Canadian Nikkei Artist

“Close to 800 dry glass negatives abandoned by the Matsubuchi studio reappeared in the mid-1980s in garage sales, and were recognized and collected by Cumberland residents, Mr. Frank Kothlow, Mrs. Flowers and Jim Small. Thanks to the foresight of Dale Reeves, the former director of the Cumberland Museum, the prints from these negatives are now located in the Museum’s Archives as a research collection,” taken from Shashin: Japanese Canadian Photography to 1942 exhibition catalogue, Grace Eiko Thomson, Japanese Canadian National Museum, 2004

After watching Hayley Gray’s remarkable “Hayashi Studio” documentary, I stumbled out into bright afternoon sunshine wondering ...

Read Part 1 >>

Can you talk about how your career as an artist began?

I am turning 60 this year and it is my first piece on JCs. If Dr. Heather Read had not very kindly invited me to turn my decades old idea into reality, it might never have existed outside of my head. Also, my younger sister Charissa Alain Lilly (also an artist) just passed away and that difficult event has in many ways pushed me to want to do more JC pieces before the window closes on my opportunity to make an artistic contribution to the racism ...

I caught up with Newfoundland artist David Hayashida on his return home after returning from the BC Internment Camp tour in July.

Like me, he grew up in Ontario far removed from most Japanese Canadians. We were often the only Asians in our schools. And as inheritors of the internment and the Redress legacy, we have spent much of our adult lives figuring out how to become valued members of our mostly-white communities where we grew up clinging on to whatever vestiges of our Japanese ancestry that we could.

As an eastern born and raised JC in Toronto, confronting the ...

Read the interview with Marjene Matsunaga Turnbull by Norm Ibuki >>

After learning what the Japanese Canadian (JC) history was, I could describe events. Using layers to build upon, it became like a cake. And making a recipe for it was perfect for doing the family history within the general JC history, I thought. Each layer was done separately, glazed, and fired. Layers were glued together.

Recipe for The Hisaoka History Cake: “Continuum”

Preparation Time: 90 years
Use three nesting bake pans and make each layer, a generation at a time.
Yield: There is a piece for each and additional member ...

Here’s an intriguing idea about how to think about your Japanese Canadian identity: What if it were a cake recipe what would go into it and how would you construct or, perhaps, more aptly, deconstruct, it?

De/constructing my own Japanese Canadian identity over the years, I’ve learned that the foundation of the Japanese part of my cultural shaping would include the food, my awkward way of interacting with others (especially in Japanese), Buddhism, aikido, how history has twisted and bent my identity, the novels of Yukio Mishima, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, Kenzaburo Oe, and writer Naoya Shiga’s ...