Statement on Denial of Japanese Visa

Japan Won't Admit Mrs. Sanger, Head of Birth Control League

San Francisco, 17 Feb. 1922

The Japanese Consulate here late to-day announced that instructions had been received from Tokyoto refuse a visa to a passport of Mrs. Margaret Sanger, of New York, of the Birth Control League, who is in San Francisco preparing to start on a tour of the Far East. Lack of the visa will prevent her landing in Japan, it was said.

The Japanese Department of Home Affairs, through the Foreign Office, issued this order according to Consul General S. Yada. He said Mrs. Sanger would be allowed to book passage upon a Japanese steamship, but that she could not set foot on Japanese soil.

Mrs. Sanger to-day, not having the proper passport visa, was refused a ticket on the Japanese steamer Taiyo Maru, sailing from this port February 21. Mr. Yada indicated to-night there was no objection to the steamship company selling her a ticket.

Mrs. Sanger announced that she intends to sail aboard the Taiyo Maru whether her passport is vised or not, and take chances of being able to effect a landing in Japan.

"Without a doubt the Japanese government feels my lectures in their universities would be in direct opposition to their theories of militarism which they have fostered in the past and still continue to foster," Mrs. Sanger said.

Consul General Yada asserted that the Japanese government for some time have been opposed to propaganda "of the sort Mrs. Sanger is reported to spread." He said he presumed that was the reason he had been ordered not to vise her passport.

A few days before departing for San Francisco Mrs. Sanger gave out a statement here in which she said the Japanese government had decided to take steps against "the yellow peril" by instituting a national birth control policy. Mrs. Sanger said she had been in conference with Dr. Kato, chief of the Department of Medical Affairs of the Japanese government,who had been making a study of the birth control movement in the United States, England, Holland, and Germany.

"Dr Kato told me," Mrs. Sanger said, "that the Japanese government is convinced it must establish birth control as a nation-wide movement or at once fight a war of aggression on the next generation. Dr. Kato points out the population of Japan is now 57,000,000 in an area the size of California and that it is increasing at the rate of 800,000 a year."

"For more that a year I have been receiving visits from representative of the Japanese government sent out to study birth control. There have been twenty-five of these visits in all, representing various departments of the Japanese government."

"Dr. Kato told me last week that the majority of the Japanese government were nowconvinced of the wisdom of birth control and that it only remained for the principle to be intelligently communicated to the Japanese people. It has been recognized that over-population is the basis of 'the yellow peril.'"

[Additional quotes from the Oakland (CA) Tribune.]

The Kaizo, an organization of young Japanese thinkers, modern to their very finger tips, invited me to visit Japan. They are the same faction that invited Bertrand Russell here. They realize as I do that Japan with 67,000,000, as opposed to our 110,000,000 has her most serious menace in over-population.

This tremendous population is crowded into a country about the same size as California. Added to this handicap, their increase far out totals their death rate. Such advanced thinkers as Baroness Ishimoto, who have sponsored my teachings in Japan and who have asked me to lecture to the Japanese social workers, realize just what this over-population means. It means war, nothing more or less.

[Additional quotes from the San Francisco (CA) Chronicle]

"'The entire circumstance of that government refusing to allow me to visit their country has arisen through misunderstanding. I feel quite sure,' the lecturer said, and when the real aim and underlying purpose of my teachings are understood by the Japanese I am certain that my tour will not be interrupted."

"At any rate, I shall sail on schedule time and if I am not allowed to land in Japan I can at least go to China and India and present my lectures there," she continued. "Those governments have placed no obstacles in my path, but signed my passports this morning."