Inoue Katsunosuke

• Japanese: 井上勝之助 (Inoue Katsunosuke)

Inoue Katsunosuke was an official in the Meiji government, and the son of Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru.

In 1885, he traveled to Hawaii as a Special Commissioner to investigate the conditions in which Japanese immigrants to Hawaii were living and working. He had been empowered to cancel the contracts under which nearly 1000 Japanese arrived in the islands earlier that year, if satisfactory provisions were not in place. In the end, however, an agreement was made. A Convention of Japanese Immigration, signed in 1886 and taking into account Katsunosuke's recommendations, arranged for the Japanese in Hawaii to be provided with doctors, interpreters, and inspectors who would oversee that conditions were amenable.

Inoue managed to secure positions for eight Japanese doctors and ten interpreters to be employed by the Hawaiian Bureau of Immigration, and assigned out to plantations on the various islands. Conditions for plantation workers remained quite poor, however.

References

• Franklin Odo and Kazuko Sinoto, A Pictorial History of the Japanese in Hawaii 1885-1924, Bishop Museum (1985), 22, 74.