Dominion and the Rising Sun
Canada Encounters Japan, 1929-41
John Meehan, 2004, Prologue, p. 1-3
The hot, humid weather did little to stifle the jubilant mood that 1 July afternoon in Shibuya ward, Tokyo. For the hundred or so well-wishers gathered outside the new residence of His Majesty’s Canadian representative to Japan, Dominion Day, 1929 seemed unlike any other. Traders and diplomats mingled with missionaries, teachers and social workers, reflecting the diversity of Canada’s involvement in the Orient. A hush came over the crowd as A.E. Bryan, the president of the newly formed Canadian Association, rose to address the gathering. He opened the ceremony by welcoming Hugh Keenleyside, who had arrived in May as chargé d’affaires. Then, Dr. D.R. MacKenzie, the longest serving Canadian missionary in Japan, spoke to the crowd, impressing all with his sense of history. He surveyed Canada’s past, from Cartier’s search for a passage to Asia to the dominion’s newfound diplomatic status, and concluded the legation was an idea whose time had come. After a brief speech by Keenleyside and a phonograph recording of prime minister Mackenzie King’s remarks at the recent Peace Tower carillon dedication, the ceremony reached its finale. For the first time in Asia, Canada’s red ensign was hoisted atop the legation as all assembled sang ‘O Canada’ and ‘God Save the King’.
From 1945 to 1947, Muriel Kitagawa wrote numerous articles exhorting the Japanese Canadian community to respond to injustice. She believed that if those who advocated the denial of Nikkei rights remained unopposed, other groups would soon feel the sting of oppression, with the wholesale curtailment of their human rights. Although the leading Canadian and American public advocates for the Nikkei were almost exclusively white males from religious or professional backgrounds, they were not alone. American and Canadian Nikkei did not sit passively while others defended their rights. Instead, they typically expressed their activism through the organizations that represented them: the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and, in Canada, the Japanese Canadian Citizens League (JCCL), the Japanese Canadian Citizens Council (JCCC), and the Japanese Canadian Citizens for Democracy (JCCD). The Nikkei also conveyed their views through their community publications. In the United States, the Pacific Citizen, the so-called mouthpiece of the JACL, was perhaps the most important of these. In Canada, the New Canadian, initially Vancouver-based, voiced the opinions of the JCCL; the Toronto-based Nisei Affairs promulgated the largely Nisei views of the JCCD. These newspapers acted as important vessels for the Nikkei in North America, facilitating awareness of developments in both nations.
