ABSTRACT
The historical record in the wake of Hayakawa’s death offers many clues about the nature of Japanese immigrant life in the early twentieth century. The paucity of women in early Japanese immigrant society had implications for gender relations that have rarely been examined, especially in the context of rural life where possibilities for women’s exploitation and agency appear in sharp relief. The peculiar conditions of early immigrant life in rural California produced inherently unstable gender relations and intra-ethnic conflict, with surprising and occasionally tragic consequences. The emergence of Silicon Valley has eclipsed the Santa Clara Valley’s rich agricultural past and the history of its Asian farmers and laborers who cultivated the land. The early twentieth-century Japanese immigrant community in the Santa Clara Valley was an integral part of the area’s agricultural economy. Another important characteristic of this rural immigrant community was its considerable gender imbalance.
