Ken Adachi (1929 – February 9, 1989) was a Canadian writer and literary critic, who was associated with the ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'''s literary section from 1976 until his death. Born to

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese immigrants in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Adachi was

interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

with his family at Slocan during World War II. Following the end of the war, Adachi became editor of the ''New Canadian'', a Japanese Canadian newspaper formerly edited by Tommy Shoyama, and studied

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. He subsequently taught at the University of Toronto from 1958 to 1971, and at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

from 1964 to 1968. He then joined the ''Toronto Star'' in 1972 as a copy editor, rising to become editor of the books section in 1976. That same year, he also published the book ''The Enemy That Never Was'', a history of the Japanese Canadian community which was later hailed by Robert Fulford as the definitive book on Japanese history in Canada. Adachi was fired from his position with the ''Star'' in 1981 after a

plagiarism Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...

accusation, although he was soon rehired as a book reviewer and literary columnist. He remained associated with the ''Star'' until 1989, when he committed suicide after a second accusation that he had plagiarized three paragraphs from a 1982 book review in ''

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

''. His widow Mary Adachi, remains active in Canadian literature as a book editor.

Select works

* Adachi, Ken. (1976)
''The Enemy that Never was: A History of the Japanese Canadians.''
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

References

External links

Ken Adachi profile at ABCBookWorld
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adachi, Ken 1929 births 1989 suicides Canadian male non-fiction writers Canadian literary critics Historians of Canada Japanese-Canadian internees Writers from Vancouver Suicides in Ontario University of Maryland, College Park faculty University of Toronto alumni University of Toronto faculty 20th-century Canadian historians Canadian writers of Asian descent

Select works

See also

References

External links