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In San Jose’s Japantown, local photographer James Nagareda provides a short overview of Japantown history through photographs and accompanying text.

What I liked:

• Although I grew up not far from this Japantown, this is my first time reading any kind of history about it. I especially enjoyed learning about how each generation of nikkei contributed to Japantown in their own way.
• I had no idea Banana Crepe was such a longstanding establishment! I ate at Banana Crepe for the first time about a year ago and loved it, and assumed it was a new place because I never remembered seeing it in my childhood. For better or worse, a good reminder of the limitations of childhood memory.

What I learned:

• I remember Dobashi Market, but I was not familiar with many of the other nikkei-owned businesses which once operated in Japantown. Even with the aid of the photographs in this book, I can scarcely imagine what Jackson Street looked like, once upon a time. I think there is value to recognizing how little we (in the present) can truly understand of the past, even when provided with excellent resources, because it drives home the importance of responsible storytelling and narrative (re)making. In particular, reading this book made me think more deeply about how the contemporary generation of JA writers, myself included, should theorize the (re)telling of our histories, specifically narratives of wartime incarceration. This is not to say we should *not* tell these stories, but rather to highlight the care required to undertake such a project, since we are telling not our own personal stories, but the stories of our ancestors and other community members.
• There were sumo tournaments in San Jose? Really?! I’ve only ever seen sumo on TV during summers in Japan, so this was quite a surprise.

Questions I had:

• Did Nagareda and/or the nikkei who advised him on this project choose to use “internment” or was the term required by the editorial team of the Images of America series, of which this book is a part? I recently learned the National Park Service has, at least on paper, a policy requiring staff to use the term “internment” when speaking with visitors. I’m not sure if the Images of America series receives any federal funding, but if so, I wonder if they have a similar editorial policy.
• Where did the term “J-town” come from? I think I first saw it online but I’m curious to know its history – was it a shorthand developed by nikkei trying to imitate AAVE? Or perhaps as a convenience in social media spaces with character limits? I suppose J-town might also be easier to pronounce for Japanese people unused to English, but I’ve never heard any 日本人 use the term, probably because one can just as easily say 日本町.
• Whether intentionally or not, this book chronicles the evolving relationship(s) between Japan – specifically cultural aspects brought over from Japan – and the local nikkei community. Has any nikkei scholar written a book about this topic, maybe looking at JA/nikkei communities throughout the US? I suppose it would be a social or cultural history, or maybe an analysis of community/ethnic identity formation, depending on the author’s focus. Personally, I would be most interested in reading a nikkei scholar’s analysis of how cultural aspects (language, customs, sports, media, etc.) brought over from Japan have influenced nikkei identity formation(s) over time. I’ll have to take another look at my TBR list to see if I already found a similar book and simply forgot (would not be the first time!).
• Has any nikkei scholar analyzed the connections between Japantowns and nikkei identity? I’m thinking specifically of how definitions of “Japaneseness” are (re)made and (re)translated in Japantown spaces. For example, the Japanese-speaking child of Shin-Issei parents goes into a Japantown shop run by Yonsei, who might only know fragments of Japanese, but who have a much more extensive knowledge of nikkei history in the US, and they start a dialogue about their connections to Japan. Or, a young nikkei student trying hard to learn Japanese goes into a Japantown shop, hoping to reconnect with their heritage in nikkei spaces, only to be greeted by a white (and maybe also weeb) clerk. I suppose this could be interpreted as one particular iteration of the cultural aspects I mention above, but I also see a distinction in that Japantowns have experienced very specific changes over time (in appearance, location, ownership, clientele, etc.) by virtue of their physicality in non-Japan spaces, in a way that, say, something like Naruto has not.*

Follow-up:

• If there are Images of America books for San Francisco Japantown and Little Tokyo, I’m definitely interested in reading them, as long as they were put together by nikkei writers. It would also be interesting to read a history of the now-vanished Japantown in Portland, Oregon, especially if said history was discussed in relation to contemporary perspectives on Portland in Japan, as well as analyses of Portland’s current Japanese community.
• I saw another tweet the other day reminding me what a privilege it is to be able to concentrate one’s advocacy on representation. Although I started this blog mostly for myself, I strongly believe it is important to link issues of representation (specifically, in nikkei media) to broader social issues in the nikkei community, in order to facilitate in-community dialogues about how we can all do our respective work to move forward together. I’m not sure this goal has always been obvious in my posts and will try to do better going forward. Once my job and housing prospects stabilize, I also hope to move beyond this blog and become more actively involved in my local nikkei community.

*That said, as manga/anime continue to increase in popularity outside of Japan, I wonder what sort of ripple effects this will have (and may already be having) on the industry and how long it will be before these effects start to become evident to consumers.