142-555: Japantown ( Japanese : 日本町 , Hepburn : Nihonmachi ) , also known historically as Japanese Town , is a neighborhood in the Western Addition district of San Francisco , California . Japantown comprises about six city blocks and is considered one of the largest and oldest ethnic enclaves in the United States . The main thoroughfare is Post Street, between Fillmore Street (to the west) and Laguna Street (to
284-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
426-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
568-680: A float. The San Francisco Police Department Northern Station serves Japantown. The area is within the San Francisco Unified School District . Rosa Parks Elementary School is located near Japantown. It houses the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program (JBBP). In the winter of 2005 Rosa Parks had 245 students, which filled less than half of the school. That winter, SFUSD proposed closing the school and merging it with another elementary school. Parents protested in favor of keeping
710-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
852-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
994-711: A missionary in Canton, came to work with the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. In November 1853 he organized the first Chinese mission in the United States, which provided much needed medical aid and conducted day and night schools that taught English to Chinese immigrants. He also published a Chinese/English newspaper, the Oriental , which staunchly defended the Chinese as anti-Chinese sentiment began to grow in
1136-463: A place of vice caused it to become a tourist destination, attracting numerous working-class white people, who sought the oriental mystery of Chinese culture and sought to fulfill their expectations and fantasies about the filth and depravity. The white customers' patronization of Chinatown prostitutes was more extensive than gambling. After catering for three decades to white people as well as Chinese bachelors, Chinatown's prostitution sector developed into
1278-466: A post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. Due to a combination of factors, some more broad-based related to difficult circumstances for San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces
1420-414: A powerful vested interest, favoring the vice industry. As the tourist industry grew up, the visitors came to include members of the white middle class, which pushed the vice businesses to transform into an entertainment industry as a more respectable form in which to serve white customers. After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, San Francisco saw the birth of its tourism industry. By
1562-492: A progressive city like San Francisco should feel compelled to tolerate in its midst a foreign community, perpetuated in filth, for the curiosity of tourists, the cupidity of lawyers and the adoration of artists. Dr. Williamson, Annual Report to the Board of Health (quoted in 1901) In March 1900, a Chinese-born man who was a long-time resident of Chinatown was found dead of bubonic plague . The next morning, all of Chinatown
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#17327836619511704-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1846-575: A separate Vietnamese enclave on Larkin Street in the heavily working-class Tenderloin district of San Francisco, where it is now known as the city's " Little Saigon ". San Francisco's Chinatown was the port of entry for early Chinese immigrants from the west side of the Pearl River Delta , speaking mainly Hoisanese and Zhongshanese , in the Guangdong province of southern China from
1988-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
2130-706: A smaller one in the South Park area. The South Park area was located between the docks used by Japanese shipping companies and the Southern Pacific Railroad Station, and primarily served travelers between Japan and the United States. The South Park district businesses suffered following the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 . By 1940, the Western Addition Japantown area (referred to as Nihonjin-machi)
2272-619: A statue memorializing comfort women in 2017. The statue is currently erected on public property in San Francisco's Chinatown . 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 Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) offered to buy
2414-416: A struggle for survival. Officially, Chinatown is located in downtown San Francisco, covers 24 square blocks, and overlaps five postal ZIP codes (94108, 94133, 94111, 94102, and 94109). It is within an area of roughly 1 ⁄ 2 mi (0.80 km) long (north to south) by 1 ⁄ 4 mi (0.40 km) wide (east to west) with the current boundaries being, approximately, Kearny Street in
2556-477: 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 the duration of the pandemic and have reported losses of 50%. The area is home to Japanese cuisine restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks, and other shops, including one of the few U.S. branches of
2698-541: A whole and to the city government. The state legislature of California passed several measures to restrict the rights of Chinese immigrants, but these were largely superseded by the terms of the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. In 1880, the Burlingame Treaty was renegotiated and the United States ratified the Angell Treaty , which allowed federal restrictions on Chinese immigration and temporarily suspended
2840-589: Is Grant Avenue , with the Dragon Gate ("Chinatown Gate" on some maps) at the intersection of Bush Street and Grant Avenue, designed by landscape architects Melvin Lee and Joseph Yee and architect Clayton Lee; Saint Mary's Square with a statue of Sun Yat-sen by Benjamin Bufano ; a war memorial to Chinese war veterans; and stores, restaurants and mini-malls that cater mainly to tourists. The other, Stockton Street ,
2982-680: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
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#17327836619513124-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
3266-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
3408-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
3550-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
3692-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
3834-418: Is at present, cannot be rendered sanitary except by total obliteration. It should be depopulated, its buildings leveled by fire and its tunnels and cellars laid bare. Its occupants should be colonized on some distant portion of the peninsula, where every building should be constructed under strict municipal regulation and where every violation of the sanitary laws could be at once detected. The day has passed when
3976-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
4118-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
4260-402: Is frequented less often by tourists, and it presents an authentic Chinese look and feel reminiscent of Hong Kong , with its produce and fish markets, stores, and restaurants. It is dominated by mixed-use buildings that are three to four stories high, with shops on the ground floor and residential apartments upstairs. A major focal point in Chinatown is Portsmouth Square . Since it is one of
4402-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
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4544-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
4686-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
4828-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
4970-679: Is primarily Cantonese and Taishanese -speaking, both dialects originating in southern China. Most Chinatown residents have origins in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong ; albeit there are some Mandarin -speaking residents from Taiwan and central and Northern China, but lesser in comparison to Cantonese-speaking people, despite Cantonese being a minority language amongst people in China and ethnically Chinese people in Asia. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches,
5112-635: Is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia . It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco . Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages , places of worship , social clubs , and identity. The Chinatown district
5254-665: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
5396-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
5538-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
5680-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
5822-615: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
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5964-536: The California Gold Rush , and purportedly the first Chinese prostitute in San Francisco. Arriving from Hong Kong in 1848, she became the best-known Asian woman in the American frontier . When Ah Toy left China for the United States , she originally traveled with her husband, who died during the voyage. Toy became the mistress of the ship's captain, who showered gold upon her, so much so that by
6106-525: The Committee of Fifty and, within a week of the end of the Great Fire, on Saturday, April 27, 1906, formed an additional Subcommittee on Relocating the Chinese, because he felt the land was too valuable for Chinese. Opposition arose, however, from politicians who feared that the removal of the Chinese would affect San Francisco's lucrative trade with Asian countries. Moreover, the government of China
6248-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
6390-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
6532-580: The San Francisco Bay Area , especially in Silicon Valley , such as Cupertino , Fremont , and Milpitas , where many Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese Americans settled. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these outer neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown, causing gridlock on roads and delays in public transit, especially on weekends. To address this problem, the local public transit agency, Muni extended
6674-487: The San Francisco Planning Department , Chinatown is "the most densely populated urban area west of Manhattan ", with 15,000 residents living in 20 square blocks . In the 1970s, the population density in Chinatown was seven times the San Francisco average. During the time from 2009 to 2013, the median household income was $ 20,000 – compared to $ 76,000 citywide – with 29% of residents below
6816-713: The Tin How Temple (Queen of Heaven and Goddess of the Seven Seas) on Waverly Place is the oldest Chinese temple in the United States. It is dedicated to the goddess Tin How or Mazu , the Divine Protector of seafarers, much honored by Chinese immigrants, especially arriving by ship, to San Francisco. The original building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, and it opened on the top floor of a four-story building at 125 Waverly Place in 1910. After closing in 1955,
6958-676: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
7100-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
7242-441: The national poverty threshold . The median age was 50 years, the oldest of any neighborhood. As of 2015, two thirds of the residents lived in one of Chinatown's 105 single room occupancy hotels (SRO), 96 of which had private owners and nine were owned by nonprofits. There are two public housing projects in Chinatown, Ping Yuen and North Ping Yuen. Most residents are monolingual speakers of mutually unintelligible dialects of
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#17327836619517384-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
7526-678: The 1850s to the 1900s. On August 28, 1850, at Portsmouth Square, San Francisco's first mayor , John Geary , officially welcomed 300 "China Boys" to San Francisco. By 1854, the Alta California , a local newspaper which had previously taken a supportive stance on Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, began attacking them, writing after a recent influx that "if the city continues to fill up with these people, it will be ere long become necessary to make them subject of special legislation". These early immigrants settled near Portsmouth Square and around Dupont Street (now called Grant Ave). As
7668-458: The 1850s, San Francisco "was all but submerged in Caucasian forms of gambling and prostitution and lewdness" . During the late period of the California Gold Rush , a few Chinese female prostitutes began their sexual businesses in Chinatown. In addition, the major prostitution enterprises had been raised by criminal gang group "Tong", importing unmarried Chinese women to San Francisco. During
7810-574: The 1850s. The original building was destroyed by the earthquake, and the present church building on 925 Stockton Street was built in 1907. Other Christian denominations followed, including the Methodist Church on Washington Street (founded 1870, rebuilt 1911) and the First Baptist Church (founded 1880, rebuilt 1908 on Waverly Place) as well as Catholic, Congregational, and Episcopal. The pattern these early missions followed
7952-450: The 1870s and further established in the 1880s and 1890s, Chinatown's exotic, infamous reputation began to attract tourists. Tour providers emphasized the vice-ridden elements of the area, strongly encouraging any curious visitors to take a professional guide or police escort with them to venture into Chinatown. These early tours often included staged reenactments of the "depravity of the locals" who were paid by tour operators to participate in
8094-416: The 1870s to 1880s, the population of Chinese sex workers in Chinatown grew rapidly to more than 1,800, accounting for 70% of the total Chinese female population. In the mid-19th century, police harassment reshaped the urban geography and the social life of Chinese prostitutes. Consequently, hundreds of Chinese prostitutes were expelled to side streets and alleys hidden from public traffic. From 1870 to 1874,
8236-441: The 1880s and 1890s, twenty to thirty tongs ran highly profitable gambling houses, brothels, opium dens, and slave trade enterprises in Chinatown. Overcrowding, segregation, graft, and the lack of governmental control contributed to conditions that sustained the criminal tongs until the early 1920s. Chinatown's isolation and compact geography intensified the criminal behavior that terrorized the community for decades despite efforts by
8378-587: The 1880s, Chinatown became a haven for later waves of emigrants from China in the 20th century. Working-class Hongkonger emigrants began arriving in large numbers in the late 1960s. Despite their status and professional qualifications in Hong Kong, many took low-paying employment in restaurants and garment factories in Chinatown because of limited English. An increase in Cantonese -speaking emigrants from Hong Kong and Mainland China has gradually led to
8520-627: The California legislature formally criminalized the immigrant Asian women who were transported into California. In 1875, the U.S. Congress followed California's action and passed the Page Law , which was the first major legal restriction to prohibit the immigration of Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian women into America. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act declared that no more skilled or unskilled immigrants would be allowed to enter
8662-569: The Chinese emigrated from, was subdivided into many distinct districts and some with distinct dialects. Several district associations, open to anyone emigrating from that district(s), were formed in the 1850s to act as a culture-shock absorber for newly arrived immigrants and to settle disputes among their members. Although there are some disagreements about which association formed first, by 1854, six such district associations were formed, of various size and influence, and disputes between members of different associations became more frequent. Thus, in 1862,
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#17327836619518804-579: The Chinese language: historically Hoisanese , now Cantonese and some Mandarin . In 2015, only 14% of households in the SROs were headed by a person that spoke English fluently. The areas of Stockton and Washington Streets and Jackson and Kearny Streets in Chinatown are almost entirely Chinese or Asian, with blocks ranging from 93% to 100% Asian. According to a study by the San Francisco Planning Department in 2018, 81% of
8946-462: The City granted 43 building permits to Chinese businesses. By the time of the first post-quake Chinese New Year in 1907, several dozen buildings were completed, using old bricks unburnt by the fire, and Chinatown was filled with happy people. The reconstruction of Chinatown was completed more or less in 1908, a year ahead of the rest of the city. While the city's proposals to relocate Chinatown failed,
9088-528: The Great Fire, which ended on April 21, 1906, the City seized the chance to remove the Chinese from the old downtown business district. Certain city officials and real-estate developers made more formal plans to move Chinatown to the Hunters Point neighborhood at the southern edge of the city, or even further south to Daly City . Abe Ruef , the political boss widely considered to be the power behind Mayor Eugene Schmitz , invited himself to become part of
9230-641: The Japanese Government and Japanese companies. However, many former residents did not return to the neighborhood after World War II and instead settled in other parts of the city, or out to the suburbs altogether. Depopulation of Japantown by ethnic Japanese was further instigated by the city's redevelopment plans initiated by M. Justin Herman in the Western Addition in the 1960s through the 1980s. With little community input, existing housing
9372-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
9514-741: The Nihonmachi Street Fair, held one weekend in the month of August. The Cherry Blossom Festival takes place over the course of two weekends. During the first weekend, the Northern California Cherry Blossom Queen Program takes place at the Kabuki Theatre, where women of Japanese/Japanese-American descent are chosen to represent, learn about, and serve their community. During the Sunday parade, the queen and princesses are presented on
9656-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
9798-437: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
9940-415: The Sing Chong and Sing Fat bazaars on the west corners of Grant Ave (then Dupont St) and California St, which have become icons of San Francisco Chinatown. This design strategy leveraged the ethnic identity and exoticness that city planners used to justify the relocation of Chinatown to become the same forces that made the area an attractive tourist location. In constructing "Oriental" style architecture,
10082-470: The Six Companies and police/city officials to stem the tide. The San Francisco Police Department established its so-called Chinatown Squad in the 1880s, consisting of six patrolmen led by a sergeant. However, the Squad was ineffective largely by design. An investigation published in 1901 by the California state legislature found that Mayor James D. Phelan and Police Chief William P. Sullivan Jr. had knowingly tolerated gambling and prostitution in Chinatown in
10224-482: The United States and Qing China were normalized through the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. Among other terms, the treaty promised the right of free immigration and travel within the United States for Chinese. Business leaders saw China as a plentiful source of cheap labor, and celebrated the treaty's ratification. But this did not last for long. The mostly male Chinese immigrants came to the United States with
10366-623: 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
10508-610: The United States. However, the trees were hacked down over the course of three days by vandals in January 2021. In 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States , malls in San Francisco were ordered to remain temporarily closed whenever cases got high within the whole city followed by Los Angeles and San Diego . This, in effect, has forced restaurants in the neighborhood, many of whom reside in Japan Center , to turn to
10650-543: The ability to rebuild in their old Chinatown quarters was the first significant victory for the Chinese community in Chinatown. Even when the Subcommittee was bringing its relocation attempt to an end, the Chinese were already rebuilding, albeit with temporary wooden buildings which did not require permits. By June 10, 1906, twelve Chinese businesses were opened in Chinatown, including a couple of cafes. The actual reconstruction did not begin until October 1, 1906, when
10792-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
10934-477: The air they breathe) scarcely one degree above those under which the rats of our water-front and other vermin live, breathe and have their being. And this order of things seems inseparable from the very nature of the race, and probably must be accepted and borne with—must be endured, if it cannot be cured—restricted and looked after, so far as possible, with unceasing vigilance, so that, whatever of benefit, "of degree," even, that may be derived from such modification of
11076-403: The area gratified Western fascination with and perception of a stereotyped Chinese identity. Opportunistic individuals from within the Chinese community and from outside the Chinese community made entrepreneurial gains from this "ethnic tourism" as it emerged in the early 1900s and boosted local business. In November 1907, an article extolling the virtues of the "new Chinatown of San Francisco"
11218-523: The building but was rejected. It was the largest of the three remaining bowling alleys in San Francisco when it closed in September 2000. The lot has since been converted into mixed-use housing units. A pair of cherry blossom trees were planted by the 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
11360-636: The building of the first transcontinental railroad , and settling in Chinatown for refuge from the hostilities in the West. The main dialect spoken in Chinatown then was Hoisan-wa (aka Hoisanese; Toisanese in Cantonese and Taishanese in Mandarin), native to the emigrants from Hoisan (aka Toisan in Cantonese and Taishan in Mandarin), Sze Yup , in the Pearl River Delta. Surviving the ravages of
11502-479: The city's subway network to the neighborhood via the new Central Subway . Unlike in most Chinatowns in the United States , ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam have not established businesses in San Francisco's Chinatown district, due to high property values and rents. Instead, many Chinese-Vietnamese – as opposed to ethnic Vietnamese who tended to congregate in larger numbers in San Jose – have established
11644-776: The country, which meant that many Chinese and Chinese Americans could not have families in America, because their wives and children were prohibited to immigrate. Simultaneously, the public discourse began to accuse Chinese prostitutes of transmitting venereal diseases. Dr. Hugh Huger Toland , a member of the San Francisco Board of Health, reported that white boys and men contracted diseases when they visited "Chinese houses of prostitution" in Chinatown, in order to warn white citizens to stay away; Toland asserted that nine-tenths of his patients had patronized Chinese prostitutes. "When these persons come to me I ask them where they got
11786-461: The directive of rebuilding Chinatown into an attractive district along orientalized and stereotyped conceptions still gained traction. A group of Chinese merchants, including Mendocino -born Look Tin Eli , hired American architects to design in a Chinese-motif " Oriental " style in order to promote tourism in the rebuilt Chinatown. The results of this design strategy were the pagoda-topped buildings of
11928-556: The disease, and they generally tell me that they have been with Chinawomen." All great cities have their slums and localities where filth, disease, crime and misery abound; but in the very best aspect which "Chinatown" can be made to present, it must stand apart, conspicuous and beyond them all in the extreme degree of all these horrible attributes, the rankest outgrowth of human degradation that can be found upon this continent. Here it may truly be said that human beings exist under conditions (as regards their mode of life and
12070-518: 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, 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
12212-440: The east, Broadway in the north, Powell in the west, and Bush Street in the south. Owing to a combination of multifactorial issues, some more generally tied to socioeconomic difficulties afflicting downtown San Francisco itself, while other factors are more specific to this neighborhood, San Francisco's Chinatown faces a struggle for survival and is shrinking. Within Chinatown there are two major north–south thoroughfares . One
12354-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
12496-559: The elegant new "parlour house" of madame Belle Cora, and the cottage of Fanny Perrier, mistress of Judge Edward (Ned) McGowan. In 1857, Ah Toy returned to China a wealthy woman to live the rest of her days in comfort, but came back to California in 1859. From 1868 until her death in 1928, she lived a largely quiet life in Santa Clara County , returning to public attention only upon dying at age 98 in San Jose , three months short of her ninety ninth birthday. Relations between
12638-620: The evil of their presence among us, may at least be attained, not daring to hope that there can be any radical remedy for the great, overshadowing evil which Chinese immigration has inflicted upon this people. The Report of the Special Committee of the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, on the Condition of the Chinese Quarter of that City (1885) By the end of the 19th century, Chinatown's assumed reputation as
12780-535: The few open spaces in Chinatown and sits above a large underground parking lot, Portsmouth Square is used by people such as tai chi practitioners and old men playing Chinese chess . A replica of the Goddess of Democracy used in the Tiananmen Square protest was built in 1999 by Thomas Marsh and stands in the square. It is made of bronze and weighs approximately 600 lb (270 kg). According to
12922-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
13064-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
13206-621: The immigration of unskilled laborers. Anti-immigrant sentiment became federal law once the United States Government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882: the first immigration restriction law aimed at a single ethnic group. This law, along with other immigration restriction laws such as the Geary Act , greatly reduced the numbers of Chinese allowed into the country and the city, and in theory limited Chinese immigration to single males only. Exceptions were in fact granted to
13348-710: The intent of sending money home to support their families; coupled with the high cost of repaying their loans for travel, they often had to take any work that was available. Fears began to arise among non-Chinese workers that they could be replaced, and resentment towards Chinese immigrants rose. With extensive nationwide unemployment in the wake of the Panic of 1873 , racial tensions in the city boiled over into full blown race riots. The two-day San Francisco riot of 1877 raged through Chinatown in July; four were killed and US$ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 2,860,000 in 2023) in property damage
13490-504: The interest of bolstering municipal revenue, calling the police department "so apathetic in putting down the horrible system of slavery existing in Chinatown as to justify your committee in believing it criminally negligent." Phelan and Sullivan testified it would take between 180 and 400 policemen to enforce the laws against gambling and prostitution, which was contradicted by the ex-Chief of Police William J. Biggy , who said 30 "earnestly directed" policemen would suffice. Chinatown, as it
13632-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
13774-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
13916-500: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
14058-561: 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 . There is also a number of Korean restaurants here, and also a grocery store, spa, beauty shop, and a household goods store on nearby Fillmore Street. San Francisco's Japantown celebrates two major festivals every year: The Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival (held for two weekends every April), and
14200-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
14342-521: The neighborhood to an all-time low in the 1920s. Many early Chinese immigrants to San Francisco and beyond were processed at Angel Island , in the San Francisco Bay , which is now a state park. Unlike Ellis Island on the east coast where prospective European immigrants might be held for up to a week, Angel Island typically detained Chinese immigrants for months while they were interrogated closely to validate their papers. The detention facility
14484-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
14626-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
14768-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
14910-606: The people of Osaka , Japan. Up until 1906, San Francisco had been the main U.S. port of entry for Asian immigration and had the largest ethnic Japanese concentration of any city in the United States. Prior to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake , San Francisco had two Japantowns, one on the outskirts of Chinatown , the other in the South of Market area. After 1906, Japanese immigrants began moving to San Francisco's Western Addition, which then became San Francisco's main Japantown, with
15052-444: The pool of cheap labor with them. On July 8, 1906, after 25 committee meetings and considering various alternative sites in the city, the subcommittee submitted a final report stating their inability to drive the Chinese from their old Chinatown quarters. Ironically, plans to relocate Chinatown failed in the end because restrictive housing covenants in other areas of the city prohibited Chinese from settling elsewhere. In any event,
15194-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
15336-456: The reenactments. Such reenactments exacerbated the perceptions of Chinatown as a problematic, vice-ridden location among San Francisco visitors and San Franciscans. The emphasis on the danger and depravity of the community ignored deeper issues of poverty, racial discrimination, and problems of overcrowding with overtaxed infrastructure. Ah Toy (18 May 1829 – 1 February 1928) was a Cantonese prostitute and madam in San Francisco during
15478-501: The remainder elsewhere. The area was the one geographical region deeded by the city government and private property owners which allowed Chinese persons to inherit and inhabit dwellings within the city. The majority of these Chinese shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and hired workers in San Francisco Chinatown were predominantly Hoisanese and male. For example, in 1851, the reported Chinese population in California
15620-421: The removal of which many a scheme has been devised, is but a memory." Oakland Tribune, April 1906. Plans to relocate Chinatown predated the earthquake several years. At the 1901 Chinese Exclusion Convention held in San Francisco, A. Sbarboro called Chinatown "synonymous with disease, dirt and unlawful deeds" that "give[s] us nothing but evil habits and noxious stenches". With Chinatown completely demolished by
15762-625: The replacement in Chinatown of the Hoisanese dialect by the standard Cantonese dialect. Due to such overcrowding and poverty, other Chinese areas have been established within the city of San Francisco proper, including one in its Richmond and three more in its Sunset districts, as well as a recently established one in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood. These outer neighborhoods have been settled largely by Chinese from Southeast Asia. There are also many suburban Chinese communities in
15904-543: The residents in the neighborhood were Asian. Many of the Chinese immigrants who managed to accumulate wealth while living in Chinatown move to the Richmond District , the Sunset District , or the suburbs. In the 1850s, Chinese pioneers, mainly from villages in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong , began immigrating in large numbers to San Francisco, initially drawn by the California Gold Rush and
16046-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
16188-948: The school open. SFUSD moved the Japanese Bilingual Bicultural Program into Rosa Parks. As of November 2006, almost half of the students in the regular Rosa Parks program are African-American and one-third of the students in the JBBP program are Japanese. Between 1960 until 1980, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency purchased many Victorian properties, and relocated them within the Western Addition neighborhood (and specifically in Japantown) due to re-zoning. Most of these houses were constructed with local Redwood lumber. 37°47′06″N 122°25′47″W / 37.7851°N 122.4298°W / 37.7851; -122.4298 Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
16330-475: The settlement grew in the early 1850s, Chinese shops opened on Sacramento St, which the Guangdong pioneers called " Tang people street" ( 唐人街 ); and the settlement became known as " Tang people town" ( 唐人埠 ), which in Cantonese is Tong Yun Fow . By the 1870s, the economic center of Chinatown moved from Sacramento St to Dupont St; e.g., in 1878, out of 423 Chinese firms in Chinatown, 121 were located on Dupont St, 60 on Sacramento St, 60 on Jackson St, and
16472-702: The site of the Chinese consulate was the property of Imperial China, it could not be reassigned by the city. On May 10, 1906, the subcommittee met with representatives from the Chinese community, the Chinese Six Companies , who said that they would either rebuild in their old Chinatown quarters or move across the bay to Oakland, where most of the Chinatown refugees had fled. Other community leaders pointed out that displaced residents may not stop to resettle in Hunters Point, moving further to other West Coast cities like Seattle or Los Angeles, taking
16614-641: The six district associations (commonly called the Chinese Six Companies, even though the number of member associations varied through the years) banded together to resolve inter-district disputes. This was made formal in 1882 and incorporated in 1901 as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (on Stockton Street) to look after the general interest of the Chinese people living in a hostile western world. Founded purportedly in roughly 1852 or 1853,
16756-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
16898-762: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
17040-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
17182-555: The temple reopened in 1975, due to a resurgence of interest from a new immigrant population following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 . Another Mazu temple, known as Ma-Tsu Temple was established in 1986 by Taiwanese American community and affiliated to Chaotian Temple in Taiwan. The Chinese Presbyterian Church on Stockton Street can trace its roots to October 1852, when Cantonese-speaking Rev. William Speer ,
17324-609: The time she arrived in San Francisco in the 1840s, Toy had a fair bit of money. Noticing the looks she drew from the men in her new town, she figured they would pay for a closer look. Her peep shows became quite successful, and she eventually became a high-priced prostitute. In 1850, Toy opened a chain of brothels at 34 and 36 Waverly Place (then called Pike Street), importing girls from China in their teens, 20s and 30s, as well as some as young as eleven years old, to work in them. Her neighbors on Pike Street—conveniently linked to San Francisco's business district by Commercial Street—included
17466-736: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Chinatown, San Francisco The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco , California , ( Chinese : 唐人街 ; pinyin : tángrénjiē ; Jyutping : tong4 jan4 gaai1 )
17608-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
17750-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
17892-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
18034-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
18176-475: The wives and minor children of wealthy merchants; immigrants would purchase or partner in businesses to declare themselves merchants in order to bring their families to America. Alternatively, prospective immigrants could become " paper sons " by purchasing the identity of Americans whose citizenship had been established by birthright. However, the Exclusion Act was credited with reducing the population of
18318-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
18460-578: Was about 12,000 men and fewer than ten women. Some of the early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the 1849 Gold Rush . Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of labor, most famously as part of the Central Pacific on the Transcontinental Railroad , from 1865 to 1869. The west side of the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong, where most of
18602-633: Was also opposed, and soon after the earthquake, Tsi Chi Chow, the first secretary of the Chinese legation in Washington, DC, arrived in San Francisco, conveying to California governor George Pardee the opposition of China's Empress Dowager Cixi to the plan. The representatives, "acting unofficially", stated "the only way to remove the Chinese from the old Chinatown would be to give them a place elsewhere that would be acceptable for their purpose, when they might be willing to move." The San Francisco Call reported it as "a vigorous protest" and noted that as
18744-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
18886-409: Was done to Chinese-owned businesses. In response to the violence, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association , also known as the Chinese Six Companies , which evolved out of the labor recruiting organizations for different areas of Guangdong, was created to provide the community with a unified voice. The heads of these companies advocated for the Chinese community to the wider business community as
19028-680: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
19170-400: Was lifted but the burning and fumigating continued. A federal court ruled that public health officials could not close off Chinatown without any proof that Chinese Americans were anymore susceptible to plague than Anglo Americans. The Chinatown neighborhood was completely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire that leveled most of the city. "The fire had full sway, and Chinatown, for
19312-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
19454-521: Was one of the largest such enclaves of Japanese outside Japan, as it took an appearance similar to the Ginza district in Tokyo . The ethnic Japanese population numbered over 5,000, and there were more than 200 Japanese-owned businesses. In February 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 , which forced all Japanese of birth or descent, including Japanese-American citizens of
19596-506: Was quarantined, with policemen preventing "Asiatics" (people of Asian heritage) from either entering or leaving. The San Francisco Board of Health began looking for more cases of plague and began burning personal property and sanitizing buildings, streets and sewers within Chinatown. Chinese Americans protested and the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association threatened lawsuits. The quarantine
19738-445: Was razed and transportation corridors were widened. 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. In commemoration of their 50th anniversary, one block of Buchanan Street in Japantown was renamed Osaka Way on September 8, 2007. However, Osaka ended the 60-year relationship in 2018 after then mayor Ed Lee accepted
19880-436: Was renovated in 2005 and 2006 under a federal grant. As in much of San Francisco, a period of criminality existed during the late 19th century; many tongs arose, trafficking in smuggling, gambling, and prostitution. From the mid-1870s, turf battles sprang up over competing criminal enterprises. By the early 1880s, the term tong war was being popularly used to describe these periods of violence in Chinatown. At their height in
20022-440: Was to first conduct English language classes and Sunday schools. In these decades, the only English classes available to Chinese immigrants were those offered by these Christian missions. Some added rescue homes (e.g., from prostitution), and social services for the sick and protection from racial discrimination. With such tactics, the early Christian missions and churches in Chinatown gained widespread respect and new converts. In
20164-409: Was written, praising the new "substantial, modern, fireproof buildings of brick and stone ... following the Oriental style of architecture" and declaring "[n]o more picturesque squalor, no more gambling dens, opium joints or public haunts of vice" would be tolerated, at the command of the Chinese Six Companies. By then, 5,000 residents had returned, of the estimated 30,000 that lived in Chinatown prior to
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