Books

A Black Mark
Mary Taylor
194 pages. Softcover. ISBN 0778012670 $19.95
There have been several academic studies of the plight of Japanese-Canadian citizens during the Second World War, but this is the first book to confront the issue squarely as a human reality.  Young Canadians know very little about this chapter  of their past.  It’s time they learned.  Prime minister Lester Pearson called it a black mark in Canadian history.  Few who read this book will fail to agree.

A Dream of Riches
Japanese Canadian Centennial Project
191 pages. Hardcover. ISBN 0-9690708-0-2 $20.00
A Dream of Riches is the permanent record of the Japanese Canadians 1877-1977 exhibit, which celebrated the centennial of the arrival of the first known immigrant from Japan, Manzo Nagano.  This book consists of some of the 4,000 photographs collected by the Japanese Canadian Centennial Project as well as interviews of Japanese Canadians from across the country.

A Historical Guide to the Steveston Waterfront
Mitsuo Yesaki.
34 pages. Softcover. ISBN 0-9686799-2-7 $12.00
This guide describes the development of the one and half mile extent of the Steveston waterfront from the late 1880s to 1971. A short description is given of each section of the waterfront, as well as maps for 1889, 1897, 1911, 1936 and 1971. These maps show the locations of salmon canneries, public wharves and significant businesses on each section. Several photographs, mostly from 1971, show the character of the waterfront.

A White Man’s Province
Patricia E. Roy
345 pages. Softcover. ISBN 0774803738 $32.95
A White Man’s Province examines how British Columbians changed their attitudes towards Asian immigrants from one of toleration in colonial times to vigorous hostility by the turn of the century and describes how politicians responded to popular cries to halt Asian immigration and restrict Asian activities in the province.

Across Currents: Canada-Japan Minority Forum
Edited by Roy Miki and Rita Wong, photos by Randy Enomoto
109 pages. Softcover. ISBN 0-9694168-1-4 $10.00
In Across Currents – the proceedings of a unique forum – cultural activists from Japan and Canada come together to compare and examine issues of mutual importance.  Contributors: Akehiko Asai, Mieko Chikkup, Meerai Cho, Paggie Cho, Gloria Cranmer, Kinsei Ishigaki, Yasmin Jiwani, Bryce Kanbara, Betty Lough, Teresa Marshall, Keibo Oiwa, Haruko Okano, Millie Poplar, Shigeki Takeo, Loretta Todd, Henry Tsang, Victor Wong, Jin-me Yoon.

An Evacuee’s Memoir – An Account from the Writer’s Own Recollection
Yutaka Harold Yoneyama, B.A.Sc.,P.Eng
ProFamilia Publishing, Toronto, 2008 | ISBN 978-1-896596-15-0 | $39.95
A Japanese Canadian born in Haney, British Columbia, whose years as a young man were directly affected by the turmoil of World War II and the federal government’s uprooting and dispersal of Japanese Canadians, the author and his family overcame challenges in establishing themselves anew, and contributed to Canada’s development. Against the prevailing social and political odds, the author and his three sisters successfully pursued careers in the fields of civil engineering, medicine, dentistry and optometry. Illustrated with 96 photographs, 3 family charts and 20 maps/documents.

Battlefield at Last
The Japanese Canadian Volunteers of the First World War, 1914-1918
Kaye Kishibe
Softback  56 pages  ISBN 9780981259703  2007 $14.95

Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness
Kyo Maclear
213 pages. Hardcover. ISBN 0791440052 $28.00
Beclouded Visions is an exploration of the many and varied ways in which atrocity has shaped the requirements of art, vision, and collective memory in the twentieth century. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki serve as a starting point, but what begins as a study of visual culture related to the atomic bombings soon generates questions that can be applied to multiple sites and practices of communal remembrance.

Breaking Trail
Tom Morimoto
296 pages. Softcover. ISBN: 189725217X $24.99
When he was a boy, Tom Morimoto saved up a dollar and ordered a book called How to Box so he could defend himself against the kids who called him “Jap.” Morimoto lived through a historic period before the modern age changed the North forever. He describes his childhood growing up in Depression-era Fort McMurray. As a young man, Morimoto worked on an Athabasca River scow and as a radio operator for Canadian Airways before traveling to Yellowknife to stake gold claims and work in the Negus gold mine. His next adventure found him serving as a signalman during the Second World War, and surviving Juno Beach on D-Day. Later, Morimoto became a chemical engineer, a pioneer in the burgeoning gas industry in Alberta. He eventually managed a gas plant in Dubai. Breaking Trail is a rich memoir from a man who has experienced much of what the twentieth century offered northern and western Canada.

Chorus of Mushrooms
Hiromi Goto
222 pages. Softcover. ISBN 0920897533 $18.95
Celebrating cultural differences as a privilege, Chorus of Mushrooms explores the shifts and collisions of culture through the lives of three generations of women in a Japanese family living in a small town.  Author Hiromi Goto demonstrates the clash of cultures through the three women of the novel: a grandmother who refuses to speak English and who hides salted squid in her pockets; a daughter who refuses to speak Japanese and cooks ham with pineapple for special occasions; and a granddaughter who struggles to find a cultural identity somewhere between the two.  Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada; Co-Winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award; and winner of the Grant MacEwan College Book Award.

Clay Between My Fingers
Millie Chen, Jamelie Hassan, Baco Ohama and Garry Williams
41 pages. softcover. ISBN 0920159788  $10.00
This publication presents a challenge to the traditional association of ceramics with function. Much ceramic work continues to be considered in relation to the vessel – the cup, plate and teapot – but there is much more to consider. The four artists in this publication work with ceramics in a broader context, looking at the history, cultural use and social value of clay.

Coldstream: The Ranch Where It All Began
Donna Yoshitake Wuest
182 pages. Softcover. ISBN 978-1-55017-343-7 $28.95
Coldstream Ranch on the outskirts of the Okanagan city of Vernon, wasn’t always crowded in the ‘burbs.  One of the oldest continually operating ranches in Canada, it was on the far edge of the far West when Charles Houghton founded it to provision the Cariboo Gold Rush in 1863.  It’s been operating so long Vernon is actually named after its second owners, the Vernon brothers.  For decades it was owned by a succession of British bluebloods, including the quixotic Lord Aberdeen, who resigned his appointment as Governor General after he and his profligate brother-in-law Coutts squandered a fortune on grandiose schemes at Coldstream.  Nevertheless, they proved dry belt soil could be turned into fine farmland with the aid of irrigation and pioneered the region’s world-renowned orchard industry.

David Suzuki: The Autobiography
David Suzuki
400 pages/Hardcover/ISBN: 978-1553651567/ $34.95
The first volume of David Suzuki’s autobiography, Metamorphosis, looked back at his life from 1986 when he was 50.  In this eagerly awaited second installment, Suzki, now 70, reflects on his entire life–and on his hopes for the future.  The book begins with his life-changing encounters with racism while interned in a Canadian concentration camp during World War II and continues through his troubled teenage years and later successes as a scientist and host of PBS’s The Nature of Things.  With characteristic candor and passion, he describes his growing consciousness of the natural world and humankind’s precarious place in it; his travels throughout the world and his meetings with international leaders, from Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama; and the abiding role of nature and family in his life.  David Suzuki is an intimate and inspiring look at one of the most uncompromising people on the planet.

Dear Lake
Sadashi Inuzuka
12 pages/softcover/ISBN: 0920123260/ $1.00
Dear Lake is a catalogue of an exhibition at the Burnaby Art Gallery, Sept. 7 to Oct. 27, 1996. It includes pictures of the exhibit and essays by Grace Eiko Thomson and Kiyoji Tsuji.

Democracy Betrayed: The Case For Redress
National Association of Japanese Canadians
26 pages/softcover/ $5.00
(Only Available in Japanese)
A submission to the Government of Canada on the violation of rights and freedoms of Japanese Canadians during and after World War II, by the National Association of Japanese Canadians.

Diamond Grill
Fred Wah
176 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1-897126-11-5 / $16.95
This story of family and identity, migration and integration, culture and self-discovery is told through family history, memory, and the occasional recipe.  Diamond Grill is a rich banquet where Salisbury steak shares a menu with chicken fried rice, and bird’s nest soup sets the stage for Christmas plum pudding; where racism simmers behind the shiny clean surface of the action in the cafe.

Emily Kato
Joy Kogawa
288 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-14-301496-X / $22.00
In Obasan, Naomi’s childhood was torn apart by Canada’s betrayal of Japanese Canadian citizens during the 1940s.  Years later, living quietly as a schoolteacher in the prairies, Naomi suffers the passing of the dear aunt and uncle who raised her, and her wounds are reopened.  But Naomi’s other aunt—the feisty Emily Kato—convinces her to move to Toronto and encourages her to become involved in the Japanese Canadian fight for redress.  Politically charged and intimately poetic, Emily Kato tells the story of one community’s struggle for justice, extraordinary commitment, and profound hope.

Faking It (Poetics & Hybridity)
Fred Wah
280 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1-896300-07-3 / $ 24.95
According to Fred Wah, the act of thinking critically is one of exploration and discovery.  In Faking It, Wah demonstrates how writing poetry is writing critically.  This scrapbook of Wah’s work— collected from fifteen years of his writing— contains essays, reviews, journals, notes and, most importantly, poetic improvisations on contemporary poetry and identity. Faking It was written between 1984 and 1999— during major shifts in critical thinking and cultural production— and the hybrid style of the book is an apt reflection of these changing times, as well as a reflection and study of Wah’s own hybrid identity.

Ganbaru – the Murakami Family of Salt Spring Island
Rose Murakami
40 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9737814-0-8 / $5.95
Rose Murakami tells the inspiring story of her family in this book.  Pioneers on Salt Spring Island, were incarcerated in 1942 and forced to spend years of their lives in filthy, cold and crowded prison camps.  Their bank accounts were frozen.  Their land and possessions were seized and sold without their consent for a tiny fraction of their value.  The proceeds were used to pay the costs of their incarceration.  The Murakami family lost everything.  With incredible courage and determination, they finally returned to Salt Spring Island in 1945.  When they could not regain the land that had been taken from them they started from scratch, building a good life in the face of enduring racism.  The Murakamis are the only Japanese Canadian family to return to the Gulf Islands, to start over and to stay.

Gathering Our Heritage
31 pages / Softcover/ ISBN 1-896627-12-9 / $5.00
This book is written by the Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society (VNCS), which was formed in 1993 for people who are interested in Japanese culture.  It contains everything you need to know about harvesting seaweed, including information on how and when to gather Nori (seaweed), basic biology facts with its nutritional value along with some recipes involving the use of Nori.

Getting a Grip
Joseph R. Svinth
300 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9689673-0-2 / $32.95
This book is about the sports that the Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) played.  It focuses on the influence of judo in the lives of young Nisei males in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.  This book describes the increase in popularity of judo through time.

The Gull
by Daphne Marlatt
with a Japanese translation by Toyoshi Yoshihara
Paperback | 128 pages | Talonbooks (September 28, 2009) | ISBN 978-0889226166 | $17.95

Winner of the prestigious 2008 Uchimura Naoya Prize, “The Gull” is a play written in the classical Noh style. Set in 1950, when wartime restrictions on interned Japanese Canadians had finally been lifted, allowing them to return to the coast, it exquisitely dramatizes the historical link between the fishing town of Steveston, home to many of these first, second, and third generation Japanese Canadians, and Mio, the coastal village in Japan from which many of their ancestors originally emigrated. An international collaboration, “The Gull” premiere featured: Noh master Akira Matsui, declared an Important Intangible Cultural Asset by Japan in 1998, as the main actor; music by American Noh expert Richard Emmert; masks by Wakayama artist Hakuzan Kubo; and, a troupe of professional Noh musicians from Japan.

Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941
Michiko Midge Ayukawa.
208 pages/Softcover/ISBN 9780774814324/ $32.95
Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 is a fascinating investigation of Japanese migration to Canada prior to the Second World War. It makes Japanese-language scholarship on the subject available for the first time, and also draws on interviews, diaries, community histories, biographies, and the author’s own family history.

History of Haney Nokai
Yasutaro Yamaga
134 pages/Softcover/ ISBN: 0-9733049-1-x/ $20.00
In the years before the Second World War, a strong Japanese Canadian farming community established itself in the Fraser Valley. The farmers and their families worked together, forming co-operatives and similar organizations to better promote and distribute their produce.  One such organization was the Haney Nokai – the Haney Japanese Canadian farmers’ association. In a meeting just prior to the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, the Haney Nokai executive committed to writing a history of the Haney Nokai. Twenty years later, after surviving the hardships of internment and re-establishing their lives and livelihoods, the Haney Nokai executive fulfilled their promise and published the Japanese language Haney Nokai Shi (History of Haney Nokai) in 1963.

Home Away From Home – The Vancouver Japanese-Canadian Seniors Cookbook
The Japanese Community Volunteers Association
175 pages / Softcover / ISBN 9780978337803 / $25.00
Home Away From Home is full of great ideas for any occasion, whether it’s a family dinner or a gathering to impress friends.  There are over 70 healthy and delicious home-style recipes, each with step-by-step directions sand colour photographs.  Also included are time-saving tips, guides to Japanese ingredients and methods for traditional culinary techniques.

Images of Internment: A Bitter-sweet Memoir in Words and Images
Dr. Henry Shimizu
68 pages/ Softcover/ISBN: 978-1-896627-16-8/ $22.95
In 1999 Dr. Shimizu created a series of oil paintings based on his life in New Denver.  As a teenager he lived with his family in the internment camp at New Denver from 1942 to 1946.  Each of these 27 pictures are reproduced on a full page, with a story on the facing page.

Internment and Redress: The Japanese Canadian Experience
A Resource Guide for Social Studies 11 Teachers
Developed By Masako Fukawa, Richard Beardsley, Bruce Kiloh, Richard Per, Jane Turner and Mike Whittingham.
138 pages/Softcover/www.japanesecanadianhistory.net/ $15.00
The goals of this resource guide are: to foster historical empathy and a sense of justice regarding the suffering of others; to develop a historical understanding of some of the significant events in Canada during the Second World War; to encourage meaningful participation in Canada’s legal and democratic institutions; to develop an understanding of the physical, emotional and economic hardships endured by Japanese Canadians before, during and after the Second World War; and to teach students how to recognize stereotyping, overgeneralization and discrimination.

Internment and Redress: The Story of Japanese Canadians
A Resource Guide for Teachers of the Intermediate Grades Social Studies 5 and Social Responsibility
Developed By Masako Fukawa, Greg Miyanaga, Susan Sayuri Nishi and Patricia Tanaka.
130 pages/Softcover/www.japanesecanadianhistory.net/ $15.00
The materials presented in this resource support many of the learning outcomes contained in the Social Studies Five Integrated Resource Package and the Social Responsibility Standards for the intermediate grades. The lessons provide students with opportunities to critically reflect upon events and issues in order to make connections with the past, examine the present and hopefully, shape the future.  Students examine primary sources: copies of actual photographs, government documents, post cards and personal accounts to make these connections.  Their reflections are chronicled in their journals.

I RO HA (NI)
Curator: Michael Tora Speier
8 pages/Softcover/ $5.00
Powell Street Festival 2001 presents five irrepressible Nikkei artists and their evanescent creations–Emu Goto, Kao Kaori, Lotus Miyashita, Lynda Nakashima and Miyuki Shinkai.  Their work seriously addresses the many layered themes of this year’s 25th anniversary celebration: history; memory; location; neighbourhood.  The artists in the show are connected by their deeply childlike worlds of perception, personal languages, built of simplicity, directness and emotional energy.

In Search of a Soul: Designing and Realizing the New Canadian War Museum
Raymond Moriyama.
144 pages 100 full-colour images. Hardcover. ISBN 1-55365-207-X. $40.00.
In Search of a Soul is revered architect Moriyama’s personal account of conceiving and creating this important − perhaps iconic − national monument, opened to great acclaim on May 8, 2005, the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day.  Illustrated throughout with full-colour plans, drawings and photos, it is a compelling story of one architect’s commitment to a vision, and to the country that provided his inspiration.  “How can architecture reflect the ambience of battle without overpowering the visitor or glorifying war? . . . What is Canadian?  What does war mean?  Moriyama explores the difficult questions he wrestled with as the design took shape.  In this bold new museum− and equally bold book− a great Canadian artist challenges us to address these troubling questions.

Japanese Canadians in the Arts
Members of the Japanese Canadian community
252 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9698249-0-4 / $25.00
This is a directory of Japanese-Canadian professionals, ranging from the areas of arts, music, film/video, architecture, and visual arts, etc., with their personal information on their education/training and accomplishments, etc., which is produced with the help of many individuals from the Japanese-Canadian community across Canada and from members of the local arts community.

Japanese Community in Mission: A Brief History 1904-1942
William T. Hashizume
162 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 0-9733049-0-1/ $20.00

Justice In Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement
Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi
160 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 9780969475613/ $22.50
Justice In Our Time celebrates Japanese Canadian Redress.  From the historic injustices, through the redress movement, to the final events leading up to the settlement day on September 22, 1988–the dramatic story of redress is told through a rich interweaving of commentary, photographs, quotations, and historic documents.

Kuroshio
Terry Watada
256 pages / Softcover / ISBN 978-1-55152-233-3 / $21.95
An Issei woman arrives on the west coast from Japan as a picture bride, marrying a fellow Japanese immigrant whom she has never met before – but soon her dreams and expectations of a lavish life in a new land are crushed by the grim reality of a loveless marriage.  Before long, she becomes desperate to escape the clutches of the law after committing a heinous crime, which leads her to become inextricably involved with ruthless Issei crime boss Etsuji Morii and his underground gang.  In this vividly imagined novel based on a true story that spans decades and continents, Terry Watada explores the dark reaches of Issei, or Japanese immigrant, life in North America prior to World War II.

Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps
Mary Matsuda Gruenewald.
227 p. Softcover. ISBN 0-939165-53-8. $18.95.
An eloquent memoir of the experience of being imprisoned as a teenage girl by the U.S. government because of Japanese ancestry.  Gruenewald describes what it was like to face an indefinite sentence in crowded, primitive camps; the struggle for survival and dignity; and the strength gained from learning what she was capable of and could do to sustain her family.  A coming-of-age story of interest to readers both young and old.

Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows: A History in Photographs
Donald E. Waite
288 pages/Hardcover/ISBN: 978-0-9697085-8-2/ $35.00
This is a wonderful new book of photographs and stories by Don Waite  Don has assembled a collection of rarely seen photos – particularly older aerial photos – and has retouched them to their original splendor.

Memories of Our Past: A Brief History and Walking Tour of Powell Street
Audrey Kobayashi
48 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 0-9696587-0-2/ $6.00

Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka
Roy Kiyooka, edited by Daphne Marlatt
190 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1-896300-24-3 / $16.95
In 1993 Mary Kiyooka sat with her son Roy Kiyooka, one of Canada’s most important avant-garde painters, and a tape recorder and in her native Japanese shared her memories with him—her childhood in Japan, her arrival as a married woman in Canada, and her family’s experience in Alberta during the Japanese internment period.

My Year of Meats
Ruth L. Ozeki
366 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-14-028046-4 / $21.00
Ruth Ozeki’s mesmerizing debut novel has captivated readers and reviewers worldwide. When documentarian Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing My American Wife!, a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting, business, she discovers some unsavoury truths about love, fertility, and a hormone called DES.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife, struggles to escape from her child-craving husband.  When Jane’s and Akiko’s lives intersect, the deepest concerns of our time are illuminated: how the past informs the present, and how we live and love in an ever-shrinking world.

Nikkei In The Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans & Japanese Canadians In The Twentieth Century
Edited by Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura
348 pages/softcover/ISBN 0295984619/ $29.95
Challenging the notion that Nikkei individuals before and during World War II were helpless pawns manipulated by forces beyond their control, the diverse essays in this rich collection focus on the theme of resistance within Japanese American and Japanese Canadian communities to twentieth-century political, cultural, and legal discrimination. They illustrate how Nikkei groups were mobilized to fight discrimination through assertive legal challenges, community participation, skillful print publicity, and political and economic organization. Comprised of all-new and original research, this is the first anthology to highlight the contributions and histories of Nikkei within the entire Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia.

Nikkei Journey – Japanese Canadians in Southern Alberta
N. Rochelle Yamagishi
207 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1-4120-5935–6/ $23.95
This book was written as a follow-up to the museum exhibit, “Nikkei Tapestry: The Story of Japanese Canadians in Southern Alberta,” which was presented at the Sir Alexander Galt Museum in Lethbridge, AB in 2003.  Ten stories have been written from first-person perspectives, telling what it was really like for pioneers, evacuees, and their descendants to be Japanese Canadian.  In addition, there are stories about the new immigrants who came to work on farms in the 1970s, and the Redress movement, finalized in 1988.  The stories are all true, taken from books, conversations, and interviews, and interwoven to produce composite characters representing different generational groups, each with their own unique experiences and viewpoints.

Obasan
Joy Kogawa
274 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-14-006777-9 / $10.99
This powerful, passionate and highly acclaimed novel tells, through the eyes of a child, the moving story of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.  Naomi is a sheltered and beloved 5 year old when Pearl Harbor changes her life.  Separated from her mother, she watches bewildered as she and her family become enemy aliens, persecuted and despised in their own land.

OBON – The festival of the dead
Terry Watada
94 pages / soft cover / ISBN:13:978235-  14-10 / $15.95
Terry Watada crafts an artful mix of Buddhist tradition, Japanese-infused language and rich cultural history, where death is but one stop in the cyclical, timeless nature of  life.  His is a warm tribute to the thin veil between worlds where sorrow is as transient as happiness.  Obon: The Festival of the Dead is honest communion that bids ancestral voices to speak from every page, spreading their illumination long after the poetic moment, long after the season of Obon has ended.

Odori
Darcy Tamayose
268 pages/softcover/ISBN: 978-1-897151-09-9/ $22.95
This novel navigates through the glorious Ryukyuan Kingdom and the Golden Era of the Sho Dynasty, through bloody World War II Okinawa, and over parched prairies of Southern Alberta’s Rainmaker Hills–all the while exposing human sorrows, indignities, idiosyncrasies, failed faiths, splintered spirits, and an island culture so resilient, so embedded it becomes mythical.  It tells of Mai’s journey into the world of an old kataribe storyteller, the ghost of her great-grandmother where she hears of Tree Gods, Sky Gods and human lumps of clay.  Where her mother’s poignant war letters tell of sights and sounds that singe a child’s soul.

One Hundred Million Hearts
Kerri Sakamoto.
279 pages. Softcover. ISBN: #978-0156030045. $21.00
When Miyo Mori’s elderly father, Masao, dies, the past he has kept from Miyo comes back to life: Masao had been briefly married and his other daughter, Hana, was given up for adoption and raised in Japan.  Miyo travels to Tokyo to meet her half-sister, and is shocked to learn that in World War II her father was a pilot in the Special Attack Forces – a kamikaze – and she comes to suspect, with Hana, that he was guilty of a war crime.

Our Favourites in Canadian Japanese Cookery: Revised Edition
Kamloops Japanese Canadian Association
119 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 0-9688061-0-4/ $13.95
Canadian Best Seller, with over 30 new recipes.

pH6: A Book of Haiku Moods
Hiromi Goto, Lydia Kwa, Roy Miki, Mark Nakada, Ruth Ozeki and Brandy Liên Worral, Illustrations by Kaori Kasai
Powell Street Festival Society 2008 | $12.00
In honour of community, collaboration and spirit, six Vancouver writers took on traditional Japanese poetic forms such as haiku, hokku and renga, and created their own modern hybrids. The final product for the 2008 Powell Street Festival was a limited run of 120 slender, hand-stitched, illustrated chapbooks with ribbon bookmarks attached, complete with a dedication to the late Roy Kiyooka.
The “pH6″ in the title implies a sense of balance to the book’s unpredictable poetic pairings – inspiration and creativity, ritual and invention, life and death. The voices within make up an echo chamber across time and experience, the shadow of tradition always traceable.

Phantom Immigrants
Jiro Nitta, English translation by David Sulz.
227 p. Softcover. ISBN 0-9685608-0-6. $24.95.
Jiro Nitta’s account of the Suian Maru voyage and the resourceful group, led by Jinzaburo Oikawa, who made the arduous ocean journey from Japan to Canada and built lives here in the early twentieth century.

Race, Racialization, and Antiracism in Canada and Beyond
Edited by Genevieve Fuji Johnson and Randy Enomoto
252 pages / Softcover / ISBN 9780802095046 / $35.00
This multidisciplinary volume brings together scholars and activists to examine expressions of racism in contemporary policy areas, including education, labour, immigration, media, and urban planning.  While anti-racist struggles during the twentieth century were largely pitched against overt forms of racism (e.g., pogroms, genocide, segregation, apartheid, and ‘ethnic cleansing’), it has become increasingly apparent that there are other, less visible, forms of racism.  These subtler incarnations are of special interest to the contributors.  The intent of Race, Racialization, and Antiracism in Canada and Beyond is to probe systemic forms of racism, as well as to suggest strategies for addressing them.  The collection is organized by themes pertinent to political and social expressions of racism in Canada and the wider world, such as the state and its mediation of race, education and the perpetuation of racist marginalization, and the role of the media.  The contributors argue that, in order to effectively combat racism, various methodological approaches are required, approaches that are reflective of the diversity of the world we seek to understand.

Redress: Inside The Japanese Canadian Call for Justice
Roy Miki
361 pages / hard cover / ISBN 1-55192-650-4 / $5.50 soft cover, $15.00 hard cover
This book achieves what it promises: it presents the inside story of the long struggle for redress by Japanese Canadians, told through the perspective of an insider- a member of one of the hundreds of families forcibly removed from the west coast during World War II.  For this small group of citizens, shattered by the racist policies of the federal government, and divided internally, the redress movement enabled them to achieve a settlement that is unique in Canadian history.  As a participant of the movement, Miki draws on a wealth of research sources as he takes readers through the events that led to the settlement.

Road to the Pinnacle
Pat Adachi
83 pages/Softcover/ $19.95
Chronicles the famed Asahi baseball teams which played in British Columbia during the prewar period and are honored in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.

Shaku of Wondrous Grace
Art Miki, Henry Kojima & Sylvia Jansen
99 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 978-0-9694756-4-4/ $15.00
It is the story of one among many ordinary and heroic stories of the Japanese Canadians who have helped shape Canada.  This new biography traces the history of the remarkable Yoshimaru Abe, and in doing so pays tribute to the remarkable history of the people of Abe’s generation.

Shojo Manga: Girl power!
Edited by Masami Toku.
80 pages/Softcover/ISBN 978-1886226104/ $15.00
This gorgeous and thoughtful collection of essays, while still more of a beginner’s primer than an extended tour of the field, nonetheless fills a gaping hole in the growing body of manga studies in the West. Shojo Manga! Girl Power! collects a dozen essays from a variety of knowledgeable scholars and writers, as well as a handsome section of full-color illustrations showcasing the artists featured in the accompanying exhibition.

Snow Falling on Cedars
David Guterson.
480 pages. Softcover. ISBN: #0-679-76402-X. $12.00
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies.  But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.  Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.  Gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric, Snow Falling on Cedars is a masterpiece of suspense – but one that leaves us shaken and changed.

Spirit of Redress: Japanese Canadians in Conference
Edited by Cassandra Kobayashi and Roy Miki
148 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9694168-0-6 / $10.00
In May, 1987, sixteen months before the historic Redress Settlement on September 22, 1988, Japanese Canadians from across Canada gathered in Vancouver for a national conference.  While the justice struggle continued at a high pitch, they turned inward to assess the personal and social impact of the mass uprooting and internment of their community during the 1940s. The conference concluded with a journey back to the past on a bus tour through the B.C. Internment Camp — from Tashme through to Kaslo, New Denver, Slocan City, Sandon, and Greenwood. On the road, many recalled the internment camp days and spoke about their involvement in the movement to redress the injustices of the 1940s.

Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet: BC’s Japanese Canadian Fishermen
Masako Fukawa with Stanley Fukawa and the Nikkei Fishermen’s History Book Committee
256 pages/Hardcover/ISBN: 978-1-55017-439-7/ $35.00
Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet: BC’s Japanese Canadian Fishermen tells the history of Japanese Canadians in the fishing industry in BC and includes many personal accounts of the experiences and contributions of Nikkei to Canada’s Pacific coast fishery from the 1870s to the present day.

Steveston Cannery Row: An Illustrated History
Mitsuo Yesaki and Harold and Kathy Steves
128 pages/ Softcover/ISBN: 0-9683807-1-9/ $24.00
This book describes the development of the southwest coast of Lulu Island from the arrival of the first Caucasian settlers in the 1800s to the present. The Fraser River supported one of the largest runs of sockeye salmon in the world. The first salmon cannery was built on the Fraser River near New Westminster in 1870 and the number of canneries increased exponentially thereafter. Marshal English built the English Cannery on the Steveston waterfront in 1882.

Surrender
Roy Miki
131 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1-55128-095-7 / $15.95
Surrender opens into a new space where ideas, borders, and authority are questioned, explored, and exploded.  The poems in this book, written over a period of years in a variety of geographical sites, from Vancouver, B.C., to Sydney, Australia, interact in apposition and opposition, often in parts that face each other across pages, in dialogue, counterbalance, or antiphony.
Roy Miki’s brilliant intermixture of the lyrical with the political, the moment with history, the brutal banality of the document with the tender touch of a hand, builds in a tour de force of clarity and beauty.  His daring engagements with the provisional, shifting formations of identity and language place him among the most original and powerful of contemporary poets.

Sutebusuton: A Japanese Village on the British Columbia Coast
Mitsuo Yesaki
148 pages/ Softcover/ISBN: 0-9686799-3-5/ $24.00
This book traces the immigration of Japanese into the Fraser River fishery from first entry in the 1870s, their immigrant surge in the late 1880s and their dominance by the 1900s. The majority of the Japanese fishermen settled in Steveston where they lived primarily in cannery bunkhouses supervised by Japanese fishing bosses. Each boss supplied his contract fishermen with accommodations, fishing boats and gear for a percentage of their catch. With this fishing boss system, Japanese immigrants with initiative were able to accumulate capital, and to expand into other businesses.

Teaching in Canadian Exile
Frank Moritsugu & the Ghost Town Teachers Historical Society
395 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9688221-0-1 / $30.00
This book uses personal recollections of former teachers and Japanese-Canadian students in the internment camps in B.C. to tell the story of how children in the camps were given an education during the Second World War.

The Best Years: The First Japanese Canadian Conference on Aging
Edited by Jacqueline Hayami-Stevens
301 pages/ Hardcover/ISBN: 0-9694756-0-8/ $12.00

The Electrical Field
Kerri Sakamoto.
320 pages. Softcover. ISBN: #978-0-676-97195-8. $19.95
When the beautiful Chisako and her lover are found murdered in a park, members of the small Ontario community must finally acknowledge certain inescapable truths.  Set in the 1970s, The Electrical Field reaches deep into the past to explore the dire legacy of the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the war.

The Forgotten History of the Japanese Canadians – Volume I: The Role of Japanese Canadians in the Early Fishing Industry in B.C.
Yuko Shibata, Shoji Matsumoto, Rintaro Hayashi, and Shotaro IIda
85 pages/Softcover/ $10.00

The Kappa Child
280 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0889952280 / $18.95
In her second novel, The Kappa Child, Hiromi Goto continues her exploration of growing up Japanese Canadian that she began in A Chorus of Mushrooms.  The unnamed narrator in this novel finds herself pregnant by a Kappa, a mythical Japanese being with webbed feet, an affinity for water, and a bowl growing on its head.  The Kappa Child looks back at the dysfunctional childhood of the narrator, with her passive-aggressive mother, odd siblings, and abusive, delusional father struggling to grow rice in the prairie dust bowl.  Not quite an adult, the narrator struggles to come to terms with her past and her less-than-promising present and achieves an unexpected moment of satori in the process.  As in her first book, Goto continues to combine poetic, even surreal, turns of phrase with an understated but sharp-edged version of feminist post-structuralism, all wrapped up in a picaresque, magic-realist narrative.

The Japanese Canadian Redress Legacy: A Community Revitalized
Arthur K. Miki
208 pages/Hardcover/ISBN: 0-9694756-3-2/ $20.00
This book will serve as a reminder of the many accomplishments and successes achieved by the National Association of Japanese Canadians, Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation and the many Japanese Canadian Organizations and individuals.

The Letter Opener
Kyo Maclear
312 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 978-0-00-200894/ $17.85
It is 1989 and Naiko is working in the Undeliverable Mail Office, a cavernous space that resembles a giant, congested pawnshop. Immersed in things lost and missing, she searches for clues to match undeliverable mail with addresses, a job that allows her to achieve a semblance of order in a disorderly world. It is a shock, then, when Naiko’s co-worker Andrei, an enigmatic Romanian refugee who has become the unlikely object of Naiko’s fascination, suddenly vanishes. As the novel reveals itself in exquisitely wrought layers that drift through time from the Second World War to the fall of communism, Andrei’s story of his past life in communist Romania becomes an opaque reflection of Naiko’s own existence.

The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914-41
Patricia E. Roy.
344 pages/Softcover/ISBN 9780774810111/ $32.95
Patricia Roy’s latest book, The Oriental Question, continues her study into why British Columbians — and many Canadians from outside the province — were historically so opposed to Asian immigration. Drawing on contemporary press and government reports and individual correspondence and memoirs, Roy shows how British Columbians consolidated a “white man’s province” from 1914 to 1941 by securing a virtual end to Asian immigration and placing stringent legal restrictions on Asian competition in the major industries of lumber and fishing. While its emphasis is on political action and politicians, the book also examines the popular pressure for such practices and gives some attention to the reactions of those most affected: the province’s Chinese and Japanese residents.

The Plum Tree
Mitch Miyagawa
Softcover / ISBN 0-88754-736-2 / $15.95
Play script.  The roof of Frieda Wagner’s house leaks.  Ever since her husband died, she’s struggled to keep her u-pick berry farm running.  One morning, she finds a stranger under the old plum tree, and the roof of her world begins to collapse… For George Murakami, three years as an activist in the Japanese Canadian Redress movement have finally paid off.  But what has the struggle cost him?  Driven by the puckish spirit of his Uncle Mas, he’s come to the berry farm in search of a connection to his past.  The Plum Tree is an exploration of ownership and justice.  Most of all, it’s a story of how the perennial re-seeding of history affects every generation.

The Triumph of Citizenship – The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
Patricia E. Roy
400 pages. Hardcover. ISBN: #9780774813808. $85.00
Softcover. ISBN: #9780774813815. $32.95
In this companion volume to A White Man’s Province and The Oriental Question, Patricia E. Roy examines the climax of antipathy to Asians in Canada: the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the BC coast in 1942.  The Triumph of Citizenship explains why Canada ignored the rights of Japanese Canadians and placed strict limits on Chinese immigration.  This book reminds all Canadians of the values and limits of their citizenship; students of political history and of ethnic relations in particular will find this book compelling.

The Truth About Death and Dying
Rui Umezawa
Fiction | Paperback, 304 pages | Anchor Canada
ISBN: 978-0-385-65909-3 (0-385-65909-1) | October 2003 | $21
The Hayakawa family carries in its blood and memory the scars of a devastating war. Shoji, the family patriarch, first learns the bitterness of loss as a young boy when his Japanese village is bombed by American places, and even as he settles into middles age in Milwaukee the past only intensifies its grip. One generation passes to the next in Shoji’s two sons, who revel in the fresh pleasures of American life even as they suffer the penalties of being immigrant children. Toshi, the eldest is the eccentric and gentle anchor of his family, while his impenetrable and brilliant brother Kei flees for Canada, where history and the present collide with tragic consequences. Graceful and uproarious, this book reveals the sometimes difficult truths of human love, mortality, family and honour.

The Vision Fulfilled (Kanae Rareta Yume) 1894-1994
Edited by Bill Hoshizaki
312 pages/Hardcover/ISBN: 0-9699229-0-6/ $15.00
Historical sketches of Central Okanagon Japanese Canadian families & community organizations

There
Roy Miki
86 pages / Softcover / ISBN 1554200261/ $21.00
In the follow-up to the 2002 Governor-Generals Award winner Surrender, Roy Miki extends his exploration of the margins joining social and individual language, and of layers of history overlaying places.  Canada, Asia, and Europe provide the local conditions where the authorial engages with globalization, with the collision between otherness and specialization.  The serial poems comprising.  They contain a multiplicity of voices drawn from those the poet hears in conversation, advertising, historiography and scientific proceedings, and incorporate photos and photo montages.

This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941–1948
Muriel Kitagawa, Edited by Roy Miki.
304 pages. ISBN: #978-0-88922-230-4. $24.95
This is a collection of letters written by Muriel Kitagawa during this period, as well as statements, essays and manuscripts which arose from Kitagawa’s commitment to write about the injustices of the government’s policies and to educate the Canadian public on the history and perceptions of Japanese Canadians.

Tomekichi Homma
K.T. Homma & C.G. Isaksson
72 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 978-0-88839-660-0/ $14.95
The story of Tomekichi Homma offers a unique perspective that embraces diversity, equality, and justice, and is a testament to the dignity of spirit and perseverance that defined his life. A gentle and gracious man, from an educated and disciplined family tradition, Tomikichi arrived in British Columbia in the 1880s, and quickly became a crusader for justice and dignity for his fellow immigrants. He worked tirelessly throughout his life to change the widespread racial intolerance and restrictions of the time, and to improve his community.

Tsudoi Gatherings
National Association of Japanese Canadians
71 pages/Softcover/ $5.00
A symposium for Japanese Canadians in the arts dedicated to the memory of Roy Kiyooka

Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei
David Mura
384 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 0-8021-4239-7/ $18.95
Award winning poet David Mura’s critically acclaimed memoir chronicles how a year in japan transformed his sense of self and pulled into sharp focus his complicated inheritance.  Mura is a Sansei, a third generation Japanese-American who grew up on baseball and hot dogs in a Chicago suburb, where he heard more Yiddish than Japanese.  Turning Japanese chronicles a quest for identity with honesty, intelligence, and poetic vision and stands as a classic meditation on difference and assimilation, providing a valuable window into a country that has long fascinated our own.

Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall 1906-2006
VJLS-JH Centennial Committee
107 pages/Softcover/ $10.00 [sold out]
Centennial Memories, celebrating 100 years of education and community spirit.

Voices Rising
Xiao Ping Li
320 pages / Softcover / ISBN 9780774812221 / $29.95
Voices Rising examines Asian Canadian political and cultural activism in the late twentieth century around such issues as community building, identity making, racial equity, and social justice.  Informed by a postcolonial cultural critique, Xiaoping Li draws on historical sources and compelling personal testimonies to show how culture acts as a means of engagement with the political and social world.  As an interdisciplinary inquiry addressing topical issues of “race,” ethnicity, identity, and transculturalism, Voices Rising will be welcomed by scholars, researchers, and students in Canadian studies, cultural studies, ethnic histories, postcolonial theory, globalization studies, diaspora theory, and transcultural analysis.  The general reader interested in Canadian identity and cultural history will also find this book accessible and useful.

Watari-dori (Birds of Passage)
Mitsuo Yesaki
175 pages / softcover / ISBN 0968679943 / $15.00
Watari-Dori is a historical novel of a fifteen-year old Japanese immigrant’s first six months fishing on the Fraser River. Because Miyakichi refused to continue his studies in Japan and instead insisted on becoming a fisherman, his father reluctantly sent for his wife and son to join him in Steveston, BC.  Miyakichi fished as a boat-puller with his father during the sockeye salmon season.  When his father accepted a position with a boat works, Miyakichi was left with the choice of either being unemployed or fishing the boat by himself.

Where the Heart Is — HomeComing ’92
Edited by Randy Enomoto, Photographs by Tamio Wakayama
108 pages / Softcover / ISBN 0-9696587-1-0 / $15.00 10.00
This book chronicles the reunion of four generations of Japanese Canadians in Vancouver, fifty years after the war time internment, and expulsion from BC.  An overview of the internment and the second uprooting is presented, as well as other issues arising from this event, such as intermarriage, human rights and deportation to Japan.  In addition there’s a section dealing with aging Japanese Canadians and the specific problems they face.  Each section is presented from the particular viewpoint of the speaker, representing a diversity of peoples and experiences.

Wild Daisies in the Sand – Life in a Candian Internment Camp
Tom Sando
230 pages / softcover / ISBN 1896300510 / $19.95
The Japanese-Canadians relocated to Petawawa and Angler during World War II were imprisoned in maximum security penitentiaries: compounds encircled by three layers of barbed wire fences, and under constant surveillance by rifle armed guards stationed in watchtowers.  These people were not prisoners-of-war, or even criminals, but Canadian civilians deemed dangerous by the Canadian government because of their race.  This is Tom Sando’s story, related through a series of his journal entries throughout his years of imprisonment.  This is a story of loneliness, fear, and, eventually, friendship and hope.

鮭とリンゴの里から カナダで二十年
Sakuya Nishimura
270 pages/Softcover/ISBN: 978-0-9688100-8-8/ $18.95

Reflections of My Heart
カナダ生まれのねりきり
Junko Friesen
A beautiful original collection of wagashi (cakes made from white lima beans) created by Junko Friesen coupled with images of Vancouver, by Koichi Saito, which environment inspired these creations. Includes a short history of wagashi and a recipe. $30