Description of Historic Place

Powell Street Historic Japanese Canadian Neighbourhood (Paueru-gai) is a historic Vancouver neighbourhood adjacent to Burrard Inlet and formerly industrial waterfront. The social and commercial centre of this area lay along the blocks of Powell Street from Jackson Avenue to Main Street within the historic neighbourhood situated largely between Cordova and Railway Streets between Main Street and Heatley Avenue.

Little Ginza was the block of Alberni Street between Burrard and Thurlow Streets that thrived in the 1980s and 1990s.

Heritage Value

Paueru-gai, the historic name for the Powell Street neighbourhood used by its early 20th Century Japanese Canadian residents, has historic, cultural, social and aesthetic value as the primary place of settlement of Japanese Canadians in B.C. before their forced detention, deportation to internment and work camps away from the Pacific Coast in 1942, and the associated dispossession of their property.

Major buildings along Powell Street built and/or owned by Japanese Canadians before the dispossession during World War II are evidence of the thriving family-owned commercial and professional economy at the centre of the neighbourhood that by the early 1940s was home for roughly 8,000 Japanese Canadians along with other ethnic and cultural groups. The neighbourhood functioned as a sanctuary outside the dominant society, through day-to-day life, festivals, Japanese language schooling and entertainment, and activities such as baseball games played on Powell Grounds (now known as Oppenheimer Park), political protests, church services and spiritual practices.

A cluster of religious institutions in the neighbourhood with largely Japanese Canadian congregations are a testament to the major pre-1942 Japanese Canadian population in the area, and the important social role these religious institutions played in facilitating the settlement of Japanese immigrants to B.C., and later during their forced resettlement in B.C.'s Interior and east of Rockies in the 1940s.

The neighbourhood is also valued for the social and cultural activity of Japanese Canadians in the area after regaining freedom of movement in 1949. The re-establishment of prewar institutions such as the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Japanese Hall and Vancouver Buddhist Temple are examples of the commitment to rebuilding historic institutions of the neighbourhood following dispossession and deportation. The formation of new institutions in the historic area, such as Tonari Gumi and the Powell Street Festival are evidence of evolving approaches to the post-dispossession and post-dispersal neighbourhood, while honouring its past.

A legacy of Vancouver's earliest history, the neighbourhood is valued for its characteristics as a walkable and human-scaled area with some of the oldest buildings and public space in the city, and as a destination and mini-pilgrimage site for Japanese Canadian from the Lower Mainland, B.C. and across Canada. The individual commercial and cultural buildings of the neighbourhood have aesthetic value for their form, style and detailing that are typical of Vancouver buildings and are therefore important as evidence of Japanese Canadians' success in joining the economy and culture of the province.

Little Ginza is valued as evidence of the significant impact Japanese tourism had on the economy of Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s and as a reminder of the ongoing influence Japan has on the economy and culture of Vancouver and British Columbia. The place also reflects a second wave of Japanese immigration, post-1967, and featured a collection of upscale businesses including food outlets and gift shops, and even a nightclub aimed at Japanese tourists, often selling Canadian-themed omiyage, or souvenirs, such as maple syrup, smoked salmon and seafood products. Today, there are no longer any Japanese businesses remaining in the area.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable