Watari-Dori (Birds of Passage)

Details: Soft cover. 175 pages with glossary of Japanese words.

Price: $15.00 CAD / $12.50 USD

Order Form: For Canada / For U.S.

Description: Watari-Dori is an historical novel of a fifteen-year old Japanese immigrant’s first six months fishing on the Fraser River. Because Miyakichi refused to continue his studies in Japan and instead insisted on becoming a fisherman, his father reluctantly sent for his wife and son to join him in Steveston, BC. Miyakichi fished as a boat-puller with his father during the sockeye salmon season. When his father accepted a position with a boat works, Miyakichi was left with the choice of either being unemployed or fishing the boat by himself.

Review 1: This family tale presents the story of a young man no longer interested in school, with little or no future in the Wakayama Prefecture of Honshu Island, Japan, who has decided to join his father in Steveston and take up the life of a fisherman. The rich details of his life as a novice fisher on the Fraser River are almost a guidebook. I felt like I could go and fish from the Lightship to Canoe Pass. Unfortunately, it would have been in 1915, a year when the salmon fishery was already in decline. Here we learn why. As Miyakichi's story unfolds, we go back and forth from his new life in Steveston to his old life in Japan. We also go back in time through the tales of the fisherman he meets in the community of cannery houses. Back to the Steveston riots of 1900 when troops had to be called out to prevent a strike from turning violent. It is a time of many canneries on the river, and we learn the details of the economic system. We also hear stories from up and down the coast. However, this is not just a long fish story, it is something much more. What we have is a painstakingly detailed work of art that lays bare a young man's hopes, dreams, and aspirations as well as his fears and trepidations. I don't know of another book quite like this one. Not because there are no coming of age narratives - libraries and bookstores are full of them. However there are no others that I am aware of with this set of particularities. It is the particularities that are compelling: the young man with no experience, no physical strength, not even the vocabulary for the new world he enters. Even that is a familiar story, the duck out of water, if you will excuse the pun, is shopworn. As in real estate, it's the location, location, location. It is not remote, geographically, the time is not so distant but it is a different world. Even the food seems unfamiliar, but it makes sense that a Japanese community would adapt, and occasionally have bacon and eggs for breakfast and bento box, lunch and dinner, on the water.

The writing style seems very stylized, the narrator steps forward and identifies the characters fully and describes the action. It seems like a Noh convention adapted to the novel. Once you get used it, though, it rarely intrudes. In fact it becomes a reliable companion, moving the story along nicely. The prose seems to mimic the rhythm of river - currents, tides and wind come and go - but the Fraser has been there for years and will continue for many more. A comforting thought, much in the way this historical novel is comforting. Humans are only a part of nature and one of the things people do is comment on their relationship with nature, naturally. - Reviewed by James Ross. Review appeared in THE VANCOUVER RAIN REVIEW OF BOOKS, May-August 2005, page 8.

Review 2: WATARA-DORI (Birds of Passage) is a biographical fiction of a half-year period (24 June 1915 to 1 January 1916) in the life of a Japanese-Canadian fisher. Mitsuo Yesaki has a thorough knowledge of the Pacific coast fisheries, in particular those in the Steveston area. He is aware of the canneries, the disagreements and strikes, and the racially based legislation that was passed in order to decrease the number of Japanese fishers. Yesaki is the author of Sutebusuton: A Japanese Village on the British Columbia Coast (2003); with Harold and Kathy Steves he co-authored Steveston, Cannery Row: An Illustrated History (1998); and with Sakuya Nishimura he co-authored Salmon Canning on the Fraser River in the 1890s (2000). Yesaki also travelled to his ancestral village in Wakayama prefecture, Japan, where he learned how, for centuries, the inhabitants had fished for sardines, seals, and other marine life. However, by the beginning of the 1900s these inhabitants were finding it difficult to survive. In this latest book Yesaki incorporates this information as he tells the story of what is likely a period in his father's life.

Jinshiro Ezaki, whose surname was registered as "Yesaki" by an immigration officer in Victoria, emigrated to British Columbia in 1900 shortly after the birth of his son, Miyakichi. He had visited his family just once, when Miyakichi was six years old. Jinshiro was the eldest son in an extended family and thus, according to custom, was responsible for caring for his parents, his unmarried siblings, and his wife and son. With what he earned in Canada he was able to provide his family in Japan with a big house. Jinshiro's dream was that his son would be a good, earnest student and, after completing the compulsory six years of elementary school, would go on to middle school and beyond. Jinshiro would have gladly worked hard and sent back money for this purpose. However, Miyakichi was not interested in higher learning and preferred to accompany his grandfather on his fishing boat. In 1915 Jinshiro finally accepted the fact that his son would only be happy as a fisher, and he sent for his wife and son.

In this novel Yesaki tells the story of his ancestral village and of many of its inhabitants, who had emigrated to Canada. He describes the arrival of Miyakichi and his mother to Victoria, their trip to Vancouver, and their travel by tram to Steveston, where Miyakichi immediately becomes a boat-puller (assistant) for his father. It is a difficult learning experience, but soon he begins to fish on his own. Watara-Dori contains a detailed map of the Fraser River delta area, showing the channels, the locations of the canneries, and the tidal zones. Through it, one can readily follow Miyakichi's movements. Miyakichi is daring and independent. By reading the tides, using his compass, and observing points on the shoreline, he is able to fish in foggy weather, when more prudent fishers remain on shore. One of his happiest days occurs when he opens his own bank account; but he is most proud when he is able to give $200 to his grandfather for the family's New Year festivities.

Through the story of Miyakichi's first year in Canada, Yesaki portrays the daily life of the fishers: how they fished, lived on board their boats, and attended to their gear. The cost and effort required to mend and weave new nets becomes evident. He describes the company houses, the outhouses, the Japanese-style bathhouses, the way salvaged logs were sawed and chopped into firewood, the food that was eaten, and the New Year celebrations, when special foods were prepared and the men made the rounds of their friends and neighbours. The women have their work too: in the canneries, on nearby farms, and helping with the nets. These details are all woven into the broader history of Japanese immigration in Canada, and they speak of the gradual change from a sojourner society to a family settlement.

It is unfortunate that Yesaki self-published this book. A number of printing errors and unsatisfactory choices of words and phrases have slipped through. The glossary of Japanese words is particularly disappointing. There are a number of errors that would likely have been corrected by a competent bilingual person. In spite of these drawbacks, Watara­Dori is a valuable addition to a rather scant supply of books on the history of the Japanese in Canada. I hope that Yesaki will write sequels to this story and thus provide us with a much­needed account of later developments in the Steveston area fisheries and in the lives of Japanese Canadians. - Reviewed by Michiko Midge Ayukawa. Review appeared in the BC Studies, The British Columbia Quarterly, Summer 2005, Number 146, pages 120-121.

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