Japantown, San Francisco

Looking north on Buchanan Street, across Post Street in Japantown.

The main thoroughfare is Post Street, between Fillmore Street (to the west) and Laguna Street (to the east). The Japantown neighborhood is generally considered to be bordered on the north by Bush or Pine Street, and on the south by Geary Boulevard.

Its focal point is the Japan Center, which opened in 1968,[5] and is the site of three Japanese-oriented shopping centers. The San Francisco Peace Pagoda, also at the Japan Center, is a five-tiered concrete stupa designed by Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan.

Built and settled as part of the Western Addition neighborhood in the 19th and early 20th century, Japanese immigrants began moving into the area following the 1906 earthquake.[6] (Before 1906, San Francisco had two Japantowns, one on the outskirts of Chinatown, the other in the South of Market area. After 1906, San Francisco's main Japantown was in the Western Addition, with a smaller one in the South Park area.[7]) By World War II, the neighborhood was one of the largest such enclaves of Japanese outside Japan, as it took an appearance similar to the Ginza district in Tokyo.[6]

Japantown residents being relocated to Japanese American internment camps in 1942, during World War II.

In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced all Japanese of birth or descent, including Japanese American citizens of the United States, to be relocated from the Pacific coast and interned. By 1943 many large sections of the neighborhood remained vacant due to the forced internment. The void was quickly filled by thousands of African Americans who had left the South to find wartime industrial jobs in California as part of the Great Migration.

Following the war, some Japanese Americans returned, followed by new Japanese immigrants as well as investment from the Japanese Government and Japanese companies. However, many did not return to the neighborhood and instead settled in other parts of the city, or out to the suburbs altogether. This was further exacerbated by the city's efforts to rejuvenate the neighborhood initiated by M. Justin Herman in the Western Addition in the 1960s through the 1980s.[8]

In 1957, San Francisco entered into a sister city relationship with the city of Osaka, hence the nickname "Little Osaka". Osaka was San Francisco's oldest sister city.[9] In commemoration of their 50th anniversary, one block of Buchanan Street in Japantown was renamed Osaka Way on September 8, 2007.[10] However, Osaka ended the 60 year relationship in 2018 after then mayor Ed Lee accepted a statue memorializing comfort women in 2017. The statue is currently erected on public property in San Francisco's Chinatown.[11]

Japantown Bowl was founded in 1976 amidst urban renewal in the Fillmore District, San Francisco in the 1970s. When the building was put up for sale, Supervisor Mabel Teng suggested that the city buy the building if negotiations between private investors failed. The JCCCNC offered to buy the building but was rejected. It was the largest of the three remaining bowling alleys in San Francisco when it closed in September 2000.[12][13][14] The lot has since been converted into mixed use housing units.

A pair of cherry blossom trees were planted by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) outside of the center in 1994 to commemorate a visit by Emperor Emeritus Akihito and Empress Emerita Michiko of Japan during their 2-week tour of the United States. However, the trees were hacked down over the course of three days by vandals in January 2021.[15]

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, malls in San Francisco were ordered to remain temporarily closed whenever cases got too high within the whole city. This, in effect, have forced restaurants in the neighborhood, many of whom reside in Japan Center, to turn to a take-out/delivery only model. The JCCCNC have organized socially distanced outdoor seating and ordering areas in the Peace Plaza, however some businesses have still remained closed for duration of the pandemic and have reported losses of 50%.[16]

The five-tiered concrete Peace Pagoda at Japan Center.

Dancer at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival (1990s).

The area is home to Japanese cuisine (and some Korean and Chinese) restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks, and other shops, including one of the few U.S. branches of the large Kinokuniya bookstore chain. Most of these businesses are located in the commercial Japan Center of the neighborhood, in a large shopping mall built in the 1960s as part of urban renewal efforts and is run by Japanese retailer Kintetsu.

The San Francisco Police Department Northern Station serves Japantown.[20]

• 49-Mile Scenic Drive
• History of the Japanese in San Francisco
• Japanese American internment
• Japanese American National Library
• Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California
• Japantown — for other Japanese neighborhoods
• Kinmon Gakuen
• Neighborhoods of San Francisco

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Japantown, San Francisco.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Japantown.

• Discover San Francisco Japantown
• Japantown Task Force, Inc.
• Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California
• Google Maps view of the Peace Pagoda
• SFcityguides.org: free walking tours of Japantown
• Nihonmachi Street Fair
• Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival
• Japantown Cultural Heritage and Economic Sustainability Strategy (PDF) (Report). San Francisco Planning Department. October 2013. Retrieved May 1, 2018.