A quiet courtyard space at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, is photographed on April 26, 2023. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
On a recent spring day at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the cherry trees were in bloom, obscuring the low building behind a haze of the palest pink. Visitors bustled about, both outside and inside, where the centre offers everything from classes in eight different martial arts to the annual Japanese film festival. A coming concert with the sought-after young Japanese pianist Kyohei Sorita in the centre’s 500-seat concert hall is already sold out while a major exhibition by Toronto photographer Shin Sugino, the JCCC’s contribution to the city-wide Contact photography festival, has just opened.
The JCCC celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, its kanreki, a milestone in Japanese culture considered to be the completion of a life cycle and a rebirth. The unusual Toronto institution, an arts centre almost entirely funded by the community, has emerged forcefully from the pandemic but not without some difficult contemporary decisions and painful reminders of past sacrifices too.
The JCCC was established in the early 1960s by 75 families from the generation of Japanese-Canadians who had been interned by the Canadian government during the Second World War. Required to resettle east of the Rockies, many had come to Ontario after the war and built successful new lives, but they felt prejudice persisted.
“Toronto was a cold, administrative city,” said Chris Hope, chair of the JCCC board. “The community wanted to push back against the prevalence of anti-Japanese racism.” Getting a bank loan seemed unlikely so the families mortgaged their own houses as collateral. “There are literally 75 signatures as guarantors,” he said.
The group then commissioned a young Japanese-Canadian architect and former internee to design a building on a site in North York; it was Raymond Moriyama’s first major commission. The project, a low and long rectangle of concrete and wood that skilfully integrated a Japanese aesthetic into European modernism as it inserted the building into a ravine site, would announce the arrival of an important new talent. The JCCC’s current documentary display about the anniversary features a photo of the fresh-faced Moriyama unveiling a model of his proposed design.
A pagoda nestled between cherry trees at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The centre, operating by 1963 and officially opened by prime minister Lester B. Pearson in 1964, was a success, drawing together the Japanese community and other Canadians in appreciation of Japanese-Canadian heritage. As a non-profit arts centre, it is unusual in not receiving government operating funds – although it does get programming grants – relying instead on community fundraising, volunteerism and venue rentals to make up its $3.5-million budget. While it continues to mount exhibitions about the immigrant experience, it has recently broadened its mission to include all Japanese culture.
But its growth over the years has also entailed a difficult decision: By the 1990s, the centre had outgrown the Wynford Drive building and that site would have made expansion prohibitively expensive.
“The difficult decision was made to sell the building,” Hope said. “The original centre was the crown jewel of the Japanese-Canadian community. It was built to represent elements of the experience of immigration and internment. It’s a wonderful building. … Because the building represented so much to the first and second generations of Japanese-Canadians who put their souls into, the third generation proposed to raise money for the new building without touching the proceeds of the sale.”
The board organized a separate capital campaign to construct a larger building on nearby Garamond Court – it opened in phases from 1999 to the early 2000s – and the money from the sale of the old building created an endowment fund for the JCCC. It was that endowment that saved the centre during the pandemic when 70 per cent of its revenue evaporated: On the proverbial rainy day, it dipped into the fund, borrowing $1-million to cover operating costs.
Today, the painful irony is that the old building is now threatened with near-total demolition. It was sold to the Lakhani family, Ismaili-Canadian philanthropists who turned it into the Noor Cultural Centre. That Islamic cultural organization closed its physical premises during the pandemic and now operates online only. The building has been sold to developers whose plan for condo towers would retain only some panels from the old JCCC façade and wings.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, Moriyama’s second big commission, the Ontario Science Centre, appears threatened by Premier Doug Ford’s scheme to move it downtown to Ontario Place and build housing on the site. Dark clouds gather over the Japanese-Canadian community’s architectural legacy, but Hope is unperturbed.
“The old building holds so many happy memories but the approach of the board is to support the community and the community is not linked to a piece of real estate. We are so much more vibrant than a building.”
So, the new JCCC roars into its 61st year with concerts and classes, and the cherry trees will bloom again next year.