are Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of British Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them living in and around Vancouver. In 2016, there were 121,485 Japanese Canadians throughout Canada.
Generations
The term Nikkei (日系) was coined by sociologists and encompasses all of the world's Japanese immigrants across generations. Japanese descendants living overseas have special names for each of their generations. These are formed by combining one of the Japanese numerals with the Japanese word for generation (sei, 世): Issei (一世) – The first generation of immigrants, born in Japan before moving to Canada. Nisei (二世) – The second generation, born in Canada to Issei parents not born in Canada. Sansei (三世) – The third generation, born in Canada to Nisei parents born in Canada. Yonsei (四世) – The fourth generation, born in Canada to Sansei parents born in Canada. Gosei (五世) – The fifth generation, born in Canada to Yonsei parents born in Canada.
History
Early years
The first Japanese settler in Canada was Manzo Nagano, who lived in Victoria, British Columbia in 1877 (a mountain in the province was named after him in 1977). The first generation or Issei, mostly came to Vancouver Island, the Fraser Valley and Rivers Inlet from fishing villages on the islands of Kyūshū and Honshū between 1877 and 1928. A Japanese community newspaper for Vancouver residents was first launched in 1897. Around the same time, the Fraser River Japanese Fishermen’s Association Hospital in Steveston was established after the local hospital refused to admit and treat Japanese immigrants.
In 1907, the Asiatic Exclusion League was established in Vancouver and, by September of that year, led a mob of rioters who vandalized both Chinese and Japanese neighbourhoods. In 1908, Canada enacted a Gentlemen's Agreement intended to curb further Japanese immigration to Canada.
Influenced by the American Immigration Act of 1924, members of the British Columbia parliament pushed for a total federal ban on immigration in the 1920s. After several years of negotiations, Japan eventually agreed to reduce its immigration quota under the Gentleman's Agreement to only 150 persons per year.
Internment
In 1942, the Canadian government used the War Measures Act to brand Japanese-Canadians enemy aliens and to categorize them as security threats. There were 20,881 Japanese placed in internment camps and road camps in British Columbia, and prisoner-of-war camps in Ontario. Families were also sent as forced labourers to farms throughout the prairies. Three quarters of them were already citizens in Canada. A parallel situation occurred in the United States, the Japanese American internment.
The property and homes of Japanese Canadians living in the province of British Columbia were seized and sold off without their consent in 1943. The funds were used to pay for their internment. They also had to "pay rent" for living in the internment shacks that they were assigned. In 1945, after the war, as part of the continued effort to remove all Japanese Canadians from British Columbia, Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King had his cabinet pass Orders-in-Council to extend the powers of the War Measures Act and give Japanese Canadians two "options": to be relocated to another province "East of the Rockies" or to go "back" to Japan though most were born in Canada and had never been to Japan. After organized protests by against their treatment, they were finally given the right to vote in 1949. Mobility restrictions were lifted in 1949.
After World War II
Until 1948, Japanese-Canadians, both Issei and Canadian-born Nisei, were denied the right to vote. Those born in the 1950s and 1960s in Canada are mostly Sansei, the third generation. Sansei usually have little knowledge of the Japanese language. Over 75% of the Sansei have married non-Japanese. Nisei and Sansei generally identify themselves not as fully Japanese but as Canadians first who happen to have Japanese ancestry.
Since 1967, the second wave of immigrants were usually highly educated and resided in urban areas.