Founded around 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.

[7] Founded during this time were rotating savings and credit associations known as tanomoshiko, which provided funding towards emerging business ventures in Little Tokyo.

Concurrently, these leaders worked with Japan to establish kenjinkai or mutual aid societies each associated to one of the Japanese Prefectures.

[13] 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.

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 the Zoot Suit race riots.

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 the Jordan Downs housing complex.

Others were pushed out when Japanese Americans began to return and white landlords chose not to renew leases with their wartime tenants.

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.

[7] 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.

[15] 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.

[7] 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.

During its inception in 1980, the Weller Court mall was opposed by some people in the community because it redeveloped a strip of family-owned small businesses.

[24] Little Tokyo has a variety of public art,[25][26] including a memorial statue of Chiune Sugihara, Japanese consul to Lithuania before World War II and Righteous among the Nations.

The Go for Broke Monument commemorates Japanese Americans who served in the United States Military during World War II.

[32] 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 the public courtyard of the Union Center for the Arts[33] Cold Tofu Improv was founded in 1981 as the nation's first Asian American Improv & Comedy Group.

[34] Kollaboration founded in 2000, is an organization focusing on advancing Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi Americans (APIDA) in the Music and entertainment industries.

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.

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 the JACCC at the Aratani Theatre.

[37] 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.

Two wagashi (Japanese sweets) shops located in Little Tokyo are among the oldest food establishments in Los Angeles.

Fugetsu-do, founded in 1903,[47] appears to be 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.

These are a great way to find Japanese video games that were either never translated into English, or were never domestically released in North America.

The Japanese Village Plaza is located roughly in the center of Little Tokyo on the east side of San Pedro Street.

For tourists visiting from Japan, there are a number of shops specializing in expensive name brand products such as Coach handbags.

Weller Court was the second major project of the East West Development Corporation in association with the Community Redevelopment Agency, after the $30 million New Otani.

Union Church of Los Angeles, founded in 1918, represents a long tradition of Japanese American Presbyterianism.

Fr Albert Breton, a Japanese-speaking missionary of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, with the support of Bishop Thomas Conaty of the Diocese of Los Angeles, established the community on December 25, 1912.

Where the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center Plaza is now located was once the home of the First Pentecostal Church, a multiracial congregation called the Azusa Street Mission.

The former cathedral was converted into a performing arts space and non-historic buildings on the site demolished and replaced with a new Little Tokyo Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Community representatives from the Little Tokyo Business Association, the Japanese American National Museum, and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta expressed their concerns about Metro's decision.