A non-Japanese Canadian, James Heron has been executive director of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre for 21 years, and co-programmer of 10 Toronto Japanese Film Festivals. He credits the absence of YouTube for his good fortune.

“When I was 24 or 25, pre-Internet, I was reading a novel (by Yukio Mishima) that had scenes of (the Japanese martial art) Kendo in it,” Heron says over Zoom from his office in an otherwise pandemically empty Cultural Centre.

TJFF Grand Prize winner A Garden of the Camellias is a beautiful and sad must-see

“If this had happened now, I would probably pull up a YouTube video of Kendo and say, ‘Okay, cool,’ and that would be it.”

“Instead, I picked up the phone book and the first thing I saw was the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre. And I phoned them and asked, ‘Do you guys do Kendo there?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we have a club.’ And I said, ‘Can I come and watch a practice?’”

Soon he was enrolled, and further, began learning Japanese. He’d recently graduated into a job at a bank, “but I wasn’t particularly suited to it or inspired by it.

“But all of a sudden, I had something where I could say, ‘Maybe this is my thing.’ So, I went to Japan and was there for 11 years until the late ‘90s when I came home.”

Now fluent, Heron found work counseling companies on Japanese business protocols. “Then the opportunity came up at the Centre, and I said, ‘I’m not Japanese or Japanese-Canadian,’ and they said, ‘No, we’re open. Please apply.’

“I did, and it’s been the defining piece of my career.”

Under his tenure, the Cultural Centre moved from its original 25,000 square foot facility in Don Mills to a nearby 113,000 sq. ft. former printing facility.

Its jewel was the Kobayashi auditorium, where some of Japan’s most famous filmmakers and actors have taken bows over the past decade.

This year’s TJFF is virtual, of course, running from June 5 to June 27. And it’s available across Canada. Depending on what happens with COVID protocols, there are plans to do a follow-up series of films with audiences at the Kobayashi in October.

It’s a solid line-up of films, including one stand-out from the Toronto International Film Festival. Under the Open Sky is an elegiac film by Miwa Nishikawa, a bout a former Yakuza hitman (Kôji Yakusho) who is released from prison after many years to a life under scrutiny that is like prison without the walls.

It is one of two similarly-themed films about the Yakuza at the TJFF. A Family, by Mitsuhito Fujii follows the gangster career of a street punk (Go Ayano) who is “adopted” by a Yakuza patriarch (Hiroshi Tachi) into the philosophies of what turns out to be a dying Japanese crime tradition.

But the winner of the festival’s grand jury prize is A Garden of the Camellias, an exquisitely shot film by photographer Yoshihiko Ueda about an elderly widow (Sumiko Fuji) who has recently lost both her daughter and husband, and shares her brilliantly lush seaside grounds and modest house with her American-raised granddaughter (Shim Eun-Kyung).

“I really like that film,” Heron says, “because of the concept of ‘mono no aware’ – the unavoidable impermanence of things in the material world. It’s why cherry blossoms are so important in the Japanese culture and why seasons are important in the Japanese mind.”

What’s missing for now, of course, is the festival’s longtime intimacy with Japanese stars. Heron says it crossed a tipping point in 2015. “One director I really admire, Masayuki Suô, had had a big hit in Japan in 1996 called Shall We Dance?, starring his wife Tamiyo Kusakari.

“In 2015, they put out a film called Lady Maiko, which is sort of a Japanese remake of My Fair Lady, but it was based on geisha, and it was a musical. They both agreed to come. It was our first combination of a big Japanese director and a really recognizable Japanese star. And people flooded the Kobayashi Hall.

“From that point on we started to get not only great directors but really recognizable Japanese actors and actresses. That created huge excitement among the Japanese population here, because they were going to see Odagiri Joe or they were going to see Takumi Saitoh

“Some people even flew from Japan for the screenings, because it was an opportunity to get closer to the stars than they would at home.”

Heron is also looking forward to getting back to Japan. Each year pre-pandemic, he and artistic director Aki Takabatake would go there to scout films and renew contacts.

“So much of Japanese business is face-to-face. “You have to go meet with film companies and keep the relationship strong,” he says.

The Toronto Japanese Film Festival streams online from Sat., Jun. 5 - Sun., Jun. 27.

Toronto Japanese Film Fest: James Heron's Hollywood Nippon adventure goes cross-Canada (virtually)

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