Walk with me, if you can stand driving with me first, on L.A. highways that challenge even the most ardent motorist (and I count myself among those.) Someone called the experience soul crushing. I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pretty insane if you add the difficulties with finding parking, or, as a friend more aptly phrased it: crazy insane.

However, I made it to the northern edge of L.A. in one piece this Sunday, ready to check out a Japanese enclave, Little Tokyo, that existed since the beginning of the 20th century. The roughly 5-block district was home to some 10.000 Japanese immigrants by the early 1900s, a market place and cultural hub that nowadays offers a mix of traditional stores and restaurants next to tourist traps and skateboard businesses.

On a sunny, windblown Sunday, the place was jumping, throngs of people standing in line in front of various shops, sushi-joints and Karaoke studios, mostly ignoring the multiple reminders of the district’s history, spread throughout.

Sculptures tells stories, as do wall plaques and photographic mosaics.

Junichiro Hannya Ninomiya Kinjiro (1983) – It is actually a controversial sculpture, see details here.

Ramon G. Velasco Chiune Sugihara Memorial, Hero of the Holocaust  2002.

 As the Japanese Vice-Consul for Lithuania, Sugihara helped over 2000 Jews to escape Nazi Germany by handing out transit visas that allowed them to flee through Poland and Russia. He did so against the explicit instructions of the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Jerry Matsukuma Senzo, 1981

There is a large plaza next to the center of the district. Here you find the Japanese American National Museum as well as its National Center for the Preservation of Democracy and the Go for Broke Monument for Japanese Americans who served in the United States Army during World War II, dedicated in 1999.

JANM’s renovated Historic Building was formerly the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, the first Buddhist temple building constructed in Los Angeles in 1925.

“From the plaque for the camera sculpture: First-generation Japanese American photographer Toyo Miyatake (1895) opened his photography studio in Little Tokyo in 1923 and spent the rest of his life documenting his community’s life on film. When Miyatake, his family and 120,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II, Miyatake bravely smuggled a camera lens and a film plate, considered contraband, into the Manzanar concentration camp in California. Using a secretly-constructed camera, he captured everyday life in Manzanar. Artist Nobuho Nagasawa created a three-times-as-large bronze replica of the Miyatake camera in homage to Toyo Miyatake. The sculpture projects slides of Miyatake’s work onto a window of the Japanese American National museum each evening. This sculpture was commissioned by the Community Redevelopment Agency and was first installed in 1993.“

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The Japanese American National Museum was surprisingly airy and empty, and everyone was wearing masks, which made me comfortable enough to meander through both, the permanent exhibit that describes in detail the traumatic experiences of immigrants even before they were rounded up and incarcerated in concentration camps in 1941, and the current exhibition, Don’t Fence Me In, that traces the coming of age of so many young people in the camps during these horror years with superb archival photographs and other objects. (Details here.) Thoughtful curation throughout. The museum is the largest of its kind in the U.S. and holds over 60.000 artifacts. Hello Kitty included…

The OOMO Cube by photographic messaging artist Nicole Maloney was installed near the main entrance of the JANM Pavilion in 2014. OOMO stands for “Out Of Many One” and Maloney conceived of her installation as a giant Rubik’s cube with five sides filled with photographs and the sixth side as a mirror.

Maloney explained that people are often identified through five different characteristics: race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. The cube allows visitors to JANM to have interactions with it by rotating the sections into different configurations. Maloney hoped that those interacting with her cube will be reminded that everyone belongs to one world and one humanity and that it will encourage people to “stand in awe instead of judgment of one another.” (Ref.)

Also located on that plaza is the  Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, an outpost of downtown L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The doors were locked, despite regular business hours. Just as well, I would not have been able to process two museums in a day.

Barbara Kruger’s imposing 30 by 191 feet red, white, and blue mural mural, Untitled (Questions), provided enough to look at and think about.

An installation of airplane parts was home to quite a few birds, coming and going and disappearing inside – urban nesting of the finest.

Nancy Rubin Chas’ Stainless Steel, Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts, About 1,000 Pounds of Stainless Steel Wire (2002)

Wandering around, I was struck by the absence of graffiti – there were a few commissioned, professional murals and the usual plastering of electric cable boxes, meters or some such.

Katie Yamasaki Moon Beholders (2014)

The mural is intended to represent, celebrate, challenge, and preserve different concepts within the Japanese American culture, both contemporary and historic, while connecting with the diverse community around JANM. The mural depicts a young girl, clothed in several furoshiki, a traditional Japanese cloth often used to carry, cover, and protect objects, most often gifts.

The mural also depicts lanterns or akari, representing light or illumination and displays a haiku poem by Basho, a famous Japanese poet from the Edo period. (Ref.)

I will have to figure out where to find it, but that is for another outing. Should I survive the maze of freeways yet again.

The Home is Little Tokyo (2005) mural depicts present-day life in Little Tokyo with vibrant images reflecting Little Tokyo’s revitalization and the community’s strong personal ties to the district. The brightly-colored mural spans 40-feet along the wall fronting Central and is 16-feet tall. Artists Tony Osumi, Sergio Diaz and Jorge Diaz involved community members in the mural design process through open meetings to discuss and collect ideas. The process of creating the mural took three years. (Ref.)

Music today needs a bit of attention. It is a beautiful act of story telling with music.

The Nikkei Music Reclamation Project, in their own words, aims to (re)imagine Nikkei (Japanese American) musical identities and to examine pre- and post-WWII Japanese American political history and music. The goal of the Nikkei Music Reclamation Project is to bring together multiple generations of musicians in extending this legacy and envisioning new directions for Nikkei musical culture in Little Tokyo.