Destination Nihonmachi: A Night in SF Japantown is designed to revitalize Japantown by providing the merchant corridor and entrepreneurs with revenue opportunities and offering an immersive experience of authenticity and discovery for our Japantown community, our displaced families, and visitors from San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.  

The event will activate the commercial corridor on Post Street between Laguna and Buchanan Streets with retail vendors, live entertainment, and will bring together visitors, the existing Japantown Community, and our Western Addition neighbors to celebrate moving Japantown forward for our next generation.

Nihon-jin machi “Japan people’s town” was how early Japanese residents named their cultural community from 1920 - 1942. The first Japanese immigrants settled in the South of Market near Stevenson and Jesse Streets, and were forced to relocate after the 1906 Earthquake to the Western Addition area. In its new location, “Nihonmachi” Japantown came alive as a dense culturally vibrant urban 40-block neighborhood with services, commercial and social institutions to support a community where Japanese people could fully express their cultural identity as Japanese in America. The Western Addition was an ethnic enclave of immigrant minority communities where the boundaries of neighborhoods blurred, bringing together the rich diversity of cultures that San Francisco is known for today.

Destination Nihonmachi will immerse you in the Japantown of today, as if it were a main transit stop on a Shinkansen train line in Japan - a destination of a district steeped in culture, community and arts. Navigate the streets, explore the neighborhood, and see where the night takes you.