On Being Gosei: Reclaiming 120 Years of Japanese Canadian History
In 2023, I knew nothing about my Japanese family, despite having a Japanese name and living in a house full of Japanese things. Now, in 2025, it's become my entire life—and potentially my career. This series recounts a life-changing eighteen months in which a visit to the cemetery led me to a genealogy rabbit hole, an award-winning academic project, and a potential future in cultural preservation.
Stories from this series
Part 4—Expanding Horizons
Nov. 8, 2025 • Ava Sakura
Read Part 3 As I began reshaping my feature-length piece for one class, I was working on a large project for another. My elective for the semester was Thinking in Systems, a project-based course with a linked competition portion. While I’d initially focused on my first love, science, I was being tugged—violently—into Japanese Canadian history. Even though I’d spent an entire semester mapping out the intricacies and difficulties of antimicrobial resistance, it was becoming increasingly apparent to everyone that my …
Part 3—The Community
Sept. 29, 2025 • Ava Sakura
Read Part 2 Finding people to interview for my feature piece proved more difficult than I thought. I had no ties to the Japanese Canadian community as a whole, I wasn’t a history or social sciences student, and, despite being neck-deep in the project, there was still that lingering feeling of “I don’t belong here.” That feeling wasn’t new to me. I’d grown up living with my parents and grandparents, and was always cognizant that I didn’t quite look like …
Part 2—Down the Rabbit Hole
Sept. 17, 2025 • Ava Sakura
Read Part 1 I didn’t continue digging into my Japanese Canadian family history for a while after finding their custodian file—for almost another half year, in fact. I became preoccupied with school and work and cancelled my Ancestry trial once it became clear I’d gone through every file with anything remotely similar to my family’s name. Names like the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC) and Nikkei National Museum were vague concepts far off on the horizon, places I’d heard of …
Part 1—Ancestors’ Call
July 7, 2025 • Ava Sakura
Around ten years after my grandma died, I was visiting her family’s cemetery plot and was struck with the realization that I didn’t know any of the names on the gravestones. It was a strange feeling, standing at the cemetery that day. I’d always felt somewhat unmoored, ethnically and culturally; I’m very much mixed and not especially connected to any of my backgrounds for one reason or another. But the other parts of my heritage—Hungarian, African American, colonizer Canadian—have stories, …
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