For more than two decades, the University of Alberta's Prince Takamado Japan Centre for Teaching and Research has been promoting Japanese language and culture, forging deep ties with the Japanese Canadian community.
Researchers across disciplines have explored a wide range of topics in Japanese studies, while U of A students have enjoyed exchange opportunities through a network of 39 Japanese universities. The U of A now has 59 agreements with Japanese institutions, and its researchers are co-authors of almost 2,200 publications with their Japanese counterparts.
"The Prince Takamado Japan Centre holds a special place at the University of Alberta," says U of A president Bill Flanagan. "It serves as a conduit for the exchange of knowledge, ideas and cultures, building a bridge between Japan and Canada."
As the centre celebrates its 20th anniversary this month, interim director Walter Davis says it's a great time to reflect on a cherished bond.
"Because of geopolitics, the relationship is more important than it's ever been," says Davis. "There's a lot of potential for connections between Japanese and Canadian industry — especially ones that relate to Alberta, like energy and artificial intelligence — that are really important to Japan as well."
The centre is also trying to expand the scope of its research, teaching, and scholarship beyond Japanese studies and related disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and education to include such fields as business, technology and science, he adds.
"We're centred in the Faculty of Arts, and that's kind of our DNA," says Davis. "But we're also playing a larger role in connecting Japan and Canada in inspiring research in other fields with equally cutting-edge and contemporary relevance."
Toward that end, the U of A has committed $115,000 to launch a Prince Takamado Japan Centre seed grant program to spark interdisciplinary research and foster closer collaboration between Japan and Canada.
"These collaborations span diverse fields — from food and agriculture to energy and environmental sustainability — and they address some of the most significant challenges facing society today," says Flanagan.
He adds that the university hopes to establish, with support from the centre, a Japanese research and industry hub where researchers, industry leaders and government officials from both nations can collaborate to advance innovation.
The Faculty of Arts will fund a new leading scholar in Japanese studies and culture who will also serve as the centre's director for a five-year renewable term. It will also contribute $65,000 annually over the next five years to support the centre's operations and programming.
Connecting cultures
To mark the anniversary this week, Rich Sutton of the U of A's Department of Computing Science will give a talk in artificial intelligence highlighting some of the points of connection regarding the technology that Canada and Japan share. Joshua Mostow of the University of British Columbia, the leading scholar in Japanese studies in Canada, will present on the state of pure and applied research in his field.
Japan's ambassador to Canada, Kanji Yamanouchi, and the consul-general of Japan in Calgary, Takehiko Wajima, will attend the event, and there will be a video message from Princess Takamado of Japan.
The event will also highlight ongoing collaboration between the university and Canada's Japanese Canadian community, showing a trailer for a new documentary film on the life of former U of A sociology chair Gordon Hirabayashi, to be screened at the National Association of Japanese Canadians Annual Conference in November.
Before arriving at the university in 1959, Hirabayashi became an iconic hero of the civil rights movement for his resistance to the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Later, he moved to Canada to become a professor at the U of A and helped secure redress for Japanese Canadians interned during the war. He served as chair of the Department of Sociology from 1970 to 1975, leading its degree program to become one of the top three in the country.
Hirabayashi's remarkable life story was captured in a one-man play called Hold These Truths by American playwright Jeanne Sakata, and staged two years ago at the Timms Centre for the Arts. Directed by Melanie Dreyer-Lude, former chair of the Department of Drama, it was co-sponsored by the Prince Takamado Japan Centre and starred Vancouver actor Kevin Takahide Lee.
In 2022, the Prince Takamado Japan Centre co-sponsored a performance of the one-man play Hold These Truths, about the life of civil rights icon Gordon Hirabayashi. This year's anniversary events will include showing a trailer for an upcoming documentary film about Hirabayashi. (Video: Geoff McMaster)
The centre was founded by the faculties of arts and education in 1996. After a visit to the U of A by the Prince and Princess Takamado in 1999, it was renamed in 2004 to honour her late husband, Prince Takamado, who died two years earlier at the age of 47.
Prince Takamado had a close connection to Canada, having studied law at Queen's University in Kingston. The princess has remained a staunch champion of the U of A's centre since its founding, says Davis.
Through the years, the centre has sponsored numerous lectures, conferences, symposia and study-abroad programs for students.
It has also contributed to numerous cultural events and outreach programs, including the Canadian National Japanese Speech Contest, an annual event that the Takamado Centre has helped run in varying locations across the country. The U of A is one of the few sites in North America where students can take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is organized by the Japan Foundation.
In 2012 the centre hosted the Replaying Japan symposium, an annual conference held in both Japan and North America catering to a growing interest in Japanese video games. In 2015 it organized a major conference, called 70 Years After Hiroshima: Conceptualizing Nuclear Issues in Global Contexts, to foster an open and balanced conversation about the challenges of living in the nuclear age.
The centre also now co-sponsors an annual lecture series and anti-racism program in Hirabayashi's name, combining cultural initiatives from across the U of A and the broader Edmonton community to tackle societal injustice.
To promote Japanese Canadian history and culture in Alberta schools, Olenka Bilash in the Faculty of Education produced a directory of Japanese Canadian resources. Teachers can use the directory to give students the necessary knowledge and context to more fully understand the Japanese Canadian internment — as well as the depth of contributions Japanese Canadians have made to Canada.
"If a teacher in every grade did just one thing mentioned in our directory, and those kids got one touchstone every year for 12 years, there would be a through-line about Japanese Canadian culture and contributions, not just about the internment," Bilash said upon the directory's release.
"We live in an interconnected world, and the Indo-Pacific region — especially Japan, a global leader in economics, technology and popular culture — has become an essential partner for our university, our province and our country," says Flanagan.
