Kenryu T. Tsuji BORN 1919 DIED 2004 OCCUPATION Buddhist minister, film director and producer
REVEREND KENRYU TAKASHI TSUJI was born in Mission City, BC, and graduated from the University of British Columbia. He attended Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan, as part of his effort to enter the Shin Buddhist ministry. He earned a black belt in judo and received religious ordination from the Nishi Hongwanji sect just before the start of World War II. He was appointed the minister of Hompa Buddhist Temple in Vancouver, BC. However, like all Canadians of Japanese ancestry who lived on the West Coast, in October 1942 he was forced into an internment camp. The 23-year-old Bishop Tsuji was sent to the camp at Slocan, BC, where he was appointed principal of Bayfarm Elementary School. In 1945, after the camp was closed, Tsuji was unable to reclaim his father’s 35-acre berry farm, so he settled in Toronto. He worked on a mushroom farm, washed dishes and worked in a chemical factory to support himself. As other Japanese-Canadians moved to Toronto, Tsuji and others formed the Toronto Buddhist Church, the largest Buddhist congregation in Canada. The next year, he formed Hamilton Buddhist Church and later Montréal Buddhist Church.
Tsuji was appointed national director of Buddhist education for Buddhist Churches of America in 1958 and moved to San Francisco. In 1968, Tsuji was elected the first Nisei, or second-generation Japanese North American, bishop of the national Buddhist Churches of America and became president of the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. He became a film director and producer and created several Buddhist films. He started congregations in Canada and California and, in 1981, at an age when many others would have retired, moved to Virginia and organized the first Shin Buddhist temple in the southeastern United States, Ekoji Buddhist Temple in Springfield. Tsuji was the first Buddhist to be president of the US affiliate of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, serving from 1983 to 1989. He was a guest at an interfaith breakfast at the White House with President Bill Clinton in 1993. Tsuji retired in the fall of 1999, was named Buddhist Churches of America minister emeritus and moved to Foster City, California. RETURN a commemorative yearbook in honour of the Japanese Canadian students of 1942
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