Editor’s note: In anticipation of what we all believe will be a stellar UHA conference this October 9-12 in Los Angeles, we are featuring Los Angeles as our theme this month. This is our fourth post; you can see others from this month as they are published as well as past pieces on the city here. In addition, check here for information on the conference, including accommodations.
By Emi Higashiyama
Charles Darwin might have appreciated Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for its ability to survive. A common misconception of Darwin’s work is the equation of “fittest” as “strong” – when his actual definition of “survival of the fittest” hinged on adaptability. Little Tokyo is the architectural and community embodiment of that adaptability. A neighborhood that began in the early 1900s as an ethnic enclave, and which reached peak geographic expansion and population density during the 1930s, Little Tokyo was decimated by incarceration during World War II, and its community resources were further depleted by 1960s urban renewal policies. Some might argue that the neighborhood never fully recovered. However, survival can be measured in various ways. If land coverage and population size are the only metrics, then Little Tokyo lost the fight. If heritage preservation and cultural influence are the markers, then Little Tokyo has been successful in its persistence and is currently evolving to a new level of natural selection. Having survived three waves of displacement, and now facing new threats from gentrification, Little Tokyo is poised to redefine itself yet again.
When Meiji Japan opened the floodgates of emigration after 265 years of isolationism, an unintended consequence was the plight of the nikkei – the Japanese diaspora, defined by its ability to assimilate into the mainstream cultures of their new destinations. Of the 43 Japantowns that once dotted California, only three remain: San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Among them, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles has long been the oldest and largest cultural center for Japanese Americans in the country. Little Tokyo’s development progressed as follows:
In the historic district, former sailor and cook Hamanosuke “Charles Hama” Shigeta, opened the Kame Restaurant on East First Street in 1884 – making it the first Japanese-owned business and effectively the birth of Little Tokyo. Founded in 1781, Los Angeles was just over 100 years old at the time, and Little Tokyo was situated at the southeastern edge of the city. Large groups of male Japanese laborers settled in boarding houses around East First Street, initially staying as seasonal farm workers.
As the city grew, year-round work opportunities emerged, changing their plans. A 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the US and Japan halted Japanese laborers from immigrating to the US for short-term work – the agreement established preferences for long-term immigration such as wives or children of Japanese men already living in the US. Though aimed at reducing Japanese immigration, it resulted in not only a steady increase of Japanese immigrants, it also inadvertently corrected the extreme gender imbalance of the Japanese American population. In just one decade, between 1910 and 1920, the ratio of Japanese men to women went from 7:1 to 2:1. This more balanced demographic growth meant that by 1940, the neighborhood was not simply a temporary settlement for single male laborers. The ironic net result of the restrictive immigration policies was community consolidation, family formation, and long-term investment. Little Tokyo was transformed from a provisional male labor hub into a self-sustaining microcosm complete with Japanese-owned businesses, language schools, newspapers, restaurants, hospitals, and Buddhist temples – all designed to preserve heritage and culture while marking the Japanese life cycle through health care, rites of passage, and spiritual needs. In 1942, Little Tokyo had a population of about 35,000 people – the largest Japanese community in the country and part of a burgeoning L.A. metropolis that by then was one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
The vibrant Little Tokyo community came to an abrupt halt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. War-induced panic and paranoia tinged with anti-Japanese sentiment resulted in 120,000 of the nikkei population being removed from the West Coast and forced into detention camps. Many argue that this first wave of displacement, which devastated Little Tokyo, was a gutting from which the neighborhood never truly recovered.
However, between 1942 and 1945, something unexpected occurred: Little Tokyo became “Bronzeville” – a predominantly Black community that had, seemingly, supplanted the Japanese American cultural hub. With the war effort raging, people of all races moved to Southern California looking for work opportunities in the defense industry. Los Angeles was a segregated city, even if de facto compared to de jure Southern cities. As a result, African Americans struggled to find housing – but there were vacancies in Little Tokyo while the Japanese American residents were incarcerated. A Baptist church moved into the Nishi Hongwanji Temple, and a social services center led by African American Reverend Harold Kingsley took over the Japanese Union Church. Japanese restaurants were reimagined as breakfast clubs and nightclubs that hosted jazz and bebop legends such as Miles David and Charlie Parker. Other iconic figures, including Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, and heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, frequented the area.
When Japanese families returned to Little Tokyo after the war, Bronzeville’s Black businessmen offered support, helping the Japanese American community rebuild their lives. “Little Bronze Tokyo” emerged as a shared space where both communities began to thrive. In some ways, the Japanese Americans who returned to their altered neighborhood understood that adapting and assimilating was essential to re-establishing their cultural identity.
What may have been an ideal long-term symbiotic relationship was cut short starting in 1953.
In a move that drastically reshaped the neighborhood, Los Angeles city government (through its Community Redevelopment Agency) razed nearly a quarter of Little Tokyo to build Parker Center (the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department). Parker Center occupied what had been the densest commercial and residential corridor for Little Tokyo, thereby economically devastating the Japanese American community.
As a result of this upended landscape, Bronzeville ceased to exist as white landlords started preferentially leasing to Japanese tenants – but that did not mean Little Tokyo prospered. The consequences from being commercially gutted persisted well into the 1960s, reaching a tipping point as urban renewal efforts tore through the neighborhood’s architectural fabric while more than 30% of the population aged into the 65+ years of age demographic. The city began eyeing more property for demolition, in hopes of expanding the Civic Center, which would have wiped out another quarter of Little Tokyo. Interlocking but symbolically distinct nodes of urban power (the Parker Center represented law enforcement whereas the Civic Center represented municipal governance), both architectural beasts would have grown at the expense of Little Tokyo’s existence.
In 1963, Reverend Howard Toriumi of Union Church spearheaded an initiative to resist city destruction of the neighborhood by creating the Little Tokyo Redevelopment Association (LTRA). While not a government entity, the LTRA acted as a neighborhood watchdog to ensure preservation of Little Tokyo’s cultural and economic vitality as a means to promote Japanese American heritage. They prepared a neighborhood master plan for development that the city accepted in principle, but the Civic Center expansion plan was not changed. Included in some of the original plans was a beautification project, transforming an alley into a respectable street with proper lighting and landscaping. The end goal was to acquire property adjacent to the church for expansion, thereby refuting the idea that Little Tokyo was a derelict neighborhood ripe for the taking.
The LTRA eventually morphed into Little Tokyo Community Development Advisory Committee (CDAC), which formalized its standing in 1970. The organization’s remit was to liaise with the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and advocate for Japanese American heritage interests. In other words, as the city government entity that oversaw urban renewal and redevelopment projects, the CRA – while not actively displacing portions of Little Tokyo – was pursuing policy that had an obvious byproduct of displacement. CDAC was an organized, collective response of various smaller-scale protests from Japanese American residents and activists. The imminent threat was constant, however, as plans unveiled by the CRA to extend the Civic Center further into the Little Tokyo historic district. This prompted the Nishi Hongwanji Temple (founded in 1905) – the same institution once occupied by the Bronzeville Baptist church – to move to its current location. The original temple was acquired by the city.
In 1970, the second wave of displacement unfolded when the CRA “adopted” the Little Tokyo Project, formally designating the area for urban redevelopment. The move proved to be the proverbial double-edged sword: On the one hand, it paved the way for the eventual construction of major cultural and community centers (such as the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and the Japanese American National Museum – organizations that would not have permanent homes until nearly a decade after their founding) with promises of housing and commercial buildings. On the other hand, those improvements hinged on the displacement of residents and businesses. Like the Parker Center police complex (which evicted nearly 1,000 residents in addition to wiping out entire businesses), projected developments such as the New Otani Hotel and Weller Court commercial complex required evictions (especially of small business owners and elderly or low-income residents).
Like white blood cells defending against a foreign invader, advocacy groups sprang up in response to these developments. The Little Tokyo People’s Rights Organization (LTPRO) and Little Tokyo Anti-Eviction Task Force challenged and protested against the evictions – reminiscent of the first wave of removal for incarceration, only this time there was community recourse. CDAC joined the fight, taking on a project to find affordable housing for the elderly that would not simply trade one problem for another by placing them in derelict hotels or otherwise unsafe, practically condemned buildings. The Little Tokyo Service Center was formed to provide Japanese-language support for the more elderly, less-fluent-in-English residents of the community so that they could access public health, affordable housing, and social services. While LTSC could help smooth the rough social transitions, it would take a consortium of four other major community organizations (Los Angeles Buddhist Church Federation, Southern California Christian Church Federation, Southern California Gardeners Federation, and the Pacific Southwest District Council of the Japanese American Citizens League) to construct Little Tokyo Towers, an affordable housing project that acutely tackled the problem of displacement posed by the New Otani Hotel.
In retrospect, it is undeniable that while renewal and redevelopment initiatives were ultimately successful in terms of long-term city planning outcomes, those same initiatives were always going to engender displacement as part of the process. As a result, countering that displacement required tremendous, concerted efforts by major community groups working together toward a holistic solution.
While opposition to the CRA’s Little Tokyo Project was loud, most of the community supported and welcomed the promised changes that would revitalize the neighborhood and transform it from a collection of decaying buildings into a more intentional social and cultural hub of the Japanese American community. In other words, while it caused significant disruption and displacement, the projected infrastructural improvements and government-subsidized cultural institutions help make Little Tokyo recognizable today as an intact neighborhood.
These back-and-forth tensions were evolutionary and demonstrate the complexities of urban redevelopment, where efforts to modernize – and preserve heritage – may be seen instead as destructive and destabilizing. Just one example of this somewhat ironic turn of events is the original Nishi Hongwanji Temple, which eventually became the foundational building of the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) campus. The museum, as an organization, struggled in its early years during the 1980s lacking both funding and a site location. Thanks to the CRA, JANM has emerged as a leading Asian cultural institution locally and nationally.
Perhaps the most iconic and architecturally defining example that articulates the Los Angeles Japantown is the Japanese Village Plaza Fire Tower, built in 1978. While the CRA did not directly construct the fire tower, it was responsible for the creation of the quaint plaza that became a new commercial corridor and key Los Angeles landmark. If Little Tokyo was the organism that was facing extinction due to threats caused by CRA/LA, the formation of several separate but tandem advocacy groups collectively and successively negotiated with a rival that ultimately benefited the opposing parties. The mutualism that occurred over several decades was not about CRA overpowering Little Tokyo – it was about cooperation, adaptation, and the benefits that serve both a specific community as well as the wider city at large.
By the 1990s, it was clear that Little Tokyo’s future was dependent on its residents maintaining a united front in order to champion the neighborhood’s interests. The city government proved to be an ally in some moments and an adversary in others; its interests were separate and often at odds with Little Tokyo’s immediate needs. Although the neighborhood’s “fitness” came from its ability to coexist with external pressures – while maintaining its cultural core and sense of identity – it demanded an even stronger internal alliance and strategic partnerships to survive. When the Little Tokyo Community Council (LTCC) was established in 1999, it formally brought together community giants which had been working for decades to better the lives of their neighbors. What set LTCC apart, however, was its broad, inclusive approach to community advocacy. While other groups focused on specific aspects of community life and urgent needs (therefore changing the focus over time), LTCC played a coordinating role to unite various sectors (residential, business, cultural, social) all around preserving Little Tokyo’s identity. Unlike CDAC, which was a city-appointed advisory body with a scope tied to government programs and funding decisions, LTCC was truly a central force in the neighborhood’s ongoing evolution in the face of urban development and growth.
While it is difficult to define the beginning and end of each displacement wave in Little Tokyo – they are often not defined by a single moment but rather a gradual process that evolved over time – the end of the first and second waves can be identified as phases when displacement slowed and there was relative stability thanks to the work of advocacy groups. The third wave, which started in the early 2000s and is arguably ongoing, differs in the intensity and scale of the development unfolding in and around Little Tokyo. In 1999, when the city government passed the Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, it kickstarted downtown LA’s emergence as an attractive development target. This would inevitably affect Little Tokyo because of its location.
What followed was a series of proposed and/or approved building projects that raised alarm bells for various advocacy groups that had formed over the years. The most egregious was the 2003 proposal for a jail to be built next to the Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. With the help of the entire outraged community, the Little Tokyo Community Council successfully thwarted the project. Then in 2009, when LA Metro was mapping out a new connector route, LTCC sprang into action again by negotiating an outcome that would be advantageous for Little Tokyo by two metrics: a route that would not subdivide the neighborhood while still channeling traffic to the Little Tokyo/Arts District to support businesses.
A direct consequence of the Little Tokyo vs. LA Metro saga was the birth of Sustainable Little Tokyo (SLT). An initiative considered long overdue by some, SLT was essentially a shared community vision that covered three work areas: 1) real estate and built environment, 2) educational initiatives and community engagement, and 3) arts and culture. Although the Community Council and Service Center were the two official organizations leading the campaign, the effort naturally involved hundreds of stakeholders — including the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, which served as the official arts organization partner for SLT and had itself emerged from the CRA, the very government agency responsible for the second wave of displacement. Far from a simple, inevitable march toward extinction, the evolution of Little Tokyo reveals an adaptive logic shaped by negotiation, resistance, and the strategic use of spatial and cultural tools. In what might seem to contradict traditional evolutionary models, the third wave of displacement has prompted increasingly intentional, niche-based construction responses. Unlike earlier periods when the community was largely reactive or forcibly passive, since the 2010s Little Tokyo has taken an active role in shaping its ecological conditions—strategically intervening in both the built environment and cultural landscape to guide its own evolution.
The best example of this niche construction is the Terasaki Budokan, a successful project that opened to the public in 2020. A 30-year dream in the making, this multi-purpose sports and activity facility is more than a simple gymnasium concept. The building’s deeper significance lies in its role as a generational fulcrum – ensuring the community’s continuity by engaging all generations, regardless of ethnic heritage. In other words, while the rec center does everything it should from a programming perspective – offering sports facilities, community events, and opportunities to explore Japanese American culture – its true value is found in how it cultivates intergenerational belonging and cultural continuity, fostering a resilient, inclusive community that honors its roots while welcoming a broader future. Ancillary construction projects have added to the physical reclaiming of space while programming initiatives have amplified community connection and solidarity.
On the economic front, the Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund (LTCIF) is addressing a quieter but no less consequential threat to the neighborhood: a fourth wave of displacement. Unlike the overt displacements of the past — forced removal during WWII, urban renewal in the postwar period, and more recent redevelopment tied to transit expansion — this latest wave is less visible but equally destructive. It is characterized by long-term Japanese American residents and small, family-owned businesses being gradually priced out of their rental agreements. Although the neighborhood has seen positive shifts in infrastructure and many legacy buildings appear secure, the businesses that animate those spaces remain endangered. While LTSC can be considered a nonprofit community developer and therefore works with publicly-owned properties, privately-owned properties have always posed additional challenges to neighborhood integrity. Little Tokyo’s inclusion on the National Trust’s 2024 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places underscores the urgency. In response, LTCIF is working to acquire commercial properties to stabilize rents and protect these vital community anchors from being lost to market-driven gentrification.
Although Little Tokyo of Los Angeles is the largest Japanese-American community in the United States, the context of its development and survival expands far beyond ethnic self-identity. As one of the most historically significant Japantowns in America, Little Tokyo is a generally accepted symbol of cultural endurance in the face of adversity. Over decades, it has withstood the pressures of rapid urban density, systemic discrimination, and urban redevelopment.
Left: Taken April 1942 by Russell Lee, Library of Congress.
Middle: Taken May 2005, featuring the “Chop Suey” sign of the Far East Building. Discover Nikkei.
Right: Taken April 2025 by Hiro Koh.
Despite facing repeated threats of erasure, and now facing increased difficulty to expand geographically as well as internal economic challenges, Little Tokyo has thus far managed to maintain its “fitness” – its ability to adapt to shifting external forces, much like species evolving traits that increase their chances of survival in an ever-changing ecosystem. Survival in urban history is not only about dominance, but about negotiating change and conflict. Little Tokyo has had more than its fair share of hardship, and perhaps the coming years may throw more obstacles which test its fitness. If the past is any indicator of Little Tokyo’s future, the neighborhood has proven that it is not static; it will continue to evolve in response to the shifting landscapes of economics, culture, and politics. Critics may fault the generalized Japanese cultural trait of assimilation as the root cause of its self-effacement – that to survive in a mainstream culture, the immigrant subculture needed to blend in to prove its fitness. Yet, Little Tokyo, as an organism, has only resorted to that trait when it was to its advantage. More than a set of brick-and-mortar buildings, Little Tokyo as a community has always retained and protected its identity while adapting to be inclusive and welcoming without losing itself. As the saying goes, “Newcomers and visitors are all welcome… but please take off your shoes.” This ability—for the community to change its form, function, and behavior to remain resilient amid the constant changes and demands of the metropolitan jungle that is Los Angeles—is precisely why Little Tokyo endures.
Emi Higashiyama is a freelance writer who writes about architectural history. Higashiyama has conributed to The Metropole’s recent theme month, The City Aquatic and was a participant in the 2024 Graduate Student Blogging Contest.
Featured image (at top): Japanese Village Plaza Fire Tower, originally built in 1978 (of wood) and rebuilt in 2010 (metal replica). On the side of Miyako Hotel (formerly New Otani Hotel), a 150-foot mural in progress of LA Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani. Photo taken March 2024, courtesy of NBC Los Angeles.
