The 82nd annual Nisei Week Japanese Festival returned to Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo from August 10 to 18. The event featured a parade, a festival, dancers, cultural displays, exhibits, and live music.
The Nisei Week Foundation’s 82nd annual Nisei Week Japanese Festival brought crowds to the Little Tokyo neighborhood in Los Angeles over two weekends this month, August 10-11 and 17-18, 2024. The festival featured food vendors, cultural exhibits, live music, and dance performances at a variety of locations around Little Tokyo, including the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (JACCC), Japanese American National Museum, and Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple.
The festivities kicked off on August 10th with the coronation of the Nisei Week Queen and Court in the Aratani Theatre in the JACCC. The following day featured the grand parade around the Japanese Village Plaza. The plaza festival featured food vendors and live performances, including a Japanese drum (taiko) gathering, which showcased various taiko groups from across Southern California.
Visitors enjoyed delicious foods such as Japanese hotpot, wagyu skewers, shaved ice, and booths with customized calligraphy, festival games, and Japanese books and literature. The JACCC, adjacent to the plaza festival, hosted an indoor bonsai tree and paper lamp exhibit. The festival wrapped up on August 18th with a Japanese traditional dance in the street with live entertainment, Ondo Public Street Dancing, and a closing ceremony.
Nisei Week was started in Little Tokyo in 1934 by a small group of second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) to “help attract more of the Nisei population to revive and revitalize Little Tokyo’s economic base and expose them to their cultural roots and heritage.” This year’s event highlighted the ongoing efforts to preserve Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, one of only three Japan towns in the United States. The other two are also in California – Japantown, San Francisco and Japantown, San Jose. This year’s festival celebrated Little Tokyo’s 140th anniversary with an event presented by the Little Tokyo Community Council and Little Tokyo Historical Society. In May, Little Tokyo was designated one of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Historic Trust of Preservation. Over recent years, Little Tokyo has experienced continued evictions, closures, and relocations as gentrification and urban renewable price out long-standing residents. Sustainable Little Tokyo, a community-driven initiative which includes the JACCC, Little Tokyo Service Center, Japanese American National Museum and the Little Tokyo Community Council, is working to sustain independent businesses, strengthen the community through “programs that create cultural connections to Little Tokyo,” and support green development in Little Tokyo.
This year’s event featured a revival of the long-standing festival after multiple years of cancellations and reduced programming due to Covid-19. As Little Tokyo celebrates its 140th year anniversary and Nisei Week its 82nd, the festival serves an important role in celebrating Japanese culture and the Little Tokyo neighborhood.
Alana Ballagh is a Summer 2024 Young Professional at the East-West Center in Washington. She is an incoming M.S. student in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia.