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Title: “Portrait of Cana, Mata, and Myea Okamura.” Collection: Banno Family Collection. Repository: Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. Accession Number: 2016.30.1.1.1. Year: 1920. Photo courtesy: NNM.

BURNABY — As the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (NNMCC) continues work on our digitization project, Behind the Lens: The Okamura and Banno Families, we are finding more items and stories to share from the Banno Family Collection. This project is possible thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Project and the Government of Canada.

Title: ” Portrait of Cana, Mata, and Myea Okamura.” Collection: Banno Family Collection. Repository: Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. Accession Number: 2016.30.1.1.1. Year: 1920. Photo courtesy: NNM.

One of the members of this family is Paul Louis Okamura, one of the earliest Japanese Canadian artists, whose daughter Mata married Dr. Edward Banno. Paul Louis Okamura was born Tsunenojo Okamura in 1865 in Tokyo, Japan. He attended the Technical Fine Arts School at Tokyo Imperial University, studying under Italian professors, where he learned Western artistic techniques.

After several years in the United States, Okamura immigrated to Canada in 1891 and was hired as a Professor of Drawing at St. Louis College and St. Ann’s Academy in New Westminster. He soon turned his artistic skill to photography and opened a studio, attracting clientele from Caucasian and Japanese Canadian families alike.

Okamura would operate his photography business in New Westminster and Vancouver until his death in 1937.

In 1912, Okamura married Misao Sugiyama, and they had three daughters: Cana, Myea, and Mata Okamura. This item in the collection is a photograph of their daughters taken by Paul Louis Okamura.

It is particularly treasured as, while many of Okamura’s portraits of his Caucasian clients can be found in British Columbia archives, few of his photographs of Japanese Canadians have survived, as historian Jim Wolf has researched.

Another item in the Banno Family Collection that we are still processing is a photograph album owned by the Okamura family that contains several of Paul Louis Okamura’s photographs of his family. We are looking forward to exploring this album further and finding more of Okamura’s skillful work to share.

Explore more of Paul Louis Okamura’s photographs in our collection at www.nikkeimuseum.org.

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THIS ARTICLE WAS REPRINTED FROM NIKKEI VOICE’S HOLIDAY 2023 ISSUE. SUBSCRIBE OR DONATE TODAY TO HELP SUPPORT OUR NEWSPAPER.