Ontario

Janet Horne Cozens

Janet Horne Cozens began studying art at the age of two in Japan. Her love of art continued after her family immigrated to Northern Ontario thanks to her mother, a well known haiku poet, who encouraged her to be creative and explore various media. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in […]

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 […]

David Shimotakahara

David Shimotakahara is the founder and Executive Artistic Director of GroundWorks DanceTheater dedicated to the creation, production and presentation of new work in Dance. Based in Cleveland OH, since 1998 this group of outstanding artists has introduced dance lovers and neophytes alike to an experience that is unconventional, yet deeply human and resonating. GroundWorks continually […]

Frank Nakashima

Frank Tadashi Nakashima was born in Toronto on July 22, 1951. He is a graduate of York University (Toronto) Bachelor of Fine Arts 1975, specializing in the performance practice of Medieval and Renaissance music. He has performed with The Toronto Consort (1972-1974), the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir (founding member) 1981-1986 and was a consultant for Poculi […]

Denise Fujiwara

Denise Fujiwara is a choreographer, dancer, teacher and presenter. EUNOIA, her multimedia adaptation of Christian Bök’s award-winning book was premiered by World Stage at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, and received three Dora nominations; it was named one of NOW’s Top 5 Dance Shows of 2014, and has begun national touring. In 2015 she was a […]

Joy Kogawa

Joy Kogawa was born in Vancouver in 1935. As a young child, she and her family were forced to leave their home in the Marpole neighbourhood and move to the Slocan internment camp in the interior of British Columbia. Her family’s experience of the forced uprooting of Japanese Canadians later inspired her 1981 novel, Obasan. […]

Ed Koyama

Ed Koyama is a musician born and raised in Toronto. He has played guitar and saxophone professionally in local bands. Performances include a number of albums for Terry Watada with other local Sansei/Nisei musicians.

Ruth Yamada

Ruth Yamada was a sumi-e artist and watercolour painter, and founder of the Toronto-based group Sumi-e Artists of Canada. Professionally, Yamada worked as the lead fashion artist for Fairweather Clothing. Her sumi-e and watercolours were exhibited at a number of solo exhibitions in Ontario, and part of group exhibitions internationally, including in Japan. Yamada was […]

John Ota

John Ota M.S., B.Arch., B.A., is a proud Japanese Canadian who has had a varied career in the architect and design world in Canada. He has writing expertise in the field, possessing an academic background in contemporary architecture and historic preservation, as well as possessing exhibition curator skills and skills in architectural design. John has […]

Chiyoko Izumi

Chiyoko Izumi is an odori dance instructor in Hamilton, Ontario, who has been teaching odori for over 70 years. She began to study odori at age 10 in Vancouver, two years before she was sent to Japan to care for her sick grandmother. Izumi returned to Canada after her grandmother’s death, and married her husband […]

Ken Adachi

Ken Adachi was the author of the seminal history of Japanese Canadians, The Enemy That Never Was (1976). A journalist by profession, Adachi was commissioned to write the book by the National Association of Japanese Canadians. He was born in British Columbia in 1928, and he and his family were forcibly removed from Vancouver to […]

Ann Suzuki

Ann Suzuki is an Ontario-based textile artist who uses the ancient Javanese technique of batik, a wax-resist dyeing method, to create her unique silk designs. Suzuki wishes to create garments which ‘make the wearer feel special while being comfortable’. She hand-selects and dyes silks, and then creates one of a kind garments based on the […]

Pat Adachi

Pat Adachi is the author of Asahi: A Legend in Baseball (1992), the book widely credited as sparking a popular revival of interest in the prewar Japanese Canadian Vancouver baseball team, the Asahi. Although she did not consider herself a writer, Adachi had been a fan of the Asahi as a young girl in Vancouver, […]

Tamai Kobayashi

Tamai Kobayashi is a Toronto-based writer of short stories, poetry, screenplays, and a novel, Prairie Ostrich. Prairie Ostrich, which follows eight-year-old Egg Murakami and her family on their ostrich farm in rural southern Alberta, has been called an ‘exquisitely crafted story’ with ‘insights into childhood, loss, cruelty and triumph’. Prairie Ostrich was listed by the […]