The Village of Cumberland on Vancouver Island has made great strides in preserving, and encouraging interest in, many aspects of its history. The preservation of Cumberland’s Japanese history is no less a part of this effort as seen in the Village’s designation of No. 1 Japanese Townsite and the Japanese Cemetery as heritage sites. To help recognize the historic significance of Cumberland’s other Japanese community of No. 5 Road, there are plans to erect a storyboard in the vicinity of former No. 5 Japanese Townsite that will display photographic images and brief stories by former No. 5 residents of life in the community prior to their forced evacuation during World War II. Funds are available for construction of the storyboard. Such storyboards have been erected elsewhere in the Village of Cumberland to inform visitors of life in the former No. 1 Japanese Townsite and the once thriving Chinatown.

To facilitate the No. 5 Japanese Townsite Project, Cumberland historian Florence Bell, and archivist Catherine Yasui invite former No. 5 Road residents to submit any stories and/or photographs of their family life there. We request that persons in photographs be identified and other helpful information such as the date (or approximate year/month/day), location or event be included. Enlarged copies of photographs will be used on the storyboard but to ensure the clearest of images, we request original photographs be sent from which high resolution copies can be made. Unless expressly instructed otherwise, all originals will be returned once high-quality copies have been made. Alternatively, copies of photographs (whether paper or electronic) are also acceptable.

For further information and to submit electronically, please contact Catherine Yasui at catherineyasui@gmail.com. Hard copy submissions can be sent to Florence Bell, Box 123, Cumberland, BC, V0R 1S0. Please include a return address or contact information to allow Project organizers to return original photographs or clarify any information.

Yukiko and Toni Onley 1980. Photo by Iwao Matsuo.

When iconic Canadian artist Toni Onley died in a plane crash on February 29, 2004, he left behind a legacy of paintings that documented his love of the British Columbia coast. A new exhibition that opens October 24 called Love, Toni xox shows another side of the man, offering an intimate glimpse into the romantic musings and private pain of one of Canada’s most beloved artists. Love, Toni xox is comprised of illustrated love letters written to photographer Yukiko Onley during the breakdown of their marriage in the early 1990s.

The more than two-dozen letters offer up ruminations on love and loss written in fine italic handwriting and are accompanied by depictions of landscapes and figures created in sumi drawing style on Japanese rice paper.

The original illustrated letters will be on display at the Onley Eastwood Gallery from October 24 to November 6. An accompanying limited edition book of the same name contains reproductions that are virtually indistinguishable from the original letters. The books are offered for sale at $3500 per copy, hand-bound and slip-cased in Aubergine Japanese bookcloth. The lengthy reproduction process for Love, Toni xox was meticulously overseen by publisher Robert Reid.

The Bulletin spoke to Yukiko Onley, a highly sought-after portrait photographer based in Vancouver, on the eve of the exhibition.

Yukiko Onley Interview

The new book and exhibition, Love, Toni xox, features letters from your former husband, the late Toni Onley. Could you put the letters in context, please, the circumstances behind them?
We had decided to live separately and I was going to move out of the house but it took a few weeks to do so. Actually, I was the one who wanted to leave the marriage, so whenever we talked we ended up fighting. So in order to express his feelings, he would leave letters for me. That was while I was still in the house and even after I moved out. For the first couple of years, he sent me letters like the ones in the book fairly regularly.

From the samples I’ve seen, they’re more than simply letters, they’re both poetic and visual at the same time. It’s clear that they were written by someone in pain, yet they almost feel as if they were created to be published.
My speculation, Toni being Toni, and being such a public person as he was, he somehow knew that everything that he wrote would eventually be made public. Whether it was conscious or unconscious at the time, I don’t know, but at the same time I don’t think he made up his feelings in order to create nice letters, I think they reflected his feelings at the time.

Did you ever discuss publishing them with Toni while he was alive?
We never discussed the letters. Actually, at the time I couldn’t read them because it was too emotional . . . I was too emotional and I wasn’t happy with the fact that I was leaving. It was not for lack of feeling, for caring for each other, that I was leaving. I was feeling very guilty and sad about it but I felt there was no other way, other than leaving, to feel good about myself. As long as I was married to Toni and living with him, I would always be living his life, not my life.

I’ve read that your relationship with Toni had an impact on your own art. How did it impact your photography?
I really feel that if I hadn’t met Toni I would have never started photography. I had tried to paint but that never went anywhere. Surrounded by Toni and his artist friends, I felt compelled to do something creative myself, but I didn’t know what until I discovered photography. By the time I discovered it, I already had my own aesthetic, my own way of seeing the world, so in a way it wasn’t such a hard thing to get into, and it came every naturally. Toni often said that what he painted was light, not shapes and colours, and that’s the way I feel too—I’m photographing light.

Did you see Toni as a mentor?
He supported me but didn’t tell me how to work—he respected my own approach to art.

Toni Onley is known primarily for his soft watercolour landscapes of the BC coast but these letters/paintings show a different side of him, as well as providing a glimpse into the man himself. Do you think they will alter people’s perception of him as an artist?
Of course he’s known for his watercolours, but he used to do large canvas collages and abstract painting in the sixties. Also, watercolours and sumi painting have similarities because they’re based on water, so it’s not such a big jump to using sumi ink.

Do you think he used this medium because you are Japanese?
It’s possible. He also used rice paper, which he didn’t normally do. Toni and I took calligraphy lessons together for a time, so he did do some sumi calligraphy and abstract drawings.

It’s been four years since Toni died in the plane crash. Looking back now, what memory of him do you keep with you?
Really as long as I live, Toni is very much a part of me. He is perhaps the person who had the biggest impact on my life and to me he lives within myself.

Did you come to place of comfort with each other after the divorce?
You know, I moved out and we legally divorced, but circumstances arose that ended up with me moving back into the house for the last five years of his life. We lived together quite comfortably as roommates. I’m sure to other people it looked quite strange, but we coexisted quite well. We were very close to each other. He was my teacher and my close friend.

Through this exhibition and book you are in some sense making yourself quite vulnerable, opening up a painful chapter in your life. Do you feel it is important that these letters be made public?
It is laying myself open to a degree, yes, but the letters are written so beautifully, they have such a value in themselves, that I felt strongly that they had to be seen. I can look at them objectively now, although I couldn’t at the time. I feel he wouldn’t mind that they are made public.

Yukiko Onley website

How often have you been faced with this question? Where was it? When was it? Why? And what have you checked? What did you specify? How easy did you find putting a name to the parts of you or, for that matter, to the whole of you?

The 20th Anniversary Japanese Canadian Redress Conference was held this past September here in Vancouver, BC, with participants traveling to attend from all over Canada, as well as the United States. This conference stood out as a celebration of community.

On the Friday afternoon of this three-day-long event, I had the honour of co-facilitating a workshop geared towards youth. Titled Re(a)ddressed: I am (Japanese) Canadian, the aim of this workshop was to open a dialogue between Japanese Canadian youth surrounding the present and possible futures of identity and ethnicity in Canada. Very suited to these topics was the collaboration of award-winning Canadian independent animation filmmaker, writer and artist, Jeff Chiba Stearns.

If you’re close to a computer right now, please open up your internet browser (. . . and if you’re not close to a computer at the moment, then please remember to come back to the following websites later . . .). On YouTube, search for “Yellow Sticky Notes.” Take a couple of minutes to watch what unfolds before you. Next, through the CBC website, log on to http://citizen.nfb.ca/node/20831&dossier_nid=20498 and treat yourself to a viewing of “What Are You Anyways?” – another piece of short animation by Jeff Chiba Stearns. I guarantee that you’ll smile, laugh and be left with some pretty hard questions to ponder.

These two animations, in fact, served as the introduction to the Re(a)dressed youth workshop. With Jeff describing his experiences as a hapa boy growing up in Kelowna, BC, as well as the present motivations behind his work as an artist, workshop participants were given a very unique (but also representative) picture of what it means to be a 21st century Canadian youth of mixed race. Focusing his expression not only on youth within the Japanese Canadian community, Jeff’s questions and dynamic identity reach out to all those who are a fraction this and a fraction that. Jeff, it turns out, actually prefers thinking of halves as wholes. While many of us label ourselves half Japanese and half something else (or maybe even a quarter, or an eighth), Jeff considers each part of us to be a whole. “You’re not half this and half that,” he explains, “you’re two wholes.”

In the end, the majority of people who participated in this Re(a)ddressed workshop were slightly over the age of what is typically thought to be “youthful” (. . . although, as many of the  Calgary Kotobuki Society members told me, we all remain youths at heart). This, however, seemed to have absolutely no impact on the breadth of discussion or creativity expressed! In fact, the ideas raised around discrimination, connections to Japanese heritage and the future of the Japanese Canadian community (as well as ethnicity in Canada in general) were all the more enriching because of the wide range of ages.

And since the purpose of this activity was to get all participants involved—not only listening but expressing—everyone was a given a pad of colourful sticky notes on which to write/draw/scribble their responses to the different ideas raised throughout the workshop. Discussion centered around the themes of ethnic experiences in Canada, our own “Japanese-ness”, the future of the hapa identity, and the million-dollar “what are you anyways” question. By the end of our two hours together, almost everyone had accumulated a thick stack of stickies, covered in artwork! Each person then posted their stickies next to the sticky notes of others on a series of colourful boards. The final product was beautiful, a patchwork of colour! We had collected and shared a multitude of differences, as well as similarities—every individual’s unique identity.

Above all, this workshop reminded me of just how proud I sometimes feel when checking the “Other” box on a survey, tax return, or exam. Of course, the “If other, please specify…” part is a whole other story. But my occasional cultural metamorphism, I figure that I have and always will know who I am. Sometimes I just can’t find the appropriate words to express this.

What are you anyways?

On February 6-8, 2008, Professor Atsuhiko Wada of Waseda University’s School of Education visited UBC to conduct research on Japanese Collections in Canada. Professor Wada, who won the 2007 Award of the Japan Library and Information Society for his book, Shomotsu no Nichi-Bei kankei: Ritarashi shi ni mukete (The Japan-US relationship viewed from book circulation: toward [the] literacy history) (Tokyo: Shinyosha, 2007), is chronicling the post-war migration of Japanese books to the USA, where they found their way into the collections of various US institutions.

Who acquired these Japanese books, how and when were they delivered, and for what purposes have they been used? How was the habit of reading Japanese books originally formed in the environment of North America? As there is no appropriate single word to describe these issues collectively or holistically, Professor Wada created the term “Literacy History.” In The Japan-US relationship viewed from book circulation, Wada arduously traced the historical path of about a dozen major Japanese Collections in American institutions from a Literacy History viewpoint.

Having pioneered the field of Japanese-US relations with regard to Japanese libraries and their readers in America, Professor Wada is now looking to expand his research field to Canada. In the future, he hopes to publish a new book on Japan-Canada relations viewed from book circulation, or a revised version of his current book, which will encompass Japanese collections throughout North America.

When the Pacific War broke out on December 7, 1941, North American time, high officials at the US Ministry of Defense and Ministry of State were shocked to find that they had minimal library and information resources on Japan at their disposal and very few people in the USA who were able to read and analyze Japanese written materials. As this was a very serious national security issue in wartime, they promptly established Japanese language schools for both the Army and Navy, recruiting first-class university students with a talent for foreign languages, in order to quickly produce intelligence officers. Upon graduation, these information officers were dispatched to the front line of the Pacific Campaign where they engaged in questioning Japanese POWs and deciphering captured military information. In the post-WWII era, many of these military intelligence officers were transferred to the private sector and some became academics in the field of Far Eastern studies. The US Government provided rich scholarship funds for this area of research, which was a strategic area of interest to the USA during this tense Cold War period. Many Japanese Studies experts emerged in the USA as a result of this financial support. In addition, the above-mentioned Japanese Collections at major US institutions flourished in the post-war era, as did mutual exchange programs between American and Japanese intellectuals as well as library books. To draw a modern-day parallel, present conflicts in the Middle East have created a similar need for Arab language experts in the USA and the US government has once again set up generous scholarship funds to produce university graduates who are fluent in Arabic. Graduates of these intensive Arab language programs are immediately hired either by the US Military or by its subsidiary civilian military companies.

Professor Wada’s Visit to UBC
Professor Atsuhiko Wada’s visit to the UBC Libraries marked the first case study of his Canadian field research. The visit was hosted by Professor Emeritus John F. Howes, formerly of the Japanese Study Program in UBC’s Asian Studies Department, and I, Tsuneharu Gonnami, East Asian Librarian Emeritus, formerly of the Japanese Collection of the Asian Library at UBC. Professor Howes is one of former language officers who had undergone intensive training at the US Naval Japanese Language School at Boulder, Colorado during WWII. After the War he spent the first few years in the latter half of 1940s serving as a civilian at the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (GHQ-SCAP) in Tokyo. In the early 1950s, he returned to the USA and began his MA and PhD in Japanese Studies at Columbia University. There, he studied Japanese history under Sir George Sansom and learned Japanese literature from Professor Ryusaku Tsunoda. As a Fulbright scholar, he went overseas in order to further pursue his graduate research on the history of Japanese Christianity in the Meiji period, studying at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. In 1965, he submitted his Doctoral thesis on Uchimura Kanzo (1961-1930), a representative Japanese Christian in Meiji Japan. His recent book entitled Uchimura Kanzo (1861-1930): Japan’s Modern Prophet, published in 2005 by UBC Press, was based upon his PhD thesis, but fully revised. When prominent Japanese writer Yukio Mishima visited New York for the first time in 1957, Howes, then a PhD candidate, was the one to show him around New York City. This event is described on pages 29 and 33 of Mishima Yukio mihapphyo shokan: Donarudo Kiin shi ate no 97-tsu (97 correspondents from Yukio Mishima to Donald Keene – not yet made public) (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2001) (Chuko Bunko).

On the morning of Professor Wada’s arrival on February 6, 2008, I showed him around the Asian Centre (formerly the Sanyo Pavilion from the 1970 Osaka World Exposition), Nitobe Memorial Japanese Garden, The Institute of Asian Research, the Japanese Collection of the Asian Library, and other sites of interest. After that the three of us had lunch at the University Gathering Centre and Professor Howes gave him an overview of the various Japanese Studies Programs that have been offered at UBC from 1960 until the present day. As the author of Nitobe Inazo: Japan’s Bridge Across the Pacific, Professor Howes also talked about the interesting relationship between Dr. Inazo Nitobe and Dr. Norman MacKenzie, two eminent scholars and international public servants representing Japan and Canada, respectively, with regard to the Study of Japan at UBC.

Former UBC President Dr. Norman MacKenzie (1894-1986) was one of first to encourage Japanese Studies at UBC. In the 1920s he was the Canadian representative to the League of Nations (LN) and an intimate friend of Dr. Inazo Nitobe, who served the LN as Under Secretary-General at that time. Nitobe and MacKenzie maintained their friendship for many years via long-distance correspondence after both had returned to their home countries. Upon returning to Japan in mid-1920s, Nitobe was appointed as Chairman of the Japan Chapter of the Institute of Pacific Relations, a non-governmental international peace organization on Pan-Pacific affairs. In this capacity, he chaired and organized the 1929 Conference of IPR in Kyoto. MacKenzie was also an active member of the Canadian Chapter of IPR. In 1933, Nitobe stopped in Vancouver, BC on his way back to Japan after attending an IPR Conference in Banff, Alberta. Nitobe was working for better understanding between Canada and Japan by addressing public meetings in the interest of peace over the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately he suddenly fell ill and passed away in Victoria, BC on October 15, 1933. At that time MacKenzie was teaching at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He immediately began collecting donations from many of Dr. Nitobe’s long-time friends in Europe and North America in order to construct a memorial monument in recognition of his friend’s distinguished international public services. The four-metre stone lantern, specially ordered and produced in Japan and erected on the UBC campus in 1935, contains a plaque with an inscription that reads, Nitobe Inazo (1962-1933). Apostle of Goodwill Among Nations. Erected by Friends. During WW II, the monument had been vandalized by hooligans. The memorial plaque of Nitobe was torn from the lantern and thrown into the nearby bush. This traditional Japanese stone lantern is now well preserved in the Nitobe Memorial Japanese Garden at UBC, which was initiated by MacKenzie and constructed in 1960 with the co-operation of the Japanese-Canadian community and others. Many visitors to the Garden have been impressed with an authentic Japanese garden landscape designed by Prof. Kannosuke Mori at Chiba University and also by Nitobe’s motto to become a “bridge over the Pacific.”

In the afternoon, the three of us – Professor Wada, Professor Howes and I – moved on to the Centre for Japanese Research located in the C.K. Choi Building of the Institute of Asian Research and continued to have our discussion on issues concerning Japanese Studies at UBC.

The second day of Professor Wada’s visit to UBC on February 7, 2008 was devoted to his documentation research of administrative historical materials of UBC Libraries in the University Archives, which are located at the newly-built Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) that was constructed in 2008 around the original UBC Main Library built in 1925. Wada seemed satisfied with the identification of the international exchange records between Canadian and Japanese Government Publications (JGP), as well as other acquisition records of old and rare Japanese collections.

In the evening, Professor Wada and I had dinner at a Japanese restaurant near UBC, where I outlined the history of the following Japanese Collections at UBC Libraries from 1959 to the present: a) The Japanese Collection including JGP of the Asian Library, b) The Japanese Legal Collection of the Law Library, c) The Japanese School Texts Collection of the Education Library, d) The Japanese Fine Arts Collection of the Fine Arts Division of UBC Library located at IKBLC, and e) The Japanese-Canadian Historical Collection and the Early Japanese Map Collection of the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of UBC Library located at IKBLC. Due to time constraints, I could not explain all the details of each collection, so I referred him to my paper entitled Japanese Collections at UBC Libraries: A Retrospective Overview (1959-2002), Journal of East Asian Libraries, No. 131 (October 2003), pp. 51-67, and its Japanese version, Buritisshu Koronbia Daigaku Toshokan Nihongo zosho: Kaiko gaikan (1959-2002), Daigaku Toshokan Kenkyu, No. 79 (March 2007), pp. 53-61.

The Japanese Collection at UBC began in 1959 when the UBC Library became the Canadian Depository Centre for the Japanese Government Publications (332 volumes).

In 1960, the former private collections of two prominent British and Canadian Japanologists, Sir George Sansom (300 volumes) and Dr. Herbert Norman (400 volumes), were added to the UBC Japanese Collection. In 1961, Japanese books (about 400 volumes) of the Institute of Pacific Relations’ Library were also transferred to the UBC Japanese Collection. The Japanese Collection has grown from a mere 1400 volumes in 1960/61 to approximately 155,000 volumes as of 2008. The Collection has played an integral role in supporting various Japanese Studies in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences at UBC.

A librarian’s professional role is not limited to daily duties of collection development, technical processing work and reference services, but also covers extended research projects, such as preservation projects, compiling book catalogues and bibliographies and participating in multi-disciplinary symposia. On April 28, 1999, I was invited to a panel discussion organized by the Japanese Culture and Communication Program at Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, on eminent Canadian diplomat and scholar of Japanese history E. Herbert Norman (1907-1957), as part of the premiere screening of The Man Who Might Have Been: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Herbert Norman. As a custodian of Norman’s collection of Japanese books at the UBC’s Asian Library, I was honoured to discuss the bequest of his books, courtesy of his widow, Mrs. Irene Norman. Norman’s former private collection of Japanese books, as well as books by and about Norman in Japanese, are kept by the Asian Library, and E. H. Norman archival materials are housed at the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of UBC Library located at IKBLC. In 1948, when Norman was invited by Keio University in Tokyo to deliver a speech entitled Persuasion or Force: The Problem of Free Speech in Modern Society, he concluded with these words:

“The world is tired of war and force. Not only as between different classes in a nation, but as between nations themselves, force must give way to persuasion and reason if the world is not to retrogress fatally.”

It is evident, in light of current international conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, that the world has not changed much since Norman was active in diplomatic service in the 1950s. We are still looking for a genuine world concept and a practical new order built on multi-culturalism and multi-lateralism to facilitate the co-existence of diverse peoples. This is a concept with which Canada has been experimenting domestically and externally over the past six decades. Though it has yet to be perfected, many of us are hopeful that peaceful co-existence will someday be realized. For librarians around the world who collect, preserve and supply products of human intelligence and creativity, the ultimate objective would also be to contribute to a multi-cultural world in which free distribution of knowledge and freedom of expression could be guaranteed.

On February 8, 2008, the last day of Professor Wada’s visit to UBC, he spent the whole day in the University Archives of UBC Library at IKBLC. Unfortunately, he did not have time to investigate the Japanese-Canadian Historical Collection and the Early Japanese Map Collection in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division. He may do so when he returns to Canada on a future research trip. Next time he also hopes to visit the National NIkkei Heritage Centre (Nikkei Place) in Burnaby, the Vancouver Japanese Language School located on Alexander Street and former Japan Town on Powell Street in downtown Vancouver. He also says that he would like to venture to other Canadian cities such as Toronto and Montreal when he makes his second research trip.

While he was here, I had the great pleasure to introduce Professor Wada to my two old friends, Yuzo Ota, Professor of Japanese History who has been teaching at McGill University in Montreal since the mid-1970s, and Norihiro Kato, Professor of Modern Japanese Literature, formerly at Meiji Gakuin University and presently at Waseda University. Professor Kato started his career as a reference librarian at the National Diet Library in Tokyo, from where he was dispatched to the University of Montreal in the late 1970s. Being a graduate of French Literature from the University of Tokyo and having a good command of French, Kato helped build up the Japanese Collection at the University of Montreal. He has also been active as a Japanese literature critic and was in charge of the Bungei Jihyo (Comments Column on Contemporary Literature) of Asahi Shinbun (one of five leading national newspapers in Japan) from April 2006 to March 2008.

Closing Remarks
Professor Wada’s term Literacy History, which I personally heard him define during his visit to UBC (see his Literacy History Association’s website: http://www.f.waseda.jp/a-wada/literacy), simply concerns the way of reading a book, for which of course there exists no standard methodology.

Novelist Keiichiro Hirano published a book entitled Hon no yomikata: suro ridingu no jssen (How to read a book: a practice of the slow reading method) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo, 2006) in which he suggests a slow perusal of books. He introduces a practical method of reading magnum opuses of the world classics and has suggests to readers how to capture the essence of these great works. Hirano also encourages each of his readers to discover his or her own particular method of reading. I, as the writer of this paper, understand that this is literally creating the Literacy History, which Prof. Wada has been culminating.

During Japan’s Edo period (1600-1867), common people received their primary education in reading, writing and arithmetic at Buddhist temples. Also at this time, a lot of private lending bookstores that carried illustrated versions of the Tales of Genji and many other popular picture books were flourishing in big cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Christian missionaries from Portugal and Spain and Dutch Merchants from the East Indies Trading Company who came to Japan in the early Edo period were surprised to discover that the literacy rate among average Japanese citizens was higher than any other people in the world at that time. Missionaries’ reports to the Vatican and diaries of the Dutch Trading House in Nagasaki have recorded such impressive information pertaining to Japanese literacy and education. High literacy was one of the chief reasons why the country was able to successfully emerge as a modern state so rapidly after the Meiji restoration in 1868, when the national policy of seclusion was abandoned and Japan re-opened her doors to the world.

The current trend of contemporary Japanese literature is a sort of unification of literature and media arts. Readers can simultaneously enjoy text and imagery, such as anime, steel picture, drawing and graphics. Many hail this as a new revolution of Literacy History; however, it could also be argued that the afore-mentioned illustrated books were the harbingers of the current trend.

In times of peace, how one reads a book is entirely up to a reader and full comprehension is usually neither sought nor necessary. During the Second World War, however, officers of the US Navy and Army who were trained as language specialists were required to have a complete understanding of the seized Japanese information. Literacy History, therefore, distinguishes between reading in wartime and in peacetime. Even in peacetime, however, there are distinguishable differences between the “professional reading” of a librarian and the “pleasure reading” of a library user. At the present time, the relationship between a Japanese book and its foreign readers is, thanks to globalization and the development of communication technology, borderless. Professor Wada suggests a theory of an international relationship from the point of view of book circulation as a case study in Literacy History. This perspective has been missed in world discourse on issues concerning the global importance of books and reading.

The Literacy History Association of Professor Atsuhiko Wada at Waseda University recently launched a new annual serial entitled Journal of Literacy History; its first issue was published in January 2008. In my understanding, the academic significance of Literacy History research is to explore the historical relevance of books and reading. Aside from looking at books as the result of human creativity and intelligence, Literacy History investigates publication history, the reception of books by readers and the distribution of books to international audiences. Literacy History, with its many facets of publication, media, language education, cultural history of books, reading environment, and distribution of information, should be interactively interpreted and holistically analyzed beyond the current classifications of Literature, History, and Economics, Sociology, and so on, thereby leading to a new “discovery of knowledge.” Unsure about whether my understanding of Literacy History was correct or not, I made an inquiry to Professor Wada, whose response was, “Your interpretation of the significance of a research of ‘Literacy History’ would be satisfactory enough to me.”

I would like to also confirm that the significance of the Japanese Collections located abroad is in the representation of Japan as a country and in the communication of Japanese culture and science to foreign countries. As a Japanese librarian with a career spanning 40 years, I sincerely hope that the 2007 Japanese Library Award recipient, Professor Atsuhiko Wada, will continue to successfully conduct his research on Japanese Collections abroad and will also make additional contributions to the friendly character of the foreign languages reading environment, promoting a spirit of mutual respect and good will between neighbouring countries and helping to eventually establish a peaceful multi-cultural community in the world through the field of Literacy History.
Note: This is an English and revised version of my original Japanese report on Prof. Wada’s research visit to UBC Libraries, which appeared in Vancouver Shinpo (February 14, 2008, pp. 18-19), Japanese Weekly Newspaper.

Tsuneharu Gonnami was formerly with the Asian Library, University of British Columbia. He retired in 2003 as East Asian Librarian Emeritus.

Sponsored by the Writer-in-Residence Program with funding assistance from the Canada Council, the Office of the President, and the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Fraser University.

I read the biography of the man called Tsuneichi Miyamoto, who lived from 1907 to 1981, which I spotted in a book review and bought right away. As I had hoped, I found the man and his work totally absorbing, as they inevitably became enmeshed with the personal context of my own rootless “journey of life,” in a manner of speaking. If I had only read about Miyamoto when I began my career as a journalist back in 1966, I might have gained more and lost less in my life thereafter. That’s how Miyamoto’s life story made me feel.

The essence of Tsuneiuchi and his father’s philosophy (more on this later) must be useful to anyone young and old who is interested in “exploring” in the wide sense of the word. One’s focus can be on anything, from the changing details of familiar neighborhoods to traditional customs of distant places. How far you physically travel is not really relevant.

The biography by writer Isao Nagahama is about a man who spent much of his life traveling, mostly on foot, around small towns and villages in almost all parts of the Japanese islands, collecting personal accounts from all sorts of people. Proud of his own origin as a farmer, he would spend hours and even stay overnight with old couples or widowers living in remote rural villages, as they slowly poured out their hearts to him about their days gone by. Matsumoto left scores of volumes of his studies and essays, as well as countless magazine articles, special projects and countless other works on folklore, agricultural and fishery techniques and many other aspects of folk culture. It is not certain whether all of his voluminous amount of work will ever be published.

Nagahama’s work H?k? no manazashi – Miyamoto Tsuneichi no tabi to gakumon [The gaze of a wanderer – The journeys and scholarship of Tsuneichi Miyamoto] (Akashi Shoten) came out in 1994 (so I wouldn’t have been able to read it back in 1966). As Nagahama explains, “wanderer” in the title refers to the fact that Miyamoto did not travel by schedule but went wherever his whim took him, for as long as he pleased. Also, “gaze” refers to the caring look of a friend, rather than to the “look down the nose” of some distinguished scholar talking to “ordinary people” or to the scheming eyes of an eager researcher trying to collect usable “material” for his pre-conceived theories. What he wrote about came from the people, not from his quest for any specific information.

As unique and attractive a human being as he was, Miyamoto was practically ignored by the academic mainstream to the extent that Nagahama, while working on the biography, was astounded to find practically no preceding research work on Miyamoto, while scores of volumes existed on the famous pioneering ethnologist and one of Matsumoto’s mentors, Kunio Yanagida (1875-1962). Two of the main reasons Nagahama offers for this is that Matsumoto’s studies were too unique, personal and independent of the academic factions at the big universities, and the fact that his studies which were too unique to conform to any trends were seen as reactionary and contrary to the “masses-exploited-by-the-capitalists” orientation of the academic mainstream at the time. Incidentally, both Yanagida and Matsumoto’s ultimate aim was to identify the origins of Japanese culture.

From what little I’ve learned about ethnology (from an ethnologist cousin in Finland), its subjects are often changing aspects of life that are too commonplace to be addressed by any of the major disciplines of the academic establishment. One example in BC might be the history and disappearance (?) of “conkers,” the traditional British boys’ game of pitting your horse chestnut on a string against your opponent’s, taking turns to smash each other’s “conker” until one cracks. (The game is still played in official championships in Britain and elsewhere, but my thoughts turn to how researchers in Morimoto’s time didn’t have access to the internet like we do.) Another might be a quaint custom I observed in Singapore where I lived until 1997. Old men and ladies getting on buses would smack the hard plastic seats someone had just vacated, before sitting down on them . . . apparently from some traditional Chinese belief about cleansing the seat of the residual spirit of the previous occupant.

There are many fascinating details to Miyamoto’s life, but for lack of space I shall just cite below the remarkable list of “ten instructions” (H?k? no manazashi pp 25-27) that his father, a poor farmer, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Shikoku, gave Tsuneichi when he sent the latter off to Osaka at age 16 to learn a skill at a telephone/telegram operator training school. Much of the materials by and about Miyamoto will probably never be translated into English, these “instructions for life” effectively make up the aforementioned “essence” of Miyamoto’s philosophy that I would like to share with all our readers.

(1)    When you get on the train, keep your eyes on what’s outside the window. What crops are planted in the paddies and fields? Are they growing well? Badly? Are dwellings in the villages large or small? Do they have thatched roofs or roof tiles? These are the things you must look at. When you arrive at a station, look at the people getting on and off. Study how they are dressed. See what sort of items are kept in the baggage check-in area. These are the things that tell you whether that locale is well off or not, whether the people are hard-working or not.

(2)    In a town or a village, when you arrive in a new place climb to a high vantage point and look around. Get your bearings and note what stands out. If you should come across a place like a mountain pass overlooking a village, first look for landmarks like shrines with their groves and temples, the layout of the houses and paddies and fields, and at the surrounding mountains. If anything attracts your interest from atop a mountain, you should always try to go there. If you study its location carefully from above in advance, you will almost never get lost.

(3) If you have money, try eating local specialties and cuisines. It will give you an idea of the standard of living there.

(4) If you have spare time, walk around as much as possible, for you will learn many things.
(5) Money is something that is not that difficult to make. But to spend it is difficult. This you should never forget.

(6)     I am not able to let you study as much as you want, so I will not demand anything of you. Do as you wish, but do look after your own health. Until you reach the age of 30, I shall pretend that I’ve disowned you. But when you pass the age of 30, remember again that you have parents.

(7)    However, if you become seriously ill or if you face a situation you can’t resolve, come home. You parents are always here for you.

(8) From now on, it is no longer time for children to exercise piety toward their parents, but rather, time for parents to exercise piety toward the children. Otherwise, there will be no improvement in our world.

(9) Do what you think is right. Even if you fail, your parents will not reproach you.

(10) Look for things that other people have overlooked. Among them you should find many important things. Walk firmly along the path you have chosen for yourself.

Remarkably, most these instructions, written down around 1925, with modern modifications, are applicable to today’s “watchers of life” in many walks of life, including writers and artists, if not the likes of private investigators and industrial spies, as well as ethnologists. All that from a man in remote, rural Shikoku who as a young man once migrated to Fiji with a Japanese group but failed and returned as one of 115 out of the original 250. He was too poor to send Tsuneichi to middle school, so he told Tsuneichi he could do whatever he liked with his life. The instructions above reveal him to be an extraordinary man.

I had a Kabucha Salad recipe submitted by Joyce Oikawa. She said that she made this as an appetizer for a luncheon group that she entertained and everyone enjoyed it. She first tried this salad in Tokyo about eight  years ago.
I tried it before I going to print with my column, but my kabucha (also called kabocha) was still too young and not mature, so my salad wasn’t as good as it could be. How does one know how good the kabucha is? I am hit and miss when it comes to watermelon, canteloupe and honeydew melons as far as ripeness and sweetness. This recipe is still very good, regardless, so I’m passing it on to you.

KABUCHA SALAD
Ingredients are only 3 items but it is very delicious,
1 approximately 4 lbs. kabucha (squash)
Japanese mayonnaise
1 tsp. sugar
Cut the kabucha into 2 -3″ chunks. Peel off the green skin on each piece.
Steam all chunks of kabucha. Pierce with fork to test for tenderness and remove each chunk as they are done, approximately 15 – 20 minutes.
Place cooked kabucha into a bowl, cover and cool. Then place into refrigerator for overnight or at least 6 hours.
They have to be really chilled to cut into smaller pieces as in potato salad. When kabucha is really chilled
combine 200 ml of Japanese mayonnaise, 1 tsp. sugar and gently mix. Add more mayonnaise if it seems dry.
The kabucha should be coated and the consistency like potato salad.
Serves (depending on portions) 20 servings.
It is very different and has a unique taste.
Thanks Joyce.

CHOCOLATE CHIP PUMPKIN CAKE
Prep: 30 min. Bake 65 min + cooling.
The two-tone effect makes it especially pretty.
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 can (15 oz) solid pack pumpkin
1 cup (6 oz) semi sweet chocolate chips
2 squares (1 oz each) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
3/4 cup finely chopped pecans, divided
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon;
Add the creamed mixture alternately with pumpkin.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Divide batter in half. Stir melted chocolate into one portion.
In a well greased 10 ” fluted tube pan, sprinkle 1/2 cup pecans.
Spoon chocolate batter over pecans; top with pumpkin batter.
Sprinkle with remaining pecans.
Bake at 325 degree for 65 -70 minutes or until a toothpick
inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Cool for 15 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.
Yields 12 servings.

KAHLUA PUMPKIN FLAN
Mrs. Sumi Urata made this for Thanksgiving dinner last year and it is very light and delicious after a big turkey dinner.
1 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup cooked or canned pumpkin
1 1/4 cups half and half milk
1/4 cup Kahlua
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
In skillet, heat 3/4 cup sugar over medium heat until sugar is dissolved and turns golden color. Immediately pour into bottom of 6 (6 0z.) custard cups or soufflé dish. Set aside.
In bowl, beat eggs with remaining 1/2 cup sugar, pumpkin, 1/2 and 1/2, Kahlua, cinnamon and nutmeg. Divide mixture between prepared dishes.
Bake at 325 degree F about 40 minutes or until just set.
Remove from oven, then cool, then chill.
To serve, run thin knife around edges of dish then turn out onto individual dessert plates.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Just as a reminder, there will be an official opening of Murakami Gardens on Salt Spring Island on October 4th. This land was graciously donated by the Murakami family in order to build 27 low-cost housing units for individuals and families at risk of homelessness, and other social challenges. The Murakami’s were the only Japanese Canadians to return to Salt Spring Island after being incarcerated during World War II. Rose and Richard Murakami view this generous gift as a way of giving back to the people of Salt Spring Island community

On November 1, the GVJCCA will be holding a fundraising dance at Nikkei Place. This will be an opportunity to bring friends and dress up. Costumes will not be mandatory but since it will be Halloween weekend, why not join in the fun and disguise yourself? Prizes will be given to participants Tickets will be available soon through the GVJCCA office at 604.777.5222 or email gvjcca@shaw.ca . The cost is $20 per person.

The GVJCCA Volunteer Party will be a little late this year on November 22, at Nikkei Place from 6 – 8 pm. This is a special event for the GVJCCA to thank all its volunteers, donors, and advertisers for the year. We hope you can attend and enjoy seeing your many friends again before succumbing to the anxieties of the Christmas season.

Thank you
Ron Nishimura, President Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association

The Anniversary brought back many memories for those in the Nikkei community. It also provided a chance to put things in perspective. As someone remarked at one of the youth forums, we were the young ones in those days, now we are the seniors, the veterans. Indeed, looking through the photographs from those days, it is striking how young we all looked.

With the Anniversary event itself now receding into memory, I find myself meditating on the nature of memory—both personal and collective.

Sometimes it feels, working in the Canadian Nikkei community, that we are consumed by the past—summoning up old ghosts at every turn. Perhaps it is because the past is still so fresh. After all, it is only 131 years since Manzo Nagano stepped onto the dock at New Westminster, only 66 years since the order was made to remove Japanese Canadians from the coast, and only 59 years since the last of the restriction placed on Japanese Canadians were lifted, marking the start of a new chapter in our community’s history. Here at The Bulletin of course, we are marking our fiftieth Anniversary.

Last year, Asian organizations in the lower mainland collaborated on the Anniversaries of Change, with 2007 marking a number of significant anniversaries, including the anti-Asian riots of 1907 and the winning of the franchise in 1947. Clearly, the past is still very much with us.

It is one thing to go back over one’s own memories—events that shaped us, for better or for worse. But what is it that drives us to go back over events that we were not part of, that happened, in many cases, before we were even born? What is it that moves us to ruminate on the past? I suppose you could quote George Santayana, who famously said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” While there is a lot of truth in that statement, one could just as well argue that many old hatreds and grudges are kept alive by dwelling on past injustices, real or perceived. Clearly, memory is a double-edged sword that is subjective in nature. So while it doesn’t do to dwell on what can’t be changed, it is healthy to examine the past for hard lessons, in order that we can move forward without making the same mistakes over and over again.

Perhaps the need to remember goes deeper than any conscious desire to recall the past. Perhaps it is hard-wired into our genes. What is so terrifying about Alzheimer’s disease is the idea of losing our past, of losing that connection with what we have experienced. After all, human relationships are built around shared experiences, and by extension, our shared memories of those experiences. Once we lose those memories, the connection itself is broken.

So yes, let us cherish our most precious memories, learn from past mistakes, and above all, not let our memories keep us from forging a new, and hopefully brighter, future.

Story by Catherine Yasui. Photos courtesy Catherine Yasui & Randy Preston

Catherine Yasui standing at entrance to Japanese Cemetery

It is early evening in late May as my husband and I roll off the ferry at Nanaimo and head north under a clear blue sky to the Village of Cumberland on Vancouver Island. Alongside the highway grow streams of golden broom and purple lupin that light up the earthy tones of the Comox Valley landscape. We are on our way to attend the official commemoration of Cumberland’s Japanese Cemetery as a historical landmark. My grandfather, Kichiso Sora, is among the approximately 198 Japanese people buried there, most of them loyal and hard workers in the teeming coal mining industry that drove the local economy from the late 1800s. Sadly, anti-Japanese sentiment during WWII led to the desecration of not only this cemetery, but several others on Vancouver Island; a desecration that led to the displacement or disappearance of many headstones and markers. As a result, my husband and I can’t find my grandfather’s grave. But that hardly matters because, for me, the importance of this journey and the commemoration lay in the opportunity to remember, and thank, my grandfather’s generation. As one of Kichiso’s 18 Canadian-born grandchildren, and for the 20 great grandchildren subsequently born to his line, I also feel that the cemetery is the symbolic cornerstone to the survival of our heritage.

L to R Buddhist Bishop Orai Fujikawa conducts ceremony; Master of Ceremony, Rick Grinham

The Japanese Cemetery lay just east of the village nestled among tall evergreens on a small, gently sloping parcel of land. A few years back, my husband and I visited Cumberland and, for the most part, had to rely on our memories to locate the grounds. At the time, we found only a small weathered sign tacked to a hydro pole pointing in the direction of the “Oriental Cemetery.” On this trip, however, we are happy to find new signs on the highway that guide us directly to the “Japanese and Chinese Cemeteries,” and are just as pleased at the sight of the newly-constructed white picket fence that neatly surrounds the cemetery grounds. Based on family photographs taken in 1940, the cemetery once had such a fence, but for the past few decades nothing surrounded its perimeter, giving it the appearance of open woodland. To me, the new fence reinforces a “sense of place” and “sacredness” and brings focus to the poignant memorial that sits at the top of the cemetery. Erected in 1967, this memorial includes a number of recovered headstones on a raised pedestal and stands like a quiet altar. It’s a peaceful display in appearance, yet also a powerful tribute to those who came to this strange country, most barely aware of the culture, customs and challenge they had accepted as they embarked in starting a new life. As I pass through the simple wooden archway that opens invitingly onto the memorial, I feel a renewed reverence and a gratitude to those who have ensured that this tiny cemetery is not forgotten.

Sora family L to R Hanayo, Chizuko, Shigeki & Katie, Sumio, Kiso (missing Masaru)

Before the ceremony begins, I wander around in the shade of the cemetery grounds trying to recall what stories I’d heard about my grandfather and his life. Having never met my grandfather—he died long before I was born—I know so little about the man. In my hands, I carry two photos from the past: one of my grandfather and another of my grandmother, Hanayo, and her sister-in-law, Ryu Sora, standing at my grandfather’s graveside in this very cemetery in 1940. I search the photo for some features to help orient me in the current landscape. Nothing looks the same, and each time I gaze up I feel myself shifting between generations as more than 60 years lay between where my grandmother once stood and where I am now standing. From the photo, I note how my grandfather’s burial had been marked with a tall wooden post inscribed with his name in Japanese, and how his plot was outlined on all sides with rounded boulders. I know that no sign of his burial exists today, yet I find myself half-believing that every rock that pokes through the moss might be part of the border to his plot. Not surprisingly, a little toe-tapping dispels such thoughts. However, as I meander through the cemetery on this peaceful morning, I am certain that I’ve at least passed over the spot where he lay buried.

L to R Hanayo Sora & Ryu Sora at my grandfather’s burial in 1940

My grandfather had arrived in Canada more than 100 years ago and worked in Cumberland’s No. 5 mine. He and my grandmother raised their six children—Masaru, Kiso, Shigeki, Chizuko (my mother), Sumio, and Katie (Takako)—in a house on No. 5 Road (now known as Maple Street). No. 5 Road was home to twenty-one families, most of whom were first generation Canadians, and these families formed one of two Japanese communities in Cumberland. My mother’s stories of her early years are rich with detail of treks through the woods to Comox Lake and up to “Top Lake” to collect matsutake mushrooms, and other carefree adventures. Her tales of life there are a 16-year-old’s recollections of a happy and simple life that reflects a sense of security and a strong bond to a community built of family and close friends. I would later come to know many of these folks as I was growing up, calling so many of them “uncle” or “auntie,” unconscious and uncaring of whether they were related to me by blood. I came to appreciate how closely regarded friends were and how so many of them were woven into each other’s family.

Flowers Laid at Japanese Cemetery’s Headstone Memorial

With age came a more mature and well-rounded appreciation of the importance of my heritage and its significance in Canadian history. Sadly, I never knew my grandfather or had the opportunity to have him tell me about his life directly. Yet, by listening to my mother’s stories, I see more clearly how life in Canada began for my family and how it is woven into the tapestry of stories told by countless other Canadians of Japanese descent. My patience and attentiveness to listen to my mother’s stories is long overdue. For years, I looked into my mother’s photo albums and never questioned the many faded scenes and unknown characters, so I began to ask her questions about them. As she puts names to faces and places in the photographs and recounts daily activities, of who-is-related-to-whom, the isolated photos begin to meld into each other, offering a more complete and meaningful glimpse into my mother’s childhood experiences in Cumberland. No longer are the images of “just houses” or of people as mere faces; instead, a lively community now emerges filled with family and friends, voices, laughter and activity.

As I discover on this trip, the Japanese Cemetery in Cumberland gives me a sense of place to honour the roots—and strength—of my family’s journey in Canada. I see my family’s history and my own identity as intricately tied to the landscape of this country; our lives are, in fact, part of its cultural fabric. Like so many other Japanese-Canadians, the Sora family’s story in Canada forms a series of tales that is propelled by being forcibly removed in wartime from their initial settlement on the West Coast. Family and friends were scattered. My family’s tale moves across the landscape from Cumberland to internment quarters within BC and, for some of my uncles, to road camps outside the province. At the close of WWII, my grandmother and her six children, along with scores of other fractured families, find a way to re-unite and resettle in eastern Canada; a testament to the flexibility, adaptability and strength of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations that, in turn, instills in me a deeper sense of pride in my Japanese Canadian heritage. Tying this historic cross-country saga to its significance both to my family and to the wider community is what gives context to the commemoration and underscores its importance to me.

Hike to Top Lake 1938 L to R Joan (Yasuko) Sora, Utako Aida, Toshiko Yano, Nancy Araki, Irene Tateyama, Chizuko Sora, Pat (Hanako) Matsubuchi

As I lay flowers on the memorial, it occurs to me that these once-displaced headstones are like a metaphor of the once scattered lives and the losses suffered by the local Japanese community at the hands of a racial intolerance born of ignorance; a community that somehow found enough resolve through the strength of will that individuals and families possessed to regroup, rebuild and eventually flourish. It drives home to me firsthand their enduring legacy, and how I, from where it all started more than 100 years ago, am proudly part of that continuing saga.

Catherine Yasui is an archivist and former archaeologist who was born and raised in Toronto. She and her husband, Randy Preston, have lived in Vancouver for the past 16 years.