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Kyra Soo in Bravo Niagara! Festival of the Arts upcoming world premiere of Kimiko’s Pearl at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre on June 22 and 23. Photo credit: Réjean Brandt.

ST. CATHARINES — Japanese Canadian stories have been told through literature, journalism, poetry, film, and theatre, and now, for the first time, through ballet. Kimiko’s Pearl explores the tragedies, triumphs, and perseverance of one Japanese Canadian family before, during, and after the Second World War through an original story, music, and choreography.

Kimiko’s Pearl is commissioned and produced by Bravo Niagara!. The premiere will be presented by the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines on June 22 and 23.

The ballet is based on a story written by Emmy Award-winning writer Howard Reich and inspired by the family history of Bravo Niagara! co-founders and mother-daughter team Christine Mori and Alexis Spieldenner, who are also co-creators and producers of the ballet.

The ballet centres around Kimiko, a 15-year-old girl in Toronto, who discovers an old family trunk with a forgotten diary and other precious keepsakes inside. Through these items, history comes to life, and Kimiko learns the story of her Japanese ancestors, from immigrating to Canada in 1917 to prospering as berry farmers in Mission, B.C., surviving the internment, and their postwar resurgence in Toronto.

The story was inspired by the real discovery of a family trunk built by Mori’s grandfather, Shizuo Ayukawa, in New Denver, now part of the Canadian War Museum collection. Inside was a poem written by Mori’s aunt Hiroko Ayukawa Kaita after the redress agreement was signed, highlighting the generational echoes of the wartime experience on one family.

“As a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian, I hope this deeply personal story sheds light on a dark chapter in Canadian history and takes audiences on a journey of intergenerational healing and hope,” says Spieldenner.

Mori and Spieldenner assembled a world-class team to bring Kimiko’s Pearl to life. A culmination of three years of work, born during the pandemic, the ballet brings together a diverse team of creators from Niagara, Toronto, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Chicago. The ballet unfolds through beautiful choreography by Yosuke Mino of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and dancers from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Boston Ballet and original music created by Kevin Lau—which will premiere in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 2024-25 Masterworks series next year.

The story unfolds not with words but with movement, music, and imagery. Telling a story that spans over a century and sprawling geographical locations, but with a set that only includes a trunk and bench, the ballet uses projections of original Japanese Canadian artwork and family archival photographs to help tell this epic story.

Bravo Niagara commissioned original artwork from prominent Japanese Canadian artists Norman Takeuchi, Lillian Yano Blakey, and Emma Nishimura to help tell this story. Nikkei Voice spoke with the three artists about their work, the collaborative process, and what Kimiko’s Pearl means to them.

Read the interviews with the three artists below.

Norman Takeuchi

Floating World, Norman Takeuchi, 2016. Acrylic on canvas
121.8 X 121.8 cm (48 x 48 in.) Photo courtesy of the artist.

Used in Kimiko’s Pearl are pieces from artist Norman Takeuchi‘s series A Measured Act. Created in 1996 and now part of the Canadian War Museum’s permanent collection, the series includes five life-sized paper kimonos and references the War Measures Act, the federal legislation used to uproot, dispossess, and intern Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.

While Takeuchi’s work often explores themes of social justice, his early works showed no signs of Japanese imagery to separate himself from his Japanese Canadian heritage. Born in Vancouver, some of Takeuchi’s earliest memories are of the B.C. interior, where his family was forcibly relocated during the Second World War.

Over the last three decades of Takeuchi’s expansive 60-year career, his work has been a journey of self-discovery, from exploring his family’s painful past to celebrating his Japanese Canadian identity. For Takeuchi, who was recently named to the Order of Canada, being a part of Kimiko’s Pearl has furthered Takeuchi’s exploration and pride in his Japanese Canadian identity.

Artist Norman Takeuchi. Photo courtesy of the artist.

“It’s really reinforced my Japanese heritage. I’m working on a project that is completely new to me, but it has to do with the Japanese Canadian story, which in turn, is my story. This project [has] just added to the way I feel about myself being Japanese and feeling good about it,” Takeuchi tells Nikkei Voice in an interview.

When Takeuchi was approached to join the creative team, he was excited to get involved because he and his wife Marion are fans of ballet. It has been a real learning experience to see how the ballet has developed and to watch an idea become a reality.

Over the last three years, Takeuchi worked closely with the creative team to bring Kimiko’s Pearl to life. Often, working as a visual artist is a very individual profession, but working on Kimiko’s Pearl was a very collaborative process—something new and exciting for Takeuchi.

“[It] was really gratifying for me to get responses from the dancers, the choreographer, and the composer about our work. They were very interested in what we’re doing, and that was really nice. Teamwork was a really strong element in this project,” says Takeuchi. “It’s really enjoyable to work with people that you respect and get along with—there’s that camaraderie that I normally don’t feel when I’m working as an artist. That was really special.”

Takeuchi hopes that for people who come and see Kimiko’s Pearl, it inspires them to learn more about Japanese Canadian history. During a major retrospective of Takeuchi’s work at the Ottawa Art Gallery last year, he still found some visitors were surprised to learn about Japanese Canadian history and his family’s experiences.

“It’s also a way of spreading the news of the history because there’s still so many people who don’t know anything about it. It’s discouraging, and yet this is maybe one more way, the ballet, particularly, but also the visuals, to show the story to a new audience,” says Marion.

Art has the potential to reach audiences in a way that a history book cannot. He hopes the work will encourage audiences to explore their own stories and histories, whether they are Japanese Canadian or not.

“It would be great if people went beyond what they saw and on their own looked into the whole story, and to understand the Canadian history more [and] fill in those blank spots that we all have about our country,” says Takeuchi.

Lillian Yano Blakey

Kagoshima, Lillian Yano Blakey. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artist Lillian Yano Blakey‘s work is incredibly striking and personal. Through her artwork, she narrates generations of her family’s story to shed light on the lived complications and uncertainty of being Japanese Canadian. Over the last 20 years, she has explored her family’s story through various art forms, including painting, collage, video, and literature. So, when she was approached to join the creative team for Kimiko’s Pearl, it felt like an exciting new way to explore the Japanese Canadian story and reach new audiences.

“I feel so honoured to be part of this because I’ve been [exploring] my family story for a long time. And I was just thinking I needed something different. I’ve never been involved in a ballet, so it’s been a real educational process for me,” Blakey tells Nikkei Voice in an interview.

Artist Lillian Yano Blakey. Photo courtesy of the artist.

A Sansei artist and author, Blakey’s work can be found in the Government of Ontario Art Collection and Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre’s permanent collections. She recently wrote and illustrated a graphic novel for children with Yonsei artist Jeff Chiba Stearns called On Being Yukiko.

Blakey is a retired educator who consulted on anti-racism and equity in the North York curriculum until her retirement in 2001. As a teacher, Blakey spent years encouraging students to learn and celebrate their cultural identity and heritage by listening to their families’ stories.

“That was really important for me to do that with kids. But the terrible thing is that in all those years that I was encouraging kids to talk about their story, I never once shared my Japanese Canadian story with them,” says Blakey. “But this was 35 years ago. I just couldn’t. It took that long to get over the Sansei identity crisis.”

Blakey grew up denying her Japanese Canadian identity, inheriting feelings of shame following her family’s displacement from the B.C. coast to tireless labour on sugar beet farms in Alberta, where she spent her early childhood. Since 2001, Blakey has tried reconciling this identity crisis by focusing her career on exploring the multifaceted Japanese Canadian experiences of intergenerational healing.

Like much of Blakey’s recent works, Kimiko’s Pearl tells an intergenerational story. While exploring painful points in Japanese Canadian history, the ballet also celebrates where the community is today. Telling the story across four generations of a family expresses how this history did not happen just in a moment in time but has trickled through generations and is still something that even Yonsei and Goseis are working through and trying to understand, says Blakey.

“While it’s good to tell the story of the past, I think it’s really important to tell the story of those who are Japanese Canadians today,” says Blakey. “I think it’s important that [fourth and fifth generations] feel proud of who they are. And not to forget about these people, who were the Pioneers, the people who built the lives for them.”

When looking at history, sometimes it can feel far away, like a distant past. But by exploring this story through the trials and triumphs of one Japanese Canadian family, it can reach audiences in a way a history book, article, or essay could not, says Blakey.

“I just feel this is a very uplifting experience for me, to tell the story but not make it full of gloom and doom and horror. It’s really about the perseverance and rising above. I think it’s a Japanese characteristic to survive the best way you can and do the best you can to make sure your children grow up without hatred,” says Blakey. “I think you have to love yourself for who you are and where you are.”

Emma Nishimura

A Conflated Terrain, Emma Nishimura. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Kimiko’s Pearl begins with 15-year-old Kimiko discovering an old family trunk, which when opened, unlocks the hidden stories and histories of her ancestors.

Within this story, Toronto-based artist Emma Nishimura saw uncanny echoes of her own story. Nishimura’s creative exploration into her family history began with finding a cardboard box in her mom’s basement in 2008. When opened, she discovered over 200 miniature pieces of clothing made with brown craft paper and five pattern books. The garments were made by Nishimura’s grandmother during a dressmaking course in 1941. This discovery would set Nishimura on over a decade of research and the creation of incredibly intricate, layered, and thoughtful artwork.

“There’s so many things that are the same as my story. It’s kind of uncanny, and that was such a lovely part of the project,” Nishimura tells Nikkei Voice in an interview. “Being of the Yonsei generation and meeting other folks of that generation, there is this kind of kindredness I feel…we’re all navigating this similar history.”

Artist Emma Nishimura. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Nishimura is an award-winning artist who works in a range of media, including printmaking, photography, sculpture, and installation. Through her art practice, she researches and honours the experiences of her family and the Japanese Canadian community during the Second World War. Exploring ideas of memory and loss, family stories, and inherited narratives, Nishimura questions how this history reverberates through generations.

Nishimura created four constructed landscape pieces used in the ballet that explore the relationship and interactions between the sites where these stories occurred and the memories themselves. Two pieces made a decade ago, were created from photos Nishimura took while visiting internment sites in the B.C. interior. Nishimura used photos from Slocan, where her grandmother was interned during the Second World War, printed onto Japanese paper, which she cut into pieces and then reassembled to create a composite version of the landscape. But within the landscape, pieces are missing, blank spaces in the sky and the ground, or even entire mountains missing.

“There’s all of these voids that are very purposeful, thinking about the stories that we don’t know, what we don’t share over time, and how things get fragmented through those generations,” says Nishimura.

Since parts of the ballet take place in New Denver, she used photos from her trip to New Denver to create new, similar landscape pieces for the show. The four pieces show different versions and iterations of similar spaces, but different parts appear, disappear, and reappear in the landscape, highlighting how memory can be fickle. People remember the same experiences differently, stories passed down through generations change over time, and other things are never shared because they’ve been forgotten or are too painful.

“Different people tell stories differently. Different elements are remembered and others are forgotten. So I think playing along those lines of slowly trying to piece something together, but knowing that you can’t ever put it all back together properly,” says Nishimura. “We can do all of this research, and we can try and tell the story, but there’s this real acknowledgment that we’re never going to be able to tell it to tell it completely. Too many years have passed. Too many voices have told different versions. Too many [people are] not here to tell those stories anymore.”

As Kimiko’s Pearl prepares for its world premiere in June, Nishimura hopes audiences can see themselves or their families in this story, and it creates space for them to explore and question their own families’ histories.

“I think being seen is so important for the Japanese Canadian community and to have the story told in this new way, it’s a good thing. The more we talk about this, the more we acknowledge what happened, the hope is that this never happens again. In light of everything that’s happening globally right now, we have to keep talking about this,” says Nishimura. “Yes, it happened a while ago now, but other people are experiencing new things, and the more we can share, the more we can create that space to open up for other people to tell their stories.”

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Kimiko’s Pearl is commissioned and produced by Bravo Niagara!. The premiere will be presented by the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines on June 22 and 23. For more information, visit www.kimikospearl.com.