The numbers point to a Northern Virginia suburb most people have never heard of. Here’s what ACS 2023 data reveals about where Japanese Americans actually live.
Nobody guesses Virginia.
Ask most people which American city has the highest concentration of Japanese residents and you’ll hear Honolulu, Los Angeles, maybe San Francisco. The answer, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, is Centreville — a quiet suburb in Fairfax County where 12.61% of residents identify as Japanese alone. Roughly one in eight people. You notice it in the strip malls off Route 28, where ramen counters and karaoke bars sit between dry cleaners and nail salons, and you hear it in the Japanese being spoken at school pickups.
Centreville didn’t get there through historical settlement. It got there because Honda, Toyota, and a wave of Japanese corporations planted North American headquarters in the DC metro corridor during the 1980s and ’90s, and the executives, engineers, and their families followed. A community built on assignment cycles rather than roots.
That distinction — corporate rotation versus generational settlement — runs through everything in this guide, and it changes how you read the numbers.
How we ranked these cities
A single ranking misleads. A city with 100,000 Japanese residents at 2% of the population tells a different story than a suburb where Japanese people make up 12% of the neighborhood, and both stories are worth telling.
This guide uses two lenses:
- Concentration: the cities with the highest percentage of Japanese residents — a proxy for neighborhood-level visibility and day-to-day community life.
- Community size: the cities with the largest number of Japanese residents — a proxy for institutional depth, commercial infrastructure, and regional pull.
All figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2023 5-year estimates, variable B02015_005E (Japanese alone), filtered to incorporated places and CDPs with a total population of 50,000 or more.
At a glance
| City | State | Japanese pop. | % Japanese | Lens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centreville CDP | VA | 9,063 | 12.61% | Concentration |
| Fullerton | CA | 17,580 | 12.44% | Both |
| Buena Park | CA | 10,321 | 12.43% | Concentration |
| Diamond Bar | CA | 4,647 | 8.65% | Concentration |
| Torrance | CA | 11,382 | 7.93% | Both |
| Irvine | CA | 21,651 | 7.03% | Both |
| Los Angeles | CA | 102,454 | 2.66% | Community size |
| New York | NY | 78,440 | 0.92% | Community size |
| San Jose | CA | 15,680 | 1.58% | Community size |
| San Diego | CA | 15,587 | 1.13% | Community size |
U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2023 5-year estimates, table B02015. “Japanese alone” respondents. Places with population ≥ 50,000.
The history the geography can’t explain without
Japanese immigration to the US came in three distinct waves. The first began in the 1880s, when Meiji-era laborers arrived in California and Hawaii for agricultural and railway work. The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 slowed direct immigration, but communities continued to grow through picture brides and American-born children. By 1940, most of the country’s Japanese-origin population was clustered up and down the Pacific Coast.
Then came Executive Order 9066. In 1942, approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans — the majority of them US citizens — were forcibly removed and incarcerated. Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles lost entire neighborhoods almost overnight. When the camps closed, many families had no property to return to. Only three historic Japantowns survived with their fabric intact: San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles.
The third wave came after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed race-based quotas, and accelerated through the 1980s as Japanese corporations expanded into the US market. This last wave is why Centreville, Virginia tops the concentration list, and why a second mid-Atlantic city — Ellicott City, Maryland — also appears in the national top 10.
Cities by concentration
Where Japanese residents make up the highest share of the local population.
1. Centreville, Virginia — 12.61% (9,063 of 71,885)
There’s no Japantown in Centreville, no heritage markers, no annual festival anchored in the Meiji era. What there is: a dense spread of Japanese grocery stores, izakayas and karaoke rooms along Route 28, Saturday Japanese-language schools attached to Buddhist temples, and a social world organized largely around the corporate rotation schedule. Families arrive on a three-year assignment and stay; others leave and are replaced by the next cohort. The community is simultaneously high-functioning and in permanent motion.
For visitors making the drive from DC, the draw is a genuinely Japanese meal — tonkotsu ramen, yakitori, decent convenience-store-style onigiri — without Manhattan prices or the self-consciousness that comes with being in a tourist district. For anyone curious about what Japanese corporate America actually looks like on the ground, Centreville is the clearest example the data offers.
Worth knowing: The mid-Atlantic Japanese community extends into Ellicott City, Maryland (6.95% Japanese, ACS 2023), which functions as Centreville’s counterpart further up the Baltimore corridor. The two cities together represent a largely undocumented chapter of Japanese-American settlement.
2. Fullerton, California — 12.44% (17,580 of 141,278)
Fullerton is the entry that should anchor every “most Japanese cities” list and almost never does. It scores nearly as high as Centreville on concentration and carries more than 17,500 Japanese residents — which means it has both the density of a concentrated suburb and the scale of a significant community hub.
The roots here go deeper than Centreville’s. Orange County’s Japanese-American farming history, Fullerton College’s sizeable Japanese student enrollment, and several generations of Nikkei families give the city a more layered character: Issei-descendant households alongside newer arrivals, civic organizations alongside fresher expat networks. It also sits at the center of a remarkable geographic cluster — Fullerton, Buena Park, and Irvine form a triangle in northern Orange County where, by concentration, Japanese Americans are more present than in most of Los Angeles proper.
3. Buena Park, California — 12.43% (10,321 of 83,052)
Four miles from Fullerton and statistically almost identical (12.43% versus 12.44%), Buena Park shares the same agricultural heritage from the Santa Ana Valley and functions as the same kind of community — suburban, rooted, built for residents rather than visitors. The commercial layer that 10,000-plus Japanese residents support feels out of proportion to the city’s general profile in the best way: Japanese restaurants and markets that assume you know what you’re looking at, not ones that explain it to you.
4. Diamond Bar, California — 8.65% (4,647 of 53,750)
Diamond Bar is part of the Pomona Valley cluster that includes Rowland Heights and Walnut — a stretch of suburban Los Angeles County where overlapping Asian communities have created infrastructure largely invisible to anyone who doesn’t already know it’s there. At nearly one in eleven residents being Japanese, the community is concentrated enough to sustain its own cultural life without needing the scale of a major city.
5. Torrance, California — 7.93% (11,382 of 143,499)
Torrance is the city most people think of when this subject comes up, and the reputation is earned. With 7.93% Japanese residents and more than 11,000 in absolute terms, it has both density and scale — the combination that produces a full commercial and cultural ecosystem rather than a few isolated restaurants.
Toyota’s North American headquarters was here for decades before its 2017 move to Texas, and the corporate legacy left a permanent mark on the city’s character. Mitsuwa Marketplace, Tokyo Central, the Japan America Cultural and Community Center, and one of the best concentrations of Japanese restaurants outside Little Tokyo all operate within a few square miles of each other. The Nisei-era foundations run deep enough that the community has been self-sustaining across generations, long past the point where corporate relocation was driving the numbers.
Cities by community size
Where the largest numbers of Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals live.
6. Los Angeles, California — 102,454 (2.66% of 3,857,897)
Los Angeles has the largest Japanese community of any city in the world outside Japan. The 102,454 figure (ACS 2023) isn’t a close race with second place — New York is at 78,440 and no other US city breaks 25,000.
Little Tokyo, designated a National Historic Landmark District, holds the institutional center: the Japanese American National Museum (the definitive archive of the Japanese-American experience, its collection anchored in objects from the internment), the Japanese Village Plaza, and Nisei Week, the largest Japanese-American community festival in the country, held every August since 1934. West of downtown, the Sawtelle corridor — sometimes called Little Osaka — functions as a second, younger hub oriented around food and the Japanese film and media industry.
For anyone with serious interest in Japanese-American history, most of the primary record lives here.
7. New York, New York — 78,440 (0.92% of 8,516,202)
New York’s Japanese community is the largest on the East Coast and arguably the most cosmopolitan in the country — oriented toward Japan in ways that California’s multigenerational Nikkei communities typically aren’t. The corridor running through Midtown East (the 40s and 50s east of Fifth Avenue) operates with its own internal logic: Japanese-language newspapers still in print, specialized employment agencies, cultural and trade organizations, Japanese bookshops and pharmacies stocked with products unavailable elsewhere in the US.
Japan Society, founded in 1907, remains one of the oldest Japan-US cultural institutions in the country. The community skews toward expats and professionals on rotation — which means it turns over, but it also means it’s constantly refreshed. The izakayas on the side streets off Lexington stay full on weekday evenings.
8. Irvine, California — 21,651 (7.03% of 308,160)
Irvine is one of only three cities in this guide that appear in both the concentration list and the community-size list. Its 21,651 Japanese residents are more than the entire Japanese populations of some cities that routinely top “most Japanese” rankings.
The University of California, Irvine’s research reputation drew Japanese academic and technology families for decades; the city’s master planning concentrated Asian communities into specific residential precincts, giving the result a density that feels engineered rather than accumulated. The community here tends to be professionally established and embedded in the city’s civic life in ways that more transient communities aren’t — which shows in the durability of Japanese institutions in the area.
9. San Jose, California — 15,680 (1.58% of 990,054)
Of the three surviving historic Japantowns in the US, San Jose’s is arguably the most alive as a functioning neighborhood. The Japantown Business District along Jackson Street has been continuously operating since before WWII; the Obon Festival — one of the oldest on the mainland, running for over a century — fills the neighborhood each July with taiko and bon odori dancing. San Jose Taiko, founded in 1973, has become one of the most recognized taiko ensembles in the country.
This is a community that has done the work of preservation deliberately, not just by surviving but by documenting and passing things forward. The Nikkei Traditions cultural program has been collecting oral histories and material culture from Bay Area Japanese-American families since the 1980s.
10. San Diego, California — 15,587 (1.13% of 1,385,061)
San Diego’s Japanese community has a character shaped by the end of the war rather than the beginning of settlement. Many Japanese Americans released from internment at Poston and other Southwest camps chose San Diego over the Bay Area — it was closer, cheaper, and had a naval sector that offered employment to veterans. The community that formed in the late 1940s and ’50s developed deep roots in the defense and maritime industries and never moved.
The Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park — a long-running collaboration between San Diego and its sister city Yokohama — is the most accessible cultural anchor for visitors. The residential center sits in the National City and Chula Vista areas, a quieter and more local chapter of the Japanese-American California story.
Frequently asked questions
What about Honolulu? It’s always at the top of these lists. Urban Honolulu CDP has 12,720 Japanese alone residents (ACS 2023), which places it seventh in the US by community size. Its concentration is 3.67% — not in the national top ten. Honolulu’s Japanese share was once dominant (43% of Hawaii’s total population in 1920) but has declined steadily as the overall population has grown and diversified. It remains a significant community by any measure, but the data no longer supports placing it at the top of a concentration ranking.
Which US city has the highest percentage of Japanese residents? Centreville CDP, Virginia — 12.61% Japanese alone (ACS 2023). Among cities with over 100,000 residents, Fullerton, California leads at 12.44%.
Where is the largest Japanese community in the United States? Los Angeles — 102,454 Japanese alone residents (ACS 2023). It’s also the largest Japanese community outside Japan globally.
What are the three surviving historic Japantowns? San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles. Most others were destroyed or never rebuilt after the 1942 internment.
What the data doesn’t show
Census figures count Japanese alone — single-race respondents only. A significant proportion of Japanese Americans, particularly Sansei (third generation) and Yonsei (fourth generation) families, identify as multiracial and don’t appear in B02015_005E. The real cultural footprint of Japanese America in any of these cities is larger than the table above suggests.
The data also can’t tell you which temple has been running the same Obon for eighty years, where the Japanese fish market stays open until 9 p.m., or which ramen counter the expat community actually goes to rather than the one that appears on every list. That’s the part that requires going.
All population figures: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2023 5-year estimates, Table B02015 (Asian Alone by Specific Origin). “Japanese alone” respondents. Incorporated places and CDPs with total population ≥ 50,000.