Little Tokyo is an ethnic Japanese enclave in downtown Los Angeles. Founded around the beginning of the 20th century, the area, sometimes called Sho-Tokyo, Lil' Tokyo, Japantown or J-Town is the cultural center for the Japanese in southern California.
At its peak, Little Tokyo had approximately 30,000 Japanese living in the area. While a shadow of what it once was in terms of population (only about 1,000 mostly elderly Japanese-Americans actually live there now), Little Tokyo is still the undisputed cultural focal point for Los Angeles's Japanese population (the largest in the world outside of Japan). It is mainly a work and entertainment district, because the Japanese today live in areas such as Torrance and Gardena (cities just to the south of Los Angeles City).
What is left of the original Little Tokyo can be found in roughly four large city blocks. It is bounded in the west by Broadway Street, in the east by Alameda Street, in the south by 3rd Street, and in the north by Temple Street. More broadly, Little Tokyo is bordered by the Los Angeles River to the east, downtown Los Angeles to the west, the L.A.. City Hall and Parker Center to the north, and the newly named Artist District (made up of warehouses converted into live-work lofts) to the south.
Attractions
The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center is located in Little Tokyo, as well as the Japanese-American National Museum, the only museum of its kind. The extension of the Museum of Contemporary Art, formerly called the Temporary Contemporary and now known as the Geffen Contemporary (named after David Geffen), is also in Little Tokyo. The East West Players, the nation's first Asian American theater, specializes in live theater written and performed by Asian American artists. There is also the Japan America Theater, which features plays and musical performances.
The Nisei Week festival is held every August, and includes a large parade, a beauty contest, athletic events, exhibits of Japanese art and culture, a taiko drum festival and other events. The LA Tofu Festival is also held in Little Tokyo every summer.
Little Tokyo has quite a few public sculptures and artwork, including a monument to Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka, a Japanese-American from Hawaii who was a Mission Specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger when it exploded during takeoff in 1986. There are also two Japanese gardens in the area open to the public—one is next to the Japanese American Community and Cultural Center and the other is a rooftop garden in the New Otani Hotel.
There are several Buddhist temples in the area and a few Japanese Christian churches. Also, one of the roots of Pentecostalism started in Little Tokyo. Where the Japanese American Community Cultural Center Plaza is now located was once the home of the First Pentecostal Church, a multiracial congregation called the Azusa Street Mission. This is where the Azusa Street Revival started in 1906. Earlier, it was also the site of the First AME Church.
There are numerous Japanese restaurants, catering to both Japanese and non-Japanese clientele. Many of them specialize in one type of Japanese cuisine, such as Donburi, Japanese noodles (both soba and udon) or Japanese curry. There are also a number of Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is often grilled on a small grill built into the center of your table.
Little Tokyo has several shops that specialize in Japanese-language videos and DVDs, while other shops specialize in Japanese electronics and video games (a great way to find Japanese video games that were never translated into English).
The Weller Court shopping mall, besides having several restaurants, also has a large bookstore, Kinokuniya , which is part of a well-known Japanese bookstore chain. They have a large selection of Japanese-language books, magazines, J-Pop music CDs, manga and anime. They also have a nice selection of English-language books on Japanese subjects such as haiku, as well as translated manga and anime.
Weller Court also includes a number of shops specializing in expensive name brand products such as Coach handbags that target tourists visiting from Japan.
The Little Tokyo Shopping Plaza is located in roughly the center of Little Tokyo. There are several restaurants in the plaza, plus a number of shops geared towards tourists.
History
The original boundaries of Little Tokyo extended east and south of the present location, and covered approximately one square mile. The area was a magnet for immigrating Japanese until the Exclusion Act of 1924 halted any further immigration. Shops were along First Street. Vegetable markets were along Central Avenue to the south, and Japanese Americans were a significant ethnic group in the vegetable trade, due to the number of successful Japanese American truck farms across Southern California.
The internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War emptied Little Tokyo. For a brief time the area became known as Bronzeville as African Americans moved into the vacated properties, and also opened up nightclubs and restaurants. After the interment ended the Bronzeville residents moved to other areas.
After the war, due to lack of housing in Little Tokyo, Japanese Americans returning from the camps moved into areas surrounding the downtown, into apartments and boarding houses. Notably, Boyle Heights, just east of Little Tokyo, had a large Japanese American population in the 1950s.
In the late 1970s a redevelopment movement started as Japanese corporations expanded overseas operations and many of them set up their US headquarters in the Los Angeles area. Several new shopping plazas and hotels opened, along with branches of some major Japanese banks. Although this redevelopment resulted in many new buildings and shopping centers, there are still some of the original Little Tokyo buildings and restaurants, especially along 1st Street.
During the 1970s and 1980s, artists began to move into nearby aging warehouse spaces in the area, forming a hidden community in the industrialized area. Al's Bar, Gorky's, the Atomic Cafe, and LA Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) are some well known sites.
Land use has been a contentious issue in Little Tokyo due to its history, proximity to the Los Angeles Civic Center, the role of Los Angeles as a site of business between Japan and America, and increasing influx of residents into the Artists District. Unlike a traditional ethnic enclave, there are relatively few Japanese residents in the area because of evacuation and internment. Consequently, Little Tokyo, like all Japanese-American urban enclaves, are constantly threatened with development that could eradicate the enclave. Conversely, because the Japanese-American community was politicized by the internment and subsequent Redress and Reparations effort, and because of the global and local growth of overseas Japanese investment, Little Tokyo has resisted eradication, and has continued to exist as a tourist attraction, community center, and home to Japanese American senior citizens and others.
The current site of Parker Center, the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters, was the former site of the Nishi Hongwangi Buddhist temple. The area south of the site was part of the First Street business strip. The warehouses and new condominiums to the east of Little Tokyo were once residential areas of Little Tokyo. The Weller Court mall was opposed by some people in the community because it redeveloped a strip of family-owned small businesses. Community activists established First Street as an historic district in 1986, In 2004, they helped re-open the Far East Cafe, an acknowledged community hub.
The original Roman Catholic cathedral of Los Angeles, St. Vibiana's Cathedral, is just to the west of Little Tokyo. It was heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
External links
Last updated: 06-02-2005 14:47:12
