Toronto

Takashi Yamashita

Takashi Yamashita is an architect who operates in the corporate world of commercial real estate, finance, and development. A partner and president at Takol Real Estate in Toronto, he is also a member of both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Manitoba Association of Architects. Born in Manitoba, he received his BES (Architecture) […]

Dennis Tanaka

Dennis Tanaka is an award-winning Toronto-based architect and president of Dennis K. Tanaka, Architect Inc. Born in British Columbia, he received his Bachelor of Architecture from McGill in 1968. He has been responsible for numerous additions, renovations, and master plans for community buildings around Ontario, and has received provincial and national masonry awards for design […]

Margaret Ishii

Margaret Ishii is a Toronto-based architect and university lecturer in interior design. She holds degrees in Environmental Studies and Architecture from the University of Waterloo, and has over thirty years’ experience as an architect, working on projects such as the redevelopment of the Pearson Airport’s Terminals One and Two, Fredericton Medical Centre, and a number […]

Yoichi Shimizu

Yoichi Shimizu is a Japanese-born graphic designer who worked primarily in Toronto. After graduating from Naniwa Art College in Osaka, Shimizu worked for a Japanese design company, Nippon Create Design Limited, for from 1974-1976. He then immigrated to Canada and worked for Gottschalk and Ash Limited in Montreal, later moving on to different design companies […]

Vernon Hakkaku

Vernon Hakkaku was a well-known piano accompanist for many Nisei singers during and after the Second World War. He was known for having a distinctively Japanese style which suited the Nisei singers well. Terry Watada recalls: ‘Vernon Hakkaku was a postal worker in Toronto. His house in Cabbagetown was sparsely furnished, with only a baby […]

Toyo Takata

Toyo Takata was the author of Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement to Today. Born in Victoria, Takata spent two years in internment camps before resettling in Toronto. He was the English editor for The New Canadian from 1948-1952, and also served as president of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. Takata was […]

Yon Shimizu

Yoshio ‘Yon’ Shimizu was the author of The Exiles: An Archival History of the World War II Japanese Road Camps in British Columbia and Ontario. Born in Victoria, Shimizu was a young man just about to finish high school when the government ordered the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the west coast. Shimizu was […]

Tomoko Makabe

Tomoko Makabe is the author of Picture Brides: Japanese Women in Canada and The Canadian Sansei, two non-fiction books on Japanese Canadians. Born in Japan, Makabe became a writer, researcher, and consultant in Toronto. She originally wrote the oral history-based Picture Brides in Japanese, based on interviews with five Issei women; it was translated into […]

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 […]