ABSTRACT
Japanese prostitutes also appeared in America in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Few Japanese women immigrated to America in the nineteenth century. The first phase of Japanese immigration consisted predominantly of males. Indigent students began to arrive in fair numbers from the mid-1880s, and many laborers followed closely on their heels from 1890. The small female population in 1900, numbering in the neighborhood of a thousand, included many prostitutes who, in all likelihood, comprised the majority. No documented evidence on the first appearance of the prostitutes nor precise figures on their numbers and geographical distribution exist. Oral tradition has it that they appeared in Denver, Colorado as early as the 1860s. Japanese consular reports bear out their arrival. In January 1890 the San Francisco consul reported that the prostitutes had begun to arrive in the preceding years and estimated that thirty worked in the city.
