Narrating Japanese Canadians In and Out of the Canadian Nation: A Critique of Realist Forms of Representation

Abstract

During World War II the Canadian government implemented a systematic plan to rid British Columbia of over 22,000 Japanese Canadians. Forty years later, Japanese Canadians mobilized in a movement to demand redress. To make their case, they used realism with its objective research methods to prove that the government’s actions violated their rights. But while realism helped them win their case, this paper claims that there were ramifications. While realism made it possible to narrate Japanese Canadians into the history of the Canadian nation as fully assimilated citizens, this implicitly accepted the nation’s hostile construction of racial others. Through an analysis of the Japanese Canadian film Minoru: Memory of Exile, this paper shows how difficult it is to shed realism once it is institutionalized, underlining the importance of developing a critical awareness of how it operates.