Over the next few months, JAMsj will be posting “Nikkei in San Jose”, a blog series by volunteer and writer, Judith Ichisaka. Through research and interviews, Judith explores the diversity of the Japanese diaspora here within San Jose, both through a historical and personal lens.
nikkei in san jose: Japanese Canadian
Most Japanese Canadian historians will mention that Manzo Nagano was the first known Japanese immigrant to arrive in Canada more than 200 years ago, in 1877.
The Issei Japanese arrived in North and South America at the turn of the 20th century. By 1901, almost 5,000 Japanese had established settlements in Vancouver, Steveston, and Victoria, as well as various locations along the coast of British Columbia towards Alaska. The majority were farmers and fishermen supporting the herring and salmon canneries, but others who settled more inland worked in mining, sawmill, and pulp mill towns. Boat building became a major enterprise for Japanese entrepreneurs to the point where they were producing half of the boats for the BC salmon fishing industry.
Unfortunately, the non-Asian locals were not welcoming the influx of Japanese, and some groups were openly hostile towards non-white communities. Tensions also rose between the Native fishermen and Japanese as well. The Asiatic Exclusion League formed in 1907 in response to the growing resentment towards the Japanese and Chinese immigrants, and three major riots erupted in Vancouver’s Chinatown and Powell Street’s Little Tokyo area. The Lemieux-Hayashi Gentlemen’s agreement limited male immigrants and domestic servants to 400 a year until 1928, when wives and children were added to the quota.
When World War I broke out, a number of Issei believed that if they served in the Canadian military, it would pave the road for equality and citizenship. The 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance made Japan and Britain allies (and Canadians were subjects of the British monarchy). After failed attempts, once conscription was initiated to fulfill Canada’s obligation to support the British army, a total of 222 Issei volunteers were able to fight.
But the victory was short-lived, as the Japanese Canadians faced more fishing license reductions and crew member limits imposed by the British Columbia Fisheries Commission (Duff Commission). Discrimination and mistrust towards the Japanese Canadians became more rampant during the economic slump in the 1930s.
Around the same time as when the U.S. passed Executive Order 9066, the Canadian federal government swiftly enacted the War Measures Act. The 37 World War I veterans, along with more than 21,000 other Japanese Canadians, were automatically classified as “enemy aliens”. Their franchise and voting rights, fishing licenses, boats and homes were immediately confiscated, and within 48 hours, they were sent off to the mountainous areas of British Columbia and Ontario. Unlike the Japanese American experience, serving in the military was no longer an opportunity for Japanese Canadians to prove their loyalty to Canada. Most able-bodied men were sent to remote road camps, while small towns such as New Denver and Slocan became internment camps for their families. In thin-walled buildings with no plumbing, these families were forced to withstand temperatures below freezing in the Canadian winter.
Ironically, once the war ended, the United States, which had been suddenly attacked on December 7, 1941, gave immediate freedom to the incarcerated Japanese Americans. In contrast, the Canadian government gave Japanese Canadians two choices: permanently move to “east of the Rockies” or be repatriated to Japan immediately.
This unfortunate chain of government decisions marked the tragic Japanese Canadian experience during World War II, and families suffered repercussions for the next few decades.
It took four more years after World War II for the Japanese Canadians to be allowed back into the coastal areas of British Columbia. But nothing was left by 1949 in Vancouver, Steveston, or Victoria, nor in other areas within the province where the Japanese Canadian families originally settled. This explains why there are no “Japantowns” in Canada. The previous homes, shops and community property were long gone and many Japanese Canadians struggled financially to start over again. Education was too expensive and many suffered from psychological trauma. Even the Nisei, the first to be born and formally educated in Canada, were still denied the right to vote until after World War II.
Joy Kogawa, a well-known Japanese Canadian author and Order of Canada recipient, wrote “Obasan“ in 1981 and its sequel “Itsuka” in 1992. In both novels, Kogawa takes the reader on her semi-autobiographical journey of a family going through the Canadian internment experience and eventually resettling just after World War II. The sequel illustrates the different generations’ reactions to retribution for the internment experience. An example of this is where an older Issei repeatedly reminds the younger generation to have “gratitude” for having survived the internment and the ability to live quietly in Alberta after the war. In contrast, a group of Nisei and Sansei were actively vocal about justice not being served in a country where a citizen is reassured of basic freedoms and human rights.
Fear of racial discrimination buried any pride in Japanese culture or language for most Niseis and Sanseis during most of the 20th century. Japanese Canadians in post-war Canada eventually settled back into normal life, continuing higher education and attaining respectable employment. Unfortunately, most Sansei grew up speaking little or no Japanese, and most knew little of their cultural heritage. Wartime disbursement of Japanese Canadians was a factor in explaining why intermarriage was very high among the Sansei and Yonsei.
Continuous political opposition to granting non-whites equal rights and ongoing prejudices made it impossible for Asian Canadians to gain a better standard of living. However, the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC), established in 1947, led the lengthy journey for redress.
Another four decades went on before the NAJC and the Canadian federal government finally reached a successful redress settlement on September 22, 1988. This finally reaffirmed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ intention that no Canadians would experience injustice on Canadian soil.
At the time, the late Prime Minister Brian Mulroney - who had just passed away in March 2024 - had declared that “nearly half a century ago, in the crisis of wartime, the Government of Canada wrongfully incarcerated, seized the property and disenfranchised thousands of citizens of Japanese ancestry. We cannot change the past. But we must, as a nation, have the courage to face up to these historical facts.”
Yurika Chiba, seen working on art.
yurika’s story
As Art Miki writes in his most recent book, Gaman – Perseverance, “the redress settlement and acknowledgement were meaningful…for all Japanese Canadians in the implementation and revitalization phases of community development” (259), the Japanese Canadian communities are evolving as the younger Yonsei and Gosei become more present in the various cultural events and activities.
In December 2023, I briefly visited the newly renovated Nikkei Cultural Centre in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, Canada. It currently hosts a number of Japanese cultural events and has a small bookstore and art gallery. Upstairs is the Japanese language school and a Japanese language library, and along the corridor, is a long mural depicting the history of Japanese Canadians.
On the mural is a section describing another wave of Japanese – the Shin Issei – who migrated to Canada after the law opened doors to more immigrants in 1967, bringing with them the cultural traditions like tea ceremony and odori. Interestingly, Canada’s first taiko group was not inspired by a Shin Issei, but a performance by the San Jose Taiko Group at Vancouver’s Powell Street Festival in 1979.
Since the 1970s, many Canadian cities have become rich with multicultural representation visible on every corner, everything from the First Nations art gallery to the famous local shawarma restaurant to a popular flamenco dance studio. The majority of Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, comprises of residents from almost every nation.
I recently met Yurika Chiba, a Japanese-Canadian from Toronto and longtime instructor with the San Jose Taiko group. Her parents met through a Christian church and married in Japan, but wanted to find a place with an easier pace of life to live and raise their children.
Both of her parents were born in Japan, and went through hardships during their childhood,
“My mother’s family was very poor; father taught Japanese in China didn’t meet until 8. When she got older, she worked in record store in Tokyo for a while,” Yurika explained. “When my father was 13, he lost his mother to tuberculosis and went right to work at 14.”
Yurika’s parents were in their mid-30s when they got married, and wanted to live in a place outside of Japan with less societal pressure and stigma. At the time, immigration to Canada increased during Pierre Trudeau’s time as Prime Minister. With the sponsorship of a great aunt, they immigrated to Toronto shortly after Yurika was born.
“It was my grandfather’s longtime dream of becoming a painter in France, and that partially inspired the move to Canada. Canada has two official languages – French and English – and was that “close enough” according to him,” Yurika recalled with a smile. “His view of Canada in the 1970s was this wide open, magical place.”
But it wasn’t quite a magical place to Yurika.
“When I was in elementary school, there were mainly Koreans, Indians, and Greeks who recently immigrated. They wanted to fit in. They were the minority,” Yurika explained. “Back then, some of my friends who had parents from other countries and didn’t want to associate with immigrants. They didn’t want to be part of a group that segregated itself.”
Yurika and her family.
Because of her parents’ Christian faith, Yurika already did not participate in the Obon festival or other Japanese cultural events. And like most teenagers - who would immediately break free from parental expectations if given a chance - Yurika stopped going to Japanese language school, practicing piano, as well as participating in any church related activities. But as Yurika entered competitions and applied for part time job opportunities, there was always a question in the back of her mind of whether she had been chosen, or, missed an opportunity because of her Japanese background and name.
As Yurika and her friends experienced new challenges in school, they were each questioning what it meant to be “Canadian” and figuring out their own identities.
Even now, Yurika’s two siblings have polar opposite approaches to being a “Japanese Canadian”. Both her younger brother and sister were born in Toronto.
“My brother is very Canadian in his identity. He’s somewhat distant from the family, in part because he’s been living in South America, whereas my sister wants to be close to the family, and speaks Japanese.”
After completing a degree in Psychology at the University of Toronto, Yurika spent three fulfilling years on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) program, starting in a remote town on the island of Shikoku in Japan. This is also where she first started playing Taiko.
Yurika and other taiko players in Japan.
“I went to Japan to find my roots,” Yurika revealed. On her flight to Japan, Yurika had the idea that she was “more Japanese”, that she had to be one or another. But during her experience with JET, she came to a realization that she was not Japanese in the way she perceived herself. She was indeed, more Canadian.
One of the things that helped Yurika with coming to terms with her identity was spending time with other Nikkeis from other countries - in particular, Japanese Americans - and she became close friends with some Hawaiians of Japanese descent.
“Their comfort of being in their skin of being Japanese but also being American was very refreshing for me, and that they didn’t have this feeling of constant conflict,” Yurika recalled.
At an Enkai - a social gathering where Japanese and JET teachers were more open and relaxed around each other - one older male teacher admitted that he was waiting for Yurika to point out ‘how ridiculous some things are that we do here [in Japan] because you an outsider, and you have this perspective of how things were done.”
Yurika with some of her students from the JET program.
In Yurika’s mind, she was wondering why she would do that, because speaking her mind in such a brash way in Japan never crossed her mind. Whether she really thought something was ridiculous or not, the strong Japanese principle of “Gaman” prevailed.
Yurika reflected that the experience was interesting to her because she realized the other teachers viewed her as an “outsider” more than a “Japanese”. Up until that day, she was so paranoid about being expected to behave like the other Japanese teachers (rather than as a non-Japanese JET teachers), and that assumption made her very worried about making a faux paux.
Overall, Yurika had a fulfilling experience in Japan, connecting with the small, local community and gaining a better understanding of the culture. As she traveled throughout Japan, she noticed that each region had its own unique foods, traditions, festivals, and even dialect.
She was completed her TESOL, and then moved on to Melbourne, Australia for a year on a working holiday visa. She spent some time working in a Japanese restaurant, but there wasn’t an established Japanese community in the city.
Then, in 2006, she moved to San Jose to continue taiko, and lived near Japantown.
“San Jose Obon was very large!” Yurika said of her first impressions.
Yurika poses for a picture at San Jose Obon.
However, it took Yurika a while to fully adapt to her new neighborhood. Having no real personal connection with the Japanese American World War II experience, she felt like an outsider.
“My great-aunt in Canada was the first to move outside of Japan. As a teen, she was incarcerated. But we weren’t really close so I didn’t learn about her experiences during the war,” Yurika explained.
She lived in Sonoma for a while, and wanted to take her taiko to the next level and moved to San Jose specifically to be a part of San Jose Taiko.
“I didn’t really identify with San Jose’s Japantown at first. When I learned about the Japanese Canadian internment (back in Toronto), I felt really distant then. I didn’t really grasp the experience, even Hiroshima, at the time,” Yurika admitted, alluding to a common feeling among those who do not have personal connections to a historic event. “But once I started meeting people in San Jose who were incarcerated during World War II and they shared their stories, I began to really understand the significance.”
Because Yurika has now lived in United States for about 20 years, she identifies strongly with being Japanese American. She revealed that she does not have a sense of being part of any particular community in Canada other than the connection with her childhood and family.
The demographics within San Jose Taiko and its creative music rhythms have also evolved, as Yurika and her team continue to educate audiences of varying ages and backgrounds. The world-renown taiko group incorporates traditional Japanese beats with various types of American genres, including hip hop and jazz.
The San Jose Taiko group has also connected her to a huge network of people who were connected with taiko on different levels as well as the multicultural art scene.
“I like that there is a community of people here that celebrate the culture and the sense of belonging,” Yurika stated. “Moving to San Jose was a good move for reaffirming my values.”
Written for JAMsj by Judith Ichisaka
“Nikkei in San Jose” posts will be published on the 15th and 30th of each month. Sign up for the JAMsj eNews or follow us on social media for notifications when new posts are published!
sources
To learn more about the NAJC: https://najc.ca/about-us/
Prime Minister Mulroney’s complete speech:
Library of Parliament, Canadian Parliamentary Historic Resources, House of Common Debates, 33rd Parliament, 2nd session, vol 15, “Japanese Canadians Interned During World War II – National Redress,” September 22, 1988, 19499-19501, parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC3302_15/1037
Reference:
Miki, Arthur. Gaman: Perseverance: Japanese Canadian’s Journey to Justice. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023.
For more information:
Vancouver Taiko https://www.vancouvertaiko.ca/history/
San Jose Taiko https://taiko.org/