Hainichi iminho to nichibei kankei: "Hanihara shokan" no shinso to sono "Judainaru kekka." (The Japanese exclusion act and U.S.-Japanese relations: The truth behind the "Hanihara note" and its "grave consequences")

Hainichi iminho to nichibei kankei: "Hanihara shokan" no shinso to sono "Judainaru kekka" (The Japanese exclusion act and U.S.-Japanese relations: The truth behind the "Hanihara note" and its "grave consequences"). By Toshihiro Minohara. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003. viii, 342 pp. ¥10,000, ISBN 4-00024412-4.) In Japanese.

The Japanese took the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 as a great grievance. Anti-American demonstrations erupted throughout Japan. In Tokyo, a forty-year-old man committed hara-kiri by the American embassy site, and two men took down and carried away the American flag flying at the embassy. A large crowd of over twenty thousand held a protest rally against the law. The people in the major cities demanded a boycott of American goods, and Japanese movie companies banned importation of American movies.

The law that incited such violent reactions is the subject of Professor Toshihiro Minohara's book, a revision of his Kobe University dissertation. He tells a familiar story,...