Document 27: Margaret Sanger to Juliet Barrett Rublee, Yokohama, Japan, ca. 27 March 1922. Last page(s) missing. (Juliet Barrett Rublee Papers, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., The Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm Edition, Collected Documents Series, reel C2, frame 28-29), 2 pp.


Introduction

   Sanger's confinement in Yokohama to recover from her illness gave her time to reflect on her trip and her impact. What she did not acknowledge was the extent to which her impressions of Japan were based on limited interaction with the Japanese people. She spent most of her time with elite, often western-educated Japanese and with American and British citizens. Her contact with the people on her tours of factories, hospitals and working-class areas was buffered by Baroness Ishimoto and other guides and translators.


[p. 1]

Dearest Juliet:

   Here I am delayed because of a bad cold, and nearly had pneumonia, but the gods are good to me, and I am getting on nicely now. Shall leave for Nagoya tomorrow and then for Kobe where I take the boat for Korea & on to China.

   It is very amazing the way interest in birth control has been aroused here through my coming. Every paper in the Country carried headlines & front page stories & Editorials on the subject for a full week. Everyplace I went I was followed by Photographers & reporters & moving picture machines.

   I have given ten lectures in one week

[p. 2]

and were it not for the threatened pneumonia I would have given at least forty before leaving the Country. There were far more work engagements than I could fill.

   I spoke at the Peers Club last week before a select group of very fine men. Count Kawamura got up the group & invited those who could speak & understand English so I could speak plainly & directly. I loved the questions they asked about womans love nature. I'll tell you all about the questions when we meet.

   It could be very discouraging here were it not for the public interest taken in the subject.

   The reason the Government objected to my coming here to speak on B.C. was because of one official[A] who went to Wash D.C. & was there when the Town Hall affair occurred.[B] He said I was not allowed to speak in public in U.S.A. & why should I do it in Japan? [Last page(s) missing.]

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A. The official has not been identified. The Japanese delegation, headed by Tomosaburo Kato, Kijuro Shidehara, Iyesato Tokugawaa, and Masanao Hanihara, numbered ninety-four (Washington (D.C.) Conference on the Limitation of Armament, 1921-1922 [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922], pp. 33-35.)
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B. When the November 13 meeting culminating the First American Birth Control Conference in New York's Town Hall was raided by police, Sanger and several others were arrested. The charges were dropped and the meeting, on "The Morality of Birth Control," was rescheduled and held at the Park Theatre on 18 November 1921.[24]
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