The American Dream Gone Bad: Suicide and American Migrants in the Yokohama Treaty Port, 1859-1899

Much more is known about American immigration than American emigration. This article is a case study on American emigrants in the nineteenth century. The article treats Americans present in Yokohama, the main site for international migration in Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the American migrants and health. A noteworthy number of Americans appear to have taken their lives in the port. From 1859 to 1899, Yokohama was a treaty port. The article examines the American deaths in the context of the main socioeconomic and cultural forces that shaped daily life in the setting. Among other Western nations, the United States had forced the treaty port on Japan, largely for reasons of economic aggrandizement. The American deaths are first profiled (demographics, individual background, manner and means of the suicide act). The profile includes comparison with suicide patterns in the U.S. during the period. How the acts were understood by contemporaries-other international migrants in Yokohama and elsewhere in Japan and Americans at home-is then discussed. The article finds that several factors influenced understanding, including class, notions of citizenship, the role and power of the nation-state beyond national borders, popular culture practices in the homeland compared with those of co-nationals who had gone abroad, and Western perceptions of and attitudes towards "the East." The suicides by Americans in Yokohama were tragic individual physical acts which connected with a complex interplay of social, cultural, and economic forces engendered in the U.S. and internationally.