August 13 Community Meeting
If you missed the Grand Opening, you can still experience the Japanese Heritage exhibit.
Gallery Hours
Tuesday - Thursday
1pm - 4pm
Grand Opening (Aug 13)
See, taste, hear and participate in Japanese culture. Celebrate Japanese heritage and culture at the re-opening of the Chinatown Cultural Gallery. Experience the food, music, crafts, poetry and history of Japanese Americans, especially their original home in Fresno – Chinatown.
This exhibit includes historic documents, maps of Japanese-owned businesses and
Look for the red door
photographs with details of farming, sports, buildings and World War II incarceration. Experts include former Judge Dale Ikeda (Honorary Consul of Japan in Fresno), Brynn Saito (poet, professor and co-director of the Yonsei Memory Project) and Morgan Doizaki (Central Fish and Chinatown Fresno Foundation Board Chair).
A short program will take place at 6:00 pm. Throughout the evening, traditional Japanese food like sushi, tofu, seaweed salad, octopus and sweet snacks will be served. Instruction on proper use of chopsticks will be available.
Other instructions include haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry in three lines, and origami, a technique of folding paper into objects. A paper crane, which is featured, has become a symbol of hope and healing in troubled times.
While Japanese Heritage will be the initial culture presented, the Chinatown Cultural Gallery will eventually honor all eleven cultures(1) forced across the railroad tracks in the overt segregation and redlining (2) that began in the late 1880s.
NOTES
(1) Eleven cultures: People from Africa, Armenia, China, Greece, Japan, Italy, Mexico, the Philippines and Portugal, as well as Basque people from Northern Spain/Southern France and Volga Russians from Germany
(2) Redlining: a discriminatory practice by businesses that refused or limited loans, mortgages, insurance, and other services within specific geographic areas, especially inner-city neighborhoods