After 200 film and TV roles, Hiro Kanagawa embraces his cultural identity at Stratford
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But the actor and award-winning playwright, who wrote the stage adaptation of Mark Sakamoto's memoir Forgiveness and has two roles in the production currently at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, said for the most part he's avoided work related to his Japanese-Canadian identity.
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'In some ways, Forgiveness is a return or entry into it,' Kanagawa said in a Zoom call from the Stratford Festival where the play runs through to Sept. 27.
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The play tells the story of Sakamoto's maternal grandfather Ralph MacLean, who was a prisoner of war in Japan in the Second World War, and his paternal grandmother Mitsue Sakamoto, who was sent to an internment camp in Alberta, and what ensues later when their children fall in love and the families learn to forgive.
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'The play is absolutely relevant now,' Kanagawa said, reflecting on deportations in the United States and divisions in society.
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And for Kanagawa, who was born in Sapporo, about 1,170 kilometres north of Tokyo, being surrounded by other Japanese-Canadian artists in the production has been both healing and inspiring.
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Kanagawa's early life was peripatetic, more of which later, but he ultimately settled in Vancouver in 1990 and did a master's of fine arts in interdisciplinary studies at Simon Fraser University. That's where he wrote his first full-length play.
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'The theatre department seemed like the place to make my home during that period, so that's really how I began my career as a playwright,' he said. 'Around that same time, the film and TV industry was really kicking into gear in Vancouver and I very quickly started getting work …
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'I woke up one day and there I was — I'd made a living and raised a family and had a career,' the 61-year-old, who has two children with Tasha Faye Evans, said modestly.
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He's had roles in everything from The X-Files to Altered Carbon. His screenwriting credits include story editing on the critically-acclaimed Canadian series da Vinci's Inquest and Blackstone. His plays, Tiger of Malaya and The Patron Saint of Stanley Park have been performed across the country and Indian Arm scored him the 2017 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.
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'A lot of it was not by design, I kind of just went with the flow to some extent,' he said.
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