Sansei

Michael Fukushima

Over 36 years, Michael Fukushima has been an animator, filmmaker, producer, and head of the NFB’s Animation Studio. He’s a member of the AMPAS® Academy, with over 200 films (and some nice awards) under his belt. Now mostly retired, Fukushima skis, cycles, and cherry-picks projects that interest him and “spark joy”.

Ron Korb

Grammy® Award nominated flutist and composer Ron Korb has released 30 albums in 20 countries and plays a wide variety of indigenous woodwinds from around the world. Ron is on the list of ‘Ten Best Flute Players in the World’ and has won numerous awards. After graduating the University of Toronto he moved to Tokyo […]

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 […]

Baco Ohama

Baco Ohama describes herself as a sensorialist, a writer, a text walker, a maker, and as an artist who works with the felt and the found. She says she is drawn to slow conversations and everyday poetics, and often finds herself thinking about the relationships between history, language, and location. A sansei who grew up […]

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, […]

Lillian Michiko Yano

I am a sansei, a third-generation Japanese Canadian artist. Currently, my art explores multifaceted Japanese Canadian experiences of intergenerational healing. By exploring my family’s relationship with Canada through my art, I have finally found my identity as a Canadian who is Japanese. As one of eight Japanese Canadian artists telling the Japanese Canadian story of […]

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 […]

Masako Fukawa

Masako Fukawa (nee Shinde) is a Sansei educator and writer. Born in Prince Rupert BC, she was removed from Steveston and relocated to the ghost town of Greenwood. Returned to Steveston in 1951, attended UBC, the University of Michigan, University of Victoria and taught in Japan and in Nanaimo. She developed resources for teachers and […]

Bryce Kanbara

Bryce Kanbara is a visual artist, curator and proprietor of you me gallery in Hamilton, Ontario. He is a founding member and first administrator of Hamilton Artists Inc.; curatorial positions at the Burlington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, and curator/chair of the Arts Committee at the Japanese Canadian Cultural […]

Emiko Morita

Emiko Morita is a third-generation mixed-heritage Japanese Canadian arts administrator and from 2015 – 2024, the Executive Director of the Powell Street Festival in Vancouver, the largest Japanese Canadian arts and cultural festival in Canada. Previously, she worked in the publishing industry as the marketing director at Douglas & McIntyre, leading marketing campaigns for national […]

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 […]

John Endo Greenaway

John Endo Greenaway is a self-described hapa-sansei who lives and works in the Metro Vancouver area. Born in London, England to a Japanese Canadian mother and an English/Irish Canadian father, he has spent the last 55 years trying to figure out where he fits in. He will let you know when he does. In the […]