East of the Rockies is a Canadian mobile augmented reality video game application, produced by the National Film Board of Canada and released in 2019. [1] Written by novelist Joy Kogawa based partially on her novels Obasan and Itsuka, [2] the project tells the story of Yuki, a young Japanese Canadian girl in the 1940s who is caught up with her family in the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. [3]
The character of Yuki is voiced by Kogawa's granddaughter, Anne Canute. [3]
The application was released to the Apple Store in March 2019 for iPhones and iPads running iOS 12 or higher. [2] A "pop-up experience" version of the application was also screened at the 2019 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. [3]
The project won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Video Game Narrative at the 8th Canadian Screen Awards in 2020. [4]
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. The overlaid sensory information can be constructive, or destructive. As such, it is one of the key technologies in the reality-virtuality continuum.
The Hidden Fortress is a 1958 Japanese jidaigeki adventure film directed by Akira Kurosawa, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It tells the story of two peasants who agree to escort a man and a woman across enemy lines in return for gold without knowing that he is a general and the woman is a princess. The film stars Toshiro Mifune as General Makabe Rokurōta and Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki while the peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, are portrayed by Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara respectively.
Joy Nozomi Kogawa is a Canadian poet and novelist of Japanese descent.
From 1942 to 1949, Canada forcibly relocated and incarcerated over 22,000 Japanese Canadians—comprising over 90% of the total Japanese Canadian population—from British Columbia in the name of "national security". The majority were Canadian citizens by birth and were targeted based on their ancestry. This decision followed the events of the Japanese Empire's war in the Pacific against the Western Allies, such as the invasion of Hong Kong, the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the Fall of Singapore which led to the Canadian declaration of war on Japan during World War II. Similar to the actions taken against Japanese Americans in neighbouring United States, this forced relocation subjected many Japanese Canadians to government-enforced curfews and interrogations, job and property losses, and forced repatriation to Japan.
Obasan is a novel by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. First published by Lester and Orpen Dennys in 1981, it chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War from the perspective of a young child. In 2005, it was the One Book, One Vancouver selection.
Marpole, originally a Musqueam village named c̓əsnaʔəm, is a mostly residential neighbourhood of 23,832 in 2011, located on the southern edge of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, immediately northeast of Vancouver International Airport, and is approximately bordered by Angus Drive to the west, 57th Avenue to the north, Ontario Street to the east and the Fraser River to the south. It has undergone many changes in the 20th century, with the influx of traffic and development associated with the construction of the Oak Street Bridge and the Arthur Laing Bridge.
Keram Malicki-Sánchez is an actor, musician, writer, filmmaker, interactive media and virtual reality developer, multimedia artist, and event producer.
The Naver Corporation is a South Korean internet conglomerate headquartered in Seongnam that operates the search engine Naver. Naver established itself as an early pioneer in the use of user-generated content through the creation of the online Q&A platform Knowledge iN.
Japanese Canadians are Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of British Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them living in and around Vancouver. In 2016, there were 121,485 Japanese Canadians throughout Canada.
AKQA is a digital design and communications agency owned by WPP. It was founded in London in 1994 and expanded internationally in 2001 through a merger with agencies based in the United States and Singapore. It operated as an independent agency until 2012, when it was acquired by WPP. Initially the firm focused on technology and digital projects, later broadening its focus on design and innovation to services including product and spatial design. In 2020, WPP announced it was merging Grey Group with AKQA to create the AKQA Group. The resulting agency has around 6,000 employees in 50 countries.
Monica Sone, born Kazuko Itoi, was a Japanese American writer, best known for her 1953 autobiographical memoir Nisei Daughter, which tells of the Japanese American experience in Seattle during the 1920s and 1930s and in the World War II internment camps, and is an important text in Asian American and Women's Studies courses.
The Asahi was a Japanese-Canadian baseball team of amateur and semi-professional players that was based in Vancouver from 1914 to 1941. The team won many league championships, particularly in the 1930s.
Allegiance is a musical with music and lyrics by Jay Kuo and a book by Marc Acito, Kuo and Lorenzo Thione. The story, set during the Japanese American internment of World War II, was inspired by the personal experiences of George Takei, who starred in the musical. It follows the Kimura family in the years following the attack on Pearl Harbor, as they are forced to leave their farm in Salinas, California and are sent to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in the rural plains of Wyoming.
Toca Boca is a Swedish children's mobile video game developer. The company is owned by Spin Master and is based in Stockholm, Sweden.
White Cat Project is a free-to-play action role-playing game developed and published by Colopl for Android and iOS. It was initially released in Japan on July 14, 2014. An English version was released internationally under the title Colopl Rune Story and operated from July 23, 2015, to October 7, 2016. A spinoff title, White Cat Tennis was released on both iOS and Android on July 31, 2016, while the upcoming sequel Shironeko New Project will be released on the Nintendo Switch at a later date.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is a cloud gaming service as part of Xbox offered by Microsoft Gaming. Initially released in beta testing in November 2019, the service later launched for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on September 15, 2020. Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming is provided to subscribers of Ultimate at no additional cost. Xbox Cloud Gaming operates by linking the device to a remote server in the cloud.
Cindy Mochizuki is a multimedia Japanese Canadian artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. In her drawings, installations, performance, and video works created through community-engaged and location-specific research projects, Mochizuki explores how historical and family memories are passed down in the form of narratives, folktales, rituals and archives. Mochizuki's works have been exhibited in multiple countries including Japan, the United States, and Canada. Mochizuki received MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the School For Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 2006. She received Vancouver's Mayor's Arts Award in New Media and Film in 2015 and the VIVA and Max Wyman awards in 2020.
Gordon Goichi Nakayama was Japanese Canadian Anglican priest, author and pedophile. He was active in his ministry in Western Canada and the Pacific Rim for 62 years from 1932 to 1994. G.G. Nakayama has been the subject of controversy surrounding the Anglican Church and their handling of child abuse claims. In 2015 the Anglican Church of Canada revealed that it had received a written confession from Nakayama of his abuse in 1994, and apologizing for withholding the information from the public and the police for over 20 years.
Peter Knegt is a Canadian writer, producer, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of four Canadian Screen Awards and his CBC Arts column Queeries received the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.
The Book of Distance is a Canadian virtual reality documentary film, directed by Randall Okita and released in 2020. Made for the National Film Board of Canada, the film is an animated immersive environment placing the viewer inside the context of Okita's grandfather Yonezo Okita's experiences during the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II.