The United States is home to many Japanese cities with unique cultures and histories. Here are the most Japanese cities in America, according to recent data. Japanese-Americans predate the second world war. Most have ancestors who came to the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s, drawn by the promise of jobs in the American West. The Japanese population in the U.S. exploded after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed race-based quotas, making it easier for Japanese people to move to the States. Most Japanese-Americans live on the West Coast in states like California, Washington, and Oregon.
Although a small number of intrepid travelers first traveled from Japan to California in the 1860s, it wasn’t until the 1880s that the number of immigrants reached thousands. These early settlers formed little settlements within more smallish towns and larger cities, like San Francisco’s Japantown, and dispersed up and down the Pacific coast. Less than 25,000 Japanese citizens were living in the U.S. in 1900.
About 426.4 thousand Japanese people were residing in the United States as of October 2020. The early immigrants frequently chose to work as farm laborers. Still, you could find them in mining camps and timber mills, where they occasionally opened essential stores, restaurants, and small hotels. Here are a few of the American cities where there are Japanese people.
Honolulu
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Honolulu is a city in Hawaii. The second-largest ethnic group in Hawaii is Japanese, also referred to as “Local Japanese,” “Simple Japanese,” and less frequently as “Kepani.” In 1920, when they were at their largest, they made up 43% of Hawaii’s total population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, they currently comprise 16.7% of the island’s total population. In the USA, a sizable portion of the ethnic group is Japanese. The main ethnic groupings are Asian Indians (21%), followed by the Japanese (20%), Filipinos (13%), Chinese (10%), Koreans (4%), and Vietnamese (2%) (0.3 percent ). Only 3.2% of people nowadays are solely of Native Hawaiian heritage. More than 23.7 thousand Japanese citizens were inhabitants of Honolulu as of October 2020. The nation contains the most significant number of Japanese citizens.
Sacramento
Sacramento had the fourth-largest Japanese population of any American city by the 1920s. On their route into the city, travelers on U.S. 40 traveled through the neighborhood on M Street (today’s Capitol Avenue). A few streets east of the Tower Bridge and the Sacramento River in 1940, Fourth and M Streets served as the main intersection for Sacramento’s Japantown. Several proud Japanese Americans have taken it upon themselves to revitalize the heart of Sacramento’s Japantown and provide the local Japanese American community with more knowledge and possibilities. Numerous Japanese restaurants, such as the Hana Tsubaki Restaurant, may be found in Sacramento.
San Jose
Due to the excellent farm work in the Santa Clara Valley, the Japanese migrated there around 1890. These Issei (first generation) pioneers sought safety in San Jose’s Chinatown, located north of the downtown area and known locally as “Heinlenville” in honor of John Heinlen, who built it. It is still one of the three remaining historical Japantowns in the United States more than a century later. Japantown is a well-liked destination for tourists and locals, offering a variety of unique boutiques, conventional stores, art galleries, museums, and original restaurants.
San Francisco
San Francisco has a sizable Japanese population and one of the biggest Japantowns in the country, where you may find a predominantly Japanese community. Each year, a variety of Japanese parades happen in Japantown. Nearly 20,000 Japanese citizens resided in the San Francisco metropolitan area as of October 2020. The nation with the greatest concentration of Japanese citizens was the United States in the same year. As long as San Francisco has existed, it has had a sizable Asian population. Since the California Gold Rush, Asians have played a significant role in the state’s history. Today, slightly more than one-third of the city’s residents are Asian. People who have resided in the area with their families for two, three, or more generations make up the majority instead of immigrants.
Los Angeles
The Little Tokyo area, also known as the Little Tokyo Historic District, is the center of the largest Japanese-American community in North America and is located in downtown Los Angeles. The most fantastic aspect of Little Tokyo, the center of Japanese culture in downtown Los Angeles, may be that it even exists. The area provided Japanese Americans with a secure, comfortable setting to work, gather, and start their new lives. It originated in the 1880s for issei, or Japanese immigrants, to preserve their culture in a foreign land. Today, the district’s enticing assortment of cultural hubs, apparel stores, restaurants, and pubs bears witness to that heritage.
Seattle
The Japanese initially came to the Pacific Northwest in the nineteenth century. Their numbers increased to meet the need for workers in railroads, mining, forestry, and fisheries. Japanese immigrants had surpassed earlier Chinese immigration to become the largest minority population in the Seattle region by 1900. In 2010, there were 20,652 ethnic Japanese living in King County, with 7,829 of them living in the city of Seattle. In the Seattle area, the Eastside was home to a sizable ethnic Japanese population as of 2000.
Bellevue
Bellevue has a diversified population because more than 39% of its residents were born in more than 90 different countries. People of color make up about half of the population, and about 43% speak a language at home besides English. Asians are Bellevue’s largest non-white population group, making up around 34% of the city’s population. The proportion of Asians in Bellevue is 12th out of all American cities with 100,000 or more residents, and it is the highest among major cities outside California and Hawaii. There are undoubtedly many Japanese in Bellevue.
Torrance
California’s Los Angeles County is home to the city of Torrance. Torrance is one of the medium-sized American towns with the highest concentration of Japanese and one of the safest cities in Southern California. Since it was first established as an industrial hub 107 years ago, Torrance has developed into a thriving mix of business, industrial, and residential areas. In Torrance, people born outside of the USA make up about 30% of the population. Torrance boasts the second-largest population of ethnic Japanese people in the United States after Honolulu. The percentage of people with Japanese ancestry in Torrance is around 15%. A significant Korean population, primarily concentrated in Torrance and Gardena, also resides in the South Bay area.
Gardena
You can find Gardena city in Los Angeles County, California, in the South Bay area of the county. The City of Gardena has part of the most significant percentage of Japanese Americans in California in the U.S. census until 2014. The South Bay area of Los Angeles has the highest number of Japanese businesses in the mainland United States thanks to Gardena’s Japanese American community. There is a sizable Japanese-American population in Gardena. As of 2014, Torrance, a nearby city, has the most significant number of Japanese Americans living in the 48 contiguous states. Since 1988, Gardena has been home to the Japanese Cultural Institute (JCI), which provides Japanese Americans with cultural and social events. The building that was in use during that time was built in 1976.
Novi
Novi is a city in Michigan State. 14,528 Japanese nationals were living in Michigan as of January 2017, primarily in the state’s southeast. You can find the most significant concentration of Japanese people in Michigan Novi, which is home to more than 3,000 Japanese. When Japanese auto executives started moving to metro Detroit to work in the global car capital, it took at least 20 years for Novi to begin earning the nickname “Little Tokyo.”
Many of those executives would stop at the hospital that is now known as Providence Park, whose attendance was always contingent upon a business physical. More and more patients from Japan got treatment as time went on. Then, as one family’s mission in the U.S. ended, another family would depart Japan in search of a new home, sometimes in or near Novi.