"After All Our Efforts at Good Citizenship": Propriety, Property, and Belonging in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, 1940s.

This article examines how property ownership functioned as a key site for claiming and performing citizenship in early twentieth-century Canada, focusing on the case of a Japanese Canadian family, the Takahashis, who protested their wartime dispossession. Situating their appeals within the ideals of Canadian urban reformers and property theorists of the 1920s and 1930s, the article reveals how property remained culturally significant for asserting national belonging despite legal separations from citizenship and pervasive racial exclusion. The Takahashis’ performance of property—through their well-maintained home and garden in Victoria, British Columbia—aligned with dominant notions of “proper” citizenship and garnered rare governmental recognition, including a reassessment of their property’s value during forced sale. However, their case also underscores the racialized hierarchies embedded in Canadian citizenship and property regimes, illustrating both the limited avenues available to marginalized groups and the ways such claims could inadvertently reinforce exclusionary systems.