Hamilton-based dance artist Mayumi Lashbrook identifies herself as Yonsei. This means that she is a fourth-generation Japanese Canadian.
Like many other Yonsei, Lashbrook’s family roots go back to B.C.’s West Coast. Her great-grandmother and grandfather lost all their possessions simply on the basis of their ethnicity during the Second World War. This history informs Lashbrook’s intergenerational, full-length dance-theatre work Enemy Lines.
“My grandfather is in his 90s. I was spending time with him and noticing some of his fears and disconnection from folks,” Lashbrook tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom. “I started questioning, ‘I wonder why that is?’ And it really brought up an understanding of this history that my family has gone through—and his experiences in the internment.”
She adds that the more she discovered, the better she understood herself. The Firehall Arts Centre will present Enemy Lines in Vancouver in partnership with Powell Street Festival from Wednesday (May 6) to Sunday (May 9).
Lashbrook choreographed this work, which she describes as a nice balance between abstract and linear storytelling. There is some dialogue but it’s rooted in contemporary and modern dance, movement-based theatre, and performance art. Lashbrook is also part of the five-person ensemble with Michael Mortley, Lucy Rupert, Denise Solleza, and Gerry Trentham.
“I think dance fans will get a lot out of it, and also, folks looking for a story to follow through a more theatrical lens,” Lashbrook says.
Lashbrook found great-grandmother’s letters
Her family’s story will feel familiar to other Yonsei. After immigrating to Canada from Japan, Lashbrook’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived on a farm in New Westminster. Her granddad, Tatsumi Sumioka, is Nisei (second-generation Japanese Canadian). He had three siblings when their father died shortly before the Second World War.
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Canadian government incarcerated 22,000 Japanese Canadians living near the West Coast, including 11-year-old Tatsumi. Most were shipped to internment camps in the B.C. Interior but others ended up as farm labourers on the Prairies.
When the war ended, the Canadian government repatriated about 10,000 Japanese Canadians back to Japan. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time because the country was in the grips of famine. Tatsumi accompanied his mother to Hiroshima—a city that had been devastated by nuclear bomb attack just a few months earlier.
In Enemy Lines, Lashbrook discovers a trunk, which transports her back in time to become her great-grandmother. This character experiences the internment and dispossession. Then repatriation returns Lashbrook to the present as she grapples with how her family’s experience affects her today.
“I actually used my great-grandmother as the inspiration, as much as I really started with the spark from my grandfather,” Lashbrook explains. “It became clear that if I was going to tell the story, it needed to be from a female perspective.”
During the show, she includes her great-grandmother’s letters from the internment, which she discovered in the Landscapes of Injustice Archive at the University of Victoria. Lashbrook also visited the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver and Sunshine Valley Tashme Museum in Hope to ensure that Enemy Lines is authentic.
“There was so much research that went into it,” Lashbrook says. “I read every book, probably, that I could have about the internment.”
Lashbrook acknowledges that she’s really interested in the history of Japanese Canadians. But she felt that it was also important to create a piece that resonates nowadays in an era of rising hate crimes. She hopes that it appeals to non-Japanese Canadians who have felt “othered” at times in their lives.
“I wanted it to be universal,” Lashbrook states.
Racial reckoning drives interest in family histories
Enemy Lines is being staged in the heart of what was once the historic Japanese community of Paueru Gai in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. As for Tatsumi, he returned to Canada at the age of 19, settling in Toronto. He never returned to the West Coast.
Lashbrook’s great-grandmother remained in Hiroshima for several more years before joining her son and other family members in Canada.
During her interview with Pancouver, Lashbrook mentions that the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 has led to a racial reckoning. She believes that this is driving more people to try to understand their family histories, including Yonsei.
To cite one example from her family, Lashbrook points to her own name. She says that after all the racism that her grandfather endured, he didn’t feel comfortable giving a Japanese name to his daughter. But Lashbrook’s mother, Nancy, didn’t feel so restricted, which is why she named her daughter Mayumi.
“I find that folks love my name and are excited that it is Japanese,” Lashbrook says. “I really feel that in the generational shifts when I look at my family in that way.”
The Firehall Arts Centre will present Enemy Lines in Vancouver in partnership with Powell Street Festival from Wednesday (May 6) to Saturday (May 9). For tickets and more information, visit the Firehall Arts Centre website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
