This must be Sawtelle

While most Japantowns across the country have vanished, Los Angeles is home to not just one, but two, Japanese enclaves. Most people know Little Tokyo. But on the Westside, past the 405 and tucked between strip malls and office buildings, there’s another: Sawtelle.

Smaller in footprint but steeped in history, Sawtelle reflects the legacy of Japanese immigrants — their resilience, resourcefulness and ability to reinvent. That spirit lives on in one of L.A.’s most dynamic neighborhoods today: a cultural crossroads where you can slurp the best ramen, dig into sisig, cool off with Korean soft serve, try a California roll burger or sing your heart out at karaoke until 4 a.m., all within 2.69 square miles.

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Long before Sawtelle became a hot spot for buzzy restaurants and boba shops, it was a refuge. Named after the manager of the Pacific Land Company that developed the area, Sawtelle in the early 20th century was a haven for Japanese immigrants barred from owning property or signing leases under exclusionary laws, like the 1913 California Alien Land Law. In this less developed pocket of the Westside, landowners looked the other way — allowing Japanese immigrants to carve out enough space to build new lives.

The proximity to the coast reminded them of home, mild weather and fertile soil made outdoor work a pleasure, and local Kenjinkai organizations offered vital community support. By the 1910s, Sawtelle — “so-te-ru,” as it was affectionately called — had become a magnet for Issei, or first-generation Japanese immigrants. Between 1920 and 1925, its population tripled, driven by an influx of Japanese farmers, a booming film industry and the opening of UCLA. Here, they set up nurseries and small businesses, tended gardens for wealthy Westsiders, built temples and schools and laid the groundwork for a close-knit community.

The neighborhood flourished until World War II, when residents were forced into incarceration camps and their lives upended. Those who returned started over, restoring what had been lost. In many ways, Sawtelle is a testament to the immigrant instinct to endure, adapt and rebuild — even with the odds stacked against them. In 2015, that resilience was officially recognized when the city named the area Sawtelle Japantown, sparking a renaissance of Japanese influence with restaurants, markets and shops celebrating Japanese culture and identity.

These days, Sawtelle’s prewar landmarks are fading, giving way to office buildings and rising commercial rent. Traci Toshiyuki Imamura, a fifth-generation Japanese American, remembers when her father’s business, Tensho Drugstore, stood at the corner of Sawtelle and Mississippi — a neighborhood fixture in the mid-1940s. Today, it’s the Furaibo restaurant.

“I miss the regular everyday people and how close people were with each other in the community,” she said. “It makes me emotional just thinking about what Sawtelle felt like to me when I was a young girl in contrast to what it is evolving to.” Now living in Torrance, Imamura serves on the Westside Community Planning Advisory Group and advocates against Sawtelle’s gentrification and upzoning.

Over the years, the neighborhood has certainly changed, and its identity has expanded beyond its Japanese roots. But you’ll still find traces of what made it special to begin with: Family-run Hashimoto Nursery and Yamaguchi Bonsai Nursery trace back to Sawtelle’s early days and serve as nods to its agricultural past. And every summer at the Obon Festival, a traditional Buddhist celebration honoring the spirits of one’s ancestors, hundreds still gather — dressed in kimono, yukata and hachimaki headbands to dance to the steady beat of taiko drums. Kids crowd around the balloon fishing pool, parents line up for takoyaki, and for a moment, the old Sawtelle feels as alive as ever.

To walk down these streets today is to experience not just what’s current, but what endures — in the smell of yakitori on the grill, the sight of bonsai trees still tended by the same families and the beat of the taiko drums that call people back, year after year. Sawtelle is a neighborhood shaped by people who made every inch count and built a community, and in a city that’s always changing, that may be the most enduring legacy of all.