Reclaiming cultural ties

Enjoying chili rice, Asian hip-hop and traditional martial arts, Japanese Americans threw a daylong party in Little Tokyo on Saturday to reassert their cultural identity and rebuild cohesion amid the powerful forces of assimilation and gentrification.

In demographic trends familiar to other established ethnic groups, Japanese Americans, known as Nikkei, are increasingly intermarrying, moving to the suburbs and loosening their ethnic affiliations. As a result, institutions in Little Tokyo are scrambling to figure out how to recapture their interest and lure them back to the community’s historic heart. It is one of only three Japantowns left on the West Coast.

On Saturday, dozens of community organizations held a book fair, children’s sports events, a discussion forum and two cultural festivals, including the first Nikkei Community Day to bring scattered Japanese Americans back home, so to speak, for at least one day.

“We just want to keep Little Tokyo. If we lose it, it’s gone forever,” said Bryan Takeda, president of the Nikkei Federation, a network of 16 community organizations.

Only about half of Southern California’s 230,000 Japanese Americans live in Los Angeles County; among them, 19% described themselves in the 2000 U.S. Census as multiracial or multiethnic, the highest rate among major Asian American groups.

For some institutions in Little Tokyo, the situation is stark. At its peak, the 27-year-old Japanese American Cultural & Community Center on San Pedro Street had about 5,000 members, but it lost nearly half of them before beginning a turnaround in the last year or so, according to executive director Chris Aihara.

Other institutions in the area also lament a declining donor base, saying that younger Japanese Americans do not contribute as much as the first-generation Issei pioneers or their second-generation offspring, the Nisei. Among the Pasadena Japanese Cultural Institute’s 400 paid members, for instance, 80% are Nisei in their 80s, Takeda said.

“In times of adversity, the Issei generously supported their community institutions, but the core of pioneer supporters is gone,” Aihara said. “The younger people are less connected.”

Meanwhile, Little Tokyo is being transformed by major residential and retail developments that are hiking property values and bringing scores of non-Japanese residents and businesses into the area.

The trends have sparked an urgent community conversation -- and a flurry of initiatives -- aimed at reunifying Japanese Americans and preserving Little Tokyo’s century-old history and traditions.

At a forum on the community’s future, longtime activist Alan Nishio told an audience of about 75 people that the community could thrive if it widely embraced all, including multicultural families, straight and gay Nikkei as well as English- and Japanese-speakers.

“People have questions about whether our community in fact has a future,” said Nishio, board president of the Little Tokyo Service Center, a social services agency. “I think yes, if we choose to define Nikkei as one that embraces diversity and inclusion.”

Nishio used his family as an example of the rapidly diversifying community. He told the audience that he was born in the Manzanar internment camp in 1945, the son of two Nisei parents and grandson of immigrants from Hiroshima. He married a Chinese American, Yvonne Wong. Their multiethnic daughters both married men with multicultural backgrounds -- one Thai and white, the other Chinese and Filipino.

Under narrow ethnic definitions, Nishio said, his children and grandchildren would not qualify as Japanese Americans. “We have to extend our definitions and make sure we welcome everyone,” he said.

That wide embrace must include newer Japanese immigrants who may not be fluent English-speakers or familiar with such defining experiences as the World War II internment, several speakers said. The older Nikkei, who predominantly speak English, and newer Japanese-speaking immigrants often lead parallel lives that must be bridged for the community to thrive, said Tatsuhiko Wakao, president of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Southern California.

The Nikkei Community Day was the brainchild of a group of Japanese Americans who began meeting a decade ago to talk about the community’s future. Several conferences and meetings later, the Ties That Bind group launched the Nikkei Federation, a Camp Musubi cultural heritage summer program for middle-school students and a Rising Stars Youth Leadership program.

Rapid development in Little Tokyo has raised particular concerns. In recent years, six major residential developments with nearly 800 condo and apartment units have opened or broken ground in the area. Only one, the senior housing complex Teramachi, has been specifically marketed to Japanese Americans.

To preserve their community’s character, activists have secured city planning guidelines to ensure that a Japanese aesthetic will be retained in many of the developments. Renowned Japanese American architect Ted Tanaka, for instance, is designing the Little Tokyo Gold Line station and the public spaces for a new development known as Block 8, which is planned for 2nd and San Pedro streets. Some of his design ideas feature a cherry blossom motif.

Institutional leaders facing funding losses are launching revenue-raising schemes: the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, for instance, plans to open space in its garden for weddings and other events.

And community boosters are also dreaming of new Little Tokyo institutions. One of them is a Japan Center that would showcase the hottest automobiles, electronics, fashion, anime and other contemporary Japanese products. Promoters hope to bring to Little Tokyo a Japanese corporate presence, which is now centered in the South Bay, and eventually lure back the Japanese Consulate, which moved a couple blocks west to South Grand Avenue several years ago.

Another longtime dream is to build a major athletic facility in Little Tokyo to attract young families involved in the community’s hottest sport: not judo or kendo, but basketball. More than 10,000 Southern California girls and boys play in predominantly Japanese American basketball leagues, which have become the leading and often only avenue for young families’ continued community involvement.

On Saturday, such young basketball players were on the streets, competing in San Tai San, or three-on-three, games. So were UCLA taiko drum players and hip-hop artists, not to mention performers of traditional Japanese dance and martial arts, makers of handcrafted Japanese American jewelry and clothing and food vendors, hawking quintessentially Japanese American fare like chili rice.

Nikkei community center representatives from Long Beach and elsewhere came as well, trawling for suburbanites to join their organizations.

Debbie Hazama, 35, a homemaker with three children in tow, drove in from Diamond Bar with her husband.

She said she rarely comes to Little Tokyo anymore because of the distance but wanted to make sure she and her family were part of the first Nikkei Community Day.

“There aren’t a lot of Japanese where we live, so we are here so my children can see their culture,” Hazama said. “We want them to stay connected.”

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com