This dissertation covers the political, economic, and social circumstances in Japan that led to the emigration from Hiroshima prefecture, and the lives and communities of these emigrants in Canada. It traces the gradual conversion of a sojourner society to family-centred communities with social relationships modelled upon the Hiroshima village societies the immigrants came from. Ostracized by white workers, exploited by the British Columbia entrepreneurs in a “split labour market,” and denigrated to second class citizenship by institutional racism, the pioneers nevertheless persevered and reared their Canadian-born nisei children to be Japanese Canadians. That is, they “acculturated” their offspring with Japanese language and traditions so that the nisei would be able both to function within the Japanese communities in Canada and would be proud of their heritage. The degree of acculturation of the nisei varied and was dependent on many factors: family goals, environments, time periods, as well as individual inclinations. This study employed both English and Japanese language sources including oral interviews of over fifty Hiroshima settlers and their descendants residing in Japan and in Canada. / Graduate

In the Canadian archival system, in the past, ethnic communities were not encouraged to establish their own archives because they were considered to.lack the resources required for sustaining professionally acceptable archives. In recentyears public archives have come to emphasize preservation of their parent bodies' archives, and consequently fewer resources have been available for preservation of private archives, including ethnic archives. There is evidence that some ethnic communities are concerned to preserve their archival materials. This thesis examines the.efforts of Japanese-Canadian communities to preserve archival materials bearing-on their historical experiences. A case study using the method of focussed interviews of Japanese-Canadian communities in seven cities revealed the substantial will to preserve archival materials. The study discovered that, while Japanese Canadians have been and are being rapidly assimilated to the larger society, cultural interests and the need for the sense of identity persist and are renewed by each generation. Under these circumstances, community leadership sees archival activities as an integral part of the community activities. The case study also revealed strengths and weaknesses of archival activities in those communities. Closeness to records creators through formal and informal networks within the communities provides community archives with distinct advantages. These archives can easily identify and locate materials of continuing value. They also have easy access to contextual information on records and their creators. Weaknesses were identified in defining acquisition policies and financial resources. Contrary to concerns of some archivists and researchers, most respondents are aware of the need to abide by professional standards, and they are also willing . to make their materials available to the general public. Based on the findings of the case study, several recommendations are offered. Preservation of ethnic archival materials should be clearly recognized as a responsibility to be assumed by both public archives and ethnic communities. To carry out this responsibility effectively, planning and cooperation among different archives and communities are essential. Ethnic community-based archives, on their part, should follow the accepted principles and practices, especially in the area of acquisition, so that they function as a legitimate part of the Canadian archival system. Networking among ethnic community archives is also recommended in order to reveal relationships among their holdings.

In the Canadian archival system, in the past, ethnic communities were not encouraged to establish their own archives because they were considered to.lack the resources required for sustaining professionally acceptable archives. In recentyears public archives have come to emphasize preservation of their parent bodies' archives, and consequently fewer resources have been available for preservation of private archives, including ethnic archives. There is evidence that some ethnic communities are concerned to preserve their archival materials. This thesis examines the.efforts of Japanese-Canadian communities to preserve archival materials bearing-on their historical experiences. A case study using the method of focussed interviews of Japanese-Canadian communities in seven cities revealed the substantial will to preserve archival materials. The study discovered that, while Japanese Canadians have been and are being rapidly assimilated to the larger society, cultural interests and the need for the sense of identity persist and are renewed by each generation. Under these circumstances, community leadership sees archival activities as an integral part of the community activities. The case study also revealed strengths and weaknesses of archival activities in those communities. Closeness to records creators through formal and informal networks within the communities provides community archives with distinct advantages. These archives can easily identify and locate materials of continuing value. They also have easy access to contextual information on records and their creators. Weaknesses were identified in defining acquisition policies and financial resources. Contrary to concerns of some archivists and researchers, most respondents are aware of the need to abide by professional standards, and they are also willing . to make their materials available to the general public. Based on the findings of the case study, several recommendations are offered. Preservation of ethnic archival materials should be clearly recognized as a responsibility to be assumed by both public archives and ethnic communities. To carry out this responsibility effectively, planning and cooperation among different archives and communities are essential. Ethnic community-based archives, on their part, should follow the accepted principles and practices, especially in the area of acquisition, so that they function as a legitimate part of the Canadian archival system. Networking among ethnic community archives is also recommended in order to reveal relationships among their holdings. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

The Internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War was a blatant act of racial-based injustice in Canadian history. In this study, the term "Internment" encompasses all the events that resulted from the abrogation of Japanese Canadian rights of citizenship--mass uprooting from their homes and communities in British Columbia (BC), dispossession, forced relocation to internment camps in interior BC, road camps, and sugar beet farms, followed by forced exile from BC to Japan, or forced migration and assimilation across Canada. The twelve participants in this study are Canadians of Japanese heritage who were born after the Internment and whose parent(s) or grandparent(s) experienced a form of Internment. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, we explored intergenerational communication of the Internment experience and the lived experience of growing up in the aftermath of the Internment. The findings revealed alternative responses and outcomes to historical trauma theory. Threaded throughout these stories and responses were prevailing themes reflecting values of gaman and enryo, in addition to resilience and empowerment.

The Internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War was a blatant act of racial-based injustice in Canadian history. In this study, the term "Internment" encompasses all the events that resulted from the abrogation of Japanese Canadian rights of citizenship--mass uprooting from their homes and communities in British Columbia (BC), dispossession, forced relocation to internment camps in interior BC, road camps, and sugar beet farms, followed by forced exile from BC to Japan, or forced migration and assimilation across Canada. The twelve participants in this study are Canadians of Japanese heritage who were born after the Internment and whose parent(s) or grandparent(s) experienced a form of Internment. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, we explored intergenerational communication of the Internment experience and the lived experience of growing up in the aftermath of the Internment. The findings revealed alternative responses and outcomes to historical trauma theory. Threaded throughout these stories and responses were prevailing themes reflecting values of gaman and enryo, in addition to resilience and empowerment.

No description available.

No description available.

Describing historical accounts of Canadian Nikkei1 experience, historian Midge (Michiko) Ayukawa (1996) writes that these accounts represent "history in the passive voice, and that it is necessary to retell it with the eyes and ears of the people who were directly involved" (3). For Nikkei women, "history in the passive voice" has either completely overlooked their experiences or narrowly defined their social role in terms of domesticity and submission to a patriarchal authority. The dominant image of the Japanese Canadian woman has been that of the "good wife, wise mother" (Ayukawa 1995). This ideal image of womanhood emerged as a component in the dramatic processes of social reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Both Caucasian and Nikkei historians have sustained the power of this mythical image by characterizing those experiences that exceed its conceptual boundaries as merely idiosyncratic. Simultaneously, however, Nikkei women have been weaving narratives of their history which both duplicate and subvert this image of quiet domesticity. This study contrasts processes of identity formation in twentieth-century writing by and about Canadian Nikkei women. I approach these narratives by first analyzing the categories of race, class, ethnicity, culture, and gender that historians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and theorists of ethnicity have constructed in order to interpret and contain them. I then examine how the narratives engage with three dominant discourses of being, namely those concerned with food, sexuality, and the transmission of culture. For several reasons, I treat this body of writing from an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspective. My sources include published and unpublished texts from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and geography. These texts embrace a wide range of genres, among them fiction, poetry, autobiography, the essay, the journal, the letter, so-called conventional scholarship, and responses to an ethnograhic questionnaire that I have collected. The texts are also informed by both Japanese and "western"2 cultural ideas and practices, and sometimes by several additional cultural influences. Their writers create a complex interrelation of textual identities which invites a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Thus I examine the texts by engaging with a number of theories, including deconstructive postmodernism, deconstructive feminism, feminist anthropology, feminist history, and close textual analysis. I base this study on the theoretical premise that to treat narratives of experience rigorously, the researcher must regard the texts as both objects of study and authoritative critical voices (Cole and Phillips 1995; Chow 1993; Trinh 1989; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Therefore, I look to writing by Nikkei women for its reflections on Nikkei women's experiences, but also for guidance in interpreting the texts under study. As well, I read these texts for their critical comment on the conceptual categories that conventional scholarship has used to manage the unruliness and ambiguity of Nikkei women's narratives and experience. By welcoming the categorically disruptive, my analysis offers a theoretical perspective that may help to ensure a creative interrelation of theory and praxis. [Footnotes] 1 "Nikkei" are individuals of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. 2 Some researchers favour the upper case "Western" to describe North American and European theoretical traditions across disciplines (Mennell 1985). I include in the category of "western" all those ideas that become a body of thought as they are used to distinguish them from "eastern" or "oriental." With the success of European and American imperialist projects from the nineteenth century to the present, this "setting-off against the Orient," as Said calls it (Orientalism 3), exceeds national boundaries. One can say, then, that there are critics of Japanese ancestry, residing in Japan and elsewhere, who write from a western point of view. Thus, I depend on the lower-case "western," to emphasize the constructed nature of western ideology, as opposed to the stricter geographical or political connotations suggested by the proper noun.

This thesis endeavors to create an architecture that will contribute to the revitalization of Vancouver’s Japantown, mending severed cultural ties between the community and this historically significant neighborhood. Building upon the success of the Powell Street Japanese Cultural Festival, this project proposes a series of architectural interventions that will re-establish a Japanese-Canadian presence and serve as the catalyst for future phases of development. Focusing on the processes and rituals that permeate Japanese culture, the design seeks to celebrate the act of making at both the neighborhood and building scales. The initial phase of development concentrates on the preparation and consumption of Japanese foodstuffs and their potential to mitigate existing urban maladies.

Describing historical accounts of Canadian Nikkei1 experience, historian Midge (Michiko) Ayukawa (1996) writes that these accounts represent "history in the passive voice, and that it is necessary to retell it with the eyes and ears of the people who were directly involved" (3). For Nikkei women, "history in the passive voice" has either completely overlooked their experiences or narrowly defined their social role in terms of domesticity and submission to a patriarchal authority. The dominant image of the Japanese Canadian woman has been that of the "good wife, wise mother" (Ayukawa 1995). This ideal image of womanhood emerged as a component in the dramatic processes of social reform in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). Both Caucasian and Nikkei historians have sustained the power of this mythical image by characterizing those experiences that exceed its conceptual boundaries as merely idiosyncratic. Simultaneously, however, Nikkei women have been weaving narratives of their history which both duplicate and subvert this image of quiet domesticity. This study contrasts processes of identity formation in twentieth-century writing by and about Canadian Nikkei women. I approach these narratives by first analyzing the categories of race, class, ethnicity, culture, and gender that historians, anthropologists, literary theorists, and theorists of ethnicity have constructed in order to interpret and contain them. I then examine how the narratives engage with three dominant discourses of being, namely those concerned with food, sexuality, and the transmission of culture. For several reasons, I treat this body of writing from an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretical perspective. My sources include published and unpublished texts from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, history, literature, and geography. These texts embrace a wide range of genres, among them fiction, poetry, autobiography, the essay, the journal, the letter, so-called conventional scholarship, and responses to an ethnograhic questionnaire that I have collected. The texts are also informed by both Japanese and "western"2 cultural ideas and practices, and sometimes by several additional cultural influences. Their writers create a complex interrelation of textual identities which invites a range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Thus I examine the texts by engaging with a number of theories, including deconstructive postmodernism, deconstructive feminism, feminist anthropology, feminist history, and close textual analysis. I base this study on the theoretical premise that to treat narratives of experience rigorously, the researcher must regard the texts as both objects of study and authoritative critical voices (Cole and Phillips 1995; Chow 1993; Trinh 1989; Clifford and Marcus 1986). Therefore, I look to writing by Nikkei women for its reflections on Nikkei women's experiences, but also for guidance in interpreting the texts under study. As well, I read these texts for their critical comment on the conceptual categories that conventional scholarship has used to manage the unruliness and ambiguity of Nikkei women's narratives and experience. By welcoming the categorically disruptive, my analysis offers a theoretical perspective that may help to ensure a creative interrelation of theory and praxis. [Footnotes] 1 "Nikkei" are individuals of Japanese descent living outside of Japan. 2 Some researchers favour the upper case "Western" to describe North American and European theoretical traditions across disciplines (Mennell 1985). I include in the category of "western" all those ideas that become a body of thought as they are used to distinguish them from "eastern" or "oriental." With the success of European and American imperialist projects from the nineteenth century to the present, this "setting-off against the Orient," as Said calls it (Orientalism 3), exceeds national boundaries. One can say, then, that there are critics of Japanese ancestry, residing in Japan and elsewhere, who write from a western point of view. Thus, I depend on the lower-case "western," to emphasize the constructed nature of western ideology, as opposed to the stricter geographical or political connotations suggested by the proper noun. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate