother or sister is a special person for me. I wouldn't lend money to them.

To study the forgotten phase of Japanese history, I can recomend you to go to the museum, which is located near Sakuragi-cho station.
After I visited it, I found a Hawaiian bar near there.
To share the dream with the ancient Japanese, I drunk an Hawaiian beer "Tsunami" there. Mmm, delicious.