Remember March 11, 2011? I was just waking up and getting ready for school when I received a call from CBC radio asking for a comment when I still didn’t have a clue about the tragedy that had befallen the Tohoku region of Japan where I had lived for nine years.
Read Part 1 >> Besides resistance to their being imprisoned and refusing army service, were there ever any acts of “disloyalty”/terrorism ever committed by these No-No Boys? If so, what? That’s a big question this documentary engages, though the definition of “disloyalty”/terrorism is crucial. But the most important takeaway is, at every …
What, if anything, makes us uniquely Canadian Nikkei? In many ways, we are very much like Nikkei in the United States as we’ve grown up in similar cultural environments, schools, churches and even immigrated from the same places in Japan.
Read Part 1 >> Were you ever drawn to any other traditional Japanese instruments like the taiko? Well, it looks to me that today’s taiko players take a totally different approach to training themselves. Mr. Daihachi Oguchi, a jazz percussionist, considered to be responsible for transforming O-suwa style ceremonial taiko …
While I have never met Takeo Yamashiro in person, he seems familiar to me in a way that good friends are even the first time you meet them.
Everybody loves a good sports story and baseball ones seems to possess certain narrative qualities that help it to reach mythological proportions.
Read Part 1 >>Quebecers seem to have a special relationship and interest with Japanese culture. Is this something that you recognize too? Quebec is the one province in Canada that consumes the most Japanese goods. In terms of dollar value, the bulk of this is cars and electronics, but anime …
When I reflect on why I have been involved as a writer with the Japanese Canadian community for almost 25 years now, I really have the late, great filmmaker and writer Jesse Hideo Nishihata to thank for much of this.
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