Backstory and you may Perspective

San Francisco’s first Japanese immigrants (otherwise Issei) arrived in the early 1860s, paying generally into the Chinatown and Southern Park. Meanwhile, regarding 1870s, the fresh Western Addition (like the home who feel Japantown, or Nihonmachi) subdivision was being transformed away from an exotic, chaparral environment for bobcats, rabbits, and quail, on an effective Victorian community. If the disturbance and you will next flame off 1906 drove of many San Franciscans from their residential property, tent communities about West Addition’s parks considering short-term security getting a few of the city’s residents, in addition to the majority of the japanese populace. Approximately one to rectangular mile of your own West Introduction turned into, nowadays, San Francisco’s Japantown, for the introduction out of Japanese churches, shrines, stores, and you will dining.