Why Us Too? Japanese Views of Immigration and Racial Exclusion in Australia.

This article examines the Japanese-Australian debates over immigration and racial exclusion over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By examining the development of collective national identity in Japan and by drawing on archival materials in Japan and Australia, including official correspondence between the two countries and policy-related primary source materials such as internal government correspondence and parliamentary debates, it shows how the local discourse on national identity in both Japan and Australia was an important factor in what would be Japan's heated response to the issue of Japanese exclusion under the auspices of White Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]