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"Two Other Solitudes": Historical Encounters between Japanese Canadians and French Canadians

Greg Robinson, Assistant Professor of History, Université du Québec à Montréal

Les Canadiens à qui on demande en quoi leur pays se distingue des États-Unis devraient répondre en français. (When Canadians are asked what is the difference between their country and the United States, they should answer in French.) —Lester B. Pearson, Prime Minister of Canada, 1963-1968

As an American living in Montreal, I am frequently assigned the task of comparing the United States and Canada, and of reflecting on the particular factors that make life in these two countries, which share a border and a great deal else, so oddly different. One important historical element separating the two is that Canada, its relatively new policy of official multiculturalism notwithstanding, has not generally perceived itself as a nation of immigrants, as has more commonly (though hardly universally) been the case in the United States. Rather, the traditional basis of Canadian identity is the interaction between the nation’s two founding non-native peoples, the British and the French, whose distant and sometimes hostile coexistence the novelist Hugh MacLennan famously referred to as “the two solitudes.”¹ All other groups who have come to Canada have been forced to place themselves within the English Canadian-French Canadian dyad. For various reasons, most of these immigrants, even in largely francophone Quebec, have tended to connect more with the dominant Anglophone group. They have confronted discrimination by the Anglo Saxons, acculturated to English language norms, and forged their identity vis-à-vis English Canadian values. In contrast, Canadian scholars, Anglophone and Francophone alike, have paid less attention to the interchange between immigrants and the French Canadian population. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the case of racialized minority groups, whose historical experience has most often been excluded from scholarly treatment in the first place. Such research, in my view, is especially valuable for the historical insight it provides into some essential questions about Canadian society: Have French Canadians, who have often felt themselves marginalized within the larger society, historically been more hospitable to other marginalized groups? Is Quebec truly a distinct society from the rest of Canada in its attitude towards immigration and racial difference? Has acculturation to a French model ever been an alternative for newcomers?²

The interaction between Japanese Canadians and French Canadians is illuminating in this regard, since these two groups’ historical encounter has contributed in important ways to shaping the modern development of Canada. The history of this encounter begins with the wave of Japanese immigration to Canada that took place at the turn of the 20th century. The vast majority of the Japanese immigrants settled in British Columbia, where they became active in agricultural labor, lumber mills and in the fishing and canning industries. By 1907, there were some 10,000 Japanese immigrants in Canada. Local whites, anxious over labor competition and inflamed by racial bias, organized protests against the Japanese presence. Beginning in 1897, British Columbia’s legislature passed a series of laws restricting Japanese immigration. The federal government disallowed all these laws in order not to disturb British imperial foreign policy towards its Japanese ally Emotions in British Columbia reached a pitch on September 7, 1907, when a mass demonstration called by the Asiatic Exclusion League in Vancouver broke into a race riot. White thugs attacked the city’s Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods, damaging property and looting shops.³

During these years, many French Canadians expressed ambivalence or hostility towards immigration to Canada generally. Immigration to Quebec, where most French Canadians lived, had been minimal from 1867 to 1896, but it expanded dramatically in the years afterwards.⁴ The Catholic Church, which dominated French Canadian intellectual life, underlined the importance of immutable racial and religious identities in opposing entry by Italians, Jews, and other groups. “For the French Canadian Catholic church, immigration was a horrid experience which caused individuals to lose their ties and sense of attachment to family and community values.”⁵ In addition, many educated French Canadians were influenced by prevailing social Darwinist ideas, and viewed immigrants from outside Western Europe as inferior and even dangerous on racial grounds.⁶ A cartoon from the journal Le Canard, dating from 1900, (See Appendix I) for example, presents the new immigrants, whether Asian, Jewish or Eastern European, in stereotyped fashion to emphasize their undesirability. French Canadian liberals, who had supported Confederation as a means of striking a balance of power between English and French, opposed immigration by members of other nationalities as a destabilizing force.

At the same time, the mass of French Canadians, concentrated in Quebec, remained largely distant from and indifferent to the specific question of Japanese immigration. Commentary in the French-language press on Japanese immigrants seems to have been scanty and neutral. In early 1907, La Presse expressed opposition to anti-Japanese legislation, not because it was racist but because it hindered development:

If British Columbia wishes to keep its anti-Japanese laws, so be it, but our country, being young, must follow the example of the United States, and as far as the development of our railroads is concerned, the policy of the Canadian people should be: whether you are black, yellow, red or white, come work!⁸

Despite the general indifference, French Canadian politicians, notably Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, occupied a central role in the exclusion of Japanese immigrants. Scholars of Canada’s Anti-Asian movements, notably Peter Ward and Patricia Roy, have described Laurier as generally respectful toward Japan, whose political and military progress he admired. He wrote in one letter, “The Japanese has adopted European civilization, has shown that he can whip European soldiers, has a navy equal man for man to the best afloat, and will not submit to be kicked and treated with contempt, as his brother from China still meekly submits to."⁹. Fearing to confront Japanese power, Laurier refused to be drawn into the movement for exclusion.

After the 1907 Vancouver Riot, the Laurier government was forced to take action. As a conciliatory gesture towards Japan, the Prime Minister agreed to send Deputy Minister of Labour, future Prime Minister Mackenzie King, to Vancouver as head of a commission on payment for damages caused by the riot. Meanwhile, Laurier sought some means for limiting Japanese immigration that would placate British Columbian restrictionists without alienating Japan, disturbing the Anglo-Japanese naval alliance or violating the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce, to which Canada was a signatory.¹⁰ Laurier’s trusted lieutenant, Labour Minister Rodolphe Lemieux, volunteered to visit Tokyo and negotiate with the Japanese government an informal understanding to limit immigration visas, on the model of the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” which Japanese leaders had just concluded with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.¹¹ In addition to his closeness to Laurier, Lemieux was selected for this mission, the first independent demarche of Canadian diplomacy, because of his fluency in French, then the international language of diplomacy.¹²

Lemieux arrived in Tokyo in December 1907. Although his Japanese hosts refused any explicit undertaking that would signify Japanese inferiority, Lemieux succeeded in obtaining from First Minister Count Hayashi a private promise that Japan would henceforth permit only 400 Japanese each year to enter Canada.¹³ On his return from Japan in January 1908, Lemieux reported to Parliament on his mission, and hailed Japan’s willingness to cooperate in limiting immigration. In a long passage, Lemieux discussed the history of the “Japanese problem.” He made clear that unrestricted Japanese immigration posed a menace the western “Anglo-Saxon” civilization in which he clearly included French Canadians such as himself:

In an Anglo-Saxon country like ours, where democratic institutions prevail, the introduction in large numbers of foreign races unfamiliar with our principles of self-government can only be considered dangerous…These orientals belong to a civilization formed over the centuries in ways radically and totally different from ours. It is thus clear that British Columbians must oppose this vast foreign colony—exclusive, inscrutable, unassimilable, retaining their particular customs and characteristics.¹⁴

Laurier backed his minister with a two-hour speech of his own. Despite his friendly foreign policy towards Japan, Laurier made the case for a restrictive policy in apocalyptic and racially charged terms. “In all the nations where they have met, the white and mongol races have demonstrated their antagonism. The population of British Columbia is small, and it is understandable that they fear if the wave of Asian immigration is not contained, power will soon pass from one race to another.”¹⁵ The "Gentleman’s Agreement" was approved by a large majority in Parliament, and it remained in force, with some changes, until World War II.

Following the outbreak of the crisis in British Columbia, the French newspapers shifted rapidly towards an anti-immigrant line tone. The September 1907 issue of Le Canard depicted Japanese immigrants in dehumanized terms as a swarm of insects, although it also satirized the exaggerated nature of British Columbian xenophobia (see Appendix II). La Presse devoted generous coverage to Lemieux’s visit to Tokyo. The week of his return, it reported in indignant terms that three firemen in Victoria were attacked by “a horde” of “oriental demons.”¹⁶ Following Lemieux’s report and the announcement of the Gentleman’s Agreement, La Presse, which referred to both Laurier’s and Lemieux’s speeches as “magisterial exposés” of the Asian problem, expressed outspoken support for Japanese exclusion. Le Prix Courant and Le Moniteur de Commerce, which spoke for the Francophone business community, were even more extreme. According to historian Fernande Roy, in the months that followed the Vancouver riot and Lemieux’s visit to Japan, they published “Several hate-filled articles demanding that the government halt entirely all immigration by Blacks, Asians and Jews.”¹⁷

As anti-Japanese agitation in British Columbia subsided following the Gentlemen’s Agreement and a consequent sharp reduction in Japanese immigration, so too did attention to the issue among French Canadians. So far, I have found only a handful of references to Japanese Canadians in works by French Canadians in the following decades. Emile Miller’s 1912 textbook Terres et Peuples du Canada ¹⁸ spoke of British Columbia’s “8000 proud and combative Japanese” as part of an “invasion jaune” that threatened the future of the country. Louis Marie Le Jeune’s 1931 Dictionnaire Général described Japanese immigrants as the least desirable element among Asians, incontestably talented but inassimilable and resentful of their inferior status.¹⁹

This distant attitude would gradually change after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The outbreak of war between Japan and the British Empire unleashed a new wave of anti-Japanese hysteria in British Columbia. White farmers, merchants and political leaders, seizing the opportunity to rid themselves of their long-despised ethnic Japanese competitors, accused the Japanese Canadians of being spies and saboteurs for Tokyo, and called for drastic action to protect the West Coast. In response to the political pressure, on February 26, 1942, two days after the government issued Order in Council P.C. 1486, which granted the military authority over civilians, Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that all people of Japanese ancestry would be excluded from a 100-mile zone of the Pacific Coast. The order led to the expulsion from their homes of 22,000 Canadian Japanese, the vast majority of whom were Nisei (Canadian-born citizens) under 21 years old. Families were separated as able-bodied men were sent to work in road labour camps, while women and children were transported to sugar beet farms or to concentration camps, most of them near largely abandoned mining towns. In order to finance the internment of these community members and discourage them from returning to the West Coast, the government confiscated their land and possessions, which a Custodian of Enemy Alien Property an enemy property custodian then sold off for a fraction of their value.²⁰

In 1944, a new order-in-council presented confined Japanese Canadians with a stark choice: agree to move permanently east of British Columbia, or face postwar deportation to Japan. Most of the internees consented to be resettled, and new communities grew up in and around cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. In the first years after the war, the Canadian government, hoping to appease racist public opinion in British Columbia, renewed its restrictions on Japanese Canadians, although there was clearly no longer any conceivable military danger. Under the direction of Justice Minister (and future Prime Minister) Louis St. Laurent, the government issued an order-in-council to deport the 10,000 Japanese Canadians who had “agreed” to “voluntary” repatriation. By this time, however, the war had ended, and there was increasing criticism of the injustice of the government’s actions. Progressive and religious groups joined Japanese Canadians to form the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, which organized legal challenges to the involuntary deportation of Japanese Canadians. Although in 1946 the Supreme Court of Canada (and subsequently the British Privy Council) upheld the constitutionality of mass deportations, the government ultimately abandoned that policy in the face of public opposition. The nation’s West Coast was finally reopened to Japanese Canadians on April 1, 1949.²¹

The anti-Japanese hysteria on the West Coast following Pearl Harbor found little echo in Quebec, where both the war and the government’s conscription law remained unpopular (Montreal’s mayor Camellien Houde, imprisoned for counselling resistance to conscription, became a martyr to many French Canadians). At first, the French Canadian press even rang a supportive note. La Patrie reported that none of the 17 people in Montreal’s tiny Japanese colony, most of whom were outspokenly pro-British, had been arrested for disloyal activity.²² One resident, H.S. Kobayashi, the article noted, was a Canadian WW I veteran. Ten days later, all Canadian residents of Japanese ancestry were ordered to register with the federal government. A correspondent for La Presse referred to those concerned as “The Japanese whose loyalty to Canada is undoubted, except in a few isolated cases.”²³ As the movement for mass expulsion of Japanese Canadians grew, the prevailing tone among Quebec newspapers remained one of indifference. Newspaper coverage of the internment decisions was scanty, and consisted in large part of wire service dispatches or verbatim reports of government statements. Interestingly, French Canadians newspapers devoted much greater attention to the contemporaneous anti-Japanese movement in California and to the internment of Japanese Americans.

This said, the French-language press reports revealed little sympathy for Japanese Canadians, and editors showed some signs of anti-Japanese hostility along with their editorial support for official policy. On February 25, even before the government announced its policy of evacuation of all ethnic Japanese from the West Coast, La Patrie devoted prominent space to a speech by Ian Mackenzie, a Liberal M.P. from British Columbia who was the chief instigator of evacuation within the Cabinet, stating that the Japanese Canadians would be entirely removed from the West Coast. “First we will remove the men. Later we will take care of their families.”²⁴ Shortly afterwards, a headline in the journal referred to the Japanese Canadians in British Columbia as “the Yellow Peril.”²⁵ Similarly, in March 1942, Montreal Matin printed on its editorial page an article by H.H. Stevens, a former Minister of Trade and Commerce in R.B. Bennett’s Conservative government. As a Member of Parliament for Vancouver from 1911 to 1940, Stevens had often campaigned against Asian immigration. Stevens repeated all the familiar canards about Japanese spies and saboteurs and insisted that Japanese Canadians had already formed military units for mobilization in support of a potential Japanese invasion.²⁶ The newspaper’s editors agreed with Stevens on the necessity of removing all Japanese Canadians to the interior, where they could be “under control and observation.” The editorial stated “the Question of military defense must be discussed by experts but that of the presence of Japanese in strategic areas does not require and military knowledge.”²⁷

The dispersion of Japanese Canadians from the Canadian Pacific Coast marked a turning point in the encounter between Japanese Canadians and French Canadians. Beginning in 1943, Japanese Canadians, predominantly Nisei, began to leave the camps and move East.²⁸ The New Canadian, the organ of the Japanese Canadian Citizens League, published repeated accounts by Tom Shoyama extolling Montreal as an ethnically diverse city free of discrimination where Japanese Canadians could easily find jobs. As a result, Montreal’s Japanese population jumped from 25 in January 1942 to 334 by the end of 1943.²⁹ The trickle became a torrent following the government’s 1944 Order-in-Council requiring Japanese Canadians to relocate outside of British Columbia, as the majority of the country’s ethnic Japanese population accepted resettlement in the East. The largest fraction of migrants, most of who were young, unmarried Nisei, settled in agricultural southern Ontario or near Toronto (whose Board of Control refused to allow Japanese Canadians to reside within city limits until 1946). However, approximately one-tenth of the migrants resettled in Montreal, despite the vocal opposition of Premier Maurice Duplessis, the right-wing French Canadian nationalist who had returned to power shortly before. In the end, the newcomers to Quebec settled almost exclusively in the Montreal area,³⁰ whose Japanese population reached 1247 by the end of 1946 and over 1300 in 1949, making it the largest Japanese community in the Francophone world.³¹

The full story of Japanese Canadian settlement and adaptation in Montreal is beyond the scope of this work, but a few general statements can be made. Many of the newcomers discovered that public opinion was less negative against them than in British Columbia, and some were able to find jobs in areas such as nursing, public schools, and accounting. Koryo Shimotakahara set up a popular ladies’ fashion store on rue St. Catherine.³² Nevertheless, Japanese Canadians in Montreal encountered significant racial prejudice, especially in housing and employment. Many Nisei, irrespective of their qualifications, were forced to take menial labor jobs, particularly in domestic service, where 74 out of a total of 240 employed Nisei were working at the end of 1943.³³ Another significant fraction of Nisei was able to find work in the garment factories of Montreal’s Jewish community.³⁴

The Nisei formed a number of community institutions for mutual support and sociability. In 1944, a group of Nisei Christians led by Taira Yasunaka formed a Friendship Club, while a group of young workers and university students formed a Nisei Fellowship Club in 1946. With the aid of United Church minister Rev. Kosaburu Shimizu, the two clubs united to create the Montreal Japanese United Church in 1946-1947.³⁵ Shortly afterward, the Montreal Buddhist Church was founded, although Premier Duplessis refused to grant the Buddhist Church official recognition as a religious institution.³⁶ In May 1946, a monthly community newsletter, The Montreal Bulletin, commenced publication.³⁷

The migration to Quebec brought French Canadians and Japanese Canadians into large-scale association for the first time. Many of the migrants settled in the historically French neighbourhoods of Villeray and St. Michel, and the Nisei interacted daily with French Canadians on the streets, in school, and in the workplace. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was a measure of confusion and wariness among the locals at their first contact with the newcomers. As one Nisei later described, he was a figure of curiosity at his new job:

The French Canadians with whom I worked asked me if I was Chinese; I told them no. Then they asked where I came from; I told them British Columbia...Then I told them what had happened during the war. They could not believe it. They simply could not understand it.³⁸

Still, many Nisei made friends with their French neighbors and coworkers, and there were a number of marriages between members of the two groups during the postwar years. One Nisei later explained that he felt a warmer welcome from the French group. “I was impressed by the French Canadians. They are interested to know you; they are simple, ordinary people...with a rather friendly curiosity…The English…not every one of them is bad. But as a group...you have to be on your guard.”³⁹

Meanwhile, leaders within both the city’s English and French communities divided over the issue of how to deal with the Japanese Canadian “problem”. The city’s politically dominant English community initially reacted to the newcomers with hostility. In October 1944, McGill College, which was notorious for its longstanding discriminatory policies against Jews and other ethnic minorities, became the first Canadian university officially to close its doors to Japanese Canadian students.⁴⁰ The English-language newspaper Montreal Star editorialized in May 1944 about the need to “clear out lock stock and barrel” and deport the entire Japanese Canadian population.⁴¹ However, liberals and religious groups supported the rights of Canadian citizens. McGill Sociology professor Forrest La Violette (an American of French Canadian ancestry) denounced anti-Nisei racism and warned that discrimination at home would hinder Canada’s postwar international role.⁴² The United Church organized aid to the migrants. Sir George Williams University accepted a number of Nisei students. McGill’s Students Society sponsored a mass meeting protesting the University’s exclusion policy, and the university Senate voted to lift the exclusion in autumn 1945.⁴³

The French community reaction was rather different. From the beginning, a number of French Canadian organizations organized in support of the Japanese Canadians. In 1945, Mother Saint-Pierre and the Sœurs du Christ-Roi opened a hostel for young Nisei women,⁴⁴ and when Father Jean-Claude Labreque returned to Montreal from a mission to Japan in 1950, he devoted himself to assisting Japanese Canadians.⁴⁵ The Université de Montreal accepted Nisei students.⁴⁶ However, the institutional response of French Canadians was overwhelmingly one of indifference, and even Premier Duplessis’s hostility did not translate into restrictive legislation.

Rather, it was the issue of deportation that gained widespread attention within the French community, and galvanized a major split. As in the era of Wilfrid Laurier, French Canadian officials led anti-Japanese forces within the federal government. Within the Cabinet of Prime Minster Mackenzie King, it was Justice Minister Louis St. Laurent, dubbed “the King of Quebec,” who campaigned for deportation of as many Japanese Canadians as possible following the war. When liberal groups challenged St. Laurent’s Orders in Council, Maitre Aimé Geoffrion defended the government’s position on mass deportation before the Canadian Supreme Court. The Court ruled in the government’s favor in February 1946, but divided over the issue of whether women and children could be involuntarily deported. Among the minority who supported the extreme position were the Court’s two French Canadian judges, chief Justice Thibaudeau Rinfret and Associate (later chief) judge Robert Taschereau, who ruled that the Orders-in-Council gave the government authority to strip any Canadian citizen of Japanese ancestry of their citizenship and to deport whom it chose. During the months that followed, as public opinion turned against discrimination and the government hesitated to enforce its orders, St. Laurent continued to push for mass deportation. On January 22, 1947, he called for the renewal of Orders-in-Council restricting people of Japanese ancestry, insisting that the Japanese Canadians would be “troublesome” if they were not deported, and warning that their continued presence would lead to pressure “to have the Japanese in Canada given the same rights as the white population.”⁴⁷

In contrast, French Canadians outside government circles lined up to support the citizenship rights of the Nisei. The French section of the Canadian Welfare Council unanimously adopted a resolution asking the Prime Minister to grant full rights to Canadian citizens. ⁴⁸ The nationalist Saint Jean-Baptiste society joined the YMCA and the Canadian Jewish Congress in sponsoring the Montreal Committee on Canadian Citizenship/Le Comité pour la défense de la citoyenneté canadienne to support the rights of Japanese Canadians,⁴⁹ and a group of progressive French Canadian activists, including Therese Casgrain, Jacques Perrault and Roger Ouimet, were named to its Executive Committee. The Committee, which denounced the deportation policy as “dangerous and attacking the fundamental rights of minorities,” mobilized to awaken public opinion and to raise funds in order to appeal the Supreme Court judgment to the Privy Council.⁵⁰ In 1947, Benoît Michaud, a French Canadian member of parliament from Restigouche-Madawaska, New Brunswick, spoke out in Parliament against the extension of the War Measures Act by stating "As a member of a minority race in Canada, I must oppose such legislation".⁵¹ Quebec newspapers also quietly expressed support for Japanese Canadians during this time. La Patrie ran a photo of a Japanese Canadian reading a book on citizenship and explained that any “deportation” of such people would be expulsion, as they were born in Canada and would be strangers in Japan.⁵² Montréal-Matin ran a story on a Japanese Canadian serving with Allied intelligence in Asia, G. Suzuki, which featured the headline “Long Live Democracy.”⁵³

In the years after World War II, as Toronto and the Pacific Coast reopened to Japanese Canadians, many of those who had initially resettled in Montreal left the city. Quebec’s society remained unfamiliar to them, and their lack of French fluency limited their employment and business prospects.⁵⁴ Nevertheless, the majority preferred to stay in their adopted city, where they had put down roots and started families and careers. Many Nisei considered Montreal a far less hostile environment than their previous homes, and they were able to become absorbed into the wider society.⁵⁵ In the following decades, the Montreal community was reinforced by new arrivals, and by 1971 it numbered 1670 people.⁵⁶ The community produced a few well-known figures during these years, including the actor Robert Ito and the jazz trombonist Jiro “Butch” Watanabe.

The central question remains: has the presence of Japanese Canadians in Quebec led to a special relationship between them and the French Canadian majority? The answer seems to be “yes and no”. On the one hand, the two communities remain fairly separate. Most Japanese Canadians in Montreal, particularly longtime residents, gravitate toward the Anglophone community, attend English-language universities, and opposed Quebec separatism during the 1970s and 1980s. A poll of 184 Japanese immigrants taken in 1976, at the time of the nationalist Parti Quebecois’s accession to power, found that the immigrants considered themselves part of the English-speaking population, while 37.5% said they would probably or definitely leave Quebec should it become independent.⁵⁷ Conversely, during this period most French Canadians remained indifferent to the Japanese Canadians’ fight for redress for their wartime internment. The Parti Quebecois took no official position, and Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (who in 1970 had sought to crush Quebec separatism by invoking the same War Measures Act that the Mackenzie King government had previously used to violate the civil rights of Canadian citizens of Japanese origin) expressed his opposition to the granting of a public apology or reparations for the injustice.⁵⁸ Occasional episodes of racial tension arise, as in the case of a reporter for Le Journal de Montreal who during the 1998 Winter Olympics publicly mocked Japanese facial characteristics. On the other hand, in recent decades Japanese community institutions have embraced bilingualism—or sometimes, as in the case of the Montreal Bulletin, trilingualism. Quebec is home to a number of francophone Japanese writers and artists such as novelist Aki Shimazaki and painter Miyuki Tanobe. Furthermore, during the 1980s a number of French Canadians, including filmmaker Denys Arcand and novelist Marie-Claire Blais, publicly expressed their support for Japanese Canadian redress.⁵⁹ In 1988, when negotiations between Japanese Canadians and the government of Conservative Prime minister Brian Mulroney on a redress package became blocked, it was a French Canadian minister, Lucien Bouchard, whom Mulroney named to lead the government’s team. Bouchard used his influence to broker a redress package that included an official apology and a $21,000 redress payment as compensation for the wartime internment.⁶⁰ Bouchard’s actions show, perhaps, that within these two solitudes, there is the potential for an entente cordiale.

 

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This article was originally published in:

Ada Savin, ed. Journey Into Otherness: Essays In North American History, Culture, and Literature. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005.

Greg Donaghy and Patrica Roy, eds. North Pacific Neighbours: Canada and Japan in the 20th Century (forthcoming)

We are grateful to Prof. Robinson for his permission to republish it in the Discover Nikkei website.

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