JACCC Plaza: Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (In Front of Building)

JACCC’s 2.2-acre campus features an outdoor sculpture and plaza designed by world-renowned artist and Los Angeles native, Isamu Noguchi.

The volcanic basalt sculpture is Noguchi’s only publicly-accessible sculpture in his hometown. Its title, “To the Issei,” refers to the Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) who made great sacrifices to support their families and the Japanese American community.

Working closely with our founders, Noguchi understood that the Issei and Nisei (second generation) envisioned JACCC as a permanent home for Japanese and Japanese American art and culture to flourish in the United States. Thanks to the efforts and support of many, JACCC is now one of the largest ethnic arts and cultural centers of its kind in the United States. We are located in Little Tokyo, the historic heart of Southern California’s Japanese American community, the second oldest neighborhood in Los Angeles, an inaugural California Cultural District, and one of just three remaining historic Japantowns in the United States.

Our campus opened to the public in 1980 and centers around the Noguchi sculpture and one-acre plaza. Flanking the plaza is the 880-seat Aratani Theatre and the JACCC Center Building, which houses the George J. Doizaki Gallery, the Japanese Cultural Room, conference and meeting rooms, office space for more than 20 nonprofit tenant organizations, the Toshizo Watanabe Exhibition Center, and the state-of-the-art Toshizo Watanabe Culinary Cultural Center, which opens onto the award-winning James Irvine Japanese Garden. Throughout our campus, we host programs, performances, and exhibitions, as well as a myriad of community-produced events, projects, productions, and meetings.

It is our hope that the work of preserving Japanese and Japanese American traditions will bolster the spirits of subsequent generations of Japanese Americans, allowing them to connect to our ancestors and weave their identities into the urban fabric of contemporary Los Angeles, and into the world beyond.