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= Heritage Language in Toronto - Japanese =

Brief History of the Japanese Immigrants to Canada
The wave of immigration from Japan has begun fur from the late 19th century started with Mr.Manzo Nagano, who settled along the west Canada from 1877 and worked in the fishing industry. With the growth of supply industry economics along 1901, a number of 4,738 Japanese settlers have also arrived in Canada seeking for an occupation. With the professional fishing and agricultural skills practiced in homeland, these settlers worked with a purpose to grant their family extra living incomes. The initial wish of the Japanese immigrants were to work temperately for a low cost, but as many workers has collected enough funds and bussiness knowedlge, they started self-employing companies focusing in fishing, lumbering and goods trading affairs. This change has became the cause for the Japanese's settlers permanent settlement in Canada.There are mainly 23,149 Japanese immigrants by 1941, where a large portion is occupied by second and third generations of Japanese. Unfortunately, with the outbreak of World War II, the Japanese immigrants faced the force from government to relocate their homes. In 1942, about 23,000 Japanese immigrants were relocated in eastern British Colombia and the Prairie after the Dominant Government has announced the evacuation. This move not only cause a big loss of the settler's property, but also has broke the relation link in between members of the same heritage language speaking community. When the Second World War has begun 1944, Canada's Prime Minister Mackenzie King has officially announced the 'dispersal policy', with a purpose to have the concentrated population of Japanese immigrants to be fully distributed across the country in order to prevent the case of racial hostility against non-Japanese Canadians. Following 1943, there are 1,084 Japanese immigrants who decided to have their new home settled in Manitoba, while another 1,650 have moved to Ontario, where later became most populated of the Japanese evacuees with increased number of 8,581 persons. After the world war, along with the 'Immigration Regulation', Canada has descended its discrimination against Japanese-speaking immigrants and welcomes many skilled workers and family immigration.

Immigrants in Toronto
There are mainly three groups of Japanese immigrants in Toronto who have been divided according to individual’s social, economic and historical backgrounds.
 * Prewar immigrants


 * Post-war immigrants

The prewar immigrants in Toronto were originated from the evacuation and the 'dispersal policy'. Although Toronto holds the name for 'city with the most concentration of Japanese immigrants', the settlers tend to have a low residential concentration, and they rarely participate in communicating with other same-origin immigrants. However, the second generation of these immigrants have became the pioneer for establishing Japanese- Canadian communities. Due to the immigration restriction proposed by the Canadian Government during 1930 - 1956, a huge social and economical gap was created between the prewar immigrants and the postwar immigrants in Toronto. These postwar immigrant did not suffer as much disaster from the government as the prewar immigrants. They were raised in homeland Japan with a post war recovering and developing environment. This has resulted in that most new immigrants after the war are urban-immigrants who came from cities with advanced economic and industry institutions. During the period, there were 72.3 percent of the postwar immigrants who are employed, and a number of 14.4 percent who are self-employed. Contrary, there were only 1.6 percent of postwar immigrants who are unemployed. The average age of the immigrants was 31.7 years old with a general age range from 26 - 50 years old, and the majority of the population mainly ranged from 26 - 40 years old. Figure 1 also studies the education level in Japan educational institutions of immigrants who came to Toronto; about 72.3 percent of the surbey participant were employed while the other 14.4 were self-employed. This data suggests that a professional skill of being able to comprehend English is crucial for the Japanese immigrants to have a stable occupation and income in Toronto. Although the prewar and postwar immigrants differ by their social historical status, they share a similarity of dispersed population which is seen as a characteristic of immigrant pattern rather than the result of government force.
 * Japanese citizens with oversea business or family

Japanese Language Education
Although Toronto is a city with greater population of Japanese immigrants, these settlers are dispersed among the region. According to a survey conducted by Toronto Board of Education, within 121 public school, all schools had no more than 12 students whose heritage language is Japanese.

However, in order to maintain offspring’s ethnicity and heritage language as Japanese, the first Japanese language school in Ontario was established in 1949 with the name Toronto Japanese Language School and has later expanded into two branch schools. During the late 1960s to early 1970s, the number of Japanese immigrants has again increased due to the improvement of immigration law and reasons of having business branch in Canada. As the result of wanting to keep their heritage language, many of these immigrants chose to sent their children to the Toronto Japanese Language School.

In the beginning of 1971, a new educational institution has been established by groups of businessmen with the name The Japanese School of Toronto Business Association, dedicated for Japanese Language speakers and teaches the same curriculum as of schools in their homeland Japan. However, due to the disagreement to the Toronto Japanese Language school that Japanese was taught as a second Language, new immigrants from Japan founded another school for those who holds their heritage language speaking skills. This school has opened in 1976 and is called Toronto Kokugo Kyoshitsu (Toronto Japanese classroom).

Despite the fact that the number of students in the Japanese school has increased, there are groups of parents opposing the idea of participating in the heritage language education.

As a part of the expansion, another Japanese language school The Heritage Japanese Language School has begun working under the name of the Board Education in City of North York in 1981. By this time, the total number of Japanese language schools sums up seven of them.

Language Vitality
Language vitality is a theoretical framework for the better understanding of the relationship between language, ethnicity and the intergroup relations. The three main categories under Language Vitality include Status, Demography, and Institutional Support.
 * Status - Status can be understood as the reputation or importance of a linguistic group within a society. "What kind of role does Japanese plays in the Japanese Canadian’s life?" could be a really good question we need to think about. Have to say, nowadays, a large number of Japanese Canadian are orient to marrying outside their own ethnic group in GTA. As a result, the interracial marriage creates a new group and a new generation of Japanese with less physical appearance similarity and cultural identification than their elder generation. In fact, more and more new generations of Japanese Canadian youths are more rooted their experience from the environment they grew up, the surround people around them at school and the friends in the different racial group. This situation may step by step fade the status of Japanese in the society and also their ethnic group. On the other hand, the society of Japanese Canadian is keep trying to maintain and enhance the status of Japanese by opening language schools, holding culture festival, etc.
 * Demography - Demography is the population, characteristic and distribution of a linguistic group in a given area. Toronto, a big city in North America with a large population of Japanese Canadian. There are several different Japanese Canadian communities in different parts of Toronto. They run the almost same flavor sushi bar or restaurant, have same custom and culture, speak some Japanese, etc., that’s something easy to be observed. However, every different community has the different Japanese language schools. The first Japanese has been record in Toronto is in 1973, up to now, there are 88 preschool, 346 elementary, 95 middle school and 42 high school in GTA. Although the speech behavior have more or less different between the speaker in different communities. Still, the only thing we have to admit is no matter what community they are belong to, they are use their way to maintain their language. Japanese is a chain and the root of common to connect every Japanese Canadian together.
 * Institutional Support - Institutional Support are supports provided by the community to better maintain the vitality of a linguistic group. There are some community centres, government funded language school, etc. locate in Toronto. These language schools welcome not only the Japanese Canadian, but also the other racial from the Toronto. These institutions spread Japanese languages and cultures to the people from preschool to senior in the society. These institutions are also rise some part of their funds from the social donations.

Japanese in Present Toronto
It is understood that no matter which generation the children are from, the difficulty in maintaining and developing their heritage language increases as they enter dominant language schools in the country.

Second- Generation in Maintaning Japanese Heritage Language
It is obvious that the macro factor such as demographic, cultural and society are important in maintaining one’s heritage language. But for the second-generation where these macro factors are not in favour, in order to maintain their heritage language, the micro factors will be more important. Those factors can be interactions among people, family environment, and attendance to institutional support. These micro factors are especially helpful in maintaining and developing young students knowledge in their heritage language.
 * Parental Role - One of the most important factor affecting second-generation learner are their parents. Parental roles is crucial for the development of heritage language. In a study conducted by Miwa Tonami, it stated that if parents view the developmental of heritage language as helpful and positive, it is more likely the child will decide to keep learning and develop their heritage language. Also, the consistent usage of Japanese at home will help the second-generation to better lay their foundation for further study of the language.
 * Attendance of Japanese Language School - In order to maintain a heritage language, literacy device of such language need to be learned, and this kind of skills is better to understand in a school environment. Weekend School or any kind of language school provides further help on the development of Japanese based on the foundation made at home. Since second-generation still have direct access to the language, it will be easier for them to get grasp on the literacy part of the language. It is notable by the parent that the influence made by the school has greatly promoted the linguistic development.

Third-Generation Japanese in Toronto
Most third-generation Japanese will speak English due to the macro factor of the environment, but they still face major challenge when it comes to ethnicity issue. One of the major issue faced by the third-generation of Japanese heritage speaker is the conflict between their ethnic identity and the language they speak. Since cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge can be viewed both as separate or interconnected, this brings difficulties to the third generation of identifying themselves in multiple cultural and language setting. The language gap between first and third-generation Japanese also brings conflict to whether the third-generation should keep practicing their heritage language or not. In a research conducted by Okuno Aoi, it stated that whether a third-generation identify them as Japanese, Canadian or Japanese-Canadian is highly dependent on people’s characteristic, although the data shows more third-generation identifying them as Japanese-Canadian, there are still exceptions.