Remembering Families, Futures and Hearts at Bowen Road Cemetery

Re-membering Families, Futures, and Hearts was a gathering with Japanese graves at Bowen Road Cemetery in Nanaimo (Snuneymuxw Territory), May 14, 2023. The artists aimed to create a space and time for long-separated spirits to re-unite, through the temporal presence of our gathering, and to nurture long-lasting awareness.

Photo by Tadafumi Tamura. A stone sits in the grass between two grave stones.
Photo by Tadafumi Tamura. A stone sits in the grass between two grave stones.

The ceremony featured Tadafumi Tamura’s poetry, dedicated to the event, Ayaka Yoshimizu’s ethnographic research, and audience participation, in creating a portal for this special union and engaging in placing stones between the graves.

Photo by Tadafumi Tamura. In a black dress, Minah squats and places a stone in the green grass between two limestone gravestones. A Stone fence crosses in the the background.
Photo by Tadafumi Tamura. Minah places stones between grave markers to acknowledge both unmarked graves and the families that were forced to leave their loved one's graves behind.

Tami Hirasawa’s speech introduced the Central Vancouver Island Japanese Canadian Cultural Society and 7 Potatoes, a contemporary Japanese Canadian society in Nanaimo, and their links to the pre-war Japanese community.

Video by Robert Hewer and Makoto Kubota. Edited by Robert Hewer.

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