Little Tokyo (; Hepburn; Ritoru Tōkyō), also known as Little Tokyo Historic District, is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America. It is the largest and most populous of only three official Japantowns in the United States, all of which are in California (the other two are Japantown, San Francisco, and Japantown, San Jose). Founded around the beginning of the 20th century, the area (sometimes called Lil' Tokyo, J-Town, or ) is the cultural center for Japanese Americans in Southern California. It was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1995.
History
Origins: 1880s The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 played a pivotal role in the first large wave of Japanese Immigration to the United States, as the Japanese were heavily recruited to serve as 'cheap labor' in place of the now excluded Chinese laborers.
One of the people influenced by this first wave of Japanese Immigration was Hamanosuke Shigeta, a Japanese seaman who settled in southeast Los Angeles, an area which would eventually become Little Tokyo. There Shigeta established the first Japanese-owned business in Los Angeles, Kame Restaurant, along First Street. Attracted by the restaurant and nearby demands for labor, other Japanese immigrant men followed suit as they settled along First Street in nearby boarding houses.
The first Japanese boarding house in Los Angeles was established by Sanjuro Mizuno, who opened the Santa Fe Boarding House in 1898 to cater to Japanese laborers. To accommodate the wave of new immigrants coming to Little Tokyo, other early immigrants opened additional boarding houses.
Initial development: Late 1890s to 1930s By the early 1900s the Japanese population in Little Tokyo had grown to around 3,000. It jumped to 10,000 following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, which convinced many local Japanese to move south to Los Angeles.
In 1907 the Gentleman's Agreement was signed between Japan and the United States in which Japan voluntarily restricted the emigration of Japanese laborers by allowing only families of current U.S. residents to immigrate. In exchange the United States was to ensure that there be no discrimination against the Japanese people. The implementation of the agreement led to an influx of women who joined family or husbands as new brides. This growth in community resulted in the establishment of a commercial district. By 1908 around 90 Japanese-run boarding houses could be found throughout Los Angeles.
In 1909 Little Tokyo was described as "bounded by San Pedro, First and Requena Streets, and Central Avenue. The Los Angeles Times added: "It has a population of about 3,500 Japanese ... there are 10,000 Japanese in the city who make this section their rendezvous."
The area was a magnet for immigrating Japanese until the Exclusion Act of 1924 halted any further migration. Shops were located along First Street, and vegetable markets were along Central Avenue to the south. Japanese Americans were a significant ethnic group in the vegetable trade, due to the number of successful Japanese American truck farms across Southern California.
Institutions, associations, and establishments The Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) congregated in the East First Street area, where the first Japanese institutions, associations, and establishments in Los Angeles were founded. The first Japanese religious institution in Little Tokyo was the Japanese Episcopal Mission of Los Angeles, now Century United Methodist Church, founded in June 1896 by a group of five Issei from southern Japan. Other religious institutions followed: the Koyasan Buddhist Temple (1912), Japanese Union Church (1923), and Hompa Hongwaji Buddhist Temple (1925).
The growing population in Little Tokyo was supplemented by the establishment of primary, secondary, and trade schools. A great number of trade schools in Little Tokyo were sewing schools. The largest was the Rafu Yossai Gakuen, which taught sewing skills to Issei women.
During this time period various newspapers catered towards Japanese Americans in Los Angeles were established. The first Japanese newspaper in the United States was Rafu Shimpo, founded in Little Tokyo in 1903 and which continues to operate.
Also founded during this time were rotating savings and credit associations known as tanomoshiko, which provided funding for emerging business ventures in the quarter.
Community leaders in the 1920s and 1930s established local entities of prominent Japanese American associations such as the Central Japanese Association, Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL), and the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce. Concurrently these leaders worked with Japan to establish kenjinkai, or mutual aid societies, each associated to one of the Japanese prefectures. These associations would provide aid and social opportunities to respective Japanese families who had immigrated from the same prefecture. By 1940 the breadth of kenjinkai covered 40 out of 46 Japanese prefectures.
World War II In 1941 Little Tokyo reached its peak population with approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans. The 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing brought an end to the increase of the population, with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II emptying out Little Tokyo.
Beginning in 1942, when the city's Japanese population had been rounded up and "evacuated" to inland concentration camps, a large number of African Americans from the South moved to Los Angeles to find work in the labor-starved defense industry. This influx from the Second Great Migration almost tripled Little Tokyo's pre-war population, with some 80,000 new arrivals taking up residence. For a brief time the area became known as Bronzeville, as African Americans, and also Native Americans and Latinos, occupied the vacated properties and opened up nightclubs, restaurants, and other businesses. Prohibited from buying and renting in most parts of the city by restrictive covenants, the area soon became severely overcrowded. A single bathroom was often shared by up to 40 people, and one room could house as many as 16 occupants; people frequently shared "hot beds," sleeping in shifts. Poor housing conditions helped spread communicable illnesses like tuberculosis and venereal diseases. Crimes like robberies, rapes, and hit-and-run accidents increased, and in May and June 1943 Latino and some African American residents of Bronzeville were attacked by whites in the Zoot Suit race riots.
In 1943 officials bowed to pressure from frustrated residents and proposed building temporary housing in nearby Willowbrook, but the majority-white residents of the unincorporated city resisted the plans. In 1944, 57 Bronzeville buildings were condemned as unfit for habitation, and 125 were ordered to be repaired or renovated; approximately 50 of the evicted families were sent to the Jordan Downs housing complex. In 1945 many defense industry jobs disappeared, and the workers moved elsewhere in search of new employment. Others were pushed out when Japanese Americans began to return and white landlords chose not to renew leases with their wartime tenants.Nakagawa, Martha. "Little Tokyo / Bronzeville, Los Angeles," Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
Post World War II Following the War many previous Japanese residents returned to Little Tokyo to continue managing businesses by purchasing the Bronzeville business leases. Albeit smaller, a commercial core still managed to exist there. Due to lack of housing in Little Tokyo, many Japanese Americans returning from the camps moved into apartments and boarding houses in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown Los Angeles. Notably Boyle Heights, just east of Little Tokyo, had a large Japanese American population in the 1950s (as it had before the internment) until the arrival of Mexican and Latino immigrants replaced most of them. The post-war Japanese-American population in Little Tokyo had become only one-third of its pre-war figure.
Many Issei and Nisei who had previously owned large businesses or were heavily involved in agriculture now returned with few resources to work in civil service or other simple jobs. Concurrently a large redevelopment plan was put in place to be enacted in the early 1950s, but due to lacks in state funding and wealth in the Japanese-American community following three years of internment the plan fell into stagnation.
Following the construction there of the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in 1953, Little Tokyo's commercial area shrunk by one fourth from its original size. 1,000 residents were displaced to other parts of Los Angeles. The current site of Parker Center, the LAPD's former headquarters, was the original site of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. The south edge of the block where Parker Center stands was part of the First Street business strip of shops. The warehouses and new condominiums to the east of Little Tokyo were once residential areas of the district.
Similar urban development would continue in the 1960s and 1970s, further shrinking the extent of the coverage of Little Tokyo.
1970s to present In the 1970s, a redevelopment movement started as Japanese corporations expanded overseas operations and many of them set up their U.S. headquarters in the Los Angeles area. Named the Little Tokyo Project, this movement resulted in the opening of 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 First Street. The Little Tokyo Project would transform Little Tokyo into its present version: an area bounded by Los Angeles Street, Alameda Street, Third Street, and half a block north from First 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.Zahniser, David (March 15, 2014) "Buildings slated for tear-down were rich part of Little Tokyo history" Los Angeles Times
Land use has been a contentious issue in Little Tokyo due to its history, the proximity to the Los Angeles Civic Center neighborhood, the role of Los Angeles as a site of business between Japan and America, and the increasing influx of residents into the Arts District. Unlike a traditional ethnic enclave, there are relatively few Japanese residents in the area. Even so, the Japanese-American community was politicized by the internment and redress effort, which, along with the global and local growth of overseas Japanese investment, has assured that Little Tokyo has continued to exist as a tourist attraction, community center, and home to Japanese-American senior citizens and others.
During its inception in 1980, 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 a historic district in 1986. In 2004, they helped reopen the Far East Cafe, an acknowledged community hub.
Little Tokyo continues to develop and change with the general development of the greater Los Angeles Area through a range of ordinances, construction, and coalitions. Sustainable Little Tokyo was founded in 2013 as an attempt to guide this development in a sustainable manner. The 2024 announcement of First North Residences and the Go For Broke Plaza, promises to provide essential housing units while serving as a permanent home for the Go For Broke National Education Center, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the courage and sacrifices of Japanese-American soldiers.
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