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rfmcdonaldOn Monday, before Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko finished their tour of Canada and left for home, they visited a school in downtown Vancouver that once was the heart of Vancouver's Japantown.
Vancouver's Japantown was once the nucleus of the Japanese Canadian community, a major feature in downtown Vancouver located next to Chinatown. Unlike Chinatown, however, Japantown didn't survive the 1940s.
In a 2007 Vancouver Sun article, one community activist quoted was skeptical that the community could ever reform on this territory.
This 2004 blog entry compares and contrasts Japantown with Chinatown. Apparently Seattle has the only functioning Japantown on the west coast of North America.
What happened after Japantown's destruction? Its social fabric destroyed, Japantown ended up assimilating into the Downtown Eastside, a slum area that's notable for its inhabitants' low incomes, high rates of HIV infection and homelessness, and the street prostitution that attracted serial killer Robert Pickton, who picked up prostitutes, took them to his rural home, killed them in ways that the Crown hasn't revealed in order to protect his victims' dignity, and then apparently feed them to his pigs, all without anyone important noticing something wrong for a decade. Apparently tour organizers were concerned about the neighbourhood's potential risk to the imperial couple, but high levels of security and the importance over the Japanese Hall overrode these.
As the Emperor and Empress of Japan emerged from the Japanese Hall on Alexander Street in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Cy Saimoto was at their side, smiling and waving to the people packed six deep along the street to witness the couple's visit to a building and a neighbourhood that were once the heart and soul of Japantown.
A few minutes after helping the royal couple into a waiting limousine yesterday, Mr. Saimoto was still smiling, basking in the afterglow of escorting them around the hall and in the symbolism of the event.
“It meant a lot to the people, to the Japanese community. And the Downtown Eastside. Because the first Japanese settlement was here,” said Mr. Saimoto, who is 81 and an honorary chairman of the Vancouver Japanese Language School & Japanese Hall.
[. . .]
Hundreds of people lined the block in front of the school to catch a glimpse of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, who are on a 12-day visit to Canada that began in Ottawa on July 3 and ends this week in Vancouver.
School directors and others in Vancouver's Japanese-Canadian community lobbied to get the school on the royal couple's itinerary, arguing that the building's historical significance should outweigh any worries about the royal couple seeing rundown areas of the city.
The school and hall opened in 1906 and have operated since, except between 1942 and 1952, when the property was confiscated and used first by the Canadian military and then by local businesses.
In 1953, after a lengthy campaign, half of the property was turned over to the Japanese-Canadian community. Of all the boats, stores, homes, businesses and other assets seized from Japanese-Canadians during the war, the school is the only property to have been returned.
Vancouver's Japantown was once the nucleus of the Japanese Canadian community, a major feature in downtown Vancouver located next to Chinatown. Unlike Chinatown, however, Japantown didn't survive the 1940s.
During World War II when Japanese Canadians had their property confiscated and were interned (see Japanese Canadian internment), Japantown ceased to be a distinct Japanese ethnic area. Although some Japanese returned after the war, the community never revived. The area is now part of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Along Powell Street, a few remnants of the former Japanese neighbourhood still exist. The Vancouver Buddhist Church, formerly the Japanese Methodist Church, still exists at 220 Jackson Street (at Powell).[3] So does the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall at 475 and 487 Alexander Street (at Jackson), which was established in 1906.
Until the boom in Japanese restaurants in the 1980s, two restaurants on Powell Street were among the only Japanese dining in the city.
In a 2007 Vancouver Sun article, one community activist quoted was skeptical that the community could ever reform on this territory.
It was Nihonmachi, at least until 1942. That's when rabid, racist paranoia caught up with the events of Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, and the thriving Vancouver community of Nihonmachi, or Japantown, was torn apart to satisfy Canada's hatred of its latest enemy in the Second World War.
It's no secret Japantown never recovered from the deportations, seizure of property and sheer viciousness of Canada's hysterical over-reaction. Today, the many problems of the Downtown Eastside are much in evidence around Oppenheimer Park, which was once the heart of Nihonmachi.
Miko Hoffman is general manager and program director for this weekend's Powell Street Festival, held at and around Oppenheimer Park. She isn't optimisitc that the vibrancy of Japantown will ever return.
"I would love to see it happen, love to," she says. "It's just that the community is so dispersed, it would take a lot to get people to come back here."
This 2004 blog entry compares and contrasts Japantown with Chinatown. Apparently Seattle has the only functioning Japantown on the west coast of North America.
What happened after Japantown's destruction? Its social fabric destroyed, Japantown ended up assimilating into the Downtown Eastside, a slum area that's notable for its inhabitants' low incomes, high rates of HIV infection and homelessness, and the street prostitution that attracted serial killer Robert Pickton, who picked up prostitutes, took them to his rural home, killed them in ways that the Crown hasn't revealed in order to protect his victims' dignity, and then apparently feed them to his pigs, all without anyone important noticing something wrong for a decade. Apparently tour organizers were concerned about the neighbourhood's potential risk to the imperial couple, but high levels of security and the importance over the Japanese Hall overrode these.
