Red and white paper lanterns, brushed with black kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese script), sway gently in the wind above my head among the sturdy ginkgo trees. A sweet biscuit-like scent wafts from Mitsuru Cafe where a fresh batch of imagawayaki – golden pancakes filled with a sweet red bean paste – is steaming by the serving hatch. Slow down to the screams of two little kids running around tall gray rocks, three old men wax lyrical about deliberately steaming bun bites. The scene evokes past memories of my own children, greetings written in colorful origami hanging on fig trees.
I learned this neighborhood was added later The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America In 2024, I was eager to return to Little Tokyo, an integral part of Downtown LA for over 140 years and one of only three Japantowns in the United States, along with San Francisco and San Jose. Today, more than 170,000 Japanese Americans live in Los Angeles, the second largest population of Japanese Americans after Honolulu, although many now live outside of Little Tokyo.
In its heyday in the 1930s, Little Tokyo was bustling with life: a dense, walkable area of Japanese restaurants and bars, Buddhist temples, bathhouses and bilingual newspapers. When a former Japanese sailor opened Kame Restaurant on East First Street in 1884, it became an economic center for immigrants.
Today, at the heart of the Japanese Village Plaza (JVP), Little Tokyo is a much smaller area of just a few blocks. I’m here to find out what threatens this cherished area of LA – and more importantly, if anything can be done to save it.