Cultural Visions for Little Tokyo

Ask the new CEO of Little Tokyo’s Japanese American Cultural & Community Center about cultural fragmentation, and Cora Mirikitani becomes intense, concerned. Bring up the relationship between art and society, and hear her passion roar. For 25 years, the 51-year-old arts administrator has held posts such as developer of cultural programs in Philadelphia and as director of performing arts and film at the Japan Society in New York. A current expansion project at the 21-year-old Little Tokyo center includes 24,000 feet of new space designed by architect Toyo Ito, a new gallery, renovation of the Aratani Japan America Theatre, which Mirikitani helped open in a prior posting at the JACCC during the 1980s, and of the James Irvine Garden, and augmentation of the center’s cultural and educational programs.

What is your charge at the JACCC?

To preserve and present what is good about Japanese culture. We have to be relevant to the next generations [and] find better ways to think about doing our own work. How do New York and L.A. differ as art centers?

L.A. is big, messy and diverse--a caldron of creativity. I love New York. But it’s not multicultural like here. New York still has a European reference. It is more festival, tourism oriented. In L.A. you are in the caldron with everyone else. The different cultures in L.A. need to collaborate more. They haven’t yet figured out how to do it. Where does Little Tokyo fit in the caldron?

Little Tokyo is not residential. You have to parachute in. The term “community” is misleading. It’s not just a shopping mall. It’s an arm’s throw from City Hall, from the great downtown, from the Music Center. It is part of East L.A., part of the downtown urban mix and also a culturally specific destination.

How are artists different from the people who run cultural organizations?

Artists understand risk and innovation, [but] they are hermetically sealed away from society. There isn’t the structure to bring people of different sectors together, to discuss things and to learn. We need to create new institutions that bring together the expertise of business and art.

How do you think of yourself ethnically?

I was born in Honolulu. I am an American and a Japanese American. On my first trip to Japan, I was a stranger. I don’t speak Japanese. Here, I have enormous latitude as a woman and a professional in the arts. In Japan, it was very different.

Why is it important to preserve Japanese culture?

If we don’t, who will? Now that Office Depot has moved into Little Tokyo [and a Starbucks is set to open], is the community doomed to cultural fragmentation? No, but we have to provide a place to go, a virtual and a psychic Japanese community. You have to be able to touch cultural things, to rub against them. To lose that would be a terrible thing. It is a huge responsibility to preserve culture, to make sure it is resonant and connecting and honoring.