A Study of Emigrants to Foreign Countries from the South Coast of Kii Peninsula (Report II)

Abstract

On the cause of the emigration from Mzab in the “Island” of the desert, Jean Brunhes said “The Mozabites emigrate to the Tell to earn their living and they often grow rich there. They are emigrants who are not moved by great appetites or great desires (like the Anglo-Saxons), since they dream of returning to pass their old age. in their native country in a modest environment. They are not emigrants who are urged on by poverty in the strict sense of the word, for nothing is less poverty-sticker than the Mzab. They form a special class of emigrants who are only because their form of cultivation must be a rich man's cultivation, kept. up at great expense; the poverty that urges them toward the Tell is relative. They are not absolutely all emigrants and they do not all become emigrants; but, among the Mozabites, not to emigrate is to lose caste. In fact they are not outcasts, reduced to poverty, who go to seek their fortune in a more hospitable land” The emigrants from the coasts of Kii-Peninsula are exactly as, just described. They went abroad, stimulated by seeing their neigh-bours who emigrated, returning in affluent circumstances, at the. same time exhorted to thoso by emigrants residing abroad and those who have returned home. At first the emigrants in Siono-Misaki village (the south end of. Kii-Peninsula) went to Australia in the 16th year of Meiji (1883). as pearl-divers, since when the number emigrants from Siono-Misaki has increased considerable. To-day they. go abroad moved by the prevailing tendency in this village to emigrate. The cause that fostered emigration along the south coast of this peninsula is cause A. (Cause of emigration in my 2nd Report). The foregoing facts were established as the result of my geopsychological survey on the south coast of this region.