Michiko Midge Ayukawa, Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941.(Book review)

Michiko Midge Ayukawa, Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 (Vancouver: UBC Press 2008)

IN HIROSHIMA Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941, Michiko Midge Ayukawa presents both a scholarly and an insider's view of the history of Japanese immigrants (Issei). As a second-generation Japanese Canadian (Nisei), Ayukawa examines this history as part of her efforts to learn more about her parents and the complex story of Issei experiences and attitudes. Her goal is to reconcile the previous histories written about Japanese Canadians as oppressed people who faced persecution with her memory of "a vibrant Japanese-Canadian community full of confident men and women." (xvii)

Ayukawa's nicely written study adds to a growing trend in scholarship on Japanese immigrant history in North America in its conceptualization of the Issei as a heterogeneous immigrant group, rather than a monolithic one. Even as she acknowledges shared aspects of the history of the Issei, including the impact of racism, she highlights differences based on place, gender, class, and generation.

She draws on her own family history, oral interviews, and historical scholarship produced in Japan and North America to tell the tale of Japanese Canadians, especially in and around Vancouver. After earning a master's degree in history at the University of Victoria, Ayukawa continued to investigate this topic. She conducted 80 interviews in Japanese and English with three generations of people of Japanese descent across Canada and in Japan. Her research in Japanese-language scholarship adds to the richness of her study. Although English-language studies of Japanese immigrants in North America are frequently translated into Japanese, influencing scholarship in Japan, the reverse has rarely been the case. So, too, although scholars have conducted interviews with the Issei and Nisei in North America, few have done so in the Japanese language. "Therefore, Ayukawa presents truly transnational research, providing insights drawn from scholarship and first-hand accounts from across Canada and Japan.

She develops her argument about the significance of difference in Japanese-Canadian history by tracing the story of Japanese immigrants from Hiroshima prefecture (or province). In the 1890s, the first immigrants from Hiroshima left for Canada to seek their fortunes. Her grandfather, Ishii Chokichi, left his village in 1907 and her father, Ishii Kenji, in 1912. Her mother, Takata Misayo, married Kenji and moved to Canada after a difficult first marriage in Japan.

Ayukawa also includes some of her experiences as a child of Hiroshima immigrants in her chapter on the Nisei. Here she explores the differences between the generations and the influences of the Issei on the Nisei. For example, the Issei raised the Nisei in some of the practices of the upper-class Japanese, even though that had not been part of their own upbringing. In her family, Ayukawa was forced to learn the koto (Japanese harp), even though her father came from a poor family in a remote mountain village. The Issei were strict and often burdened their offspring with the message that they must do their best and not bring shame upon their families or the Japanese "race."

She makes a convincing case that prefectural origins mattered in Japanese-Canadian history. For instance, some prefectures encouraged Japanese residents to emigrate, while others did not. As she points out, looking for work elsewhere was a well-established pattern in Hiroshima, which "was the third-largest source of Japanese immigrants to Canada." (xx) Prefectural origins became points of identity and community formation in Canada. Immigrants united by prefecture to provide aid to each other, both formally through organization, and informally through friendships. Such prefectural links helped produce a key support network for immigrants who lacked a family-based support system in the new country. Ayukawa, for instance, felt connected to a group of "surrogate relatives" (xvii) of other Hiroshima immigrants in Canada. She argues that the support network was built on a shared sense of place in Japan, from which the Japanese developed the same dialect and culture, including tastes for certain foods.

Although she convincingly shows that regional identity mattered, she is less successful at demonstrating that immigrants from Hiroshima had a different experience in Canada than other Japanese immigrants. As evidence, she often provides detailed, biographical sketches of Hiroshima immigrants. However, too often they remain disjointed in the narrative and fail to illustrate how and why the individuals were unique as immigrants from Hiroshima, rather than typical of the Japanese immigrant experience.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book focuses on the history of Japanese immigrant women, most of whom arrived between 1908 and 1924. Here Ayukawa is at her best. She passionately demonstrates that Issei women were not mere appendages to men, but central characters in the history of Japanese immigrants. In line with scholarship in women's history, she treats women as historical figures in their own right, rather than as just the wives of immigrants. Ayukawa demonstrates that many of the women were well educated in Japan and eager for adventure. She also documents their paid work lives and not only their family caregiving labour. For example, she identifies Japanese immigrant women who worked as domestic workers in white homes, ran boarding houses, and practiced midwifery, a major health care occupation among the Japanese. She includes discussion of the agricultural labour of women, many of whom worked with babies strapped to their backs. Such activities disturbed the gender expectations of some white neighbours who criticized Issei men for allowing women to chop wood, clear land, and perform the backbreaking labour of farming strawberries.

Ayukawa's research also contributes to labour history by illustrating how complicated it was for Issei workers to organize for better conditions. There were tensions between white workers and immigrant workers because immigrants resented the fact that they were paid less than white workers and the whites resented immigrants taking jobs. There were also grievances and animosities within Japanese immigrant communities as a result of vast economic differences between workers and employers, especially the wealthy Issei owners of lumber companies. Furthermore, immigrant workers had a complex relationship with immigrant labour contractors. Japanese workers in Canada were so grateful for employment that they often thought of Japanese labour contractors as benefactors. Yet, these contractors focused on their own self-interests and exploited the Issei workers just as whites did. Immigrant workers' attitudes toward fellow countrymen "bosses," many of whom came from the same prefecture, affected their struggles over working conditions in times of class conflict.

In sum, this book provides a good overview of the history of Japanese immigrants from Hiroshima to British Columbia. Yet, it is much more than just a story of immigration from one Japanese prefecture to one Canadian city- it presents a key chapter in the development of Canada.

SUSAN L. SMITH

University of Alberta

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