Ontario

Joni Inouye

Joni Inouye is a Toronto-based interior designer who worked with Moriyama & Teshima Architects. Born in Japan, she studied architectural technology at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, and went on to design such interiors as the Scarborough Civic Centre (1969), the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library (1973), the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo (1986); the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa […]

Yosh Inouye

Yosh Inouye is a photographer and graphic designer. He studied sociology, photography, and graphic design in Japan and came to Canada in 1968. He worked as an advertising photographer, operating his own studio. In the mid-1980s, he was invited to teach at Sheridan College of which he says, ‘I didn’t know I can teach until […]

Kimiko Muraoka Koyanagi

Kimiko Koyanagi is a 3rd generation doll-maker from the renowned Muraoka doll-making family of Tokyo and has made Burlington, Ontario her home since 1966. Trained from childhood in the family tradition, she is one of only a few living masters of this esteemed Japanese craft. For over sixty years, she has been utilizing this traditional […]

Naoko Matsubara

Naoko Matsubara is a printmaker. She received her BFA in 1960 from the Kyoto Academy of Fine Arts in Kyoto, and an MFA as Fulbright Scholar at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1962. In the same year, she was a ‘Special Invited Student’ to the Royal College of Art in London, England. Over […]

Akira Yoshikawa

Akira Yoshikawa has always been interested in art, architecture, design and music. After graduating from the Ontario College of Art in 1974 with Special Commendation from the Department of Experimental Art, he has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Art Gallery of Peterborough, Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery, Mercer Union, Art Gallery of Algoma and […]

Walter Sunahara

Walter Sunahara was a painter. He was born in Vancouver and during WWII was interned as a child at Bay Farm, Slocan. Moving east after the war he earned a degree from the Ontario College of Art, Toronto in 1959. Walter then pursued graduate studies at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts specializing in Nihonga, […]

Yoshiko Sunahara

Yoshiko Sunahara is a sculptor, ceramicist, and mixed media artist. With many international exhibitions, and public commissions utilizing large-scale cast bronze and ceramic sculpture in her earlier portfolio, Yoshiko’s current work employs mixed media medallic sculpture in the form of ‘hand-held’ sculptures. Yoshiko’s work reflects a deep concern over environmental and social issues, voicing protest […]

Shizuye Takashima

Shizuye Takashima was one of Canada’s foremost Nisei painters. Beginning in the late 1950s, she became noticed on the Canadian art scene for her skilful and sensitive figurative paintings, but her style and subject matter underwent many transformations throughout her career. She is most well-known for her book, A Child in Prison Camp, which tells […]

Leslie Sasaki

Leslie Sasaki is a sansei art educator and artist living in Hamilton, Ontario. He was born in Winnipeg in 1953 to George Sasaki (b. Annacis Island, BC) and Rosa Adeline Sasaki (nee Takatsu, b. Hainey, BC) His formative artistic influences include his father, who was a sign painter and his mother, who encouraged her children […]

Kazuo Nakamura

Kazuo Nakamura was an internationally recognized abstract painter, widely noted for his application of rigorous mathematical structure to his depictions of both landscapes and more abstract visuals. Born in Vancouver in 1926, he was teaching himself how to paint landscapes when he was forcibly relocated as a teenager to the Tashme internment camp, where he […]

Louise Noguchi

Louise Noguchi is a multidisciplinary visual artist who challenges her audience with themes that pose psychological questions. Using photography, sculpture, video and other media, Noguchi’s concepts confront the spectator’s notions of identity, perception and reality. Her work has been exhibited at the Power Plant, Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Contemporary Art Gallery, […]

Mitsugi Kikuchi

Mitsugi Shinran Kikuchi is a painter who works in traditional Japanese styles of sumi-e (ink brush painting) and tarashikomi (‘drop-in’ method of watercolour painting), and a retired ikebana sensei in the Ohara school. He learned sumi-e and tarashikomi after graduating high school in Japan, and also became an ikebana teacher before immigrating to Canada in […]

John Ikeda

John Ikeda is a ceramicist.

Takako Yanagida-Lordly

Takako Yanagida-Lordly is a soprano singer. She is well known for her exquisite voice, onstage charisma and exceptional interpretations of Japanese Art Song. Yanagida-Lordly studied at the Kunitachi College of Music, Japanese National Institute for Opera in Tokyo, and in Vienna, with the renowned tenor Anton Dermota on a Japanese government fellowship. She was the […]

Nobuo Kubota

Nobuo Kubota was born on June 27, 1932 in Vancouver BC. He has degree in architecture from the University of Toronto. He practiced architecture for 10 years before becoming an artist. He is also a musician, sound artist and sound singer. As an artist, he has a tendency to work in isolation and remains outside […]