Vancouver Japanese Language School and Hall

The Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall, is a building complex on the northwest corner of the intersection of Alexander Street at Jackson Avenue in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, B.C. The historic place includes the two-storey language school classroom portion of the historic 1928 Japanese Hall building and the five-storey addition built in 2000 that includes language school classrooms and the replacement for the 1928 hall.

The School has been formally designated as a heritage building by the City of Vancouver.

The Vancouver Japanese Language School (VJLS) has cultural, historic and aesthetic value, particularly as an early, prominent, and enduring Japanese institution in the historic Powell Street area of Vancouver.

The VJLS is one of B.C.'s most historic community institutions serving the vibrant Japanese Canadian community before their forced removal and internment away from the coast in 1942. Founded in 1906 by Japanese Canadian immigrants, the VJLS is historically and culturally significant for being the first Japanese language school in Canada, with a student population of over 1000 students at the outbreak of World War II.

The school has cultural and social value for being representative of many such schools in the province that were a fixture in the daily lives of a majority of Japanese Canadian children, who attended the schools after regular English public school in small and large B.C. towns with Japanese Canadian enclaves. As a rare remaining language school building it provides tangible evidence and representation of the 28 nominated language schools that were built across the province in large and small communities. Together, these schools display the settlement patterns of Japanese Canadian immigrants in the province, who usually settled where they could find employment in waterfront and other industries such as fishing, fish canning, boat building, lumber milling and farming. It is significant as one of the only properties restored to any Japanese Canadian organization or person after being confiscated during the World War II.

The VJLS has social value as a grassroots, community organization that has operated for over a century, and continues to promote education, culture and community. It is currently home to the VJLS's vital early childhood education program, Kodomo no Kuni, which exposes pre-schoolers to a language and culture-enriched day-school program.

The VJLS has aesthetic value for its materials, construction, and design with a simple form and restrained decoration that bridges Canadian and Japanese aesthetics. The cast-in-place concrete perimeter walls, Douglas Fir framing and finishing, and remaining original interiors are important for their simplicity that is characteristic of the modern construction of the time and for revealing maintenance of the building by generations of community members.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

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