image: This is a collage of images related to Japanese migration to Canada with the title of the essay in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia.
Credit: Collage created by Masumi Izumi at Doshisha University, Japan. Photograph of the Vancouver Asahi players in 1915. Photographer: unknown. Photograph of Mikio and Kazuko Ibuki in the Slocan internment camp, BC. Courtesy of Mikio Ibuki. Photograph of an internment camp for Japanese Canadians. Photographer: Jack Long. Photograph of the plaque of the Tashme internment camp. Photographer: Masumi Izumi Photograph of Japanese Canadian cultural activists (Mayumi Takasaki, Tamio Wakayama, and Rick Shiomi with Masumi Izumi). Photographer: Emily Anderson. Photograph of the Nikkei Legacy Park, Greenwood, BC. Photographer: Masumi Izumi.
“Japanese Migration to Canada, 1877–1988,” a new reference essay by Masumi Izumi, was published in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies in April 2026. As part of the expanding Oxford Research Encyclopedia series, the article offers a sweeping and deeply researched account of Japanese migration to Canada from the arrival of the first documented migrant in 1877 through the Canadian government’s formal redress settlement of 1988. Drawing on decades of scholarship in migration studies, Asian American/Asian Canadian history, and trans-Pacific studies, Izumi’s essay situates Japanese Canadian history not as an isolated ethnic narrative, but as a central chapter in the broader history of settler colonialism, labour migration, citizenship, and civil rights in North America.
Beginning with the rise of labour migration to British Columbia in the late nineteenth century, the article examines how Japanese migrants worked in fisheries, logging camps, mines, and agricultural industries while establishing enduring trans-Pacific family and community networks. Rather than portraying migration as a one-way process, Izumi emphasizes the ongoing circulation of people, ideas, and economic ties between Japan and Canada.
The article highlights the development of vibrant prewar Japanese Canadian communities through businesses, schools, newspapers, religious organizations, and mutual aid societies. Special attention is given to the role of women and families in stabilizing immigrant life and shaping the emergence of Canadian-born Nisei generations. At the same time, Izumi demonstrates how anti-Asian racism and exclusionary policies profoundly shaped Japanese Canadian experiences throughout this period.
A central section of the essay examines the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 23,000 Japanese Canadians during World War II. Izumi documents how families were uprooted from the Pacific Coast, dispossessed of homes and businesses, and confined in camps and interior settlements under wartime emergency measures. The article underscores the lasting consequences of these policies. Importantly, the article refuses to frame Japanese Canadians solely as victims. Izumi foregrounds the resilience, political activism, and community rebuilding efforts that emerged both during and after incarceration. She explores how Japanese Canadians challenged state policies, rebuilt institutions after the war, and pursued redress for historical injustices.
The article culminates with the landmark 1988 redress settlement, in which the Canadian government formally apologized and provided compensation to surviving victims of wartime dispossession and incarceration. Izumi presents this moment not only as a milestone in Japanese Canadian history, but also as a defining episode in global debates over citizenship, minority rights, and state accountability.
A professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Izumi has written extensively on Japanese Canadian activism, wartime incarceration, civil liberties, and Asian North American social movements. Izumi argues that the Japanese Canadian experience remains a critical historical warning about how democracies can suspend civil rights under conditions of fear and political pressure. The article serves as a valuable teaching and research resource for students and scholars in migration studies, Canadian history, Asian diaspora studies, settler colonial studies, and transnational history.
The full article, “Japanese Migration to Canada, 1877–1988,” by Masumi Izumi, is available through the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies.
About Professor Masumi Izumi from Doshisha University, Japan
IZUMI, Masumi, Ph.D. is a professor of the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies and the director of the International Institute of American Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. Her main research interest is Japanese migration to North America, particularly focusing on the wartime uprooting and incarceration and the postwar community rebuilding. She authored The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s (Temple UP, 2019, selected “The Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, 2020”). She also published the first comprehensive history of Japanese Canadians in Japanese, Nikkei Kanada-jin no Ido to Undo: Shirarezaru Nihon-jin no Ekkyo Seikatsu-shi (Takanashi Shobo, 2020, recipient of the 2021 Pierre Savard Award of the International Council of Canadian Studies). She translated from Japanese into English The Tule Lake Stockade Diary, a prison diary written by Tatsuo Ryusei Inouye during his incarceration (1943-1944) in the Tule Lake Segregation Center (accessible from the UCLA Asian American Studies Center website).