Creating Dance Theatre KESSA in the Kootenays
Hiromoto Ida looks out the window of a dance studio on Nelson’s Baker Street. On the street below, young people gather on the corner and chat idly while tourists browse the shops. He turns away from the window and slips a CD into a player. As music fills the studio, he begins to dance, while ten feet away, Tsuneko Kokubo, dressed in white, walks a pattern on the floor, tracing an invisible blueprint. As he moves around her, the dynamic between her measured …

In what has been an educational (and eye-straining) experience for me, I have spent the past few months going through the archives at the JCCA office, looking through old copies of The Bulletin. It has been both eye-opening and humbling, reading the efforts of those who created and nurtured The Bulletin over the past fifty years—people like founder Mickey Tanaka and Gordon Kadota, who steered it through the early days, through longtime publisher Gordon Mayede and, in the mid-eighties, Tamio Wakayama, Sumio Koike and Fumiko Greenaway, who transformed The Bulletin …

In the spring of 1977, legacy sakura (cherry blossom) trees were planted at Oppenheimer Park by first generation Japanese Canadian pioneers. 1977 was a significant year because it was the 100th anniversary since the arrival of the first Japanese to Canada. For the Japanese Canadian elders who planted those trees, the Legacy Sakura not only commemorated the cultural bridge between Canada and Japan, they also signified belonging as Canadian citizens. The trees carry tremendous social and historical significance to the Japanese Canadian community. Recently, the Parks Board has developed a …

As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of The Bulletin, it is only fitting that we remember one of our magazine’s staunchest supporters and most loyal volunteers. Mary Takayesu passed away on December 8, 2007 and she was remembered last month with an even at Nikkei Place. The following was written for the occasion. JEG
When I came aboard as Editor of The Bulletin in the fall of 1993 I knew nothing about being an editor and very little about the Nikkei community. Fortunately I inherited a number of things when I …

The Cherry Blossoms Were Beautiful But . . .
Fleeting Impressions of Tokyo and Kyoto Revisited
For some of us who spent childhood and maybe adolescent years in Japan, the question “What’s going on nowadays in the old country?” is hovering somewhere in the back of our minds half the time, whether we admit it to each other or not. For news/info junkies like myself, there’s nowadays the internet, but even if one is pretty up-to-date info-wise, it’s still not easy to grasp the big picture, missing the forest for the trees, …

It’s How You Play the Game
Mel Wakabayashi is our best-known Nikkei ice player. Not because he made the big times, although he did have a brief stint with the Red Wings of Detroit. Products of the southern Ontario junior ranks, Mel and his brother Herbie saw better opportunities some 12 years ago in Japan where a fledgling league was taking shape with the well-heeled backing of a few industrialists.
Mel was back in North America this past February as coach of the Japanese national team playing in the Winter Olympics at …

Less “Soba”, More “Sake”
In a sober move to reduce the nation’s surplus rice, the Japanese cabinet recently decided to use more sake (rice brew) and rice at its official functions. And Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, a soba (noodle) addict, approved his Agriculture Minister’s decision to drop soba for his lunch in favour of katsudon (rice with pork cutlet) to set an example in the “eat more rice” drive. Japan’s surplus rice is expected to reach some five million tons this summer.
The Bulletin, February 1978

Mt. Manzo Nagano overlooks Lake Owekino near the head of Rivers Inlet some 250 miles north of Vancouver. The peak, named for the first Japanese immigrant to Canada, was designated in 1977 by the federal government to commemorate the Japanese Canadian Centennial. This 6,600-ft. peak was conquered, for what is believed to be the first time, on July 25 by the Nagano clan.
The climbers—three great-grandsons, a brother-in-law, and a friend—first had to take a float plane from Port Hardy to Lake Owekino, cross canyons to the mountain base through heavy …

In part one of the history of The Bulletin, we traced the origins of The Bulletin to 1958—when Mickey Tanaka, a member of the Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association founded the magazine—and followed it up to the Japanese Canadian Centennial in 1977.
The Japanese Canadian Centennial in 1977 is the result of research and lobbying on the part of former New Canadian Editor Toyo Takata, who understood the importance of not only identifying, but celebrating, the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant to Canada. In 1974, his research had led him …

Fumiko Greenaway was a key part of the restructuring of The Bulletin in the mid eighties. First Office Manager and then Managing Editor, she along with Tamio Wakayama and Sumio Koike, helped reshape The Bulletin. She is perhaps best remembered by many readers as editor of the Community Kitchen. I spoke with Fumiko, my mother, at her home in Nelson.
When you stepped in there, what was the state of things, of the Bulletin?
Well, I started at the time when the sanseis were getting ready to do something about Redress. Why …