[jordan0day]

What's extremely funny to me is that this article is at least half about how much we underestimate (or flat out don't know much about) the people of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

And the sole comment thread here is full of people saying "No way were people in North Dakota capable of eating sushi in 1905".

[moogleii]

Actually, they're saying it's likely they were eating fresh water fish, which I think is a very astute observation that the article doesn't go into. Japan itself did not bother eating salmon for fear of parasites until much later.

To be honest, the article highlights some interesting history, but seems a bit editorialized for my tastes. As I commented there:

Very interesting article, but there seems to be an odd amount of time spent in adulation of Japan that I think could give an impression of less history and more "rose tinted glasses." It wasn't that long before the focused time period that Westerners were not treated so kindly in Japan.

"And that, in microcosm, was the general attitude of 19th century Americans to both the Chinese and the Japanese; one despised, the other admired. Over and over in newspapers and magazines of the era, the Japanese are praised as a clean, well-bred, delightful race, the “most civilizable” in Asia. The Chinese? Not so much."

This seems to be laying it a bit thick on the generalizations. The Japanese weren't exactly welcomed with open arms by everybody (and I'd love to see some citations about the implied universal hatred of the Chinese [and some more background information on why that is so wouldn't hurt if we're going to be throwing that in there anyway, but that too could fill its own article]). Indeed, the Japanese, too, were excluded once the "yellow" fear descended upon them just like the other East Asians.

Speaking of gyoza (which btw I think you've misspelled), there's a bit of "delicious" irony there when considering that it very likely has Chinese origins (even when just purely considering an etymological analysis), and yet, as your article points out, from a 19th century Westerner's view, it's good riddance to the Chinese folks, in with the Japanese folks!