Survey of the capacity to teach the Japanese language in the United States is especially concerned with the overall organization of the teaching system, the characterization of the student clientele being served, the general character of instructional practice, and with the use made of language competence acquired by these individuals.

Teaching Mikadoism is a dynamic and nuanced look at the Japanese language school controversy that originated in the Territory of Hawai‘i in 1919. At the time, ninety-eight percent of Hawai‘i’s Japanese American children attended Japanese language schools. Hawai‘i sugar plantation managers endorsed Japanese language schools but, after witnessing the assertive role of Japanese in the 1920 labor strike, they joined public school educators and the Office of Naval Intelligence in labeling them anti-American and urged their suppression. Thus the "Japanese language school problem" became a means of controlling Hawai‘i's largest ethnic group. The debate quickly surfaced in California and Washington, where powerful activists sought to curb Japanese immigration and economic advancement. Language schools were accused of indoctrinating Mikadoism to Japanese American children as part of Japan's plan to colonize the United States. Previously unexamined archival documents and oral history interviews highlight Japanese immigrants’ resistance and their efforts to foster traditional Japanese values in their American children. A comparative analysis of the Japanese communities in Hawai‘i, California, and Washington shows the history of the Japanese language school is central to the Japanese American struggle to secure fundamental rights in the United States.

Although the United States is a nation of immigrants, few Americans are familiar with the ethnic community mother-tongue schools that nurtured and maintained the immigrants' language and culture. This book records the history of the schools of Americans of Japanese ancestry, focusing on the efforts of the Japanese community in California to maintain their linguistic and cultural heritage. The main focus of the book is on the period from the early 20th century to World War II, but it also surveys conditions during the war and in the postwar era up to the present. The coverage examines the difficulties experienced by the ancestors of the model minority, from the San Francisco Japanese school-children segregation incident in the early part of this century to private school control laws in the 1920s. The book also surveys the lives of Japanese Americans as college students in Japan in the 1930s, as well as looks at Japanese communities in Hawaii and Brazil.