Through this website, we hope to engage new audiences and educate visitors on the historic legacies of Japantown communities across the state and the vibrant communities of the three remaining Japantowns in California.

We share our work on Preserving California’s Japantowns, the first statewide project to document historic resources of pre-World War II Japantowns. We have completed reconnaissance-level surveys in over forty communities that begin to answer the questions: "Where were California's many other Japantowns? And what remains of them?" We have discovered hundreds of places across the state with historic resources that can reweave Japanese American history back into the communities they helped to build.

We invite you to explore San Francisco's Japantown through our interactive map as the community celebrates its 100th anniversary in the Western Addition. A virtual tour of San Jose's Japantown is now online with an interactive map of Little Tokyo Japantown to be featured soon, as we share information about efforts to preserve and plan for the future of these invaluable cultural and community resources.

The term “Japantown” encompasses a wide range of communities, from large Nihonmachi in metropolitan areas that include numerous community institutions and businesses to rural Japantowns with relatively small populations and more limited community facilities.

Historically, most Nihonmachi included one or more of the following institutions and services: community halls, language schools, bathhouses, Buddhist temples, Christian churches, markets, nurseries, and other Nihonmachi businesses.

“In Japantown, we felt comfortable,” said Joe Tondo in Generations: A Japanese American Community Portrait (2000: 15).

All across California, there were once urban or suburban Japantowns like Sacramento and San Mateo, agricultural communities like Cortez and Guadalupe where Japanese became farm laborers or truck farmers, coastal towns like Monterey and Terminal Island where the Issei worked as fishermen or in fishing canneries, and towns on the delta like Walnut Grove and Isleton, where Japanese went in search of work on the Central Pacific Railroad.

The three Japantowns in San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles that remain in the state of California are home to many community and cultural organizations, festivals, religious institutions, retail shops, and restaurants that reflect their history and culture. These Japantowns are the last of the major Japanese communities to survive the demolition during urban renewal in the 1950’s and 1960’s and the forced evacuation and incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. They provide a true sense of place for Japanese Americans today.