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Because the YouTube algorithm still works when it wants to sometimes, this video came across my home page:

Here’s my immediate reaction that I had after watching this video that while I’m unleashing now, have felt bubbling inside me the past few years: Japantowns and Little Tokyos across the U.S. no longer are the communal hubs that they were pre- and post-World War II because there isn’t a need to cater and serve to its Japanese and Japanese American residents anymore. Because there are no Japanese people in the U.S. anymore.

Yes the decline of Japanese hubs in the U.S. is in part because Japanese communities were wiped out due to the incarceration camps during the War (Look to Portland’s Chinatown, once a thriving Japantown, to see what will likely come to be of California’s Japanese cultural centers) but it was the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the 1990s that truly marked the decline of many Japanese enclaves in the U.S. In San Jose, you can still spot remnants—old Japanese restaurants that once welcomed waves of visiting salarymen (chūzaiin) and their families in the 80s and 90s, now shuttered and replaced by businesses reflecting newer immigrant communities.

According to recent U.S. Census Bureau data, people of Japanese descent make up about 5% of the country’s Asian American population. Compare that to the 1990 Census data that shows that 11% of those who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander also identified as Japanese. Today, among Asians in the U.S., only 25% of self-identified Japanese people are immigrants, and 75% are U.S. born.

Little Tokyo is both an entertainment hub and a site of historical importance. But what was once a vital space for its local residents now feels more like an exhibition at a World Expo. And that’s all fine and dandy but let’s not pretend it’s something it isn’t.