A Tailor in Oakland

Naegi, Japan

He was born in rural Naegi, Japan, to a land-owning family with a brewery business as the fourth of eight children. Kishiro's family had been in Naegi in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan since the 1700s. They were a land-owning family who were given privileges by the lord of the area (the daimyo) including a stipend (fuchi). Kishiro's predecesors in the mid 1700s were privileged family, and some served as a village headmen, collecting taxes, managing water irrigation, providing farm instruction and generally maintaining order.

Over six generation's time, the Yamashita family bought up more land, which they rented to tenant rice farmers and their wealth grew. The first son's descendents inherited the wealth, and by 1818 had built four rice breweries (sakaya). The family was also described as a "loan-shark", charging their share croppers 20 to 30 percent interest loans. (For more on this, see this excerpt from Ann Tamaki Dion research paper "Across Ryuku Waters," self published in 2003.) 

Above: The picture of Kishiro's family was taken sometime before 1920. Kishiro's father, Sadashige, died in 1913 at age 64. He does not appear to be in this picture. Kishiro's mother, Fumi, might be the older woman in the photo, in the middle of the front row. She died Oct 2, 1920 in Naegi. Sadashige and Fumi's first son was Naotaro. He may be in this picture. His second wife, Tama, may be the woman in the second to the left. Naotaro's first son by his first wife was Kohei, who may be the kid to the far right. In 1913, Kohei would have been 10. 

Kishiro was born in the sixth year of the new Meiji government, the year was Meiji 6 (or 1873). Kishiro grew up at a time of social transformation from feudalism of the Tokugawa Shogunate era to a modernizing period (Meiji) in which the feudalism was abolishied and major population shifts from rural areas to cities. Merchants were steadily taking the privileged social position and peasant farmers were being forced off of their homesteads.

The Yamashita family was one that might have gained in this economic restructuring. They were not a samurai family who had seen their wealth and privileged position slowly deteriorate. Despite inheriting wealth, Kishiro’s father, Sadashige would eventually face financial ruin, though perhaps of his own making. Kishiro left home to find a profession, for his father could not support him. 

To see Sadashige and Fumi's Family tree at 1905, 1921, and 1941. To see A Map of Naegi (unknown year).

Karen Tei Yamashita conducted research in Naegi in the 1970s. To see her notes on the family lineage scrolls which were first kept in the Buddhist Temples and then kept by the families during the period in which Buddhism was outlawed and replaced by Shintoism as the state mandated religion.

Here are some pages relating to Kishiro's father Sadashige (also known as Hikota, after his forebear) Page 33 (see bottom left of page) and Page 34 of Karen Tei's notebook from this trip. See here for the first half and second half of the notebook which includes anecdotes about her trip interspersed with translations of Japanese scrolls on the family lineage. 

To see all the surviving images of Kishiro's family, see the Collection Family in Japan, pre-World War II. This collection includes eight photographs of Kishiro's family. Items with the name Kohei (a cousin of Kishiro) include images from Kishiro's family in Naegi. Items with the name Murakami cover Kishiro's wife, Tomi's family in Tokyo. 

Yokohama to Oakland

When Kishiro was 18 years old, he and his closest brother, Enkichi, two years older were encouraged to leave and support themselves (Dion 2003). The eldest brother and inheritor of the family's fortune, Kohei, stayed with his father. Kishiro and Enkichi went to Yokohama, where Kishiro started to study to become a doctor, with the financial help of his father. However, the money soon ran out. During this period, Enkichi died suddently of dysentary at age 22.

After this tragic loss, Kishiro made his way to the U.S. He apprenticed for two years at a tailoring shop. He may have seen all of the western clothing in Yokohama, a port where wealthy businessmen from Tokyo would come to get finely tailored suits. 

Japan aspired towards a western style of military power and colonialism, and engaged in wars with Russia and China, occupying Korea, Taiwan and parts of China. 

Karen Tranberg Hansen, professor emerita of Anthropology at Northwestern University, writes about the connections between fashion and imperialism.  

"In Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912), the government energetically promoted modernization as a way of strengthening the country, with a twofold goal: to prevent Japan's being taken over as a colony by any European power, and to prepare Japan to compete on equal terms with Europe as a colonial power itself. The effort to emulate the strength of the West included a promotion of beef-eating (formerly nearly unknown in Japan) and a wholesale adoption of Western-style clothing, at least by urban elites."(Source)

According to Hansen, adopting western fashion was part of demonstrating imperialist notions of modernity and exerting imperial control to compete with Western imperial powers. Kishiro's chosen profession reflects the larger historical and national context of a Westernizing Japan. 

The Mitchell Tailoring School was known for recruiting immigrants from around the world. He then returned across the country to Oakland to  set up his own tailoring shop in Downtown Oakland, at 513 8th Street, living above Yokohoma Tailoring Co. from 1903-1918. By 1918, Kishiro was able to moved his family to a house a few streets away in Oakland, at 670 19th Street, which also still stands today. 

Kishiro remained in the tailoring business until he died in 1932. The building where Kishiro set up his business still stands in Oakland today. There was a sizable Japanese community in Oakland at that time. The infamous earthquake of 1906 which devastated San Francisco (killing around 3,000 people and destroying 80% of the city) also forced a portion of the surviving Japanese community in San Francisco to move. Many joined the Japanese immigrant community in Oakland which was thriving. Arnold Genthe's photo of the fires in San Francisco on Sacramento Street following the earthquake of 1906 illustrate the upheaval of the earthquake. Read more about the earthquake of 1906 here.

By the 1910s, there were dozens of Japanese tailor shops, grocers, laundries, and restaurants in Oakland, serving a Japanese community of 1,500.

Kishiro's daughter, Iyo, shared a bunch of her memories about the tailor shop that her dad ran along with her mom. Here is an excerpt from a 1995 oral history interview with Iyo:

Apparently he came to this country with a certain amount of money. His family had been well off at one time. With that money he went to New York to the “Mitchell Cutting School” and received this great big diploma, which I remember as a child. It was in an enormous frame in the tailor shop. That’s one of two things I remember about the shop. The other thing I remember is this great big framed mirror that occupied one wall of the front part of the tailor shop….There were other people who wanted to learn tailoring too, and so he was able to have apprentices to do the sewing. He taught them…Ernie Takahashi’s father was his partner. Of course they had to pool money but somehow they started a business. I have this picture of the tailoring shop. And little by little, by the time I was growing up, it didn’t look like this original picture. The space in the shop was the same, but he added glass showcases to hold the finished clothes. The front door was changed and the shop looked much more fancy. My father had a wonderful roll-top desk.

At first the family must have lived upstairs. It was a two-story building and I don’t think I was born in that place but I do remember growing up in that place. There was a kitchen behind the shop and my mother had to cook for these apprentices. I guess they were all bachelors, you know…And then his apprentices worked a certain number of years there and then they opened up their own shops. That’s how it was in those days. The tailoring—custom tailoring was a good business. Everyone—not just wealthy people- had their clothes made. And the Issei—they all needed a good Sunday suit, for a wedding or funeral. My father had people in the country as customers. He would take a bus and go to the country to get orders. And the other interesting thing was the Greek candy-makers. They were in the candy making business in those early 1900’s and they were his best customers, I recall.

Many of the pictures saved from the early 1900s show Kishiro and Tomi with a large group of friends. Were these friends organizing in a formal way- associated with the church that Tomi attended? Or were they on outings by virtue of being in a close knit Japanese American community in Oakland?  Were they connected through the Japanese Association of Tailors?  Some photos appear to be taken in Golden Gate Park, in beautifully tailored suits. Some are on fields. These photos provide a glimpse into their lives, and the fun that they had. 

They are relaxed and smiling, posing with umbrellas, or showing their kids. A man slouches like a dandy on another man’s shoulder, very aware of his best angles. Tomi laughs and shows her teeth, a rare site in a photograph when she almost always kept her lips closed.

The early days are more documented than the depression years, when the money for outings to Golden Gate Park no doubt ran out. One of his sons said, what killed him was the depression. What else do we know of his life up until his death? We don't have letters from him sent back to Japan or a journal he kept. Kishiro did commission two charcoal portraits of his parents (See them in  the exhibit page entitled "Naegi"). Did he envision moving back to Japan after a number of years in the U.S. or did he consider his future to be fully in Oakland? What did it mean to commission portraits from abroad? Was it a way to share his parents with his kids who had never met their grandparents? Was it a way to feel close to them while living in the U.S.? Was it a common act that others had taken? 

To see more photos from the Yamashita family's life in Oakland from 1900s and after his death, up until the outbreak of WWII.

Kishiro lived long enough to see the birth of his first grandchild, since he died in 1931 at the age of 58. Kishiro died amidst the hard times of the Great Depression. Some of his kids would later say that the Depression killed him. He never lived to see his family incarcerated or stripped of their home ownership during the Second World War. Japanese American wartime incarceration succeeded his death by a decade. His life as an Issei (Japanese first generation immigrant) tells the story of the years before World War II. He ended his life in debt, leaving behind photos of happier moments, picnics and outings with his wife and friends. These images portray a dapper immigrant, among his fellow tailor friends, well dressed although perhaps not entirely wealthy.

Looking at the history of Japan and looking at the photos of his family there may shed some light on the context of his family and class background. Unfortunatley, few other sources exist in the family oral history to tell us about what kind of person Kishiro was like, and how he felt about his immigrant life. Despite having a sizeable back story and lineage in Japan, we don’t know much about Kishiro’s day to day life in Oakland.  When asked to describe him, one of his son simply said he was  “milquetoast,” which might be to say, that his personality was less than exciting. His personality may have been subsumed by Tomi’s personality.  Whether to start with him or her to tell the story of the Yamashita Family is a hard one, but we'll start with Kishiro for now.

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