This painting is inspired by the historic Vancouver Asahi baseball team and the history of Japanese athletic clubs based in the US. These clubs served Japanese communities with the opportunity to play sports. Most commonly these clubs had baseball teams but some American clubs also included other spots like football. This painting imagines an alternate history in which Japanese Canadians were not forcibly removed from their homes during internment and the community continued to flourish. The imagined hockey team symbolizes what could have been and what opportunities where lost.

Kellen Hatanaka

Message

Follow

Kellen Hatanaka is a visual artist based in Stratford, ON. His work has been presented and distributed in a multitude of forms across Canada and internationally in the United States, including public painted murals, gallery and museum exhibitions and has been featured in publications including Victory Journal, ArtMaze Magazine, and Graphite Journal. In 2016 he was awarded the Governor General’s Award with Jon-Erik Lappano for their book, Tokyo Digs a Garden.