A JAPANESE MARRIAGE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9433, 1 May 1909, Page 3

A JAPANESE MARRIAGE.

> San Francisco, March 26. The anti-Japanese crusade has been vigorously pursued on this coast during the past fortnight. As the cables briefly advised you popular indignation baa been aroused by the announcement of the betrothal or Helen Emery to Gunjiro Aoki. Both have been driven from Oorte Mamra, ■ the suburb of San Francisco where they lived. Aoki was pelted there last week, and thought it discreet to quit. It he had any thought of returning he was probably deterred by the open threat of the residents to tar and feather him. Mies Emery has now been driven forth by of insults. Her old friends ■ out her, the newspapers kept np a continuous shriek at her expense, crowds jeered at her and hustled her. Worst of all, her father, Archdeacon Emery, left the home in anger when her engagement to Aoki was announced, and refused to return. The Emery family has been split in twain. The mother sides with the daughter and has gone with her to Tacoma; the father firmly refuses to sanction the marriage; a brother, who was appealed to intercede with the father, has shown bitter hostility. Thus be replied to his mother’s message: “Dear Mother.— You know how I love a nigger.

The sympathy of the public, as far as it is openly manifested, is all with the father. No one in the crowd says, “It is a shame that the house should be divided by the father’s Everywhere one hears, “ What a shame that the poor old man should be driven from his home by the infatuation of his daughter, and the scheming of that wretched dago” The newspapers vie with one other in trumpeting the paragraph: —“The roof tree erected by the husband and father. after years of toil and self-sacrifice baa been torn down. The fire of the new love is being fanned to life from the ashes of the old. Custom, etiquette, husband, father, friends, the very standards mutually maintained by both races, which declare that white is white and yellow naught but yellow, have been oast to the winds for —the love of a Japanese house boy.” When this betrothal was first announced it was stated that Aoki was a noble Samurai; bnt it soon became known that, however bine Ins blood, hia station in America was that of domestic servant. It was not, however, solely as a domes to that he entered the Emery household. Mrs and Miss Emery had mat 1 ng efforts to convert him to Christianity, and they thought to farther this object by bringing him to the home. They were attracted from the first by the sincerity with which he applied himself to the religious problem. Then came the betrothal, the father’s departure, publicity, Insults. On Wednesday last Mrs and Miss Emery left for Tacoma amid jeers and jostling and spiteful showers of rice and lilies. It is expected that Aoki will also go to Tacoma, If he “makes good” there, the marriage is to become a fact. At present, however, according to his own brother, Aoki has no money, position, or prospects. [The cables have since announced that the marriage has taken place at Seattle. ] THE CRUSADE CONTINUES. While the popular outcry has been mainly directed against Aoki, the crusade against his race has been carried on in more formal ways also. The resolution of the Oaliforian Legislature urging Congress to pass a law to exclude all Asiatics is to go to Washington after all. It was shelved by the Speaker, and was supposed to be quite dead, but the session was prolonged by a party deadlock, and this gave an opportunity to unsbelve it. “Fire the Jap. and give work to ten thousand unemployed,” is the exhortation that some labour body displays about the streets of San Francisco. A strong union of car- 0 penters in Alameda County, across the bay from this oity, is making a powerful effort to induce organised labour throughout the States to join in the crusade.