Setting sun
In capital's former Japantown, a handful of stores still thrive.
By Elizabeth Hume Bee Staff Writer
8/6/2002
Page D1
 	
In the large kitchen behind the 10th Street Osaka-ya market, Linda Murakami placed a spoonful of reddish-brown bean curd in the center of a handful of sweet rice dough before placing it in a box to be steamed.

The colorful manju cakes have become the lifeblood of the store that remains one of a handful of Japanese businesses still thriving in downtown. Once a part of Sacramento's bustling Japantown, these businesses survived the demolition of a physical community and continue to prosper even as they are passed on to a new generation of owners and managers.

"Linda's running it already because I'm kind of getting too old for it," said her father, Kenji Nakatani, who has owned Osaka-ya for 37 years.

Before World War II, Sacramento had a thriving Japantown in the area between Third and Sixth streets and M and Q streets. In 1940, 238 businesses owned by Japanese Americans were in Sacramento, according to Wayne Maeda, author of "Changing Dreams and Treasured Memories: A Story of Japanese Americans in the Sacramento Region."

The first assault on the community came in 1942, when U.S. residents of Japanese descent were sent to internment camps. Four years later, some returned and struggled to rebuild. In the 1950s the city's downtown redevelopment project finally brought an end to old Japantown, forcing the business owners to close or relocate.

"We had to move out - we had no choice," said Kanji Nishijima, the owner of one of the 10th Street buildings.

Several Japanese American families bought property along the few blocks stretching from T to W and encouraged former neighbor businesses from Japantown to start over in that area.

"At that time all those properties were available, and they decided it would be nice to have all the Japanese businesses together," said Molly Kimura, whose father, Nobujiro Nakamura, purchased the property on 10th Street across from Nishijima's.

In recent years, several of these stores, including the Senator Fish Market and L&M Appliances, closed as the owners retired. A handful of 10th Street businesses have survived because of the efforts of the younger generation of Japanese Americans.

Linda Murakami grew up in the kitchen behind the Osaka-ya market. Every day after school she went to the shop, where her parents taught her to make the small sweets that come in more than 25 varieties.

Osaka-ya has a corner on the 80-cent buns, stuffed with a mixture of sugar, azuki and lima beans. Each day, four people produce more than 1,000 of the traditional tea cakes that are sold in the shop, sent to private events or shipped to other stores.

"We go to Osaka-ya frequently because it's the only place that has manju in Sacramento," said Tom Fujimoto, a Sacramento resident and longtime customer.

Each week 6,000 tea cakes are sent via air freight to Seattle and Portland, where they are sold at Uwajima-ya, the largest Japanese-oriented grocery stores in the Pacific Northeast.

During the summer, the Sacramento store also sells a heavy volume of shaved ice through its street window.

Down the street, at Sakura Gifts, Nobuko Pang has purchased the firm where she worked as a salesclerk for 18 years.

"The owner wanted to retire, and I had to find something to do because my children have all grown up," Pang said while straightening the kimonos on the shelf.

Pang stocks her shop with traditional Japanese gifts such as teapots, rice bowls and dolls. While many older Japanese American customers visit her store to buy costumes for festivals and dolls for their granddaughters, her clientele has expanded to include the entire community.

"Some of the older people enjoy coming in here to speak in Japanese," Pang said. "But now the business is about 50/50 (half Japanese American and half non-Japanese American). A lot of young people come to buy chopsticks for their hair."

Last year she started a new rent-a-book service. For 50 cents, customers can rent books written in Japanese and return them within a few months.

Across the street, at the Ricksha restaurant, Isamu and Michiko Kawahira are teaching their son David how to run the 32-year-old family business that they started a month after they were married.

Serving 70 to 80 lunches a day, the restaurant continues to be successful. But Ricksha differs from many Japanese-style restaurants across Sacramento because the food and decor remain traditionally Japanese.

"A lot of the Japanese restaurants now are Chinese- or Korean-owned, and the food is more American," David Kawahira said. He hopes to keep the restaurant in the traditional Japanese style that his parents laid out.

"I want to maintain how they started it, maybe adding a few menu items here and there but not changing too much of what they've done," he said.

The Bee's Elizabeth Hume can be reached at (916)321-1203 or ehume@sacbee.com.