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108-639: Little Tokyo ( Japanese : リトル・トーキョー ), also known as Little Tokyo Historic District , is an ethnically Japanese American district in downtown Los Angeles and the heart of the largest Japanese-American population in North America. It is the largest and most populous of only three official Japantowns in the United States, all of which are in California (the other two are Japantown, San Francisco , and Japantown, San Jose ). Founded around

216-637: 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

324-845: A commercial core still managed to exist in Little Tokyo. Due to lack of housing in Little Tokyo, many Japanese Americans returning from the camps moved into apartments and boarding houses in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown Los Angeles . Notably, Boyle Heights , just east of Little Tokyo, had a large Japanese American population in the 1950s (as it had before the internment ) until the arrival of Mexican and Latino immigrants replaced most of them. The post-war Japanese-American population in Little Tokyo had become only one-third of its pre-war population. Many Issei and Nisei who had previously owned large businesses or were heavily involved in agriculture now returned with little resources to work in civil service or other simple jobs. Concurrently,

432-414: 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 )

540-419: 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

648-496: A great way to find Japanese video games that were either never translated into English, or were never domestically released in North America. There are also several stores that sell manga and anime related products. The Japanese Village Plaza is located roughly in the center of Little Tokyo on the east side of San Pedro Street . There are several restaurants in the plaza, plus a number of shops geared towards tourists. First Street and Second Street border Japanese Village Plaza and have

756-683: A high concentration of legacy institutions. East West Players , one of the nation's first Asian American theater companies and the longest continuously running theatre of color in the nation, specializing in live theater written and performed by Asian American artists, is located in Little Tokyo, performing in the David Henry Hwang Theater, a 230-seat venue in the Union Center for the Performing Arts. The Japanese American Community and Cultural Center (JACCC) runs

864-492: A kiosk on Astronaut Ellison Onizuka Street and contains a monument to Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka , a Japanese American from Hawaiʻi who was a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger when it disintegrated during takeoff in 1986. Little Tokyo has a variety of public art, including a memorial statue of Chiune Sugihara , Japanese consul to Lithuania before World War II and Righteous among

972-646: A large redevelopment plan was put in place to be enacted in the early 1950s, but due to a lack of state funding and wealth in the Japanese-American community following three years of internment, the plan fell to stagnation. Following the construction there of the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in 1953, Little Tokyo's commercial area shrunk by one fourth from its original size. 1,000 residents were displaced to other parts of Los Angeles. The current site of Parker Center ,

1080-484: 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

1188-537: A number of yakiniku restaurants, where meat is often cooked on a small grill built into the center of the table. Little Tokyo is the birthplace of the California roll , invented by a chef named Ichiro Mashita at the Tokyo Kaikan sushi restaurant. Two wagashi (Japanese sweets) shops located in Little Tokyo are among the oldest food establishments in Los Angeles. Fugetsu-do, founded in 1903, appears to be

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1296-576: A number of restaurants that are open later than those in the court. The Weller Court shopping mall is located along Astronaut Ellison S Onizuka St., backing up to 2nd St. on the south and what was originally the New Otani Hotel, now the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Los Angeles Downtown , along Los Angeles Street, to the north and west. It has several restaurants, karaoke clubs, and a Bubble Tea cafe. For tourists visiting from Japan, there are

1404-400: A number of shops specializing in expensive name brand products such as Coach handbags. There is also a large bookstore, Kinokuniya , that is part of a well-known Japanese chain. They have a large selection of Japanese-language books, magazines, music CDs, manga , and anime , as well as a selection of English-language books on Japanese subjects and translated manga and anime. Weller Court

1512-455: A one-page, mimeographed Japanese-language newspaper produced by Rippo Iijima, Masaharu Yamaguchi, and Seijiro Shibuya. H. T. Komai became publisher in 1922, beginning a family dynasty. He was succeeded by son Akira and grandson Michael. The name of the newspaper essentially translates as "Los Angeles area newspaper" (" ra " abbreviated from " rashogiri " (羅省枝利), a historic Chinese name for Los Angeles, " fu " meaning " prefecture ", and " shinpo ",

1620-420: A presence. East West Players saw the early careers of actors such as Daniel Dae Kim , John Cho , Reggie Lee , Amy Hill , Lucy Liu , Isa Briones , as well as playwrights Qui Nguyen . Lauren Yee , and David Henry Hwang . In 2018, actor George Takei returned to Little Tokyo for the first Post Broadway staging of the musical Allegiance by Jay Kuo & Lorenzo Thione co-produced by East West Players and

1728-405: A result, Little Tokyo saw a growth in community and the establishment of a commercial district. By 1908, around 90 Japanese-run boarding houses could be found throughout Los Angeles. In 1909, Little Tokyo was described as "bounded by San Pedro , First and Requena Streets and Central Avenue . The Los Angeles Times added: "It has a population of about 3,500 Japanese ... there are 10,000 Japanese in

1836-728: A rooftop garden in the Kyoto Grand Hotel and Gardens , formerly the New Otani Hotel . The Go for Broke Monument commemorates Japanese Americans who served in the United States Military during World War II . With its proximity to Hollywood and its concentration as a focal point for the Pan Asian American community, Little Tokyo Los Angeles has long served as an incubator for Asian American and Pacific Islander artists and performers sporting

1944-408: 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),

2052-428: 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

2160-402: A term for newspaper). Weekly English sections first appeared on Feb 21, 1926. The English section became a daily feature on January 11, 1932. Togo Tanaka , the editor of the paper's English language section, appealed unsuccessfully to the United States government to allow the paper to continue printing in the event of war with Japan, and oversaw the paper's last edition before he was sent to

2268-450: A traditional ethnic enclave , there are relatively few Japanese residents in the area. Even so, the Japanese-American community was politicized by the internment and redress effort , which, along with the global and local growth of overseas Japanese investment, has assured that Little Tokyo has continued to exist as a tourist attraction, community center, and home to Japanese-American senior citizens and others. During its inception in 1980,

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2376-680: 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

2484-421: 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

2592-448: 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,

2700-527: 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

2808-440: 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

2916-701: 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

3024-466: 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

3132-572: Is bounded on the west by Los Angeles Street, on the east by Alameda Street, on the south by 3rd Street , and on the north by First Street, but also includes a substantial portion of the block north of First and west of Alameda, location of the Japanese American National Museum , the Go For Broke Monument , and a row of historic shops which lines the north side of First Street. A timeline has been set into

3240-509: 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

3348-417: 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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3456-755: 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

3564-569: Is mainly a work, cultural, religious, restaurant and shopping district, because Japanese Americans today are likely to live in nearby cities such as Torrance , Gardena , and Monterey Park , as well as the Sawtelle district in the Westside of Los Angeles. However, the recent boom in downtown residential construction is changing the nature of Little Tokyo. What is left of the original Little Tokyo can be found in roughly five large city blocks. It

3672-420: 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

3780-498: 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

3888-402: 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

3996-471: 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

4104-591: Is where the first Japanese institutions, associations, and establishments were founded in Los Angeles as Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) began to congregate in the area. The first Japanese religious institution founded in Little Tokyo was the Japanese Episcopal Mission of Los Angeles, now Century United Methodist Church, founded in June 1896 by a group of 5 issei from southern Japan. Other religious institutions continued to be founded:

4212-405: 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

4320-615: 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

4428-868: The JACCC at the Aratani Theatre. The Aratani has also served as a home venue to the Grammy Nominated Jazz fusion group Hiroshima (band) founded by Dan Kuramoto & June Kuramoto. Actress Tamlyn Tomita began her career when she was crowned "Nisei Week Queen" in 1984 which led to her breakout casting in The Karate Kid Part 2 . Filmmakers such as Justin Lin , Quentin Lee , and Justin Chon have premiered some of their early career making films at

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4536-517: 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

4644-560: The Jordan Downs housing complex. In 1945, many defense industry jobs disappeared and the workers moved elsewhere in search of new employment. Others were pushed out when Japanese Americans began to return and white landlords chose not to renew leases with their wartime tenants. Following the War, many previous Japanese residents returned to Little Tokyo to continue managing businesses by purchasing Bronzeville business leases. Albeit smaller,

4752-537: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival . Actor Dante Basco has been a mainstay performing his poetry alongside many others at Tuesday Night Project. Musicians such as AJ Rafael , Jane Lui , MC Jin and more have long relationships with Kollaboration since before the "youtube-boom" that saw many AAPI artists and musicians find an internet based audience. Little Tokyo continues to be a major convening point for AAPI artists in

4860-513: The Manzanar internment camp. The paper ceased publication in 1942 due to the incarceration of Japanese Americans at President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's order. It was revived in 1946, due to Akira Komai's foresight and the loyalty of his employees. Komai had arranged for the paper's rent to be paid during the war and hid the Japanese type under the floorboards. As of 1992, circulation was 23,000. By 1997, “the laborious process of hand setting

4968-610: The Museum of Contemporary Art , formerly called the Temporary Contemporary and now known as the Geffen Contemporary (named after David Geffen ). Additionally, the visual arts are represented by the arts non-profit, LAArtcore which devotes itself to creating awareness of the visual arts through 24 exhibitions each year along with educational programming. An art gallery called 123 Astronaut is housed within

5076-514: 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

5184-477: The Second Great Migration almost tripled Little Tokyo's pre-war population, with some 80,000 new arrivals taking up residence there. For a brief time, the area became known as Bronzeville, as African Americans and also Native Americans and Latinos moved into the vacated properties and opened up nightclubs, restaurants, and other businesses. Prohibited from buying and renting in most parts of

5292-738: 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

5400-460: The Zoot Suit race riots . In 1943, officials bowed to pressure from frustrated residents and proposed building temporary housing in nearby Willowbrook , but the majority-white residents of the unincorporated city resisted the plans. In 1944, 57 Bronzeville buildings were condemned as unfit for habitation and 125 ordered repaired or renovated; approximately 50 of the evicted families were sent to

5508-806: 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

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5616-527: 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),

5724-467: The 800 seat Aratani Theater, which features theatre, dance, concerts as well as cultural performances and events. Visual Communications , an Asian Pacific American media arts organization that annually presents VC FilmFest (Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival), in several venues around Little Tokyo. Tuesday Night Project is the longest running Asian American open Mic event in the nation running every 1st and 3rd Tuesday from April through October in

5832-537: The Comedy Comedy Festival. There are numerous Japanese restaurants, catering to both Japanese and non-Japanese clientele. Many of them specialize in one type of Japanese cuisine , such as donburi , Japanese noodles ( soba , ramen and udon ), shabu-shabu (which translated from Japanese means 'swish-swish', referring to the motion of dipping meat and vegetables in a communal bowl of boiling water), Japanese curry, sushi, or yakitori. There are also

5940-614: The Go For Broke Plaza, promises to provide essential housing units while serving as a permanent home for the Go For Broke National Education Center, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about the courage and sacrifices of Japanese-American soldiers . At its peak, Little Tokyo had approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans living in the area. Little Tokyo is still a cultural focal point for Los Angeles's Japanese American population. It

6048-748: The Japanese American Chamber of Commerce. Concurrently, these leaders worked with Japan to establish kenjinkai or mutual aid societies each associated to one of the Japanese Prefectures. These associations would provide mutual aid and social opportunities to Japanese families that had immigrated from the same prefecture represented by the association. By 1940, the breadth of kenjinkai covered 40/46 Japanese Prefectures. In 1941, Little Tokyo reached its peak population with approximately 30,000 Japanese Americans living in Little Tokyo. The 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing brought an end to

6156-486: 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,

6264-669: The Koyasan Buddhist Temple (1912), Japanese Union Church (1923), and Hompa Hongwaji Buddhist Temple (1925). The growing population in Little Tokyo was supplemented by the establishment of primary, secondary, and trade schools. A large amount of trade schools in Little Tokyo were sewing schools. The largest was the Rafu Yossai Gakuen which taught sewing skills to Issei women. During this time period various newspapers catered towards Japanese Americans in Los Angeles were founded. The first Japanese newspaper in

6372-609: The LAPD's former headquarters, was the original site of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. The south edge of the block where Parker Center stands was part of the First Street business strip of shops. The warehouses and new condominiums to the east of Little Tokyo were once residential areas of the district. Similar urban development would continue in the 1960s and 1970s, further shrinking the extent of

6480-685: The Nations . The Nisei Week festival is held every August, and includes a large parade, a pageant, athletic events, exhibits of Japanese art and culture, a taiko drum festival, the Japanese Festival Street Faire, a car show, and other events. There are also two Japanese gardens in the area open to the public: the James Irvine garden in the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and

6588-736: 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

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6696-488: 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

6804-564: The United States was Rafu Shimpo , founded in Little Tokyo in 1903 and which continues to operate. Founded during this time were rotating savings and credit associations known as tanomoshiko , which provided funding towards emerging business ventures in Little Tokyo. Community Leaders in the 1920s and 1930s established local entities of prominent Japanese American associations such as the Central Japanese Association, Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL), and

6912-620: The Weller Court mall was opposed by some people in the community because it redeveloped a strip of family-owned small businesses. Community activists established First Street as a historic district in 1986. In 2004, they helped reopen the Far East Cafe, an acknowledged community hub. Little Tokyo continues to develop and change with the general development of the greater Los Angeles Area through ordinances, construction, coalitions, etc. The 2024 announcement of First North Residences and

7020-543: 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

7128-521: The beginning of the 20th century, the area, sometimes called Lil' Tokyo , J-Town , Shō-Tōkyō ( 小東京 ) , is the cultural center for Japanese Americans in Southern California . It was declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1995. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 played a pivotal role in the first large wave of Japanese Immigration to the United States as the Japanese were heavily recruited to serve as 'cheap labor' in place of

7236-567: The city by restrictive covenants , the area soon became severely overcrowded. A single bathroom was often shared by up to 40 people and one room could house as many as 16 occupants; people frequently shared "hot beds," sleeping in shifts. Poor housing conditions helped spread communicable illnesses like tuberculosis and venereal disease. Crimes like robberies, rapes, and hit-and-run accidents increased, and in May and June 1943 Latino and some African American residents of Bronzeville were attacked by whites in

7344-515: The city who make this section their rendezvous." The area was a magnet for immigrating Japanese until the Exclusion Act of 1924 halted any further migration. Shops were along First Street, and vegetable markets were along Central Avenue to the south. Japanese Americans were a significant ethnic group in the vegetable trade, due to the number of successful Japanese American truck farms across Southern California. The East First Street area

7452-586: The concrete in front of these shops, using bronze lettering, showing the history of each of the shops from the early 20th Century until the renovation of the district in the late 1980s. More broadly, Little Tokyo is bordered by the Los Angeles River to the east, downtown Los Angeles to the west, L.A. City Hall the Parker Center to the north, and Skid Row to the south. Museums include the Japanese American National Museum and an extension of

7560-420: The country, the organization hosts its annual national culmination "KOLLABORATION STAR" event at the Aratani Theatre, as well as their EMPOWER conference as incubator events for APIDA artists in the music industry. With the proximity of these organizations and Arts non-profit organizations, many notable actors, musicians and entertainers of AAPI descent have either begun their careers here, or continue to maintain

7668-482: The coverage of Little Tokyo. In the 1970s, a redevelopment movement started as Japanese corporations expanded overseas operations and many of them set up their U.S. headquarters in the Los Angeles area . Named the Little Tokyo Project, this movement resulted in the opening of several new shopping plazas and hotels opened, along with branches of some major Japanese banks. Although this redevelopment resulted in many new buildings and shopping centers, there are still some of

7776-578: 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

7884-652: The entertainment industry, and a central incubator for the nation having twice before hosted the National Asian American Theatre Conference and Festival put on by the Consortium of Asian American Theatre Artists. Little Tokyo has also seen the rise of many adjacent movements in the AAPI entertainment world such as Asian American theater companies Teada , Lodestone Theatre, Artists at Play, Hereandnow Theatre, Asian AF Comedy shows, and

7992-455: 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

8100-609: 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

8208-528: The increase in Japanese American population in Little Tokyo. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II emptied Little Tokyo. Beginning in 1942, after the city's Japanese population was rounded up and "evacuated" to inland concentration camps , a large number of African Americans from the South moved to Los Angeles to find work in the labor-starved defense industry. Its share in

8316-610: The industrialized area. Al's Bar, Gorky's, the Atomic Cafe and LA Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) are some well-known sites. Land use has been a contentious issue in Little Tokyo due to its history, the proximity to the Los Angeles Civic Center neighborhood, the role of Los Angeles as a site of business between Japan and America, and the increasing influx of residents into the Arts District . Unlike

8424-430: 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,

8532-458: 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

8640-449: 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

8748-427: 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 ,

8856-692: The now excluded Chinese laborers. One of the people influenced by this first wave of Japanese Immigration was Hamanosuke Shigeta, a Japanese seaman who settled in southeast Los Angeles, an area which would eventually become Little Tokyo. There Shigeta established the first Japanese-owned business in LA, Kame Restaurant, along the East First Street . Attracted by the restaurant and nearby demands for labor, other Japanese immigrant men followed suit as they settled along East First Street in nearby boarding houses. The first Japanese boarding house in Los Angeles

8964-589: The oldest still-operating food establishment in the city and the first one to celebrate a centennial; its best-known offerings include mochi and manjū , and it claims to be an inventor of the fortune cookie . Mikawaya was founded in 1910, but is now well known as the company that introduced mochi ice cream to the United States in 1994. Little Tokyo has several shops that specialize in Japanese-language videos and DVDs , while other shops specialize in Japanese electronics and video games . These are

9072-425: 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

9180-410: The original Little Tokyo buildings and restaurants, especially along First Street. The Little Tokyo Project would transform Little Tokyo into its present version: an area bounded by Los Angeles Street , Alameda Street , Third Street , and half a block north from First Street. During the 1970s and 1980s, artists began to move into nearby aging warehouse spaces in the area, forming a hidden community in

9288-470: 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

9396-415: 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,

9504-607: 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

9612-481: 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

9720-648: The public courtyard of the Union Center for the Arts Cold Tofu Improv was founded in 1981 as the nation's first Asian American Improv & Comedy Group. Teaching classes in short form and long form improv. Kollaboration founded in 2000, is an organization focusing on advancing Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans (APIDA) in the Music and entertainment industries. With affiliates in San Francisco, Atlanta, Hawaii, Houston, Boston and throughout

9828-459: 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

9936-521: The several thousand syllabic characters and ideograms used in Japanese, which took up to three hours per page, [had] given way to a rapid computerized operation.” In March 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that The Rafu Shimpo was losing circulation and money, and was the target of community drives hoping to save the newspaper from going out of business. On March 25, 2016, publisher Michael Komai released an " open letter " stating that

10044-439: 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 )

10152-817: 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

10260-481: 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

10368-560: 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". Rafu Shimpo The paper began in 1903 as

10476-419: 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 ,

10584-577: 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

10692-480: 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

10800-407: 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

10908-548: 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

11016-539: 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

11124-575: Was established by Sanjuro Mizuno, who opened the Santa Fe Boarding House in 1898 to cater to Japanese laborers. To house the wave of new immigrants coming to Little Tokyo, early immigrants also opened more of them. By the early 1900s, the Japanese population in Little Tokyo had reached a population of around 3,000. It jumped to 10,000 following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake , which convinced many Japanese to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. In 1907, The Gentleman's Agreement

11232-735: 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,

11340-474: 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 )

11448-454: Was signed between Japan and the United States in which Japan voluntarily restricted the emigration of Japanese laborers, allowing only families of current residents to immigrate, in exchange for the United States to ensure no discrimination against the Japanese people in the US. The implementation of the agreement led to an influx of women who joined family or husbands as new brides in Little Tokyo. As

11556-786: Was the Tomio Building , home to the Japanese-American Tomio Department Store , and two more Japanese-American department stores, the Asia Company and Hori Brothers. The area is served by the Los Angeles Unified School District . Los Angeles Public Library operates the Little Tokyo Branch. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is

11664-657: Was the second major project of the East West Development Corporation in association with the Community Redevelopment Agency, after the $ 30 million New Otani. Groundbreaking was held in November 1978, to be completed in 1979 with 62,780 square feet (5,832 m) of gross leasable area. The architect was Kajima Associates. In the 1920s, the southeast corner of First Street was the beginning of Little Tokyo. At this corner

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