Japantown (Vancouver)

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Kids at play in 1927

Japantown, Little Yokohama, or Little Tokyo was a neighbourhood in Vancouver British Columbia, north of Chinatown, that had a concentration of Japanese immigrants. It was attacked in the early 1900s by the Asiatic Exclusion League, which burned down parts of Chinatown. Japantown received warning of the attacks, and the residents prevented the Asiatic Exclusion League members from destroying their shops.

During World War II when Japanese Canadians had their property confiscated and were interned (see Japanese Canadian internment), Japantown ceased to be a distinct Japanese ethnic area. Although some Japanese returned after the war, the community never revived. The area is now part of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Along Powell Street a few remnants of the former Japanese neighbourhood still exist. The Vancouver Buddhist Church, formerly the Japanese Methodist Church, is still there. Until the boom in Japanese restaurants in the 1980s, two restaurants on Powell Street were among the only Japanese dining in the city.

Oppenheimer Park in this area is the site for the annual two day Powell Street Festival which is held every summer and is a community celebration of Japanese heritage as well as the alternative and street culture of the Downtown Eastside.

[edit] New Japantown

An upscale enclave of ethnic Japanese retailers and restaurants, New Japantown - more usually known as the Little Ginza - has developed on Alberni Street near Burrard Street in the slim boundary area between the West End and the Financial District in Downtown Vancouver.

The new enclave has been gaining momentum over the course of the last twenty years with an increasing number of high-end restaurants, dance clubs, karaoke bars, shops, and upscale boutiques. These venues are largely geared to the usual tourist as well as the travelling Japanese tourists in search of "bargain"-priced designer goods (relative to prices in Tokyo or Osaka), prostitutes, and for omiyage (obligatory gifts to be given on return home).