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of the Chinese migrants hailed from southern China: Guangdong and
Fujian – the ‘traditional’ areas of Chinese emigration – and the treaty ports
of Shanghai and Ningbo. 11 Western travellers in Japan did not fail to notice
the dominant Chinese presence in Japanese treaty ports. Miss Isabella Bird
noted that
one cannot be a day in Yokohama without seeing quite a different
class of orientals from the small, thinly dressed, and usually
poor-looking Japanese. Of the 2,500 Chinamen who reside in
Japan, over 1,100 are in Yokohama, and if they were suddenly
removed, business would come to an abrupt halt. Here, as everywhere,
the Chinese immigrant is making himself indispensable. 12
Major Henry Knollys was of similar opinion and remarked:
The ubiquitous Chinamen crop up here again in the shape of
domestic servants, in which capacity they are far superior to,
and more reliable than, the natives. . . . The plodding, businesslike
unlovable Chinese on the other hand will at any sacrifice
adhere to their contracts, and great as is their unpopularity,
monopolise most of the important posts in English firms. They
keep themselves very much apart as a class community, and, as
a matter of course, are abhorred by the Japanese. 13
Japanese generally resented Chinese because of their advantageous associations
with Westerners. Chinese warehouse keepers and skilled negotiators
of Western firms easily manipulated relatively inexperienced Japanese
businessmen and shared in the prosperity deriving from the Western
monopoly of Japan’s foreign trade. 14 On the other hand, the negative
image that the Chinese community acquired at the time was caused by
poor hygiene in the residential areas that accommodated Chinese labourers,
with cheap hotels, grog-shops and the drunken sailors they attracted.
Despite many practical skills such as Western-style tailoring and hairdressing
that Chinese passed on to the Japanese, the latter held the former in
very low esteem, an attitude that was further inflamed by the Japanese
victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War (1895). As elsewhere, a
prejudice against Chinese was strong and Chinatowns were perceived as
ethnic ghettos infested with crime and disease. 15
It is by no means surprising that in such circumstances Chinese
food did not appeal to the Japanese and they hardly ever ventured into a
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