The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community

CHAPTER 2

THE KIMONO

Every year, as a buildup to Oshogatsu, or what we call New Year’s Day, it’s a Japanese custom to do some rigorous housecleaning. This noble goal of getting one’s home in order is believed to bring good luck for the year ahead. Growing up surrounded by unadmitted hoarders, I’ve tried to counteract the clutter. Clearing the bedroom closets one year, I came across a kimono made by my great-grandmother Taki Nakamura, our family founder on my mother’s side. I had been fortunate to know her. She was my grandfather’s mother ― Bāchan as everyone called her.

Finding the kimono took me back to my childhood, living with my parents on the third floor of my grandparents’ home in Toronto’s Greektown. Bought in 1955, the house on Browning Avenue was a large turn-of-the-century semi, not quite Edwardian or fully Victorian in style but always bustling with family and friends. Like many multigenerational homes, it housed countless family members who came and went. Bāchan remained a permanent fixture.

At the time of Bāchan’s death in 1980, the kimono was one of the few items no one wanted and so it was given to me, a teenager who loved vintage things. Decades later I marvelled at the memories it contained. It wasn’t your classic silk kimono. No, it was a rather plain house kimono called nemaki. For sleeping attire Bāchan never opted for pyjamas or housecoats but preferred traditional Japanese kimono. What struck me was the heavy weave, a dark brown fabric with dotted stripes ― the strong yet subdued dress of older women and not the bright colours worn by the young. In all likelihood it was made from material leftover from a futon (quilt), zabuton (cushion), or other sewing project.

In Japan Bāchan’s family kept silkworms, so she was knowledgeable about textiles and a talented crafter. In those days a young girl prepared for her future by assembling an entire wardrobe. Once she married this cache of clothing ensured the young bride had ample items to wear in the years ahead. Bāchan continued to sew long into her eighties, although by then her failing eyesight meant someone else had to thread the sewing machine for her. I don’t believe she ever owned a pair of pants. True to her time, she wore mostly formal clothing and wouldn’t leave the house without her hat and gloves.

When I knew her, she lived in my grandparent’s home and had a room of her own on the second floor. As the long-time matriarch of the family, Bāchan was the authority on how things were done and never lost her ability to issue orders instead of simply asking. To her grandchildren, though, Bāchan was different. She always had a smile and an endless supply of hard candies. On many occasions she delighted in entertaining us. She’d laugh as she performed her famous trick of juggling several beanbags in one hand.

Like many immigrants Bāchan never learned to speak English in her ninety-plus years despite living in Canada longer than she had in Japan. The Second World War effectively created unseen barriers between generations. Learning to speak Japanese is difficult at best and was further hampered by limited educational resources during incarceration. After the war the family moved east from Slocan, British Columbia, to Chatham, Ontario, before settling in downtown Toronto in 1947. As they began to reestablish themselves in an unfamiliar city, the pressure to assimilate resulted in my mother’s generation losing their heritage language. People like my great-grandmother were effectively silenced from sharing their stories and folklore.

In my own attempts to learn Japanese, I discovered the language I knew from home was not the current and evolved language of Japan but an obsolete version rooted in the past ― often mispronounced and misspelt. For example, most JCs know obāsan is the formal Japanese word for “grandmother” and bāchan an informal version of “grandma.” We grew up seeing it spelled bachan, without the macron above the first a to indicate the long vowel, that additional “ah” sound in baachan. The things we never knew.

Often we remember things as being larger than they are, and when we encounter them later in life, we’re surprised at what we find. When I held up the old kimono, I was shocked at how small it was. Most kimono are one-size-fits-all with an abundance of material. But not this one. It was old and fragile yet strong and sturdy. It personified Bāchan: a tiny woman with a will of iron forged from earlier days as a Canadian pioneer. Perhaps it was a blessing she was so petite, for at four-foot seven-inches tall, she didn’t need much fabric.

The reality of her life was worlds away from the life she expected to live. Born on Oshima Island in Japan’s Yamaguchi prefecture in February 1889, Taki Kinoshita grew up in a wealthy family, educated and pampered by servants. When hard times hit, her parents arranged her marriage and Taki set sail for Canada with high hopes for a new life as a “picture bride.” Little did she know when she stepped off the boat in January 1909 to meet my great-grandfather Shinkichi Nakamura she was headed for a one-room shack on a farm in Port Hammond, British Columbia.

Bound for Seattle, Washington, the SS Kaga Maru departed from China before reaching Japan via Yokohama on December 23, 1908. Handwritten in dark cursive, Taki’s name and details appear among nine other Japanese passengers, with their ultimate destination marked as Vancouver. Searching for definitive details about the carrier, I discovered different sources listed different information. Another ship matched the timeline and had a similar name ― the Kagi Maru, built in 1907. Did the handwritten document contain a typo? To complicate matters, these sources had conflicting dates for when the Kaga Maru was built. The Ships List website reports it was built in 1901 and then scrapped in 1934 at Yokohama, but it listed two other ships with the same name built later. Which one was right? The Japanese Merchant Ships Recognition Handbook solved the mystery by stating it was customary for Japanese to give multiple vessels the same name though they differed in size and appearance. Maru usually means “circle” in Japanese but was added to the names of ships as a term of endearment.

Unlike the picture brides Julie Otsuka describes in The Buddha in the Attic, who slept in dim and filthy lower-level steerage, Taki and the other Japanese travelled comfortably in first class, except for one servant assigned to a second-class cabin. Curiously, the forty passengers in steerage were all Europeans. Once they reached their destination, a cruel reversal awaited the Japanese passengers. For people like Taki, who had known wealth and status and expected to begin a better life in a new country, this voyage to North America provided a different experience ― in Canada they were reduced to lowly
peasants, scorned, discriminated against, and viewed with suspicion by the white majority.

In The Enemy That Never Was, Ken Adachi writes of how growing resentments toward Asian immigrants as a “yellow horde” or “yellow peril” plagued Vancouver and led to the race riots in September 1907. But by 1908, the arrival of many picture brides like Bāchan marked the beginning of a new chapter in this family-and-community-building stage. The influx of wives and birth of children slowly transformed the male-dominated environment of transient workers, stabilizing the community and rooting the Japanese in Canada.

No one in our family knew the original details about Bāchan’s arrival. Several online searches yielded no insights, which puzzled me. Originally, I thought she embarked on her journey as a young, unmarried woman travelling to meet her future husband. When I finally found the passage record, her name was listed with my great-grandfather’s surname. Adachi’s extensive history on JCs again provided the missing puzzle piece. Prior to an arranged marriage, parents or relatives in Japan undertook extensive searches to locate a suitable mate before the eventual exchange of photos or letters between a prospective bride and groom. Once the couple or their family agreed to the union, the marriage was registered in Japan ― a simple matter of affixing the man’s seal on the required document and presenting it to the registrar. Picture brides like Bāchan were married on paper before ever meeting their groom.

Another detail bothered me. Although Taki’s twenty-first birthday had been weeks away, someone at the Land Registry Office in Victoria took the liberty of rounding up her age and listed the twenty-one-year-old “spinster” as marrying a twenty-eight-year-old bachelor and farmer. Thankfully, record-keeping isn’t what it used to be.