by Satoko Norimatsu

How do you go on living, when you have experienced suffering and humiliation beyond description? Should you abandon your past and live in the present? Or perhaps cut yourself off from the present and live in the past? Or confront the past in the present and live from moment to moment? Most women who were made sex slaves of the old Imperial Japanese army chose a way to go on living, and have embarked on new journeys.

On November 21st, 2008, I attended the opening performance of the Korean play NABI/Comfort Women—written by Chungmi Kim and directed by Eunmi Bang—at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam. The 260-seat theatre was full. The English title of the play is Comfort Women, although the original title, Nabi, means “butterfly” in Korean. The butterfly has symbolic meaning in the play. The way butterflies take flight is a metaphor for the way victimized women regain dignity and freedom by talking about their experiences.

The story takes place in 1994 in New York City. Yuni Kim lives a quiet life with her daughter and her daughter’s family. One day, Yuni’s granddaughter Jina, a student at New York University, returns home in high spirits. Jina explains that two victims of the Japanese Army’s sex slavery during WWII are in New York to provide testimony at the United Nations. Yuni tells Jina to avoid contact with these women, but Jina replies, “Actually, I brought these halmonis home with me.” The two halmonis (“halmoni” means “grandmother” in Korean) enter and approach an agitated Yuni. These two tough women are able to tell of their painful past and still sing and laugh out loud. They find Yuni’s cold and unsympathetic manner annoying.

Yet the two halmonis sense something odd about Yuni’s reactions. They notice scars on Yuni’s fingertips, and what look like tattoo marks on her back. Bokhi, one of the halmonis, taking a long look at Yuni, suspects she has seen her before. Bokhi asks Yuni whether she was “Hanako,” the “comfort woman” kept by a Japanese Army officer for his exclusive use. Yuni denies this fiercely. All she can hear in her heart is her late mother’s voice telling her, “That was a nightmare, no more than a nightmare. Just forget about it!” And then all the formidable memories of old are brought back to her. Yuni cannot bear to confront the past she once buried away, and attempts to take her own life. Jina rushes to grandmother’s side, embraces her, and tells her how much she loves her. When Yuni later revives, she asks Jina to open the window. Sunlight and a breeze from outside fill the room.

During the last scene, the entire audience was in tears—even those like my Peace Centre colleague from China and myself who were well informed about the “comfort women” issue. In July 2007, I travelled to Seoul to attend a demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy (this protest has been held by former victims of sex slavery and their supporters every Wednesday for the last 17 years). I also visited the “Sharing House,” where (at that time) nine former victims lived together. I have also been a member of Women’s Active Museum (WAM) in Tokyo, which specializes in addressing wartime violence against women, particularly the sex slavery perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army. I realized I could never truly understand the anguish and suffering of these women, but I believed I understood this to a certain extent. Seeing this play, however, made me realize that my understanding had remained at an intellectual level.

In this play, we learn that Yuni was given the Japanese name “Hanako,” when she was taken away at the age of 15 and made into a sex slave for the exclusive use of a single officer because of her beauty. Some envied her, saying, “At least you only have one officer to deal with, so you won’t have to suffer from syphilis.” At the end, however, Yuni was treated violently by this officer and transferred to another “comfort station,” where she was raped by many soldiers. Following the war, Yuni’s mother told her to treat the experience as a nightmare and forget about it. Yuni eventually married, but after having a baby, her husband beat her when he learned that Yuni had been a sex slave.

Many scenes in this play made vivid the stories of these victims of sex slavery that I had read in books and heard in their testimonials, speaking directly to the hearts of the audience. Thekla Lit, President of BC ALPHA, a sponsor of this production, often speaks of the importance of our making emotional connections with the victims of war. This play certainly served that purpose for me, enabling me to nurture empathy with these women on a deeper level, as I believe the play did for many other members of the audience.

I was also moved by the way Yuni’s despair was transformed into hope. Yuni had been married and was leading a seemingly happy life with her daughter and family until she was forced to confront a past that she had hidden away for over 50 years. Now she was left to face all the unbearable emotions of the past—her childhood trauma, as a young and innocent girl who had been deeply wounded and never healed, her guilt over receiving “better” treatment by the lone officer, her remorse over the fact that she had to abandon a friend with whom she had initially planned to make an escape, and her inner turmoil over believing she could never tell her family the truth even though she knew she bore no responsibility for her suffering.

I could relate to the anguish that led Yuni to choose her own death, though there was absolutely no need for her to die. As I was watching the scene, I found myself mentally screaming out and begging Yuni not to die. In this play, Jina and the young Yuni were played by the same actress. When Yuni came to, after her life had been hanging in the balance, she found Jina holding her. At that moment, Yuni must have seen her young and innocent self in Jina, and must have found hope for the future in her granddaughter. Jina’s love and her words that she was proud of Yuni provided Yuni with the courage to live on.

Yuni’s situation reminded me of Sakue Shimohira, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic-bombing who was only ten years old when she and her little sister became orphans. Amidst deteriorating health, poverty and despair, she had to “choose between the courage to die and the courage to live.” She chose the courage to live. Even though these two women confronted different circumstances, the love they and all survivors received from family, friends and supporters plays a crucial role when they pass through the tunnel of pain and despair to find courage and hope. Yuni had her granddaughter Jina, but many victims of sex slavery don’t have any surviving family members, as was the case for the two halmonis in this play. Who can love these halmonis, as Jina loves Yuni? The answer is each of us—each of us who has seen the play, and each of us who chooses to face the issue of military sex slavery. Yuni decided to live on by a single thread of trust in humanity. Responsibility lies in each of us human beings to respond to Yuni’s trust, irrespective of our nationality, gender or point of view.

This play has been staged in Korea more than 300 times since 2003, according to Kevin Sung, Marketing Director of Hanuree Drama Club, which produced the Vancouver performances. The Canadian performances in Toronto and Vancouver were the first performances held outside of Korea. Hanuree Drama Club is a local theatre group with 19 years of history, whose members are primarily Korean Canadians. For this production, over 20 members of Hanuree Drama Club worked with seven cast and four staff members of the Nabi Drama Club who came from Korea to join this production. In the audience were not only Korean Canadians but also Canadians of European, Chinese, Japanese and other descent. It was significant that multicultural Vancouver hosted this production, which will raise awareness about the unresolved issue of the military sex slavery throughout the world. I would like to see more performances held outside of Korea, especially in Japan.

Satoko Norimatsu is Director of Peace Philosophy Centre, and a founding member of Vancouver Save Article 9. She lives in Vancouver, BC. www.peacephilosophy.com

The end of the year is usually a time for a series of get-togethers like office parties, dinners and socializing at home. We Nikkei people, ijusha and resident Japanese folk, who probably celebrate the new year (o-shogatsu) as well, also enjoy get-togethers along with all the other minorities in multi-cultural Canada, whose format may vary from formal to casual, from traditional Japanese to “Canadian style” depending on age groups and professions.

Being a free-lancer I work mostly at home, so there’s hardly any work-related socializing like what I used to indulge in when I was working for a publishing firm in Singapore before we moved here some 11 years ago. Get-togethers usually involve enjoying cooking and drinks with my music buddies and other friends at someone’s house. Being among friends, parties too are casual, with people often bringing prepared dishes, drinks and desserts. As my wife’s and two teenage children’s friends tend to be Asian-Canadians and Caucasian-Canadians, our parties are usually “Canadian style,” which is to say relatively modest and laid-back. There is, of course, no “MC’ing” and organized games rarely happen.

Once in a while, I might attend a cultural group’s banquet or Nikkei-related functions, but I must confess that I sometimes feel out of place. I find myself thinking “All the others seem to be in their elements, but what’s a strange guy like me doing here?” If it’s a formal occasion with VIPs attending as guests of honor, there’ll be some tension – not necessarily unpleasant – in the air. I become self-conscious about little things like how I serve myself from the buffet spread, or the use of chopsticks. (Should nigirizushi be eaten with chopsticks or by hand? etc etc) So I used to harbour doubts about whether I was even cut out for that sort of gatherings.

With a casual format, one can arrive more or less at one’s convenience, chat a bit with the host couple and other familiar faces, then grab one’s preferred drink and take some food from the spread, maybe play a bit of music or have a sing-along and, again at one’s convenience, take leave quietly after thanking the hosts. That’s the sort of party I’m accustomed to.

The reason why I wrote “used to harbour doubts” above is that I recently made a little discovery.

In connection with a job I was helping out with, I was recently invited to a dinner party. They were a group of Japanese men and women probably in their 20s and 30s. As we shared some ideas about our objectives, I had found the work stimulating. As this was a good opportunity to meet their other associates and friends, I decided to accept the kind invitation.

It snowed heavily on the day of the get-together. In the evening, as I drove cautiously into downtown, I found there were so few drivers willing to risk the bad conditions that I was able to park at a roadside meter just across from the hotel where the venue was. I found the function room which was just small enough to be cozy. There were some round tables around which guests were to sit where their name cards were displayed. On a long table off to one side were arranged the fairly sumptuous menu items buffet-style. Some guests were already seated at the tables, chatting quietly with a wine or beer. Ladies in charge of the Christmas present exchange “event” after the dinner and those in charge of the cloak rack were all very organized and efficient. For an instant, that pre-conceived notion crossed my mind. “Oh, it’s one of those formal Japanese get-togethers.”

Anyway, by the time I got my wine from the bar and walked over to my place at one table, I had exchanged greetings with some people I rarely see despite frequent E-mail and telephone exchanges. And before I knew it, I was engrossed in conversation with a young Mr T., who happened to be interested in the translation business, and others about everything from Japanese politics to challenges we face in our occupations.

The dinner, with everyone serving him/herself from the buffet table, was sort of “Canadian style.” The soup, the salads, the meat dishes, seafood dishes and vegetables on the side all used fresh ingredients that were combined and seasoned in creative ways. Everything tasted quite good. By the time dessert was served and the exchange of presents, the “fun event,” began, the atmosphere was friendly and relaxed, helped a bit, perhaps, by the wine and beer. Whether it had anything to do with Canada’s politeness-first culture or not, I don’t know, but the relaxation was within reasonable bounds and, of course, no-one was creating scenes.

With the end of the get-together approaching, I was talking with some people about continuing at a pub next door, when my cell-phone rang. I had to go pick up some people right away. So, as reluctant as I was, I said goodbye and left the hotel. That’s when I came to the realization – it was more enjoyable than I’d expected. I‘d thought I wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. That was my little discovery.

Having come over here with my family, I consider myself an ijusha immigrant) of sorts. As one born and raised in Tokyo, I still find myself unwittingly comparing life here to life in that megalopolis which has a much larger population, area and economy. Japan these days, according to the print and electronic media and to my impression during a short visit back in March, is experiencing a heyday of the “eat-till-you-drop culture.” With the traditional lifetime employment system long gone and the nation, an economic giant with no future vision, caught up in the global recession, the Japanese seem to be saying “let’s at least seek solace in good company and good eats.”

What with so many eateries and a rich variety of international cuisines, it would probably be very difficult to impress anyone with a dinner party unless one served something really special.

And what with so many bonenkai (forget-the-old-year party), new year get-togethers and office parties at this time of the year, organizers are probably racking their brains to come up with novel games and performances for entertainment while the participants bide their time with innocuous conversation and jokes, and later drift on to nijikai (the party after the main party) with their close friends and colleagues. The transport to and from will most likely be JR train services and subway trains (taxis only for short distances), and as the evening wears on the air inside trains on the most crowded routes will probably reek of alcohol from the breaths of tipsy passengers. Should there be a big snowfall, a relatively rare occurrence, trains on many surface routes will stop operating.

The gathering of informal colleagues in Vancouver was sort of Japanese style in a Canadian setting. The two cultures blended to create a friendly atmosphere of understated camaraderie. In our social environment, it even felt refreshing. There were those from Japan who recently came here to work and those already settled here having married Canadians. The atmosphere was so congenial that I could easily imagine some of them becoming ijusha or Nikkei Canadians one day.

The population density is so low here that a big snowfall can reduce traffic in the city centre to a trickle. The population itself is probably less than one-tenths of Tokyo’s. Still enjoying the “aftertaste” of the get-together, I drove off into the already deserted city street. (I only had a little wine.)

Akemashite omedetoo gozaimasu.

Being a Nisei, I didn’t know much about the various Japanese teas, but green tea has a very good antioxidant qualities. Beverages or things to drink are called nomimono in Japanese, the most popular of which is ocha (tea). The word cha and the brew itself came from China and was initially regarded as medicinal and a stimulant. Drinking tea has since evolved into a philosophy that permeates both the spiritual life and the physical environment of the Japanese.

OCHA: JAPAN’S NATIONAL DRINK
The two most common varieties of Japanese tea are sencha and bancha. Following are descriptions of the various types of popular Japanese teas:
SENCHA is a green tea made of very tender leaves which comes in many gradations of quality. The delicate flavour is a blend of subtle sweetness and bitterness.
BANCHA is made of less tender leaves with some stems included and it is the least expensive, It brews a very tasty, brown tea and though not as fine as sencha, it is often the preferred tea as it is relatively neutral in flavour and compliments most foods.
HONCHA or HOJICHA is a roasted, more flavourful variation of bancha which may be served cold. The roasting process changes the woodsy, green tea leaves to a chestnut brown.
GENMAI CHA is a tea blend mixed with kernels of toasted and popped brown rice. This tea has very rich, nutty flavour and is a favourite in many homes.
MUGICHA is made from roasted, unpolished barley and is considered the most healthful to drink. It is an excellent summer drink when served cold.
MATCHA, which is in a class of its own, is a bright green powdered tea served in the Japanese tea ceremony and is made from the finest quality tea.
KOBUCHA is made from seasoned kelp.
KOCHA is black tea, like that favoured in the Western world. It is served with sugar, lemon or milk, and is often a preferred substitute for coffee.
GYOKURO is the most precious and highly revered of the regularly-served Japanese teas. Young buds of only the finest and oldest plants are carefully nurtured as a special technique. It is rare and quite expensive, and as a result, sipped a little at a time.

A delicious treat to go with green tea is ohagi — red bean paste-coated rice.

OHAGI
3/4 cup mochi gome (Sweet) rice
3 Tablespoons regular short grain rice
Wash both together and cook in rice cooker with 1 cup water.
When cooled, make rice into about 1 1/2 inch balls.
Take heaping tablespoon of anko and place in middle of a clean damp cloth and flatten to about 5 to 6 inch diameter and place rice in centre and wrap around. Makes 12 ohagi.
You can buy the anko in packages or in cans (koshian) in a Japanese grocery store.

JELLO YOKAN
1 large raspberry jello
1 large tropical punch or mixed fruit jello
2 packages Knox gelatin
4 cups hot water
1 can koshian
2 cups cold water
Add 4 cups hot water to above and mix well.
Add 1 can koshian to the mixture and mix well with a fork first and then with a wire whip.
Add 2 cups cold water and mix.
Rinse a 9 x12 inch Pyrex dish before pouring in the Jello mixture. Refrigerate.
Hoping that the recession will come to a quick end.

Born in 1977, he studied photography at Nihon University and began dancing at the age of 20, having trained in classical ballet and hip-hop. In 2000 Umeda founded his own company, S20,  and has showcased his work at cutting-edge dance festivals in Korea, Japan), Italy, France and Canada. while going to a condition, which will be presented at the PuSh Festival along with Accumulated Layout January 22-24, has been described  as “a visual and sensorial experience . . . The discovery of a young artist, both original and promising.”

Borrowing elements of hip hop, ballet and butoh, Umeda has said in interviews, “there are no conceptual themes in my shows, which I empty of everything that might constitute a meaning”. Alternating between stillness and frenzy against a background of projected images and a cacophony of sounds, Umeda constructs meaning out of chaos, disorientation and sensation.

He currently lives and works in Tokyo.

Interview with Hiroaki Umeda
Usually when I interview someone that I don’t already know, I research them on the internet—looking at various websites and reading biographies and reviews. In your case I can’t find a biography or anything that tells me much about you. I also read in several places that your work doesn’t mean anything . . . so now I’m very interested! Maybe you can tell me a little bit about yourself: where were you born? When did you begin studying dance? Who did you study with?
I was born in Tokyo, Japan and grew up there. Until university, I had played soccer, not dance. And I decided to study photography at an art university in Japan. Studying photography, I was going to see many kind of arts, which means that I was looking for a suitable form of art for my piece. And I saw contemporary dance and started. At that moment, I didn’t know at all about contemporary dance. I went to take many kind of lessons or workshops. But after one year, I found that I didn’t like to take lessons. So I stopped and decided to develop my dance by myself.

I said that I couldn’t find anything written about you on the web, but there are a number of videos on YouTube. And maybe they say all there is to say! The videos are very striking and give a good sense of what you do. Do you do all the lighting, music and choreography yourself?
Thank you very much for your kind comment. Yes, I do it all by myself. For me, lighting, sound and all things for performance are parts of choreography.

You dance as a solo artist. That is liberating I suppose. Do you ever perform as part of a company or bring in other dancers for your pieces? Do you ever feel a need to collaborate?
I feel very free as a solo artist. Honestly I decided not to dance under any other choreographer. Because I started dance very late at 20. My body was made for soccer, not for dance. So to make my body for my dance, I needed to have a clear vision for my dance. Recently I just started to choreograph with other dancers. This is a different project from my solo activities. And I would like to keep this project for the next 10 years. I have never felt the need for collaboration in my solo activities but I would like to collaborate with someone in my choreography project.

I read somewhere that you have a background in ballet, hip hop and butoh. They are three very different forms of dance, but they also come from very different places, different cultures, different socio-economic conditions. It also seems like a really exciting mix. Are you conscious of blending the different styles or does it happen organically?
I had not known dance at all as I mentioned already when I started. So I just wanted to taste some dances. Actually, I took many kind of lessons, such as jazz, mime and contemporary classes. I just wanted to find suitable movements for my feeling. This is the reason I stopped taking lessons. Adding to that, I have never studied butoh.

You say your work has no deep inner meaning, so what influences your work? Are there external things that get your creative juices flowing, give you ideas? Are you influenced by visual imagery? Writing? Films?
For the concepts of pieces, recently I am interested in visual perception. But my main inspiration comes from physical feelings in daily life. Accumulation of many physical feelings in my body makes piece and moves my body. You have emotions when you talk with your friends or family. Those happen as reactions in your conversation. Physical feelings mean reactions of body, which is impulsion rather than emotion in my thoughts.

While searching for your blog I found this quote on another blog: “Hiroaki Umeda is almost creepily good at what he does. He ripples with energy. His limbs move at such pace but with such precision. He transcends definition, it’s clearly modern with more than a hint of hip-hop but he has all the grace of a classically trained dancer. Few dancers can stand alone and transfix an audience.” Your blog is mostly in Japanese. What do you write about?
Thank you for finding such a good article! I don’t criticize my dance in my blog like that as you can imagine. I just write my news and also what I think on my travel. Japanese people don’t have so much chance to know different cultures. We don’t have much chance to see our culture objectively. I write what I feel and think, hoping Japanese people get to know more what ourselves are.

Thank you very much for reading this. I hope you could understand a bit more about me in my bad English. And hope to see you soon!

Five Days in March takes place over a five day period spanning the two days prior to and two days after the US-led invasion of Iraq. The characters are comprised of a number young people, two of whom, Minobe and Yukki, meet at a live performance club in Roppongi and go straight to a love hotel in Shibuya, where they spend five days. Minobe’s friend Miffy meets Azuma at a movie theatre. The final characters are two young men, Yasui and Ishihara, who are taking part, somewhat half-heartedly, in an antiwar march in Shibuya.

As the Performing Arts Japan Network website says, “This work, which has no real plot or notable incidents occurring, is an attempt at a serious exploration of ‘present expression.’ First of all it removes the deceptive theatrical element of how skilfully actors can ‘act out a role,’ and then it tries to eliminate the artificiality that always exists to some degree in lines spoken by the actors when they are clearly from a drama-like script. As a work born at the end of a quest for the most sincere form of expression in the present, Five Days in March skilfully juxtaposes the grand-scale event of ‘War’ and what can be called the almost insignificance of real daily life, to succeed beautifully in giving form to the ungraspable sense of the present held by Japanese young people.”

Interview with Toshiko Okada
You came to theatre in a round-about way—you were initially interested in making films, even though you were attending business school—what caused you to shift your focus to live theatre?
Back when I was in high school I felt partially guilty about the fact that I was interested in art and that I wanted to be a film director. So instead of studying art or film, I ended up studying economics—but my extracurricular activities involved being in the film society. And to be honest, the main activities of that film club were actually more oriented towards theatre than the cinema. That’s how I just naturally started being active in theatre. Before that, I had never been interested in theatre. Of course at the time I wouldn’t have had the ability or experience to produce films in our film club either. I myself cannot clearly answer why I didn’t pursue film production at the time, or why I have continued with theatre for this long.

What have been your influences in terms of your approach to theatre?
One very significant influence has been Bertolt Brecht. Another is the Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata, who is a generation ahead of me. Hirata proposed a new form of Japanese theatre that was based on colloquial language, and I believe that this system renewed the precision of what we call naturalism. I’ve been very much influenced by his work.

The name of your company, chelfitsch, is based on a child’s garbling of an English word, and not only that, you have used a word that has negative connotations. I also read that your work has been acclaimed “for the skill with which it brings out the insubstantiality of present conditions in Japan.” I’m getting the impression that you have a fairly jaundiced view of Japanese society today. Do you see it as a situation affecting only the young, or does it permeate all of society?
I actually don’t think of myself as taking a cynical point of view. I am just trying to create a theatre based on the way of life my generation has chosen, the kind of language we speak, and the feelings we have. However, there have been several times when I have been told that I view myself too analytically. That probably is indicative of my cynical side. I named my company chelfitsch in 1997, and it’s been over a decade since then. At the time, I really thought of myself as a spoiled, childish human being. I don’t think so anymore, but, the company name remains.

Japan seems to be going through a period or wrenching change in terms of its values. Do you think that there is an appetite among people to look at what’s going on and try to address the various issues or is there a sense that there is no use?
I think both sentiments exist. I believe that for us, the future looks unmistakably bleaker compared to before. But there’s also a sense of strength in the fact that we’re in a process of having to accept and adapt to change.

Your play is populated with couples from what is sometimes called Generation X or the slacker generation, an age demographic that you fit into. You yourself have called it “the lost generation.” Is there a way for it to find itself, do you think?
Yes, of course.

Your play Five Days in March will be performed in Vancouver and it has also been presented in other English-speaking countries. Are you finding that non-Japanese audiences can relate to your characters, that the issues facing Japanese youth are universal??
Cultural specificity and universality are not diametrically opposed, in fact works of art with profound universal resonance usually also possess strong unique specificity. For the creator, it is possible to create something with cultural specificity in mind, but it’s actually impossible to consciously make something that will have universal appeal, asides from hoping that it will. I make my work from my feelings and observations from my everyday life in Japan, but I cannot know with certainty whether this would be perceived as something universal.

In your scripts you use something being called “super-real verbal Japanese”, which I gather is dialogue that is largely inarticulate, like real speech often is. Is this difficult for the audience to understand? And why do you use this, rather than more traditional theatre dialogue?
For those who are of my generation and area, the language in my script should be extremely familiar. For those who are not, or for those who uphold the writing styles used in traditional scripts as the standard of dramatic writing and who cannot accept texts that deviate from them, my circuitous writing style is probably impossible to understand or even maddening. There’s a part of me that thinks that the way we speak to each other, with its unnecessary tangents, departures and repetitions, is richer that organized text and phrasings. That’s why I use this language in my work. Also, I use a style of story-telling directly to the audience instead of conventional fourth-wall dialogue – this is a clear Brechtian influence.

Your company has been called “the most talked-about theatre company in Japan,” so your subject matter must be striking a chord with audiences. Do you think theatre can be a vehicle for actual change, or do you think it is simply a diversion from life??
A strong performance has the power to bring the audience into its unique time and space. For me, nothing can beat that. In other words, the fact that the audience can actually live through the unique experience that is created by the time and space of one particular theatrical production – that alone holds a significance equal to that of changing the world. I would even go farther to say that from my point of view, theatre IS actually changing the world.

Have you made any changes to the play to accommodate western audiences, apart from supplying English surtitles?
Not at all.

Five Days in March
January 21 – 24, 9pm, Performance Works
Post-show Talk January 22
Tickets at Tickets Tonight
ticketstonight.ca 604.684.2787

South of the border, a seemingly endless made-for-TV political campaign kept many of us riveted to the screen as a self-described hockey mom from Alaska (oh yeah, and that war hero fellow she was running with) went up against a young mixed-race senator from Hawaii. Television anchors and comedians were in seventh heaven as the campaign unfolded and the mud began to fly. Side-stories and sub-plots galore ensured that the election stayed at the forefront of many people’s minds and one of the positive outcomes of the election was a seemingly re-energized electorate.

As if the election campaign wasn’t dramatic enough, the collapse of the world financial markets not only raised the stakes considerably but changed the complexion of the campaign. When the dust settled, America had elected its first non-white President, and for one night at least there was sense that anything was now possible. That euphoria was short-lived however, as reality set in and the magnitude of the economic collapse began to be apparent.

Canada’s election played out against the same background of economic doom and gloom but the contrast couldn’t be starker. Canadian voters proved to be supremely disinterested in what was widely seen as an unnecessary, opportunistic election. Interestingly, while Canadian overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama (and would have voted for him in a landslide given a chance) they returned Stephen Harper to power, although short of the majority he was looking for. Immediately following the election, it appeared that a new culture of cooperation and non-partisan politics would be the order of the day in Ottawa, an illusion that proved to be short-lived. With the economic update in late November, the Conservatives chose to bait the opposition with a series of measures including the abolition of public funding of political parties. The ensuing shenanigans saw the Conservative Party come within a hair’s breadth of falling to a jury-rigged coalition made up of the Liberals and NDP and supported by the Bloc Québécois.

For the Canadian Nikkei community, the economy was doubtless the number one story of the year, but there were a number of other events and occasions that stand out. The year began with the news that the Kamloops Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre had been destroyed by fire. Shortly afterwards, Kami Insurance of West Broadway narrowly survived an explosion at a neighbouring restaurant. Happily Kami survived relatively unscathed and the Cultural Centre was fully insured (and has since been rebuilt). 2008 was also the 80th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and Japan and numerous events were held across Canada to celebrate this longstanding partnership. In April, The Bulletin celebrated its 50th Anniversary, with the April cover featuring founding Editor Mickey Tanaka (née Nakashima). In September, the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement was marked with a National celebration hosted by the National Association of Japanese Canadians and the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association.

Nikkei artists continued to make their mark, as did others including engineer Henry Wakabayashi who in July was awarded the Order of Canada, joining an impressive list of other Japanese Canadians who have received Canada’s highest civilian honour.

As we say goodbye to 2008 and usher in the New Year, The Bulletin asked a number of Japanese Canadians across the country to provide their take on the year that was, and what they see ahead for the coming year. Below is a sampling of the answers received . . .

Michael Fukushima
National Film Board of Canada
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? Being considered a community leader by The Bulletin!
lowlight? The re-election of Stephen Harper and utter lack of cohesion of Canada’s centre left.
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? Celebrating the NFBs 70th Anniversary.
you personally? Not becoming entwined in the NFB’s 70th Anniversary celebrations . . . too much.
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? Frugalista is a truly cringe-worthy neologism, but probably the best state-of-mind I’ll be able to aspire to the next couple of years. As for the NFB, we’re always vulnerable to extermination whether the economic times are good or ill.
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be?: To do no evil. Really.

Jay Hirabayashi
Kokoro Dance
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? Creation and performances of Ghosts for the Powell Street Festival and 20th Anniversary of Japanese Canadian Redress
lowlight? The re-election of a Harper-led government
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? Kokoro Dance is going to take over the world
you personally? I am going to be a guitar hero rock star
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? Kokoro Dance has been in recession since 1986, the year we started, so nothing is new.
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? “Don’t worry, be happy” says Meher Baba, and I agree.

Kristen Lambertson
Powell Street Festival Society
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? Joining the Powell Street Festival, moving back to Vancouver, Barack Obama elected in the US.
lowlight? hard to say . . . but perhaps the state of our own federal politics, the loss of Paul Newman . . .
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? Maintaining the same high level of programming and community outreach in our new temporary location at Woodland Park.
you personally? The list is too far long . . .
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? The financial crisis is a worry given that PSF is so reliant upon donations and funds from granting agencies. Ideally PSF would like to continue to grow and provide more opportunities for Japanese Canadian and Asian Canadian artists, as well as continue its search for a permanent multi-purpose facility on Powell Street. But in order to provide equitable artistic fees and maintain stability, we need to receive a certain amount of granting fees. With the economic downturn, arts and culture will probably be the first sectors to experience funding cuts. I am hopeful that the impact will not be too great, and that PSF will not have to scale back its plans. Regardless of the economic state, PSF will definitely continue with the festival itself and the many other PSF events throughout the year. The show must go on!
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? To find additional funding!

Terry Watada
Nikkei Voice columnist and jack-of-all-trades writer
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? doing a music performance with my son, Bunji. See part of it on You Tube. Search for Cheyenne and the Weasel.
lowlight? Suffering from heat exhaustion in Hiroshima. Don’t travel to Japan in August!
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? Getting more subscribers and ads, I suppose, though I’m not involved in the daily running of the paper anymore. Mel Tsuji and Yusuke Tanaka are doing a great job in this regard. Mika Fukuma is doing a superlative job with the English section. I hope she stays on for many more years.
you personally? Get my second novel finished. It’s partially about Tom Shoyama versus Etsuji Morii (remember, this is fiction). It is wholly about the JC resistance movement during WWII.  I also have a new manuscript of poetry circulating the publishers. A play nearing a production-ready draft. I hope it goes up as a full production in 2010. Another play in development. And a third in a rather nascent state about the Asahi Baseball Team.
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? Fewer subscribers and ads, I suppose. Personally, I thought I could retire from teaching, but I’ll have to put those plans on hold for a while longer.
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? Write more. Publish more. Retire.

Caitlin Ohama-Darcus
Student/Bulletin Columnist/Member of Chibi Taiko Senior Group
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? (a) Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton, (b) the animated movie Wall-e, (c) passing my second-year organic chemistry course
lowlight? (a) the global financial crisis, (b) the ethnic crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for you personally? learning…learning…listening…looking…learning…
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you? no personal impact but many lessons learned by the younger generations witnessing their parents and leaders shaking their heads and pulling their hair out
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? to assume nothing (. . . and eat more green vegetables . . .)

Emiko Newman
Bulletin Contributor/Member of Chibi Taiko Senior Group
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? Starting high school
lowlight? The economy
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? Going to Japan with Chibi Taiko
you personally? Doing well on my piano exam. Field hockey. Watching the new Harry Potter movie!!!
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? Not applicable to me yet!
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? To not wait until the last minute to write The Adventures of Bean-chan.

Ron Nishimura
Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? The 20th Anniversary of Redress Celebration – being part of the team that put together a celebration in which Nikkei or Japanese Canadians were able to remember and be part of the accomplishments in achieving Redress for the wrongful internment by a past government that were driven by unjust fears.
lowlight? There always a lot of areas you would like to have been better, but there are always levels of family relationships that one would probably thought should be better, especially in areas of communication.
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? One thing which I would like to see is growth in new memberships and increased relations between all organizations and people within the Nikkei community, nationally and locally. Also more communications and relationship-building with our multiethnic community especially in areas of cultural awareness, human rights, and social justice.
you personally? I would like to further develop my personal skills in all areas, especially to do with communications and organizational skills.
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? Given that most of our GVJCCA membership is made up of seniors, there are always concerns over the dwindling number of memberships either being renewed or new memberships being attained. And there is always the desire to retain or grow our membership from the US and overseas.
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? One thing I would like to do is to build stronger ties with my family members and be a healthier person overall.

Rika Uto
Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall
Looking back over the last year, what stands out most for you as a:
highlight? The Hall filled on opening day of the 2008-2009 school year with the largest enrolment of students in recent times.
lowlight? The loss of several dear members of our School: Yoshiyuki Fujiwara, Jim Horiuchi, Ryota Kawasaki and Motohisa Niiro
Looking ahead to 2009, what do you see as a focus for:
your company/organization? To continue to deepen relationships within the Downtown Eastside and Japanese Canadian communities to work together towards common goals.
you personally? To devote more time to creative and physical activities and spontaneous fun.
Given the state of the world’s finances, how do you see it impacting you and or your company/organization? It’s sure to have an effect on our ability to fundraise both from the public and private sectors, especially for our heritage renovation project. It will also put more pressure on the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood as there may be fewer resources to meet the increased need and numbers of low-income residents.
If you were to make one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I never keep them so with good intention but with no expectation I resolve to get my material into John in a timelier manner.

Valentine’s Day Dance
Saturday February 14 at Nikkei Place.
Second GVJCCA dance and first fundraiser for 2009.
There will be prizes, snacks and DJ music. Tickets ($25) and information are available through the GVJCCA at 604.777.5222 or Nikkei Place. The aim is to help raise funds for the GVJCCA so that we can provide information through workshops and sessions on various aspects of human rights, Japanese Canadian immigration laws and social justice issues pertinent to the Nikkei community.

GVJCCA AGM
Saturday March 14
GVJCCA office from 2-4pm. We are always looking for individuals who are interested in helping the community in all areas of community development, social justice, human rights, Japanese immigration and Nikkei community relations. Please come and attend. If you would like more information, please contact the GVJCCA office.

Wow what a month of December we’ve just had! It is amazing the amount of snow that three major storms brought us in Vancouver and other parts of the country. I haven’t seen or shovelled so much snow since I was in my elementary years growing up in Surrey, BC. Although all the shovelling and absurd driving conditions is hard to take, the beauty of the snow covered trees and mountains certainly makes up for some of the negative aspects of Mother Nature’s work. Even though I’ve really had my fill of the white flakes of wonder, I’m certainly not looking forward to the slush and floods which will be the after-effects of all this. Please be careful and drive with extra caution during this period, and to our seniors, please bundle up properly and be careful walking down the streets and sidewalks. Everyone—please be respectful of others.

Just to keep you abreast of the sakura trees at Oppenheimer Park—the City of Vancouver has committed to work with the Coalition to Save the Legacy Sakura, maintaining 11 of the remaining legacy sakura originally planted by our issei pioneers. Building a new field house as part of the redevelopment required removal of three sakura, two of which were kwanzan trees and one, an akebono.  The two kwanzan were destroyed in November with inadequate warning, despite the Coalition’s request to the City to be given notice. The Coalition is now concerned about the scheduled transplant of the remaining Akebono tree. For the Coalition, the expected transparent and cooperative working relationship with the City of Vancouver has so far not been achieved.  The Coalition is meeting with the City in early January to see whether this situation can be rectified. As commemorative work regarding the Legacy Sakura remains to be completed, it is really important that the City, Vancouver Parks Board and the Coalition establish a respectful and effective working relationship.

Upcoming in the month of January will be the GVJCCA Keiro-kai which will be held Saturday, January 10 from 12noon to about 3pm at Nikkei Place, 6688 Southoaks Crescent in Burnaby. All those who are over 70 years of age, please register through Tonari Gumi (604.687.2172). We will be providing another excellent program honouring all our Nikkei seniors who have served our community so graciously over the years. Those of you who wish to volunteer please contact Shag Ando at 604.922.9226.

Just a reminder, the annual Nikkei Community New Year’s party will be held at Nikkei Place on Saturday January 17. Tickets are available through Nikkei Place and the GVJCCA. Please phone 604.777.7000 for additional information.

The GVJCCA will be holding a Valentine’s Day Dance on Saturday February 14 at Nikkei Place. This will be our second dance and first fundraiser for 2009. There will be prizes, snacks and DJ music. Tickets ($25) and information are available through the GVJCCA at 604.777.5222 or Nikkei Place. The aim is to help raise funds for the GVJCCA so that we can provide information through workshops and sessions on various aspects of human rights, Japanese Canadian immigration laws and social justice issues pertinent to the Nikkei community.

The GVJCCA will be holding its annual AGM on Saturday March 14 in the GVJCCA office from 2-4pm. We are always looking for individuals who are interested in helping the community in all areas of community development, social justice, human rights, Japanese immigration and Nikkei community relations. Please come and attend. If you would like more information, please contact the GVJCCA office.

Have a great month.

Ron Nishimura
President GVJCCA

For children, however, it’s a whole different matter. Like an artist standing in front of a blank canvas with a palette of freshly mixed paints, a child looking out his or her window at a fresh blanket of snow knows there is an endless array of possibilities just waiting to be explored.

Having said all that, I have to admit that the recent snowfall has brought back some wonderful memories of my childhood in Montreal and Toronto. Driving home from Tsawwassen last week I saw a sight for sore eyes—a dozen folks, young and old, men and women, playing a game of pickup hockey on a flooded, frozen field. My first memory is of walking down the street in Montreal with the snow banks towering over my head; my second memory is standing on the balcony of our apartment building watching people play hockey in the fields. A few years later I learned to skate on the Humber River behind our house.

With that happy thought, I will wish everyone a healthy, happy and peaceful New Year. I look forward to serving the community again in 2009.

Tatsuo Kage has the appearance and manner of an absent-minded professor, but this façade belies a fierce determination to follow his principles, whether they are popular or not. Over the past 30 or so years, he has been an integral part of the Vancouver Nikkei community, sitting on numerous boards and committees, and championing a number of human rights causes.

Born in 1935 in Utsunomiya, Kage was the son of a military officer. The family moved frequently until setting in Tokyo in the early forties at the outbreak of World War Two.

Developing a keen interest in history at a young age, Kage went on to major in European History at the University of Tokyo and spent two years at Germany’s University of Tübingen on a German Government Exchange Scholarship. In 1969, he became Assistant Professor at Meiji Gakuin University, teaching Political Science and European History. Upon attaining a full professorship, however, he and his wife Diane, along with their three daughters Mariko, Alisa and Eileen and son Ken, relocated to Vancouver. In Vancouver, Kage found work as a bilingual community worker at MOSAIC, a Multilingual Social Service Agency providing services to immigrants. He has also worked as a freelance researcher, writer and translator within the Nikkei community. Following the Redress agreement in 1988, Kage served as Regional Co-ordinator for the Redress Implementation Program under the National Association of Japanese Canadians. His duties including liaising with those who had been exiled to Japan following Japan’s surrender.

Over the year’s Kage’s tireless work within the community has earned him a number of awards and grants and he has written and edited many articles.

Although retired, Kage finds himself as busy as ever. He is currently working on completing the English translation of his 1998 book Nikkei Kanadajin no Tsuihou (Exiled Japanese Canadians) [Akashi Shoten Publishers, Tokyo].

In his Own Words
Tatsuo Kage

You spent the Second World War in Tokyo, is that right?
My father stayed mostly in Tokyo, so I lived there. But one special experience I had is that around 1943, school children were asked to move out from the Tokyo area, so over two hundred school children from the same elementary school were sent to the countryside, and I was one of them.

They were afraid of bombing?
Yes. My parents and two small sisters stayed in Tokyo, but myself and my elder sister, who was in the 6th grade, went to a northern part called Miyagi-ken, in the countryside, and stayed there for two years. That was, you know, quite unusual, to be away from our parents. I was still only eight or nine. And I lived with a few hundred other kids, plus several teachers. It was an old inn or country-style restaurant; the building was used for a dormitory. And the teachers lived in the same place.

So it was almost like boarding school?
That’s right. It had a big banquet room, with tatami of course, that was used for both studying, eating, and even sleeping.

Do you have many memories of the war itself?
I don’t have really have any memories of the war itself, but I remember that during the last year of the war, things were getting worse, especially the food situation and we were always hungry even though where we went was a well known rice growing area. At the beginning, local farmers came to visit us with food, so it was very nice. But the last six months or so, it was not so good. And then after we went back to Tokyo again there were many food shortages. The reason is that Japan lost colonies like Manchuria. It had lots of farming land, but nothing was imported after the war, so I think the worst time was 1946 to 1947.

When Japan lost the war, what happened to your father?
Of course he lost the job, so he was looking for a job. He did a lot of odd jobs, and finally he worked for some trading company. Unusually for his age group, he was conversant in English, so that helped quite a bit. And eventually he managed to establish some sort of small foundation. Around that time the housing situation was very, very poor, partly because half of the city was bombed and burned, destroyed. So he had an idea of forming a research institute for housing. So that was his job until he died— it was 1963.

What were your interests as you got older and went to high school?
Well, I was always interested in history, and I had a very good teacher. Looking back, I think the end of the war, when I was around ten years old, was a big shock for me. Until then I was indoctrinated into believing that Japan was a very special country and couldn’t lose the war because we had some kind of mission. That kind of nationalistic idea was held by almost everybody at that time, including young people like us. But then, when the war ended, everything turned around. The war was not a holy war for the glory of Japan or the liberation of eastern people, but more like a war of aggression. Japan was governed by an emperor, but then democracy was introduced, so many value systems and ideas were changed 180 degrees. So that was a kind of the beginning of my interest in history. But at the same time, I thought that, even though this is what happened in Japan and Asia, if I were to specialize in that area, then my point of view would be limited and fairly narrow. So I wanted to study about European history. Of course it was well known that Hitler and Mussolini were allies. So my curiosity was about Japan and Germany. For example, how did they become allies of Japan? That was something I was really interested in. So I ended up studying 1920s, 1930s German history, and after I graduated university, I managed to go to study in Germany and I became familiar with German research and people’s feeling about the war. I was always meeting people there and it was very, very interesting as well.

Your interest in history was piqued by the Japan’s losing the war. Do you think that was a shock to the population as a whole?
It is hard to say. For those who lived in Japan, the end of the war was a kind of relief, even though materially it was still very tough. And I think a lot of people around that time felt that big changes were coming. And then of course a lot of people came back from overseas, soldiers and civilians, from the former colonies and so on. I think probably one tenth of Japan’s population was living outside the country, and when the war ended they gradually came back. So those people had also a hard time. Japan was very impoverished country, so to get back to normal life was pretty tough.

When you went to Germany, what was that like?
Well, lots of German people had some familiarity with the Japanese because of the long-time relationship and wartime alliance, so there was no bad feelings at all towards Japanese. But in Europe at that time, their exposure to Oriental people was very, very limited. So people were curious about people from outside, Oriental people. So that wasn’t too bad. I never had, you know any kind of discrimination. However, I did feel that it was a place we could stay only temporarily as guests. But for visiting it was fine. And Diane and I got married there.

Did you come to Canada, to Vancouver, because Diane was from here?
Partly, yes, but one of the reasons we came here is that we have three girls, as you know—our fourth child was a boy, but he was still small—and the oldest girl was just finishing elementary school, reaching the age of Japanese middle school, and at that time there were not many mixed-race children in Japan. So especially for girls, future acceptance, or a future career was quite unsure. Japan was a more sexist country at that time, and mixed kids were not really accepted, but more looked at with curiosity, and integrating into the society could have been difficult, or so we thought. And Diane had been living in Japan for over ten years, so she also felt it would be good to have a change. She didn’t want to go back to Montreal where she came from. For one thing, she felt it was too cold in winter time, and French-English issues were always present, we’re talking about 1960. So it was not a very favourable environment. So we thought that, well, Vancouver is halfway in between, and also I had visited Vancouver beforehand, and I thought it was a pretty good place to be, even though I didn’t know very much about it.

You talk about the mixed race issue in Japan. Did you and Diane run into problems while living there?
No. That is again an interesting thing. We lived in the same neighbourhood where I grew up, and my children went to the same school that I went. So we were long time residents of that area. The neighbourhood shop keepers, usually they stay for a long time, they knew who I was, and who Diane was. So they didn’t treat us as strangers. And Diane was pretty good at speaking Japanese, so she sat on the PTA and things like that. So she was doing everything, you know, that housewives are supposed to do. So I think they accepted us without too much problem.

You arrived in Vancouver in 1975. Did you become involved in the Vancouver Nikkei community right away?
No, I think it took a few years. At the beginning I had hardly any contacts. But in 1977, the Japanese Canadian Centennial—that was an interesting year—it was then that a bunch of us formed the Japanese Immigrants Association—Take san (Yamashiro) and Yuko (Shibata), Michiko (Sakata) and Peter Kubotani who later became the president of the Greater Vancouver JCCA. So that was the beginning of my involvement. And one of the first projects I was involved with was producing a list of immigrants and also a kind of directory. I think that was some kind of prototype for the Vancouver Japanese Business Directory. At that time, you know, there was nothing like that. So it was a challenge, but at the same time I learned very quickly what kind of services were available, and who the immigrants were, and so on. So that was a very good learning experience. And then about a year later, I got a job at MOSAIC, the immigrant services association. And at that time I thought that to help other immigrants, other people, I should know the resources in the community, especially people, and organizations. So I got involved with the JCCA first and Tonari Gumi soon after that. I made arrangements with MOSAIC and Tonari Gumi that I could work one or two days a week from Tonari Gumi. So since then, I have had a connection with the Nikkei community. My work place, MOSAIC was very good as well, because besides me, there were no other Japanese, and most were also immigrants, but from different countries, like China, Vietnam, Latin American, and so on. So to be with them was also quite interesting. Immigrants from other areas are quite different, and especially refugees, they have different kinds of problems. So that was a good learning experience.

At MOSAIC did everyone have their own specialty according to their language? Did you only focus on Japanese speaking immigrants?
Yeah that was basically the way it was, but in my case, occasionally I was able to use my German. Not many German people came in to ask for us to help, because German people seem to pick up English quite quickly. So they don’t seem to have many problems.

In the time I’ve known you, you’ve been quite heavily involved in the human rights end of the community. What was it that sparked that passion in you?
(laughs) I don’t know if it’s a passion or not, but around 1983, Redress became a community issue. I was on the board of the JCCA, and I recall that at that time Redress was being discussed because the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) was sending out messages that it was going to work on it as an human rights issue. But the JCCA Board, the Japanese Canadian leaders, were quite cautious or conservative, and there was a lot of resistance to work on Redress. And I thought, right from the very beginning, I thought that this was very interesting, and a good idea to work on it. And an elder in the community warned me that there could be some kind of backlash, so you should be very careful, and I thought, well, that can’t be the case, because Japanese Canadians have a right to correct the past wrongs. Since I was not even indirectly affected by the wartime measures, my interest was a lot more general, how the community process worked among Japanese Canadians, or more generally speaking, how the democratic process could work.

So your interest in human rights came out of your involvement with the redress movement?
In 1988, when Redress was settled, I thought, and a few other people—my friends—thought that the energy generated from the redress movement had to be focussed into human rights activities. And that was the NAJC’s direction as well around that time also. A human rights committee was formed, both in the NAJC and locally too. So that was the beginning of human rights work. I was interested in Redress issues which were not resolved in 1988, with other people. One thing is that even the Chinese head tax was already an issue we were talking about, and then soon after that there were issues regarding Japanese government not dealing with past responsibility like the comfort women issue.

I think it came up in the mid the 1990s . . . just around that time that became one of the issues people became interested in. And Japanese immigrants, we were watching how the Japanese government was trying to deal with these issues. And along those same lines, in 1996/97, we were involved in the history text book issue in Japan. What happened is, Saburo Ienaga, a Japanese professor in Japan, had a lawsuit against the Japanese government. The Japanese government was screening, de facto censoring, text book drafts. Each school district or school board has a choice of choosing out of available text books, that is how the Japanese system works, and Professor Ienaga wrote one from a critical point of view regarding Japan’s past, and that was rejected by the Ministry. So he was unhappy, and eventually he sued the government. And that lawsuit lasted about 30 years. That final one came up in 1997. So about a year beforehand, we started campaigning to support that professor’s lawsuit.

Around 1996, Randy Enomoto was NAJC President and he was proposing that the Japanese and Chinese communities should get together to discuss common problems, common issues. We were looking for common issues that could be discussed together. For example, seniors care for ethnic elders could be one of the issues, that kind of thing. So at that time I became interested in the text book issue, Japanese responsibility for the war, especially regarding Asian people. I thought that unless we brought up those issues, discussed with the Chinese people, our dialogue would be useless. So I said that to Randy and he said, okay, let’s deal with it. So that was the beginning of the textbook campaign. And then I contacted the Japanese support group and got information. So eventually we started a signature-collecting campaign, and we collected quite a few signatures. 11,000 signatures were collected and the Japanese support group was surprised, they never expected that many signatures could be obtained outside of Japan. Most signatures were collected by Chinese Canadians. So we have always had some kind of connection with Japanese peace movement, human rights movement. And that’s still going on.

Did you feel there was an obligation on the part of Japanese because they had achieved redress that they then turn their focus to helping other minority groups?
Yes, well, I think simply stated, when Redress was achieved, especially at the last stage, many other people, including ethnic groups, First Nation people, some rights activists and so on, helped us, right? And so it was natural, I thought, to help them. That’s the feeling I had. And some other Japanese Canadians must have felt the same way.

So in terms of what you said earlier about, you know, connecting with the Chinese community, there are still some bad feelings on the part of the Chinese community towards the Japanese because of what happened during the war. Did you feel that getting involved in these issues, like the comfort women campaign and textbook campaign, was that a way, do you think, of bringing the communities together?
Yes. I think it’s a reconciliation process. I think at least we show some understanding, and working on the issue, together, would be helpful, I think, for the understanding between our two communities. But that’s again, my feeling. But it’s not always easy, because lots of Japanese people feel uneasy with old issues, because they’re connected to criticism of Japan’s past. So some people, even though they’re otherwise fairly open minded, they just refuse to get involved in, for example, the comfort women issue.

Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s something to do with the Japanese psyche, or is it the way they were brought up, or . . .?
I think probably many Japanese people weren’t exposed to the issues of nationalism, or their idea of what it means to be Japanese and what Japan is, because after all, Japan is an insular country, even though nowadays people are going abroad, and there’s foreign information coming in. But still, a lot of people believe that Japan is a homogenous country, and they have their own unique history . . . that kind of belief is engrained in their minds, I think. So it’s just not so easy to be critical of Japan’s past. But I think we are not bashing Japan. Looking at the past from a critical viewpoint is not meant to criticize Japan itself. It’s not anti-Japanese. But without dealing with the past properly, you can’t really establish your international standing. That’s the feeling I have, and many, many progressive people have the same viewpoint. That’s why in Japan they have a movement as well to support those people, not only comfort women, but there were many people used as forced labour in Japan during the war, and compensation for those people is still an unresolved issue.

It seems to me that Germany, after the war, had a much different response to what it did during the war. Germany, from my limited understanding, seemed to take a real hard look at itself and its actions during the war and seemed to take steps to try and make redress for their actions. Japan seems to have had a different response.
Yes, I think so. Of course the situation in Germany is very complicated, but as you mention, political leadership in Germany was quite open to trying to overcome the past wrongs, and to overcome that kind of burden by for example apologizing to Jewish people and neighbouring countries, and make arrangement for compensation and so on. I didn’t really study how that difference came about, but one thing I noticed was that in Germany, they are trying to identify themselves as different from Nazi Germany, Hitler’s regime. To be a leader in post-war Germany, they have to claim that they weren’t Nazi supporters or they are totally different from the Nazis. In the Japanese case, that kind of distance or divorce from the recent past has never been so clear-cut. For example, Prime Minster Kiishi, who was Prime Minister around 1960, was one of the minsters in the Tojo cabinet when the Asia Pacific War started, so the elite somehow survived. He could have been charged as a war criminal. So that kind of distinction from the past or divorce from the past has never been so clear in Japan. That’s to do with the uniqueness of the Japanese feeling of national identity, I think.

There’s been some strong resistance from the community to some of the work that you’ve done, especially around Japan’s responsibility for the comfort women and those particular issues. I used the word passion before, because you seemed very determined in the face of, I think, non-support within the community to keep pursuing these issues, so I’m just curious why.
Well, of course I know that some people have some objections, but I don’t expect everybody to agree. I do what I need to, what I think is proper, and yes, the comfort women issue is really a tough one because the Japanese government including embassies is involved in campaigning to promote government position, but its position is quite different from international understanding. What can you do? You know, people don’t like it, but still I don’t need to shut up.

Well, it feels like you’ve always followed your own conscience.
Yes. And, there’s a joke, because I was working with the Chinese people on these issues, and then I told Diane, I lost a lot of Japanese friends, and Diane said, but the Chinese have a much bigger population . . . (laughs)

You’ve written a book on the “deportation” of Japanese Canadians. Was that published?
In Japanese, yes. And now, we’re working on the English translation. The manuscript is almost finished and we’re now working on finding a publisher, we’re not sure. I thought that it should be translated professionally, so I asked some nissei professional translator to translate it. Actually we worked on it together, you know, almost line by line, and so the English version became quite different from a straight translation of the Japanese version, but anyways, so far we have not found a publisher. So I don’t know when it will be published.

I understand this book came out of your experience working for the Redress implementation program when you were travelling to Japan to seek out people that had been repatriated, is that right?
What happened was that after the Redress settlement, major centres had a Redress Implementation office, and I was appointed as the coordinator for western Canada of the Redress Imprementation Program, which was mostly BC, and among coordinators I was the only one who was comfortable communicating in Japanese. We knew that in Japan there were people who were eligible for redress, so I started corresponding with Japanese Canadians there, and I recommended to the Government Redress office that we do something. So that developed into a delegation, an NAJC and government delegation, visiting Japan for ten days or so, about eleven months after the Redress settlement. Before, during, and after the visit I contacted quite a few people by correspondence and in person who went to Japan in 1946 and stayed. There was another group, who went to Japan in 1946, but after several years came back to Canada. Actually probably more than half of them came back. I already knew several interesting people, like Irene Tsuyuki and Mary Seki. So there were the two very distinct groups. And I thought that to compare their experiences would be quite interesting as well.

For those people who had left in 1946 and remained in Japan, did the Redress settlement mean anything to them, or were they so far removed by that point that it was meaningless?
Well, I think they were very pleased. Someone told me that the amount of money they got was not much from Japanese point of view because at that time the Japanese economy was very prosperous. But the recognition for past injustice and the fact that the Canadian government sent people to look for them and apologize, they appreciated it very much. Until then, a lot of people had an unsettled feeling about their war time experience and “deportation.” But one of them said that for him, finally the war was over. So that kind of relief or healing happened during that visit. So you couldn’t really say that they were not interested in it, because for them it’s very unusual, a rare thing, that the Canadian government was sending a delegation to meet them. So without much effort or publicity, I’m sure that most people there knew that we were coming to visit.

Most of these people would have been kids when they were “repatriated”?
Mostly they were in their teens. Some of them did not like to go to Japan as a foreign land, but they were too young to live in Canada independently so that they had to go along with their parents and siblings.

You yourself immigrated to Canada with your family from Japan. You were involved with creating the immigrant association but then there’s this whole other side of the community, the sansei and the nisei here—the Canadian born Nikkei. Did you feel comfortable in that environment or did it some time to get used to?
Well, when I joined the JCCA board in 1978 or so, I thought that most people were very different and strange, hard to understand, so it took about two years, more or less, to follow what they were saying and so on. At that time the board was issei, nisei, sansei, that’s three generations. I wondered about the sansei, well, I didn’t find so much difficulty understanding them, even though they were quite different from Japanese of the same generation, very Canadianized . . .

It’s interesting to me that there were people like you and Takeo and Michiko, the new immigrants, and then there were people like Naomi Shikaze, Ken Shikaze, Rick Shiomi,. There was a culture gap, but there also seemed to be an alliance between the two groups.
Yes. I think the main thing was that even though our backgrounds were quite different, it was nice and good to work together on the same things, like Tonari Gumi or the Powell Street Festival. Even though we were different, we were not so different that we couldn’t work together on the same cause. Another good example is the JCCA Human Rights Committee. Over a decade and a half members of the committee always consist of nisei, sansei and postwar immigrants. Difference in our experience and expertise becomes a complementary factor for learning from each other rather than a source of friction.

Now of course there’s a whole new generation of immigrants coming from Japan. There seems to be this real divide between the Canadian born and the Japanese born. People sometimes talk about that, about how to bring them together. Are you involved at all with the new immigrants, the ones who came post-Redress?
Not too many. The face of Japanese immigrants has changed quite a bit. Until the 1980s , it was typically young working male immigrants with skills who came, but in the 1980s, not many people came. I was working at MOSAIC and I was wondering if they would get more immigrants coming. And then around that time I noticed that there was a half-forgotten provision for retired immigrants in the Immigration Regulations. I found that if you were intending to retire in Canada, you could immigrate very easily. So, I wrote that information in a Japanese publication. It was for a semi-government immigration agency, so it had a small circulation among Japanese. But one of the major newspapers picked it up and they mentioned it in a column. So that sparked an interest among Japanese, and the agency got a few hundred phone calls of inquiry. That was just around the time that the Japanese cost of living was very high and overseas, in the Philippines or Spain people could live cheaper when they retired. So because of that article, interest among retirees was generated, and until around 1990, I don’t know how many came, but in Vancouver, at least a few hundred people came. I lost contact but they still maintain their own group. And that was until 1990 when the government finally realized that it probably wasn’t a very useful immigration policy, so they struck it out.

And going back to your question about newer immigrants, after the 1990s, from around that time on, young women sponsored by non Japanese men began arriving. It seems to me that is the majority of immigrants these days. I am no longer in immigrant services so I don’t know what kind of problems or needs they have, but in the 1990s, there were group activities, and they met four to six times a year, they dealt with various topics relating to intermarriage. Then I think some people who were active in the organization moved away so that group finished. But recently there are some people who are interested in reviving it, so actually in December we are going to have a first meeting regarding intermarriage. Japanese intermarriage could include different categories, like Canadian-born sansei with non-Japanese partners, etc., but to begin with we want to focus on Japanese women, Japanese speaking women, who are isolated and need a place to meet and discuss their own problems. And I think one of the issues which will soon arise is how to deal with divorce or separation. Because once you are married, having children or common assets, there are all sorts of procedures that you have to deal with.

Do you still feel Japanese or do you feel Canadian?
Yes, that’s a good question. I . . . it is hard to say. Just yesterday I thought you might ask that question. And I was wondering . . . who are your friends? What kind of newspaper are you reading? You know, that kind of thing gives you an identity. So I . . . now I am a stateless! (laughs) Neither Japanese nor Canadian. I enjoy visiting Japan, but at the same time I don’t think I can live there permanently. Canada, well, I think, I don’t mind living here, more quietly, maybe not too much involved in the community. I left MOSAIC over 15 years ago, but it seems that I am always too busy and there are lots of things I want to do, not important things, but like repairing furniture or painting the house, those type of things, always those kind of things are neglected. So I really want to retire. I recall you interviewed Mits Hayashi and he was talking about having a second retirement. (laughs)

You have been involved in the Nikkei community for many years. How would you sum up the experience?
Well, I think that overall, getting to know and working with Japanese Canadians has been a learning experience, but has also been very beneficial for me. Most of them have been very kind and understanding. Because for example I heard that some immigrant person was talking about Redress, and Japanese Canadians gave him a difficult time saying, oh, you had nothing to do with it. But I never had that kind of thing said to me, even though I was deeply involved. That type of attitude was never shown by anybody, so that was very good. And I did help them quite a bit, in a way. Like, you know, communication with issei was important. Take-san and myself, we helped get the issei involved.

Finally, I understand that you once played the role of Ultraman, the Japanese TV character.
(laughs) Oh yeah, when our kids were still small, they were attending the Gladstone Japanese Language School and the parents were supposed to do something to entertain kids, so I think I became Ultraman with mask and costume, homemade. Take-San got to be Superman. So I got to play Ultraman.