Ontario

Audrey Kobayashi

Audrey Kobayashi is a Professor of Geography at Queen’s University and a highly respected scholar in the Japanese Canadian community. Many know her for her book Memories of Our Past: A Brief History and Walking Tour of Powell Street. Kobayashi’s academic work has a longstanding relationship with the Japanese Canadian community, which she is continuing […]

Roy Ito

Roy Ryoichi Ito was a Nisei writer and historian, the author of We Went to War: The Story Of The Japanese Canadians Who Served During The First And Second World Wars (1984), Stories of My People: A Japanese Canadian Journal (1994), and the Japanese Canadians (1977), an illustrated history for high school students. Born in […]

Brian Sano

Brian Sano is a Toronto-based commercial photographer who photographs merchandise, food, and cosmetics. His clients have included Holt Renfrew, Aritzia, Birks, Harry Rosen, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, and Winners.

Sue Obata

Sue Obata is a Toronto-based glass artist whose work can be found in government buildings, university campuses, private homes, and churches from Trinidad to Germany, and within Canada in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. After studying Creative Art at Sheridan College, Obata spent eight years apprenticing with European masters in […]

Brenda Kamino

Brenda Kamino is an actress who has performed on many of Canada’s best known stages for 40 years creating many roles in new plays for Cahoots Theatre Projects, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, YPT, Alberta Theatre Projects, the Prairie Theatre Exchange, fu-Gen Theatre, Nightwood Theatre; Kamino has also spent a season at the Shaw Festival […]

Akemi Nishidera

Akemi Nishidera is a Toronto-based printmaker. After studying printmaking at the Ontario College of Art, and showing her work in a number of exhibits in Ontario, Nishidera continued learning her craft in Japan: first, she attended the International Paper Symposium in Kyoto in 1995, and then moved to Japan in 1998 to apprentice with Richard […]

Susan Dunstan

Susan Dunstan is a singer, voice teacher and musical theatre performer. She has spent the past 20 years on some of the most prestigious stages, playing lead roles in Tony Award winning musicals across Canada and the USA. Currently she is appearing in Come From Away on Broadway. Other select credits include Kinky Boots, Disney’s […]

Roy Onami

Roy Onami is a retired graphic designer and painter. Born in Vancouver, Onami, his mother, and siblings were forcibly removed from the coast in 1942 and sent to live in Sandon internment camp. Their family resettled in Montreal after the war, where Onami graduated from high school and got a job with Trans Canada Airlines […]

Denis Akiyama

Denis Akiyama is an actor and voice actor with extensive credits in theatre, film, and television. Born and raised in Toronto, Akiyama received a BA in Psychology from York University and began working in child care before deciding to pursue his dream of acting. He studied at George Brown College, and began a decades-long career […]

Michiko Nakamura

Michiko Nakamura is a ceramic artist, born and raised in Japan. Her relationship to clay and art began in childhood; she grew up near a town famous for its history of over 1200 years of pottery production. Since elementary school, she liked to create three-dimensional objects so it was a natural choice for her to […]

Fujiko Imajishi

Japanese-born Fujiko Imajishi has made her home in Canada since 1968. After studies with Lorand Fenyves, Ruggiero Ricci, Franco Gulli and the Hungarian Quartet she went on to win both the Montreal and Toronto Symphony Competitions. She is concertmaster of the Esprit Orchestra and until 2009 was concertmaster of the National Ballet of Canada, and […]

Peter Kosaka

Peter Kosaka is a Japanese-born actor who built a film and theatre career primarily in Toronto, all while working a day job in finance. He came to Canada to study acting at the University of Windsor, receiving his BFA in 1985. After graduating, he worked as a dancer in a modern dance company, and later […]

Sandy Usami

Award-winning designer for Bell Media, Sandy specializes in print-based graphics and has designed for a variety of Bell Media franchises including CTV, CTV News, Discovery, TSN and the Comedy Network. As the sole proprietor of Kagami Images, she art-directed, designed and executed work for the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, The Toronto Buddhist Church, the Momiji […]

Miki Inokuchi

Having grown up in the household of instrument makers, Miki has worked together with his father Masa Inokuchi making guitars and violins from early teen years. At age 23, he decided to carry on the family tradition. Rather than taking the usual route of starting with carving and construction of the instrument, Miki devoted his […]

Daniel Teramura

Daniel Teramura is a Toronto-based architect and partner at Moriyama & Teshima. He has been with the firm since 1986, and worked on many of their high-profile projects such as the Saudi Arabia National Museum, Lakehead University’s New LEED Platinum Academic Building, and Vari Hall at York University. His specialty is architecture for higher education, […]