Final answer:
The Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 was an informal pact between the U.S. and Japan which stopped Japanese immigration without an official legislative ban, partly by Japanese authorities stopping the issuance of passports for travel to the U.S. It preceded the Emergency Quota Act and 1924 Immigration Act that restricted Japanese and other Asian immigration, reflecting persistent anti-Asian sentiment until the barriers began to soften with the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Gentleman's Agreement of 1907 was an informal yet pivotal pact designed to address immigration concerns between the United States and Japan without causing a diplomatic stir. Skirting around the direct legislation that had previously barred Chinese immigrants, this Agreement operated under an understanding where the United States would not impose a formal ban on Japanese immigrants. In return, the Japanese government would curb emigration by not issuing passports to its citizens for travel to the U.S. This measure was partly influenced by domestic issues such as the San Francisco school board's segregation policy which was revised to exclude only Chinese children, yielding to domestic and international pressures.
Japan's previous policy of pushing outward migration to assert its reputation as a civilized nation aligned poorly with the rising nativist sentiments in America. These sentiments also played a major role later in the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, which eventually placed an absolute prohibition on Japanese immigration. These legislative actions showed the persistent undercurrent of anti-Asian sentiment in U.S. policy up until the post-war era. It wasn't until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 that racial barriers to citizenship and Asian migration began to erode, albeit still very restrictive.