<p>This article examines Japanese rice farming colonies in the Texas Gulf Coast at the beginning of the twentieth century. While the field of southern history often ignored the presence of Asian migrants in the past, recent studies have identified diverse ways in which Asian Americans formulated southern race relations and opened up the region to the transpacific world. Studies of Japanese settler colonialism have also uncovered how rice farming in Texas was part of Japan’s imperial overseas expansion movement. Building on these new modes of scholarly inquiry, this article argues that the Japanese settlement in Texas came to exist as a result of settlers’ amicable and yet complicit relationships with local whites. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Japanese considered the American South a promised land for rice farming and a haven from the anti-Japanese movement. At the same time, the Japanese actively absorbed the Jim Crow system while establishing their colonies.</p><p>To analyze these phenomena, this article situates Japanese settlements in the Texas Gulf Coast at the intersection between the postbellum economic revival of the South and Imperial Japan’s expansionism. After the U.S, Civil War, rice farming ventures helped restore the Gulf South economy, and the reputation of Japanese rice seeds created an incentive for Texans to welcome the Japanese. In the meantime, the Japanese found Texas to be an attractive destination for two reasons. First, chronic rice shortage in Japan’s mainland since the 1890s drove the country’s territorial expansion. Second, Japanese officials used the Texas rice farming project to repaint the American image of the Japanese as an unassimilable race. Using both American and Japanese records, this article reveals that white southerners and Japanese people carefully crafted a colonization scheme to Texas. Notably, Japanese officials planned to bring only affluent and educated elites to Texas to placate the white fear of Asian migrants. Saibara Seito, a former parliament member, a lawyer, and a Christian educator, became the model of this endeavor despite his limited experience in rice farming.</p><p>This seemingly unusual bonds between white southerners and Japanese settlers, however, also relied on anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism. Using a wide range of Japanese records, this article elucidates how Japanese settlers complied with the Jim Crow system and distanced themselves from the Chinese. When Japanese settlers wrote home, they also portrayed themselves as superior to whites while highlighting their advanced agricultural skills and the excellent quality of Japanese rice seeds. This racialized self-representation legitimized Japan’s overseas rice farming project.</p><p>Lastly, this article sheds light on Japanese settlers’ complex reactions to anti-Japanese sentiment. The naturalization problem constantly loomed over Japanese settlers’ head, and Saibara eventually left for Japan’s new settlement in Brazil in the late 1910s. Other Japanese settlers, however, continued maintaining their close relationship with locals. These Japanese farmers remained optimistic even when the anti-Japanese movement swept across the South.</p>