For nearly a century, Frances Hashimoto's family lovingly crafted traditional Japanese pastries in Little Tokyo. For funerals and weddings, tea ceremonies and New Year's festivities, the little shop helped mark major community moments with soft rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste, baked chestnut buns, delicate sweets colored and shaped like spring blossoms or fall maple leaves.
But two months ago, Hashimoto remodeled her Little Tokyo store, Mikawaya. She placed her pastries in the back, giving more prominent space to Italian gelato and what has now become her signature product, mochi ice cream. She is introducing decidedly Western flavors into her sweets, including peanut butter, blueberry and orange.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Little Tokyo: An article in Sunday's California section about demographic changes taking place in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles gave architect Ted Tokio Tanaka's last name as Tajima.
"The Japanese community has always known us for Japanese pastries," Hashimoto said. "But all of a sudden, the crowd in Little Tokyo was changing and we wanted to show we were changing, too."
As goes Mikawaya, so goes Little Tokyo. A new wave of multicultural investors, residents and visitors is transforming the area, the largest of three major Japantowns left in California.
New housing projects could bring in hundreds of new multicultural residents during the next few years. Mainstream retailers, including Robeks and Pinkberry, are entering the market.
Many of Little Tokyo's major properties have changed hands to non-Japanese owners -- including the controversial sale in August of the New Otani Hotel and Gardens to a Beverly Hills-based real estate firm.
Now the community's eyes are trained on the city's request for proposals to buy and develop its last large land parcel in the Little Tokyo area at 1st and Alameda streets, known as the Mangrove site. The competition, whose bid deadline is Friday, is seen as a major test of the area's future direction.
The rapid changes have touched off anxiety -- but also a collective effort to figure out ways to embrace the newcomers while preserving the ethnic culture and identity of Japanese America's historic heart.
"The whole demographic of Little Tokyo will change," said Chris Komai, spokesman for the Japanese American National Museum. "The question for us and Little Tokyo generally is how much influence will we have on this influx of new people? Will they come and just go to Quiznos and Starbucks? Or will they say they like Little Tokyo's culture and history and want it to stay that way?"
