Lillian Yano Blakey is a third-generation sansei Japanese Canadian artist and teacher whose works assert her identity and serve as powerful forfms of anti-racist resistance through artistic storytelling. She is a past President of the Ontario Society of Artists, with paintings currently in the collections of the Government of Ontario and the Nikkei National Museum in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Lillian’s dual Japanese and Canadian identities have battled one another throughout her life: “On the one hand, I inherited the strong feelings of shame that Japanese Canadians experienced following the repressive actions of the Canadian government in World War II. On the other hand, there is the fact my family members have been loyal Canadians for over 100 years, and I have nothing to be ashamed of. Nevertheless, I grew up denying my cultural roots, my first language and my people” [1]. Lillian’s artistic creations challenge her internalized feelings of shame and showcase the nuances of the Japanese Canadian experience by keeping her family story alive.
https://www.blakeyart.ca/expulsion-1942-1951.php
Growing up in the beet fields of Alberta, Lillian’s childhood was marred by experiences of isolation from Japanese Canadian communities and anxiety about not fluently speaking Japanese as she grew older. The conflict between one’s mother tongue and the dominance of English is common among immigrant children primarily raised in Canada: “While Japanese was my first language, I can remember very clearly when I was about seven years old, that I would never speak Japanese again. Even today I can understand a lot, but I can’t speak it.” There is also the lingering fear that even if she were to learn the language today, she would still be perceived as not Japanese enough by the community if her accent sounded like that of a hakujin (white person). Despite her qualms, Lillian is now actively involved with the Japanese Canadian community as she embraces her background: “I’ve come to the conclusion that in order for me to be whole, I have to accept who I am. And who I am is Canadian who is Japanese by heritage.”
The lived tensions of being a sansei Japanese Canadian and reckoning with colonial histories of Internment is realized in Lillian’s artwork. Her pieces address the multifaceted Japanese Canadian experience as potent forms of intergenerational healing, including the necessity of forgiveness: “I’ve gone through the whole journey of accepting who I am and what had happened to my family, and it’s certainly forgiving myself and forgiving Japan for declaring war and forgiving government for what they did to us and so forth. It’s just been a really eye-opening journey because now, I really feel that I’m walking with them –with my parents, with my grandparents –as they’re working in the fields, as they had the terrible living conditions and so forth.”
Archival and healing processes work in tandem for Lillian who also emphasizes the importance of civic engagement and memorializing Japanese Canadian history: “I have to keep on doing this because if we don’t tell the story, or if it’s just one line in a history book, then people don’t really understand the enormity of taking away the rights of citizenship.”
“I have to keep on doing this because if we don’t tell the story, or if it’s just one line in a history book, then people don’t really understand the enormity of taking away the rights of citizenship.”
Lillian Yano Blakey
Before retiring, Lillian was also a dedicated arts educator who teaches using decolonizing, anti-racist and Indigenous methodologies to better support her students and foster a genuine sense of belonging. Her holistic teaching praxis is a form of social activism that encourages students to learn about their identities: “I want to do anything I can to make children love themselves, and to know that education is the only way out.” Much like channeling social activism into her art and storytelling, Lillian also incorporates her experiences with the loss of language into her classrooms: “I try to make sure that children are always proud of where they came from and to not lose the language ever. Because language is the one connection that’s so important if you want to find out anything about your family.”
Lillian explores her family’s relationship with Canada through her art and found that it validated, not diminished, their histories by allowing the public to bear witness to our history. Her mixed media works were featured in the Royal Ontario Museum’s 2019 exhibition, Being Japanese Canadian: Reflections on a broken world. Lillian’s thoughts on shikata ga nai also manifest in her artistic approach as she recognizes that previous generations of Japanese Canadians felt it too painful to openly talk about Internment or the war; instead, they chose to raise their children as Canadians and thus “cannot be brought up to hate their own country.”
However, by depicting her family’s story in her art, Lillian successfully analyzes the community’s intergenerational traumas and relates the Japanese Canadian experience to current political events: “Alienation and persecution continue to be suffered by people all over the world. Many people have come to Canada seeking a peaceful existence in a just society. I hope that my work serves as a tribute to my courageous family who came before me, and as a visual warning that the persecution suffered by any family can be repeated, even in the most democratic of countries – even in Canada – if we are not vigilant.”
Lillian’s reflections on forgiveness and acceptance underscore their importance for telling stories of the Japanese Canadian experience. In December 2020, Lillian published a graphic novel with Jeff Chiba Stearns titled On Being Yukiko, which tells the story of a 12-year-old Japanese Canadian Emma learning about how her great-great grandmother, Maki, arrived in Canada at the turn of the 20th century. It is also a present-day story of mixed race Japanese Canadian identity and a search for belonging. The book is aimed at middle school-aged children and imparts important themes of racism, intergenerational bonding, intermarriage, and embracing identity.
Lillian’s artworks and teachings prove that art is not only an instrumental form of activism and resistance but also helps communities find new depths of intergenerational healing: “This graphic novel, a creative collaboration between a Yonsei artist and a Sansei artist, has united Japanese Canadians in their common pursuit to preserve the Japanese Canadian story for generations to come.”
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Lillian has engaged with numerous creative projects that align with her artistic practice. In collaboration with recently retired teacher Debbie Ishii, she developed a cross – curriculum guide on anti-racism to offer to school boards to accompany ON BEING YUKIKO, which has received the resounding support of Japanese Canadian organizations across Canada via ZOOM presentations. Both Debbie Ishii and Jeff Chiba Stearns have been working extremely hard with teachers in Ontario and British Columbia. Over 6,000 students in B.C. have been introduced to the story through presentations made by Jeff this past spring.
Since 2020, when the graphic novel was first created, the book is now in its third printing. Currently, the it is being introduced to readers in Japan and is available to the New Issei in Canada so that they can appreciate the history of Japanese Canadians in Canada. This book is the single most impactful work that Lillian has undertaken collaboratively.
Also, during the COVID lockdown, Lillian was selected by the co-producers of THE TASHME PROJECT:THE LIVING ARCHIVES, to be one of the fourteen Japanese Canadian artists from across Canada to work collaboratively with another artist in the YUME DIGITAL DREAMS PROJECT to form seven collaborative artistic ventures. Lillian’s partner was recently retired Animation Producer of the National Film Board, Michael Fukushima. Together, they told the story through letters, of two Canadian-born sisters who were separated after the war with Japan ended – one deported with her husband and four children to Japan, the other remaining in slave labour in the sugar beet fields of Alberta. Both undergoing unimaginable hardship thousands of miles apart from one another.
Lillian notes that her work has been dramatically altered by COVID-19, as she is no longer creating small mixed media works; she now works exclusively on abstract shoji paper installations focusing on the long-lasting intergenerational effects of Internment and World War II for Japanese Canadians. On this theme, Lillian created her largest installation to date – ten feet by eight feet — on Japanese shoji paper over the course of four months of the pandemic: “Isolated during COVID-19 in a small condo, I could work on only three feet at a time. Because I could never see the whole piece on the wall, my style had transformed drastically each day. Horror! Start again! Then the work spoke to me. Behold the Black Rain, which fell on Hiroshima three days after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, an allegory of the plague falling on us in 2020, became Silver Lining, a prayer to the future.”
“Isolated during COVID-19 in a small condo, I could work on only three feet at a time. Because I could never see the whole piece on the wall, my style had transformed drastically each day. Horror! Start again! Then the work spoke to me. Behold the Black Rain, which fell on Hiroshima three days after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, an allegory of the plague falling on us in 2020, became Silver Lining, a prayer to the future.”
Lillian Yano Blakey
The process of creating Silver Lining changed Lillian’s artistic vision “from apocalypse to salvation – the two side panels became symbolic of hope, the rain changing to silver, pushing out the black rain. This, too, shall pass.” These projects reflect the intergenerational and emotional themes embedded in Lillian’s overall body of work that have helped shape the Japanese Canadian artistic landscape. Lillian’s work “TAKING THE NANCY” (from Being Japanese Canadian: reflections on a broken world) was featured at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec as part of their “Lost Liberties” exhibition in 2022.
Lillian is on the creative team for a new ballet KIMIKO’S PEARL, which tells the story of the Ayukawa family. Lillian will be designing work which will form the backdrop for the scene on the Sansei dilemma. The world premiere of the ballet will be on June 23 and 24, 2024 in St. Catharine Ontario.
In June 2024, three of Lillian’s works from the permanent collection of the Nikkei National Museum will be shown in the CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM’S Women Artists and War.
Key Themes: art as activism, storytelling, identity, forgiveness, self-acceptance, family
Interview conducted on May 30, 2019 by Izumi Sakamoto and Ai Yamamoto.
Check Out Lillian’s Website Here
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References
Lillian Yano Blakey. Japanese Canadian Artists Directory. (2023, May 17). https://japanesecanadianartists.com/artist/lillian-michiko-blakey/