Tairiku Nippō (Continental Daily News)

The Japanese-Canadian newspaper Tairiku Nippō (Continental Daily News) was published in Vancouver between 1907 and 1941. The paper, predominantly written in Japanese, was an important source of information for Japanese immigrants to British Columbia. The Nippō sheds light on the Japanese-Canadian community previous to the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Therefore, the newspaper is relevant to those researching Japanese Canadians and Canadian history more broadly, as well as immigration history, multiculturalism, Asian Studies and the impact of war. 
 

In addition to news stories, the Nippō includes advertisements for Japanese-Canadian businesses that were later forced to closed as a result of the internment, as well as religious (both Christian and Buddhist) announcements and community event notices. There is no equivalent newspaper or resource about pre-war Japanese-Canadian society. The University of British Columbia Library owns the only known collection of the Nippō, and the digitization of the paper was funded by the University as part of its Japanese Canadian Student Tribute, honouring the 76 Japanese-Canadian students who could not finish their UBC degrees or were not able to attend graduation ceremonies as a result of the 1942 internment. The family of Yasushi Yamazaki, who founded the Nippō, kindly granted the UBC Library permission to make the newspaper available online.

UBC Library gratefully acknowledges Professor Norifumi Kawahara’s research team at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan for supplying much of the rich metadata made available here. By scouring the content of the issues in order to list key terms and major titles, Professor Kawahara’s team has enhanced researchers’ ability to find articles through keyword searching, something that would not be possible otherwise given the limitations of optical character recognition for this type of material.

Assistant Professor of Teaching Ayaka Yoshimizu, as part of her “Sex and Migration in the Transpacific Underground” website, has made a series of translations of the newspaper entitled “Exploration of Devil Caves | 魔窟探検記.” These translations “…contain detailed stories of Japanese migrants operating and working at brothels at the turn of the 20th century in Canada.”