Finding Japan: Early Canadian Encounters with Asia

In contrast to the widely known experiences of Asian immigrants who came to Canada, this book looks at movement in the opposite direction. Using text and images, it is a collection of stories about how Canadians “found Japan,” the first place they reached when travelling westward across the Pacific.

These connections began as early as 1848, when the adventurous son of a Hudson’s Bay Company trader tempted fate by smuggling himself, disguised as a shipwrecked sailor, into the closed and exoti...