Japanese Canadians (日系カナダ人,Nikkei Kanadajin;French:Canadiens japonais) areCanadian citizens ofJapanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated inWestern Canada, especially in the province ofBritish Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them living in and aroundVancouver. In 2016, there were 121,485 Japanese Canadians throughout Canada.[2]
The termNikkei (日系) was coined by sociologists and encompasses all of the world's Japanese immigrants across generations. Japanese descendants living overseas have special names for each of their generations. These are formed by combining one of theJapanese numerals with the Japanese word forgeneration (sei, 世):
Issei (一世) – The first generation of immigrants, born in Japan before moving to Canada.
Nisei (二世) – The second generation, born in Canada to Issei parents not born in Canada.
Sansei (三世) – The third generation, born in Canada to Nisei parents born in Canada.
Yonsei (四世) – The fourth generation, born in Canada to Sansei parents born in Canada.
Gosei (五世) – The fifth generation, born in Canada to Yonsei parents born in Canada.
The first Japanese settler in Canada wasManzo Nagano, who lived inVictoria, British Columbia in 1877 (a mountain in the province was named after him in 1977). The first generation orIssei, mostly came toVancouver Island, theFraser Valley andRivers Inlet from fishing villages on the islands ofKyūshū andHonshū between 1877 and 1928. A Japanese community newspaper for Vancouver residents was first launched in 1897. Around the same time, the Fraser River Japanese Fishermen's Association Hospital inSteveston was established after the local hospital refused to admit and treat Japanese immigrants.[4]
In 1907, theAsiatic Exclusion League was established in Vancouver and, by September of that year, led a mob of rioters who vandalized both Chinese and Japanese neighbourhoods.[5] In 1908, Canada and Japan signed aGentlemen's Agreement intended to curb further Japanese immigration to Canada.[6]
Influenced by the AmericanImmigration Act of 1924, members of the British Columbia parliament pushed for a total federal ban on immigration in the 1920s. After several years of negotiations, Japan eventually agreed to reduce its immigration quota under the Gentleman's Agreement to only 150 persons per year.[7]
On January 14, 1942, theCanadian government used theWar Measures Act to brand Japanese-Canadians enemy aliens and to categorize them as security threats. There were 20,881 Japanese placed in internment camps and road camps in British Columbia, and prisoner-of-war camps in Ontario. Families were also sent as forced labourers to farms throughout the prairies. Three quarters of them were already citizens in Canada. A parallel situation occurred in the United States, theJapanese American internment.[8]
The property and homes of Japanese Canadians living in the province of British Columbia were seized and sold off without their consent in 1943. The funds were used to pay for their internment. They also had to "pay rent" for living in the internment shacks that they were assigned. In 1945, after the war, as part of the continued effort to remove all Japanese Canadians from British Columbia, Prime MinisterWilliam Lyon MacKenzie King had his cabinet pass Orders-in-Council to extend the powers of theWar Measures Act and give Japanese Canadians two "options": to be relocated to another province "East of the Rockies" or to go "back" to Japan though most were born in Canada and had never been to Japan.[citation needed] After organized protests by against their treatment, they were finally given the right to vote in 1949. Mobility restrictions were lifted in 1949.[citation needed]
Until 1948, Japanese-Canadians, bothIssei and Canadian-bornNisei, were denied the right to vote. Those born in the 1950s and 1960s in Canada are mostlySansei, the third generation.Sansei usually have little knowledge of theJapanese language. Over 75% of theSansei have married non-Japanese.Nisei andSansei generally identify themselves not as fully Japanese but as Canadians first who happen to have Japanese ancestry.
Since 1967, the second wave of immigrants were usually highly educated and resided in urban areas.[9]
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, documents on the Japanese Canadian internment were released, and redress was sought by the National Association of Japanese Canadians, an organization representing Japanese Canadians nationally that was headed byArt Miki from Winnipeg. In 1986, it was shown that Japanese Canadians had lost $443 million during the internment. There were 63% of Canadians who supported redress and 45% who favoured individual compensation. On September 22, 1988, the National Association of Japanese Canadians succeeded in negotiating a redress settlement with the government at the time, under the leadership of Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney. The settlement included $21,000 for each individual directly affected, which was by 1993 almost 18,000 survivors. The federal government also provided a community endowment fund to assist in rebuilding the community, which is run by the National Association of Japanese Canadians. In addition, to address the more systemic racism that led to the plan and later justifications of the effort to remove "all people of Japanese racial origin" from Canadian territory, the redress settlement included the establishment of the Race Relations Foundation and challenges to theWar Measures Act. The Prime Minister also offered a formal apology in the House of Commons and the certificate of acknowledgement of injustices of the past, which was sent to each Japanese Canadian whose rights had been stripped, incarcerated, dispossessed and forcibly displaced.
The younger generation of Japanese-Canadians born in the late 20th century are mostlyYonsei, the fourth generation. ManyYonsei are of mixed racial descent. According toStatistics Canada's 2001 census of population information, Japanese-Canadians were the Canadian visible minority group most likely to have a formal or common-law marriage with a non-Japanese partner. Out of the 25,100 couples in Canada in 2001 that had at least one Japanese person, in only 30% of them were both partners of Japanese descent. As of 2001, 65% of Canada's Japanese population was born in Canada.
Hoshū jugyō kō (Japanese supplementary schools) for instruction of the Japanese language include those in Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, London, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Toronto, and Vancouver.[10]
Multicultural Canada website images in the BC Multicultural Photograph Collection and digitized issues of The New Canadian (Japanese-Canadian newspaper) and Tairiku Jiho (The Continental Times)
Japanese Canadians Photograph Collection – A photo album from the UBC Library Digital Collections chronicling the treatment of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia during World War II
Tairiku Nippō – Japanese-Canadian newspaper published between 1907 and 1941, and now digitized by the UBC Library Digital Collections
British Columbia
Ontario
Alberta
Quebec
Manitoba
Saskatchewan
Nova Scotia
New Brunswick
Yukon
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland and Labrador
Northwest Territories
Nunavut.jpg)
.svg)
