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November 21, 2000

COMMUNITY AND CHARACTER

During my recent trip to San Francisco, I had the great pleasure of meeting Paul Osaki, who is part owner of Nikkei Traditions, a shop in Japan Town that sells Japanese American gifts, clothing and art objects. But more important, Paul is also the executive director of the Japanese Cultural Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC), an organization with a hard-to-remember name but an unforgettable impact on the community it serves.

Denver's Japanese community organizations have for years discussed creating a community center, but the idea has always gotten bogged down.

The entire time during our stay at the Best Western Miyako Inn in Japan Town, I kept seeing vans with the name "Kimochi" ("feeling") on their side drive by. I didn't realize until we visited the JCCCNC, which turned out to be just a few feet down the street from the hotel, that Kimochi is part of the JCCCNC stable of community services.

I first heard about the organization when we shopped at Nikkei Traditions and chatted with Paul, who happened to be there. He invited us to visit the JCCCNC before we returned to Denver.

Later, I stopped to say "hello" to Kaz Maniwa, an attorney who keeps an office in the middle of J-Town. I met Kaz on the Manjiro Society's "Grassroots Summit" exchange trip to Japan in 1995, but I hadn't kept in touch. I remembered that he practiced in J-Town, though, and I remembered he had something to do with a community center. It turns out he's the chairperson of the board of directors of the JCCCNC. He also urged us to visit the JCCCNC, so we did.

Visiting the JCCCNC, I realized why everyone was so proud of the organization and its accomplishments. When we entered the building's main entrance, we ran into a polling place for local citizens placing their early votes for the Nov. 7 election. Already, I could see the JCCCNC puts a premium on its role within the community.

Paul Osaki, dressed casually in jeans and a fine Hawaiian shirt, came out of his office, which was busy with staffers working on a myriad of programs and initiatives, and gave us a short but very impressive tour. In one climate-controlled room, state-of-the-art computer equipment is used by community members, including senior citizens, to learn about technology and the Internet. Paul showed us a beautiful gym where JA and non-JA teams play basketball, a library of JA historical archives (someone was doing research in there so I didn't the chance to dig around), a studio for pottery classes, and facilities or facilities-under-construction for other art studios including a full photography darkroom.

The building that the JCCCNC purchased for its operations is deceptively small - it takes up much of a block. Much of the space is taken up by smaller non-profits for who the JCCCNC serves as a protective umbrella: A dance troupe, theater group, and even the Hapa Forum, a national organization for mixed-race Japanese (http://hapaissuesforum.org).

The tour ended with Osaki leading us through a bustling kitchen into a cafeteria full of a couple hundred older Japanese, having a wonderful time eating lunch and socializing with each other. The scene was profoundly moving, because it proved how food and culture can bring a community together to achieve common goals. Osaki explained that the food program is run by Kimochi, one of the many groups that are based at the JCCCNC, and the vans we saw all weekend are for volunteers to deliver food to house-bound clients.

The incredible work of the JCCCNC is managed mostly with the energy and commitment of volunteers, and reminds me of the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) in Los Angeles, where executive director Bill Watanabe has accomplished similar heroic feats of community construction. The LTSC also owns a building, as well as a low-income apartment building called Casa Heiwa, which serves not only Japanese but all the diverse communities of the downtown LA population. The LTSC also provides healthcare and classes, and also connects its constituents with access to computers, technology and the Internet. Watanabe has also overseen the purchase and renovation of a theater nearby, and the LTSC is obviously a powerful force in Little Tokyo.

These organizations are essential to the larger Japanese communities of the major West Coast cities. Denver admittedly doesn't have as many Japanese or Japanese Americans to serve - or to serve as volunteers. At the Japan America Society of Colorado's recent annual fall dinner, outgoing Ambassador to Japan Thomas Foley spoke about the close ties between Colorado and Japan, but the numbers are puny compared to the hundreds of thousands I'm sure are in San Francisco and LA: There are 3,000 Japanese nationals working in Colorado, and 11,000 Japanese Americans who have settled here.

Denver's Japanese community organizations have for years discussed creating a community center, but the idea has always gotten bogged down in preliminary discussions about where it should be and who it should serve. When I was an active member of the board of the Japanese America Citizens League, we tried resurrecting the idea of a Japanese Community Center, but the talks never got off the conceptual stage.

The project seems doomed partly because Denver's Japanese population is dispersed, and not concentrated in one area. There's Sakura Square, but it's only one block with the Buddhist Temple, one Japanese grocery store, a couple of restaurants, a barber shop and Tamai Towers, our own low-income housing project, a haven for elderly Japanese.

Perhaps someday we'll have or own community center to serve all Japanese and Japanese Americans. Until then, I'll happily visit LA and San Francisco for inspiration!

You can "virtually" visit the JCCCNC and the LTSC online via their Web sites.