Japantown

Japantown (日本人街, Nihonjin-gai) is a common name for official Japanese communities in big cities outside Japan. Alternatively, a Japantown may be called J-town, Little Tokyo, or Nihonmachi (日本町), the first two being common names for the Japanese communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively.

History

Historically, Japantowns represented the Japanese diaspora, and its individual members known as nikkei (日系), are Japanese emigrants from Japan and their descendants that reside in a foreign country. Emigration from Japan first happened and was recorded as early as the 12th century to the Philippines, but did not become a mass phenomenon until the Meiji Era, when Japanese began to go to the Philippines,North America, and beginning in 1897 with 35 emigrants to Mexico; and later to Peru, beginning in 1899 with 790 emigrants. There was also significant emigration to the territories of the Empire of Japan during the colonial period; however, most such emigrants repatriated to Japan after the end of World War II in Asia.

San Francisco

San Francisco (/sæn frÉ™nˈsɪskoÊŠ/), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California. San Francisco encompasses a land area of about 46.9 square miles (121 km²) on the northern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, which makes it the smallest county in the state. It has a density of about 18,187 people per square mile (7,022 people per km²), making it the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City. San Francisco is the fourth-most populous city in California, after Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, and the 13th-most populous city in the United States—with a Census-estimated 2014 population of 852,469. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 8.6 million.