Theatre

Toyoshi (Yoshi) Yoshihara

Toyoshi Yoshihara was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1937. After graduating from Waseda University (B.A.), he immigrated to Canada in 1970. Besides running a successful heavy equipment marketing business (Komatsu Canada Ltd.), he promoted theatre exchanges between Canada and Japan, and has translated more than 50 Canadian plays into Japanese, and five Japanese plays into […]

Donna Yamamoto

Donna is an actor whose acting career began in 1987 in an Art’s Club production for which she was recognized with a Jessie Award for ‘Most Promising Newcomer.’ Soon after, she played the lead role in Rosie’s Café by Rick Shiomi, which was the first Asian Canadian professional theatre group to tour across Canada. Since […]

Natsuko Ohama

Natsuko Ohama is an actor who trained under legendary voice teacher Kristin Linklater. She is a founding member and permanent faculty of Shakespeare and Company Lenox, Mass., a senior artist at Pan Asian Rep New York, and was the Director of Training at the National Arts Center of Canada. Ohama has taught at numerous institutions […]

Dawn Obokata

Dawn Obokata has been acting professionally since 1980. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Dawn is a long-time artistic collaborator with Actor’s Lab Theatre in Toronto, (now known as LeTHAL) where she has created several image and movement-based performances. Dawn has toured in Canada and Europe with her solo performance Soulscape Wilderness Trilogy, a […]

Manami Hara

Manami Hara was born and raised in Tokyo Japan. She became fascinated with Western theatre and the English language and at the age of 18, left Japan home to become a stage actor in North America. She moved to Vancouver, took ESL classes and graduated from Studio 58, a two-year conservatory Theatre Arts program at […]

Mieko Ouchi

Mieko Ouchi is an actor, writer, and director working in theatre and film/TV. Mieko trained at U of A’s BFA Acting Program, the Women in the Director’s Chair Program and the National Screen Institute. Film roles include Nori Sato in Global TV’s The Guard, The Orange Seed Myth and Other Lies Mothers Tell, Fear Itself, […]

Linda Uyehara Hoffman

Linda Uyehara Hoffman has been a taiko (Japanese drum) player for over 30 years. She was a founding member of Katari Taiko, the first taiko group in Canada, and of Sawagi Taiko, the first all-women’s taiko group in North America, with whom she continues to perform. As a folksinger/guitarist, she sang in coffee houses in […]

Roy Kumano

Roy Kumano was one of the most well-known Nisei harmonica players, and a member of the Lemon Creek Harmonica Band. He was very active as a harmonica performer and bandleader in Vancouver prior to the forced removal, giving solo performances as well as leading groups such as the Gakuyukai and Hompa Harmonica Bands. He was […]

David Kenji Fujino

David Fujino was a multidisciplinary Sansei artist who wrote poetry in the form of concrete visual poetry; he was also an actor and a writer of reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces. Born in the internment camp of Greenwood, Fujino became a fixture of the Toronto Japanese Canadian community and the arts scene. In the 1970s, […]

Ellen Anderson

Ayako Ellen Yamasaki Anderson is an artist, writer, and social activist. She was born in 1943, in Sandon, BC. Sandon was an internment camp for Japanese Canadians during the war. Ellen is considered a sansei third generation Japanese-Canadian but her great grandmother was actually a first generation Issei from Japan. Ellen trained as a visual […]

Mitch Miyagawa

Mitch Miyagawa is a filmmaker and writer known for his 2012 documentary A Sorry State. A Sorry State won the Writers’ Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award for Documentary in 2013. It was commissioned by TVO and Knowledge Network. His play The Plum Tree was produced several times across western Canada, as well as a public […]

Rick Shiomi

Rick Shiomi is a Toronto-born theatre artist now based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a leader in early Asian Canadian theatre movement in the 1980s. He credits his time spent in Vancouver in the 1970s, working with the Powell Street Festival in its early years, and later with the Redress movement, as what gave him the […]

Terry Watada

Terry Watada is a poet, novelist, short story writer, historian, playwright, columnist, essayist, and music composer. He has published five poetry collections, three novels, a short story collection, two manga, two histories on the Buddhist Church in Canada, and two children’s biographies. Significant titles include Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes (Arsenal, Vancouver 2007), novel, The […]