Japanese Language

Masaki Watanabe

Masaki Watanabe is a journalist/translator and a jazz musician with an international background. Born in Tokyo in 1945 to a Japanese Finnish father and a Japanese mother, he graduated from International Christian University in 1966 after which he joined Reuters news agency in London. He has since worked as a Reuters correspondent in North America […]

Katsuyoshi Morita

Katsuyoshi Morita was the author of Powell Street Monogatari, a chronicle of stories from the prewar Japanese Canadian neighbourhood of Powell Street and Morita’s experiences in the internment camp of Greenwood during the forced removal. Powell Street Monogatari was originally written in Japanese, and translated into English by Eric Sokugawa (translation published in 1989).

Takeo Ujo Nakano

Takeo Ujo Nakano was an Issei poet and author of the memoir Within the Barbed Wire Fence, which recounts his experience of the Japanese Canadian internment in road camps and the Angler POW camp. Born in Japan, Nakano immigrated to Canada in 1920, and was living in Woodfibre, BC with his wife and young daughter […]

Aki Shimazaki

Aki Shimazaki is a French-language novelist and translator best known for Tsubaki (1999), a novel set in Nagasaki in which the dropping of the atomic bomb figures prominently. Tsubaki, her first book, has been translated into English, and her books have also been translated into Japanese, German, Hungarian, and Russian. Shimazaki was born in Gifu, […]

Minako Takahashi

Minako Takahashi is a visual and mixed media artist. She was born in Tokyo and moved to Takefu, Fukui-ken at the age of two. While a student at Takefu high school, her art work was chosen for inclusion in such exhibitions as the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper national student art exhibition and the modern art exhibition […]

Yoshimaru Abe

Yoshimaru Abe was an entertainer, artist, haiku poet, garden designer. Born in 1914 in Fukuoka, Japan, Abe immigrated to Canada in 1927 to join his parents in Port Hammond, BC. There he worked for the local lumber mill while also working on the family strawberry farm. With other Japanese community members, he engaged in shibai […]

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 […]

Tatsuo Kage

Tatsuo Kage is the author of Nikkei Kanadajin no Tsuiho, translated into English as Uprooted Again: Japanese Canadians Move to Japan After World War II by Kathleen Chisato Merken. Born in Japan, Kage studied German history in Japan and Germany, eventually becoming an academic specializing in European political and diplomatic history. Kage worked as a […]

Kazuko Tanaka

Kazuko Tanaka is an ikebana teacher and practitioner in the Koryu Shoutoukai School, which keeps the authenticity of Japanese ikebana in spirit while at the same time cultivating a modern style. Born in Tokyo, Tanaka studied at Rikkyo University, and immigrated to Canada in 1983. She earned her first degree teacher’s license from the Koryu […]

Noriko Imai

Noriko Imai is a painter who was born in Tokyo and raised in Yokohama. She is a member of La Société canadienne de l’aquarelle (THE CANADIAN WATERCOLOR SOCIETY). From a young age, Imai was inspired to paint from the influence of her father and older sisters. After graduating from high school, Imai worked for her […]

Toyoshi (Yoshi) Yoshihara

Toyoshi Yoshihara was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1937. After graduating from Waseda University (B.A.), he immigrated to Canada in 1970. Besides running a successful heavy equipment marketing business (Komatsu Canada Ltd.), he promoted theatre exchanges between Canada and Japan, and has translated more than 50 Canadian plays into Japanese, and five Japanese plays into […]

Miyo Tominaga

Miyo Tominaga is a tanka poet. She was born on August 6, 1918 in Nagano Prefecture and studied tanka and shodo in Japan. She moved to Quebec in 1987 and was the instructor of a tanka study group in Montreal in the 1990s and a long-time member of the ASUKA tanka group now dissolved. She […]