Merchants struggle in S.F.’s Japantown
Historic area, a survivor, now hit by pandemic
Tradition has flourished within the handful of blocks that make up San Francisco’s Japantown — a bonsai version of a once sprawling neighborhood. The 114yearold town has had its fair share of struggle, surviving earthquakes, internment, displacement. Now it faces another battle: COVID19.
Community members and merchants are worried about the devastating economic crisis, running parallel with the health crisis, on Japantown’s small businesses that are invariably tied to its cultural identity.
“Our stores play a big part of our attraction; they are what make Japantown unique,” said Grace Horikiri, executive director at Japantown Community Benefit District. “We’ve survived quite a bit and we hope to ride this out, too.”
The economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic is
dire for small businesses. After two months of sheltering in place, Bay Area counties announced last week that retailers could open for curbside pickup. However, most shoppers have continued to stay home as broader shelterinplace rules remain.
Recent state orders allow for instore shopping, but the six Bay Area counties that have issued health orders in tandem — Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, San Francisco and Santa Clara — are not allowing that just yet. Malls are still closed to the public in San Francisco, and storefronts can only offer curbside pickup. On Thursday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that instore shopping, including malls, could resume as soon as June 15.
For now, though, malls and the stores within them remain closed, a frustration for the Japan Center shops. The twin malls are in the heart of Japantown, or Nihonmachi as locals call it.
Greg Viloria, who directs community affairs and marketing for the Japan Center Malls, said he was unsure if the mall could reopen on June 15. He said he needed more clarity on city guidelines and would hold a town hall meeting with merchants.
“We have to review the process of reopening; our worry is the safety of our customers and our merchants,” he said.
The threat of the virus has hit close to home. Hatsuye “Hatsy” Yasukochi, coowner of the sweet shop, died due to complications from COVID19 on March 27. And at least 67 people have tested positive for the virus at Central Gardens Convalescent Hospital, a senior nursing home facility in the nearby Western Addition neighborhood, that’s been hit with one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in San Francisco.
Unlike other neighborhoods in San Francisco, most of Japantown’s more than 200 businesses are inside the Japan Center East and West malls, according to the Japantown CBD. The malls are situated between the Peace Plaza, where a fivetiered pagoda stands, a gift from the city of Osaka. San Francisco’s Japantown is the oldest and one of the last remaining in the country, along with Los Angeles, San Jose and Seattle.
“The plaza and the malls are the epicenter of Japantown,” said Rosalyn Tonai, executive director of the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco. “A special sense of place reverberates there because our culture is celebrated on those steps.”
The touristdependent neighborhood hosts numerous events, artists and concerts throughout the year, but the largest event, the Cherry Blossom Festival, which often draws 200,000 people to the neighborhood, was canceled in April. The Nihonmachi Street Fair in August is canceled, too, and with travel decimated, it’s unlikely events of this scale will be happening until a vaccine for the coronavirus is found, or when people feel safe venturing into large gatherings again.
“It’s a real challenge when so much of the cultural aspect is tied to live events,” Tonai said. “How then do we gather?”
The side effects are felt by the largely touristreliant stores inside the malls, now grappling with uncertainty. Because shops in malls aren’t allowed to open, curbside is not an option for those stores even if they’re operating online.
Husband and wife duo Victor and Stephanie Lau are coowners of Katachi, a store selling decorative Japanese swords and other wares, and Amiko Boutique, an accessories, clothing and gift store carrying brands such as Sanrio, Harajuku Lovers and Pusheen. While some online sales have picked up, it’s nowhere near enough to offset the revenue that they would have been making if they were open.
“Walkins, more than anything else, are a huge part of our business,” Victor Lau said. “People discover us by walking through the mall, and not much of that has been happening since March.”
They’ve had to lay off about 12 employees, and have applied for federal and local financial assistance to stay afloat.
“Once we get back up, we’re planning to focus more on ecommerce,” Lau said. “We’re looking at adding more merchandise to our websites and figuring out fulfillment.”
Daiso Japan, a discount goods retailer in the mall, has stayed open, because it sells food, with reduced hours. The store is enforcing distancing, limiting customers in the store, putting up Plexiglas at checkout stands and giving employees masks and gloves.
Revenue is down for the businesses that remain open. Operators of the popular restaurant Marufuku Ramen said they’re making only a third of what they usually did on a regular day.
“We have to adapt the business to what’s going on,” said Carlos Herrador, vice president of franchise operations at Marufuku. “We’ve changed to online and togo orders and are working with food delivery apps. We’re increasing our presence on social media and are investing a lot more time communicating with our customers.”
Viloria of the Japan Center Malls said management is working with merchants on “adjustments on leases” but declined to give specifics. He said a lot of the older merchants also dealt with language barriers and often needed help applying for financial aid, delaying their transition to ecommerce or other means of staying open.
Linda Mihara, whose store Paper Tree on Buchanan Street is a block away from the malls, said the lack of instore shoppers has hurt but she’s gotten crafty now that she’s offering storefront pickup. Mihara, a thirdgeneration Japanese
American, was born and raised in Japantown. Her father started the business, an office supply store that became an origami and paper craft shop. It’s one of the longstanding legacy businesses in Japantown, along with bakery Benkyodo, Soko Hardware and Yasukochi Sweet Stop, which reopened May 21.
“Retail is so much about creating instore experiences. Why do people come here? Because they appreciate Japanese origami and want to see products for themselves,” Mihara said.
She’s had an uptick in online sales and she wants to catch customers who are walking by or coming in because of a pickup. She’s put up QR codes on her window shop, which customers can scan to buy what they see on her website. Mere minutes after they place an order, she hands them their purchases.
“I go back to thinking about how we can reinvent ourselves with this challenge,” she said. “And it saddens me to think that some stores here may not come back.”
The community was also hit with the stigma of being an Asian neighborhood early on in the pandemic, Tonai said.
“We felt that quite acutely,” she said.
In its heyday, Japantown spread over almost 40 blocks. Now it is down to four to six. Formed in 1906 after the earthquake amid antiAsian immigration laws, the thriving community was forcibly relocated to internment camps during World War II. It shrank further in the 1960s, when work on the Geary Expressway began, which evicted residents and shut down dozens of small businesses.
“The future of everything is to get a vaccine, and trace testing and all that stuff. That has to happen,” Tonai said. “Our community has been through a lot, but we’re resilient and manage to make it out every single time.”