Takako Day

takako70

Takako Day, originally from Kobe, Japan, is an award-winning freelance writer and independent researcher who has published seven books and hundreds of articles in the Japanese and English languages. Her latest book, SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME: The Moral Dilemma of Kibei No No Boys in World War Two Incarceration Camps is her first book in English.

Relocating from Japan to Berkeley in 1986 and working as a reporter at the Nichibei Times in San Francisco first opened Day’s eyes to social and cultural issues in multicultural America. Since then, she has written from the perspective of a cultural minority for more than 30 years on such subjects as Japanese and Asian American issues in San Francisco, Native American issues in South Dakota (where she lived for seven years) and most recently (since 1999), the history of little known Japanese Americans in pre-war Chicago. Her piece on Michitaro Ongawa is born of her love of Chicago.

Updated December 2016

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migration en

Illinois Japanese Unknown Heroes

Chapter 1 (Part 4): Japanese Garden Designers, Domestic Workers, and their “Japanophile” Employers—“Honorary Japanese Consul” George Fabyan in Geneva, IL

Por Takako Day
26 Jun 2022

Read Chapter 1 (Part 3) >> In the early 20th century, there was another “prominent capitalist”1 in Geneva, a town along the Fox River, forty miles west of Chicago, who enjoyed employing Japanese domestic workers at his villa. His name was George Fabyan, and, according to some accounts, was considered to be an “Honorary Japanese Consul”2 before the Japanese Consulate was established in Chicago in 1897. Fabyan was well-known for entertaining Japanese celebrities and was rumored to be a friend of Baron Jutaro Komura,3 and of Toshiro Fujita and Seizaburo Shi…

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community en

Illinois Japanese Unknown Heroes

Chapter 1 (Part 3): Japanese Garden Designers, Domestic Workers, and their “Japanophile” Employers—Torajiro and Kiku Hamano and Julius Rosenwald in Chicago

Por Takako Day
19 Jun 2022

Read Chapter 1 (Part 2) >> Possibly the luckiest and most successful Japanese domestic worker in Chicago was Torajiro Hamano, who worked for twenty years for Julius Rosenwald, one of the founders of Sears, Roebuck and Company. According to the 1910 census, two single Japanese men lived in Rosenwald’s mansion at 4901 Ellis Ave. One was (Torajiro) “Kiku” Hamano, a 28-year-old butler, and the other was a 27-year-old Japanese houseman, Sakurain Louis, who were on staff along with two Norwegian and two Swedish servants. It is odd that Torajiro Hamano used “Kiku,&rd…

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community en

Illinois Japanese Unknown Heroes

Chapter 1 (Part 2): Japanese Garden Designers, Domestic Workers, and their “Japanophile” Employers—Popularity and Criticism of Japanese Servants

Por Takako Day
12 Jun 2022

Read Chapter 1 (Part 1) >> Looking at the overall picture of the service industry in those days, we find that Japanese immigrants with the right qualifications reported to be equal to the “splendid record of the older generation of black servants in the South” and thus, were placed in competition with the younger generation of African Americans in the industrious North. At the same time, Japanese people were not treated equally with whites in the polarized “black or white” society of America. The Chicago Defender expressed their frustration with the competition…

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migration en

Illinois Japanese Unknown Heroes

Chapter 1 (Part 1): Japanese Garden Designers, Domestic Workers, and their “Japanophile” Employers—Introduction

Por Takako Day
5 Jun 2022

The first Japanese domestic servant to be recorded in the 1880 Illinois census was J. Yanada, a twenty-one year old single man who served Ulysses Grant, 18th President of the United States, in Galena, Illinois.1 Grant was very satisfied with Yanada, who was assigned to Grant’s service by the Japanese government when Grant toured in Japan in 1879,2 and once reported to a friend: “I have become so accustomed to travel with my little Jap, who looks after everything, that being without him on my last visit I come off leaving my baggage at the station without think to get …

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education en

Japanese Christians in Chicago

Katsuji Kato: from Spiritual Savior to Medical Professional - Part 4

Por Takako Day
13 Mar 2022

Read Part 3 >> We already know that on his trip to Japan in 1917, Kato met with Vice Minister of Education Tadokoro, who told Kato that he hoped the Japanese language was being taught to the Nisei (American-born, second generation Japanese) by their immigrant parents and felt that Japanese language education should be controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.1 Did Kato actually make contact with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was he asked to publish a new magazine with international relations between the countries as its message? Or did his personal experiences alone ma…