Arts Faculty » Public-History-Institute » Public-Lectures » 2006-Kimono-Series »

2006 Public Lecture Series - Institute for Public History

Finding Dame Nellie Melba's butler: the hidden history of Victoria's Japanese immigrants 1869-1943.

Dr Pam Oliver, School of Historical Studies, Monash University.

(Public lecture given at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne, 9 April 2006 as part of the lecture series for the exhibition 'From Kimono to Sushi - The Japanese in Victoria'.)

Introduction

Dame Nellie Melba employed a Japanese butler at her home in Coldstream roughly between 1915 and 1917. His name was Thomas Nagai (NAAACT: A367/1, C71179). He is not recorded in any biographies of Melba. In contrast- and without minimising one jot the significance of their story- the first Australian war brides are well known to the point where one could be forgiven for thinking they were the first Japanese immigrants to Victoria. The stories of hundreds of other Japanese people, like Nagai have remained hidden. And one must ask - why?

Only 15 years ago, in 1991, the State Library of Victoria mounted an exhibition entitled: 'Sojourners and Settlers from Japan in Victoria 1897-1991'. The Curator, Morag Low found few records on pre World War 2 Japanese and even fewer individual stories to use as highlights for that period. The exhibition featured Takasuka, the rice grower of Swan Hill, and Sets Taroo Hasegawa, a teacher in Japan who immigrated as a houseboy. It also included a photo of the Geelong Community on a picnic. This dearth of information led the accompanying brochure to state that 'opportunities for contact' between the white and Japanese communities were rare. Further, that the 'history of Australia-Japan relations has, on the whole, been characterised by lack of close personal communication'. These were reasonable conclusions to make on the basis of what they had found.

The current exhibition makes these statements sound startling as it demonstrates a wealth of personal contact. It also raises several questions. How and why do histories become 'hidden' or 'silent'? Why, as so many have asked me during the lead up to this exhibition, has the history of the Japanese in Victoria remained hidden until now? What has been uncovered? How was it uncovered?

I am going to speak a little bit about how histories become hidden and found again, then look at the general context of emigration from Japan and within that context examine stories of some of those who came to Victoria and the surprises and significance that these contain.

Hidden histories

The subject of 'hidden histories' touches on the issue of what is remembered and what is forgotten. What do we choose to remember, and what do we edit out along the way? Why do some parts of the past make it into the record of history to be retold over the decades, and even commemorated in national life, yet others disappear. We can all provide a list of events whose anniversaries make the news through the year. What we perhaps don't realise is that the list would differ to some degree from decade to decade. What makes it into the historical record and popular memory can be determined by current values, great achievements or disasters and the national agenda of the day (Fredericksen 2004). It is not surprising, for example, that events commemorating wars have assumed a growing national significance, especially since September 11. Today, the two great wars attract greater interest as those who fought in them depart this life and the younger generations want to know more about what these men and women experienced. The perceived continuing public interest in war stories has also been reflected in the media interest in this exhibition when journalists immediately zeroed in on the parts of the story involving the war and the war brides.

In the case of the Japanese in Victoria, as recognised in 1991, their importance in trade has never been in doubt but information on trade with Japan is thought perhaps to lack the personal appeal and action of war stories. This was very obvious to me when one reporter last week asked me a final throw away question about trade and whether the prospects for the relationship in the future looked strong. The rest of the 45 minutes involved questions about the war, the brides, personal stories, intermarriage and gender.

One major reason for the hidden status of Japanese immigrants' history has, until very recently, been lack of records. However, even when records are readily available it takes a catalyst to generate sufficient interest for people to actually read them. Two catalysts led to the recovery of the Japanese records and of the story.

Since the 1990s, Japanese people, especially tourists and descendants of Japanese who lived in Australia, have sought to discover more about the lives of their families in Australia. This search has become widespread particularly as Japanese companies also begin to write one hundred year and even one hundred and fifty year histories of their operations around the world.

I became involved in the search for one hidden story at the request of a family in 1996 (Oliver, 2000). In that year the first book appeared on the Japanese in Australia, as distinct from scholarly articles, covering the internment experience (Nagata, 1996). It included brief stories of hundreds of Japanese people. The story was 'coming out' and has continued to do so. My first problem was whether the grandfather I was searching for had left any records. This search for records both catalogued and uncatalogued in the National Archives of Australia brought to light an even larger collection of records on the Japanese in Australia than thought possible. The finds led to the commissioning of a Guide to records held in the National Archives of Australia on Australia and the Japanese to bring the material to wide international attention (Oliver, 2004).

Among those records (NAA series detailed in references) I found one fat file with the vague title, which I called up only out of curiosity seeing it did not contain the word Japanese. If I had not done so, I would have little more to offer today than the 1991 brochure at the State Library. This file contained folios detailing the history of every Japanese in Victoria in 1911. Further uncatalogued material was contained the records of the companies that had traded in Melbourne until 1942. Many individual stories were found in Melbourne's customs records (NAAVIC:B13/0) which were not all opened for use. For the first time a chronologically complete story of the Japanese in Victoria can be told today as part of a bilateral event to celebrate the 30 years of the Treaty of Friendship and co-operation between Australia and Japan, fittingly in the presence of the Consul General for Japan for Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, Mr Kaku. The actual history of the relationship between Victoria and Japan covers a time span of 140 years but I intend to concentrate on the first 80 years before the arrival of the war brides.

In addition to the need for interested parties to search for stories and bring them to notice, stories that were once well known, can also become hidden because of certain national events or milestones. In some cases, such experiences can assist in hiding a history and even lead to the assumption that it never existed. Two milestones affect the Japanese story: the 1901 Federation of the Australian colonies which brought the Immigration Restriction Act, or White Australia policy as most people call it, and the Second World War.

Federation and the enshrining of a White Australia policy in legislation were events that have deposited the firm belief in many people's minds that no Asian immigration took place between 1901 and 1973 with a few exceptions, like the war brides, in the 1950s. The Immigration Museum in South Australia in 2000 said in its room brochure that no Japanese immigrated to Australia after 1901. When it is firmly believed that there were no Japanese living in Australia, except for a few pearlers on boats along the north coast, it is very difficult to entertain the idea that there might be records for Japanese immigrants to Australia between these years. The fact that Japanese did settle in Victoria during colonial times and continued to do so into the White Australia years also raises questions about how this was possible. Further, what was the nature of the Japanese community and of its relationship with white Australia? (Recent publications on relationships between Japanese and Australian in White Australia include Jones & Mackie, 2001; Jones and Oliver, 2001; Jones, 2002, Oliver 2005).

With the Second World War, of course, the stories of the treatment of Australian Prisoners of Wars overshadowed any previous positive stories. Privately many stories were still circulated but only 'came out' again in the 1980s and 1990s.

Another way in which the history has become hidden is ironically through how the known part of the story has been told and changed over time particularly in regard to the trade relationship. A lot was published through the post war decades on the trade with Japan especially about the very damaging trade dispute in 1936, which lasted over six months. This occurred when the volume of trade between Australia and Japan was about to exceed the volume of trade with Britain. Australia corrected that by limiting the amount of trade with Japan. This dispute was only resolved with the assistance, as very few writers have acknowledged, of immigrant Japanese company managers and employees. (Sissons 1976 & 1981; Tsokas 1989: Eccles 2006) However, even this story has changed over time. As it was told in the 1991 exhibition, one third of Victoria's wool clip destined for Japan in 1936 was jeopardised by the dispute. The assumption is that Australian firms exported this wool. There is no mention of the role of Japanese firms based in Australia with branches in Victoria. Even in 1993, Sandra Tweedie's groundbreaking book on Australia's trade with Asia could not find evidence of much trade with Japan by Australians before the 1930s. She barely mentions Japanese firms in Australia. Although one article existed on the Japanese trading company network in Australia at the time ( Purcell 1981), the story of the Japanese companies in Australia from the 1890s contained in the hundreds of metres of records in the National Archives remained to be fully researched and will take several more years of work to complete.

In this way, historical events can influence historical assumptions and render a history hidden or prevent it from being revealed. SO what is the story?

First contacts and wider international context.

In the first panel of the exhibition and pages of the brochure you will see that Victoria had the first Honorary Consul for Japan, Alexander Marks, the first Japanese trading house, Akira & Co, and the first Japanese immigrants. It also had the first marriage between a Japanese man and an Australian woman in 1875 (Sissons,1978). Why on earth were Japanese people interested in Melbourne so far from home in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s? How did they even hear of Melbourne at a time before air travel, direct sea routes from Japan to Australia and formal diplomatic contact and at a time when Victoria was a remote British colony at the bottom of the world?

Between 1639 and 1853, Japan closed its doors to all foreigners except a few Dutch and Chinese traders who were restricted to designated ports. This is known as the Togukawa seclusion period. It ended, very basically, when the US navy entered Tokyo Bay in 1853, and terrified the local population when it fired guns, demolished buildings on shore and gave Japan 12 months to think about opening its doors and signing a treaty. By 1859, westerners were trading in Japan but restricted to five treaty ports. They dominated Japan's external trade. By 1866, with the restoration of the Meiji as rulers of Japan, a passport system enabled Japanese to travel abroad and learn what they needed to reverse the balance of trade, open commercial trading houses and increase manufacturing to a point where Japan could compete in the region and beyond with the British Empire. It was an ambitious project (Wray, Howe).

The exodus of Japanese in the hundreds of thousands after 1866 was, as researchers of the pre-Tokugawa period such as Frei and Howe point out, not new. An extensive Japanese trading network existed before 1639. In that earlier expansionist era, tens of thousands of Japanese had also settled abroad and many thousands remained in Netherlands East Indies (present day Indonesia) rather than return to Japan when it closed its doors. Therefore, Japanese had knowledge of southern lands but in the mid 1800s it was far from up-to-date. From the 1870s, Japanese established trading links through travel to London, Europe, China, India, Pacific Island ports, USA and South America. Travel to Australia was for a similar purpose. No matter how much Australians may like to think it, the Japanese did not select this southern land for special attention or invasion (Frei 1991; Sissons 1972). Instead, the Australian continent was merely the fringe of a wide sweep of frontier territory for the Japanese around the Pacific rim ripe for exploration, trade and other possibilities.

Japanese who immigrated to Australia were part of two movements of population in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first was the general emigration of Japanese with its individual and national agenda. The second population movement was the growth of Australian coastal towns and ports, which enhanced two-way trade with the East. By the time the first Japanese arrived on the coast of northern Australia at Thursday Island in 1874 (Sissons: 1979) as independent settlers, not pearlers, Japanese had been moving out of Japan in all directions for almost twenty years.

Australian coastal towns had developed in the 1860s and 1870s in Queensland and Western Australia in particular. The port of Darwin began in 1869. In this way, Australia was ripe with possibilities at a crucial time.

Individuals had their own agenda for travelling abroad. Young men, often wishing to escape compulsory military service or to seek adventure and wealth, travelled to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and places south as word spread that work was available (NAAVIC: MP529/3 Tribunal 4 WOS). As Peattie argues, elements of excitement and adventure and prospects of overseas activity after centuries of national isolation and inertia spurred individual Japanese to lone exploits on the Asian continent or to the South Seas. Individuals were inspired by a spirit of self help which the Consul General informed me some days ago was popularised in Japan in the 1870s through a best selling book by Samuel Smiles which is still read today.

Travelling abroad was also vital for Japan's survival after 1854. Japan signed unequal treaties with western nations in the 1850s that stopped it applying tariff protection to its developing industries. Further, foreign trade was very exclusive and controlled by a limited number of elite foreign merchants living in the treaty ports who had a deep knowledge of western economic practices and markets. As a result, Japanese merchants often became bankrupt (Wray).

Some Australians were among the first merchants into Japan. This began Victoria's relationship with the Japanese. Alexander Marks, who was appointed the first honorary consul for Japan in Melbourne in 1879, traded in Yokohama from 1859 until 1872.In 1874, 99.9 percent of Japan's foreign trade was in foreign hands. By the 1890s, 80 per cent was still controlled by and carried out through foreign merchants. Japan had to address this situation for its economy to survive. This required the development of strong Japanese firms. The 1870s, large companies such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi were founded. Mitsui, a very old family concern, was formally established in 1875. Its success resulted from its thorough research and relationships with British firms in London. The company established its first overseas branch in Shanghai in 1877. Mitsubishi was founded in 1870 and not only obtained a leading place in services, finance and trading but also in shipping with the establishment of Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) which first established a service to Australia in 1896 (Wray).

As the fortunes of these large firms grew, they diversified, and by the 1880s the term zaibatsu was used to describe large concerns owned by single families and comprising functionally related enterprises in commerce, mining, finance and industry. These firms performed essential services in importing raw materials and industrial equipment and in exporting light industrial products such as raw silk, matches and cotton yarn (Howe). This formed a worldwide trading network of which Australia was a part.

The Japanese government also sent officials from departments of agriculture, commerce and forestry to research possibilities for trade. Journalists and writers also travelled and published travel and information books on their return to Japan. In this way Australia became known in Japan (Frei).

The government assisted enterprising individuals to go abroad through the establishment of emigration companies and societies dedicated to studying conditions in the South Seas in 1890s. The navy also assisted emigrants. The British Royal Navy helped Japan develop its navy and the Japanese Naval Training ships travelled the Pacific from the 1870s and carried some civilian passengers to Pacific islands where they caught other boats to Australia. From 1878 they called at Australian ports (Noguchi & Davidson).

People made the long journey to Australia and opened businesses in Melbourne in 1881 followed by Sydney in 1886, WA in 1888 and Thursday Island in the 1890s. In the large cities, especially Sydney, which eclipsed Melbourne in Japanese eyes as a commercial concern by the early 1890s, the immigrants were generally well-educated and intent on taking advantage of new avenues for trade. However, first arrivals between 1888 and 1902 included a mixture of occupations. In 1896, the year direct shipping began between Australia and Japan through NYK line, the Japanese Consul General was appointed and Sydney became the centre of the Japanese network in Australia. This consular representation demonstrates not only the organisation of Japanese networks throughout Australia from the beginning, but also the variety and long- term commitment Japanese people had to life in Australia. (Oliver 2001. Information on Japanese movements and settlement compiled from an analysis of the NAA series mentioned in references - customs series for each state and territory)

Commercial beginnings- Why did Japanese decide to come to Melbourne?

This photo which appeared in the Herald on the 6 July 1928, is of some
Melbourne Japanese seeing the ships off. Many young Japanese men headed
to Australia as crew on ships or as passengers if they had money. So who arrived
in Victoria and what did they do?

International Exhibitions held in Melbourne and Sydney in 1880-81 brought Japanese government trade officials and individuals interested in trading with Victoria. The regular biennial visits of the Japanese navy's Training Squadron also brought visitors and introduced sailors to Australia (Meaney). Thousands of Australians and even school tours for example from MLC Hawthorn flocked to see the ships particularly early in the century (The New Idea, 6 June 1903).

Apart from Mr Akiyama and Mr Tokuta who set up Akira and Co next to Young and Jacksons in 1880, Mr Nakamura, a tailor set up shop in the Block in 1883. Nakamura was responsible for bringing out Japanese to work in his business right up until he left in 1919 for parts unknown. He had interpreted for the customs and police and engaged in a small amount of importing. Other Japanese run shops were reported in the city by visitors at the time. In fact as early as 1879, there was enough contact between Japan and Victoria to keep Honorary Consul Alexander Marks very busy. He was very helpful to young Japanese who arrived, some in less than desirable circumstances on contracts to British sea captains, which were punitive. He also looked after some men who had been brought out by unscrupulous Victorian households wanting cheap domestic labour and who paid less than the going rate. Marks helped some Japanese successfully prosecute such people (Sissons 1978). Fortunately these bad experiences were few and most Japanese men came to work for reputable and some very well respected households including Judge Gaunt, Judge Holroyd, Captain Mollison of Scotch College, the Commissioner for Railways Mr WH Green of St Kilda, Frank Grey Smith Solicitors and institutions such as the Austin Hospital. Many worked as cooks in hotels from Port Fairy to Queenscliff, Geelong, the city, Mentone and Sorento. Laundry work was easy to come by and some Australian laundry owners hired a succession of Japanese new arrivals. Time and again in records we find Mrs Twomey of St Kilda for example and Mr Virgoe of North Brighton and Mr Tuckett, an auctioneer of Bourke Rd, Malvern (NAAACT: A1 WOS and NAAVIC: B13/0 WOS).

Hiring of Japanese for domestic and garden work was not confined to the cities. Some Japanese spent time on country properties. Examples include Mr Molesworth Green of Bacchus Marsh and Ware's station at Buangor near Geelong.

After an initial time working for Australians, Japanese often moved on to open their own small businesses. For example, another Nakamura had worked for Mr Tuckett from 1893 but by the turn of the century had his own business and was bringing out his countrymen to work with him in the laundry in Wattle tree road.

One of the interesting early stories concerns two sisters who arrived with their parents in the early 1890s. The Kagamis were entertainers and had travelled Europe where one of the sisters was born in Italy. When their father died in 1901 the family settled in Armadale and the girls worked as tailoresses in their own business for decades. One sister, Kame, never married and had moved out of her sister's home once she married and had children.

Many Japanese came from other parts of Australia. They undertook long overland journeys relying on their own resourcefulness and the knowledge that Japanese they met would help them along the way. In every town where there were established Japanese from Thursday Island to Cairns and all towns south to Sydney there were earlier immigrants who made it their business to help new arrivals. Mr Suyenaga a cook, was first helped by Mr Yasuda, a shell carver, in Sydney who arrived in 1883 and hired Japanese as houseboys until they learned English through classes at the local primary school and found jobs in mainstream society. Suyenaga's cooking was enjoyed by restaurants in Paddington, Manly and Neutral Bay before he arrived in Melbourne in 1903 and worked around the city including the Beaconsfield Hotel in St Kilda near where he lived with his wife and child. It was not uncommon for members of the small community spread from Sorrento to Port Fairy to have an unknown Japanese person enter the laundry to say he had just arrived off a ship or train after finishing his work on the cane fields of Queensland or had failed in business in Sydney and was looking for new opportunities. Maruta was one such young man who arrived to work on a contract at the sugar mills near Townsville in 1897. He later moved to Mackay in 1901 and then in1902 opened his own laundry in Brisbane. By 1905 he had worked his way to Melbourne and in 1906 bought a laundry in Malvern where he hired some of the newly arrived Japanese over time. In Geelong, George Taroo Furuya, of whom we will hear more next lecture, was the leader of the Japanese community. He also interpreted at the port and in the courts and provisoned ships. Furuya, Ito and the two others often gave the men work in their shops until they could find other work. Some went off to sheep stations in country Victoria. Once men settled, they generally married local Australian girls.Although Melbourne's Japanese flourished in the 1880s and 1890s by 1896 Sydney became the leading trading city between Australia and Japan.

The direct shipping line from Japan to Australia was focussed on Sydney. The Consul General was appointed to Sydney when the Consul for Townsville was moved south. This eclipsed Melbourne and the retirement in 1902 of Marks who was such a well known figure meant Melbourne never recovered its prominence.

By the time Jo Takasuka the rice grower and Inagaki the teacher, featured in two of the panels in the exhibition, arrived in 1905, Victoria had two centres of established Japanese settlement. Geelong and Melbourne. People knew each other and had good contacts interstate. But how did Japanese manage to enter Australia after 1901? In fact the restriction had applied through Victoria's own immigration laws in the form of a Dictation test from 1899. Commonwealth law was amended in 1904 to permit the entrance of students, tourists and merchants from Japan. Most of those who landed in Victoria were merchants. Students came to study wool classing, English or secretarial studies. The early records of entry also reveal that Japanese merchants made many return visits to Melbourne in the early years of Federation such as Tadashi Okabe a merchant who arrived mid year on a regular basis.

One example of an early Japanese student was Jiro Muramatsu at Xavier College in 1895. His father had established a business spread from Cossack to Port Darwin from 1883. Jiro finished his education at Xavier and returned to Cossack to take over the business. He naturalised while in Melbourne and lived all his life in Australia as a successful trader and master pearler (Oliver 2005). A less successful student was (B13 1910/15032 & 1911/1581) Hikoji Takasaki who arrived in 1909 to study English and commercial correspondence at Working Men's College now RMIT University. He lived with his father's friend, Mr J Takuma a laundryman of Malvern and assisted him with his business.

Takasaki fell foul of the law. In 1910, he applied for a job advertised in the Argus in breach of his stay regulations. He wanted to earn money to return to Japan because he felt he could do better in his own country. He was prosecuted and said at his court hearing "I knew I was breaking the immigration Act by taking the situation, but I could not bring myself to think that I was committing any crime or sin against the moral law or Christian principles." Mr Takuma offered to pay his passage back to Japan but he refused thinking he should earn it himself. He was given three months to leave and the Australian government paid his return fare because he was destitute.

With business migration to Victoria, large businesses followed a pattern of investigation and co-operation with Australian firms before opening branch offices. Initially, Japanese negotiated arrangements with existing Australian firms who acted as agents for Japanese firms. H Dawson and Sons. D & W Murray were among these (UM74/71).

One of the earliest large firms was established in Sept 1902 by Daijiro Ozawa of Ozawa and Co who had been at the 1880 International Exhibition. He joined the smaller operators I spoke of earlier such as Numashima, Nakamura and the laundrymen/providors of Geelong and Melbourne. 1905 was a particularly strong year, just after the new laws were passed, for merchant entry. By World War One, larger firms that had already succeeded in Sydney and were looking to expand to other state capitals opened their doors in Melbourne. T Nakano & Co, a well-known business in Sydney was not the only firm to travel south. The zaibatsu firms now well established in Sydney as we saw in the chart above, came to investigate trade in Melbourne. Mitsui, which I mentioned before as one of the oldest firms in Japan, was among them. They were followed by Mitsubishi, Kanematsu, Araki, Horikoshi, Okura, Iida and many more.

The partnership with Australian firms was a complex one. Some Japanese companies used Australian firms as agents. As we saw before the shipping firm NYK used Dalgety's. In the 1930s H Dawson & Sons were agents for Japanese wool buyers assisting various firms, including Iwai & Co. In 1935, Tatsuo Imai was a clerk and employee of Summers Trading Co Kobe and business student with Messrs T Smith and Duff indentors in Melbourne. In 1937, Mr Nagao of Maitachi Kaisha Osaka, a cotton and rayon merchant, stayed in Melbourne for 12 months with H C English, indentors of Flinders Lane.

Some personal stories of merchants that survive in company records.
One of the first clerks in Horikoshi, Melbourne was Tsuyoshi Yanase who commenced his work in 1922. By 1926 he was managing the Melbourne office and lived in Melbourne with his Japanese born wife and two Australian born children. Yanase decided to go into business on his own in 1933, which was extremely bad timing on his part during the worst of the Great Depression. He commenced business as an indent agent in Flinders Lane and imported silk. He was in considerable debt to a client of Emmerson Lund Mercantile agency who complained to immigration officers that their client was owed £80. The authorities were not at all interested and replied that Yanase was free to leave the commonwealth or to stay as he chose. The debt was a matter for litigation between the parties concerned [NAAVIC: B13, 1933/14429]. The court case was reported in detail in The Age on 12 April 1933. Over time, Yanase managed to pay most of the debt. His case is indicative of the difficulties individual merchants faced in the depression and of the relaxed attitude of the immigration administrators of the day towards Japanese people.

Mitsui (MBK) was a much bigger concern than Horikoshi. Over the period from 1918 to 1939 when records are most complete, there are details of 35 employees from Japan and many more local Australian employees. Eighteen of these men brought families from Japan and some had further children while living in Melbourne. MBK liked to rotate staff between Sydney and Melbourne particularly as individuals were promoted or required to learn new aspects of the business. After 1914, MBK was divided into departments for products such as wheat, wool, silk, timber and general merchandise.

Mrs Iida (right) and children at a consular function
c1936 - provided by Mrs Iida - photograph by
I. Kagiyama.

Okura Melbourne records are sketchy but the widow of the Melbourne manager from 1920 is still alive in Sydney. Mr and Mrs Iida lived in Melbourne for nearly 20 years and were transferred to Sydney in 1940 when the manager there died suddenly from a heart attack. Mr Sawada had been in Australia since about 1918 and was married to an Australian woman and lived in Mosman. Mrs Iida has provided one of the few snap shots of the life of women and children and the acceptance in the general community of Japanese families before 1940. This picture shows Mrs Iida and her children during their stay in Australia. I will speak more about their home lives a little later.

What were the nature of the Japanese firms' business operations

What attracted the large firms to Victoria was primary produce, especially wool, dairy produce and wheat. Mitsui was instrumental in substantially increasing Victoria's wool exports. Victoria produced 50% of Australia's cross breed wool. Before 1919, 99% of wool exported to Japan came from NSW. With Mitsui Melbourne's efforts that figure decreased. NSW had a predominance of fine merino wool for sale but Mitsui recognised the potential for other wool types and exploited that. They had to contend with stiff competition from Kanematsu in Sydney, which had opened its doors in 1890 to export wool and import rice. Nosawa & Co was another competitor, which from 1918 in Sydney took advantage of the live sheep export trade from Australia and New Zealand to Japan. By diversifying into different areas of the wool trade, each company was able to grow. The letter of 1922 to Mr Urabe in Sydney reporting on Victoria's wool industry in the exhibition shows the intensive market research Japanese always undertook in any business expansion. Australians often thought in the light of the war that this research was sinister in purpose but in fact it was normal business practice whether for selling tea cups or looking for new sources of iron ore.

Mitsui Melbourne also had to bear in mind that Victoria was at a disadvantage when positioned against Sydney in trade with Asia. Ships from Sydney took a week less to travel to Japan than those from Melbourne. Additional research and credit checks were made on every potential customer in Melbourne and throughout Victoria. Each year, all Japanese firms obtained credit and general histories on all their customers through Dunn and Co, the equivalent of today's Standard and Poors.

Mitsui contracted with the Bacchus Marsh Concentrated Milk Co for powdered and condensed milk products. When Nestle took it over in 1919 Mitsui gained the sole agency for the Nestle & Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co (Australasia) P/L for Japan. Mitsui also bought wheat from the Victorian Wheat Growers Corporation through Mr Bell of James Bell & Co one of the chief representatives of the pool. However they have only sold a very small quantity in Japan through Kobe, Tokyo and Shanghai. Victoria exported 5.4million bags of wheat in 1922 to April and of that approx 20% went to Japan.

Much of the cotton, rayon and silk used in Melbourne department stores' factories to make home brand clothing for emporia such as Foy & Gibsons, Myers and David Jones was provided by Mitsui. A personal connection with that cloth came out of a piece of hidden history one day when my mother happened to look at something I was writing and saw the name of her old firm listed in Mitsui's cloth sales during the years she worked for Foys. This prompted her to tell the story I share today.

Patricia Malloch c1938, Head Cutter and
fashion designer at Foy & Gibson, Melbourne
wearing clothes she made herself designed
in the latest fashions.

My mother had worked as a fashion designer and head of the cutting department during the depression. She was stunned to learn that Foys used so much Japanese cloth. I was surprised at her reaction until she told me that from1939, the fashion section was switched to making underwear for the Australian Armed forces and she found it hard to credit that her girls had sent our boys off to war against the Japanese wearing underwear that originated in Japan. As I told her, it was highly likely that Japan's soldiers wore Australian wool. Mitsui in fact had Australian Defence Force contracts which boosted their business in 1939-41. It also was a major trader with the Australian Wheat Board in 1940-41 and with BHP. Most of us will know the story of the protests again referred to in The Age letters section recently, when Robert Menzies, nicknamed Pig Iron Bob permitted Mitsui to export iron to Japan on the eve of what many believed would be war in 1938, but no protest ever arose over the underwear as far as I know on either side of the war.

How important were Japanese firms to the Victorian economy? It is difficult to obtain comparable figures for different firms for the same period but an indication of the size of Mitsui's operations in Victoria can be gained by comparing the variety of sales and profit figures of their Melbourne customers for 1929/1930 with the sales tax figures from Mitsui

The sales results indicate an expected downturn with the onset of the Great Depression. Sales in 1932 are half that of 1931. By 1934 through until the outbreak of war in 1939 sales are almost one third that of 1931 levels. Even with the outbreak of war the recovery is only to two thirds the 1931 level. There is also a steading of monthly sales amounts from mid 1936 onwards with amounts over £50,000 more frequently achieved. This is consistent with the end of the Trade Diversion dispute and the easing of the depression in some quarters. Nevertheless, the results indicate that Mitsui was able to maintain fairly stable business outcomes and employment throughout the depression.

Trying to compare figures, Mitsui Melbourne branch's 1931 sales figures were in excess of the profit for Dalgety Australia. The Sydney branch of Mitsui made a profit of over £2m. We don't have net sales figures for Mitsui but it is clear that the Melbourne branch alone was bringing in more per month than sizeable Australian firms managed to in a year. The secret of success was that no order was too small, no customer too much trouble and no product impossible to obtain. Mitsui also engaged in third country trading. That is it did not confine itself to trading between Australia and Japan. It imported from India and Borneo directly into Australia and also organised through its contacts overseas for products to be obtained in one country and shipped to the branch of any firm where they were required. Business was very hands on. Managers physically went around to other firms to meet and talk about orders. They picked up the phone themselves. We have records of phone messages for one manager while he was in New Zealand, from a small shop asking for 12 more cups and saucers. They were reliable and kept their word. In times when a particular order was difficult to fill, a Japanese run firm would ring around other firms to see if they had the particular item required so they could fill the order on time. For these practices large concerns like Dalgety's and the corner draper's shops placed their orders confidently with large and small Japanese trading houses.

How much were Australian firms buying from Japanese companies? Figures are hard to find and usually listed by country only. For example,
D & W Murray in the1936-7 financial year purchased £204,237 from Australian manufacturers, £161,000 from USA and £21,424 from Japan. In some months their purchases are listed according the firms from which they bought. For example, for a two week period in July 1937, out of total purchases of £847 for cloth, £163 worth was purchased from Mitsui and £657 from Iida, which is over 90%. D & W Murray also purchased from Kanematsu, Iida and Horikoshi. They were a comparable operation to one branch of Mitsui Australia, averaging gross monthly sales in 1936-7 of £56,000 (UM74/71).

This fortunate trading relationship changed in 1941 in anticipation that Japan might enter the war. From July 1941, Britain, USA and Australia froze Japanese funds which meant they could not trade in sterling currency areas. Firms hoped that the situation would resolve. They also had orders already placed and goods in transit on ships. Some merchants left during 1941 and sent families to relatives in Japan. Many decided to stay and each large firm left some staff in the offices which remained open into late November and early December 1941. Managers were ordered to leave by 2 December 1941 but for some the boat on which they were booked was delayed until 9 December. This proved too late as Japan entered the war on 7 and 8 December and all Japanese of all ages and gender were interned in Australia. In 1942 there was an exchange of civilian internees between the allies and Japan. The remainder of interned merchants and consular staff, who had been confined to the consular residences, like Mr Kawai of Malvern the First Japanese Minister in Australia, were repatriated to Japan in August 1942.

Mr Kawai in the smoke room of the residence in Harcourt Street Auburn Pix
3 May 1941

But many of the people who came early on remained. They had their families in Melbourne and no real ties remaining to their country of origin. Dame Nellie's Butler has a fascinating story.

After working for Dame Nellie and many other prominent Victorians, Nagai married Muriel, an Australian in Geelong, started his laundry in 1932. The couple had a son. Nagai tried to naturalise in 1915 and in 1931.

When he was interned, the residents of Geelong and the Clarkes of Mildura where he had worked for some time wrote persistently to government ministers and the Prime Minister until he was released. Such persistence could have brought them under suspicion too at a time when Japan was bombing the north of Australia and Sydney had experienced the mini-submarine raid. Clarke complained to the Minister for the Army, Mr Forde, two days after Pearl Harbour:

we know our country laws must be obeyed but it is very hard on some of these people who have lived peacefully in our midst some for over 40 yrs & who have married & got families here

He pleaded especially for Thomas Nagai who had worked for him and whom he had known for 30 years. Nagai was a good Christian citizen, a gentleman of samurai class and trustworthy. He was 'Australian in every sense of the word'.

Unsatisfied with the lack of response, Clarke wrote again on 30 January 1942 and 5 February 1942 arguing that Nagai's internment was 'unjust as he had been a very good citizen'.

I would ask the Minister to consider this man as an Australian I know Dame Nellie Melba tried to get him nationalised [sic] over 25 years ago and would if she where still here do her best to have him released as soon as possible on account of his failing health.

Clarke offered to be responsible for him. He argued that he should be able to collect aged pension the same as anyone else.

When Nagai's appealed against his internment failed, Clarke demanded a review of the decision. "We are 398 from the sea. He wrote to Prime Minister Curtin.'This trustworthy Christian gentleman was unfortunate enough to be by accident of birth born in a country we are at 'War ' with at present.' He offered to intern Nagai in Mildura. Again not satisfied with a refusal Clarke wrote to Alex Wilson their Member of Parliament and argued for the need for workers.

Wilson wrote to Forde on 15 May 1942 asking that all due consideration be given to the request despite the fact that he understood it has already been refused. Forde agreed to look into the matter but found no new grounds to reconsider the decision. When appeals through Menzies, the Attorney General, failed, Lily Clarke was furious and wrote to the Director General of Security Canberra.

I do not know how any Christian gentleman could arrive at such a decision even at a time like this there are always special circumstances this man has lived in our country most of his life and has lived our live I asked for his release for special reasons owing to having 3 invalids on my hands in two different homes' It is unjust to keep this man shut up and we are willing to be his guard. We are loyal Australians and sons and daughters of some of its oldest pioneers

The Clarke's persisted and in July 1943, Mr John Dedman, Minister for War Organisation, wrote to Mrs Clarke that Nagai's health was precarious and he was being released. He was confined to the property at 191 Malop St as it was felt his presence in the streets of Geelong might affect public morale. His house arrest was not revoked until 28 November 1946.

Conclusion

What conclusions and surprises can be drawn from these stories?

The degree of personal contact between Australian and Japanese is notable. Mrs Iida and other families saw how they were accepted into Australian suburban life. Their children went to Australian schools, they enjoyed tennis clubs, golf, horseracing, shopping, going for coffee and even the local church. Australians recognised in them similar values of hard work, a spirit of independence and contribution to community life. They were values Australian middle class people could relate to. Japanese were often quite well educated at least to Year 9. Nagai was 'a trustworthy Christian gentleman and a good citizen' even though he only went to the Church of England to get married and was, as Mr Clark said never 'nationalised'. Mrs Iida said that this good standing changed in 1940. She recalls one day when he husband arrived home very shaken. He had been abused by a stranger in the street and called a traitor and a 'dirty Jap.' He didn't understand why until she told him the news that Japan had signed a treaty with Germany and Italy with whom Britain and Australia were at war.

Business contacts were reliable, honest and personal. They developed over time and were largely stable. Managers knew each other so Australian and Japanese firms knew with whom they were dealing. This forged good relations, which lasted even through the war in some cases. Australian businessmen were among the first to lobby for the resumption of trade with and travel to Japan in 1945.

In peace time we can understand good relations when two countries are allies and share some common values but the actions of the Clarks in the cause of rescuing Dame Nellie's old butler are ones some of us might think twice about before undertaking even today. The Clarks took a huge risk and we ask why they did it? However they were not unique. Many Japanese had Australian supporters and friends who achieved some measure of relief for them from wartime restrictions. The Takasuka women were not interned because the local police did not serve the arrest warrant. They had asked the Attorney General's department if they had to arrest these harmless women. The reply was that 'yes' they did - but there was no time limit specified in the regulations for doing so. Sho Takasuka was released because of the fight the local community put up on his behalf, offering to go en masse to plead his case at the Aliens Appeals Tribunal. The Kagami sisters had similar support, one was never interned and the other was soon released due to community support. Inagaki however lost his main advocate at the death of his wife Rose in 1943. He had no one left to fight for him and was forcibly repatriated with hundreds of other Japanese around the country on New Years Day in 1947 (Oliver 2002). This support for Japanese to whom Australians could relate personally was evident after the war in those who supported the war brides.

I think we can conclude, 15 years after the last exhibition on the Japanese in Victoria, that opportunities for contact with Japanese in Victoria although limited were there in many suburbs and towns and especially through local shops, intermarriages, schools, clubs and businesses. Further, that the Australia - Japan relationship has indeed been built on personal contact at all levels and remains strong today in part because of it. As others have argued, international relations are often very personal underneath (Jones & Mackie: Introduction) and I encourage you to book in for future lectures, which explore these stories and their significance further.

References and notes

I wish to acknowledge the research funding provided by the National Archives of Australia and Monash University, which supported this work.

National Archives of Australia records
The newly opened material is NAANSW: SP1098/4 to SP1098/14 and SP1101/1, WOS Controller of Enemy Property Records. See also NAAACT: A1379/1 EPJ WOS series. Please note: because of the very large number of files and folios used to obtain information, exact scholarly footnoting of original material has not been undertaken in this transcript of the lecture. The reader is referred to the National Archives of Australia web site at www.naa.gov.au Record Search. If names are entered in Key Word search, files can be found. The key information has come from analysis of all Japanese files in the following series. For Victoria: NAAVIC: B13/0 and MP529/3 Tribunal 4; NAAACT: A1. For Western Australia: K1145 and NAAACT, A1/15. For Queensland series J2773. For NSW: C123, C320, SP42. For NT, Series F1 and E52. Also see Oliver 2001 for the Japanese trading company network and Oliver 2004 for further sources.
For company records see NAANSW: SP1096/6 Records of Mitsui Melbourne to 1941 and SP1098/4 to /14 for Japanese companies prior to 1941.A photocopy of the index of the company record series' contents is available on request from the National Archives of Australia Sydney office.
Further personal files are available for Victorian Japanese in NAAACT: A367/1.

University of Melbourne Archives records
UM74/71 Records of D & W Murray Ltd

Books and articles
G Eccles, 'The Hirodo Story - a three generational family case study of bi-cultural living'. In M Ackland & PM Oliver, Unexpected Encounters. Pending publication, MAI, Clayton, 2006.
C Fredericksen, 'Ways of remembering: Cross-sultural commemoration of early contact in the Northern Territory". In D Carment (ed), Northern Encounters: New Directions in north Australian history, Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin, 2004.
H Frei, Japan’s Southward advance and Australia from the sixteenth century to World War II, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1991
C Howe, The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy: Development and Technology in Asia from1540 to the Pacific War, Crawford House Publishing, Bathurst,1996.
N Jones, Number 2 Home; A Story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 2001.
PA Jones and Mackie, Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, University of Melbourne History Monograph, No 28, The History Department of the University of Melbourne, 2001. See Introduction and S Noguchi and A Davidson, 'Melbourne friends of the Mikado's navy'.
PA Jones & PM Oliver, Changing Histories: Australia and Japan, Monash Asia Institute, Clayton, 2001
N Meaney, Towards a new vision: Australia and Japan through 100 years, Kangaroo press, Sydney, 1999.
PB Murphy, ‘Australia and Japan in the Nineteen Thirties.’ Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 65(4), March, 1980
For a detailed history of the foundation of NYK, see Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Golden Jubilee History of Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 1885-1935, NYK, Tokyo, 1935, although this has little information on Australian operations.
Y Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese internment in Australia , University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1996.
PM Oliver, 'Hirokichi Nakamura: immigrant, trader, internee'.In (Eds) V Mackie, A Skoutarides, A Tokita, Coloniality, postcoloniality and modernity in Japan, Vol 3 Japanese Studies: Communities, cultures, critiques, MAI, Clayton, 2000.
PM Oliver,‘Who is one of us? (Re)discovering the inside-out of Australia’s Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-57.’ Japanese Studies, Carfax, December 2002.
PM Oliver, Allies, Enemies, Trading Partners: Records on Australia and the Japanese, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 2004.
PM Oliver 'Navigating White Australia: Challenges to the status and identiy of J & T Muramatsu,pearlers and general merchants, 1888-1967.' Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Beppu, Japan, October, 2005.
M R Peattie Introduction to (Eds) R H Myers and MR Peattie, The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945 , Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1984.
WR Purcell, 'The development of Japan's trading company network' Australian economic history review 21(2) 1981.
JG Roberts, Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, New York, Wetherhill. 1989.
Y Shinichi, General Trading Companies: A Comparative and Historical Study, UNU Press, Tokyo, 1990.
DCS Sissons, ‘Australian Fears of Japan as a Defence Threat’, Australia, Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence - Reference: Japan, Official Hansard Report, 28 April 1972.
--------'Karayuki-san: Japanese prostitutes in Australia.' Historical Studies 17(68) 1977.
Indents were first employed in the Australian pearling industry in Thursday Island by Fearon and Low in 1883. See DCS Sissons, 'The Japanese in the Australian Pearling Industry', Queensland Heritage,3 (10), 1979.
--------‘Australian-Japanese Relations - The First Phase, 1859-91, 1978, (unpublished National Library of Australia NLAMS 3092).
-------- ‘Private Diplomacy in the 1936 Trade Dispute with Japan.’ Australian Journal of Politics and History, 27(2) 1981.
--------‘Manchester V. Japan: The Imperial Background of the Australian Trade Diversion Dispute with Japan,1936.’ Australian Outlook , 30(3) 1976.
--------‘The Japanese in the Australian Pearling Industry.’ Queensland Heritage, 3(10) 1979.
--------‘A Selector and his Family.’ Hemisphere, (25) 1979.
K Tsokhas, ‘The Wool Industry and the 1936 Trade Diversion Dispute Between Australia and Japan,’ Australian Historical Studies, 23(93), October, 1989.
S Tsunoyama, ‘The Early History of Japanese-Australian Trade: An Addendum to Japanese Consular Reports.’ Business History, 23, 1981.
S Tweedie Trading Partners: Australia and Asia, 1790-1993, 1994.
DR Walker, Anxious Nation : Australia and the rise of Asia, 1850-1939, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia,1999.
WD Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K., 1870-1914: Business Strategy in the Japanese Shipping Industry , Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1984.