ASAHI DRY GOODS, LITTLE TOKYO, LOS ANGELES

OCTOBER 1ST, 2022

As a kid of Japanese descent growing up in the 60’s/70’s in rural Orange County, California, finding roots to my heritage outside of my family was a difficult task.  Especially growing up in a predominately white neighborhood. Sure, there was an occasional Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood, but connections to the culture were few and far between.  We obviously understood we were of Japanese descent, there wasn’t any way which portrayed this in a way that was uniquely cultural.

Then around the mid 70s some cool, bilingual T shirts started appearing.  Whimsical, witty and purely Japanese American.  Images of a protesting horse telling his Samurai master, ‘Banzai my Ass!”  Or a bespectacled monkey staring and proclaiming, “Ah so, Asso”. Or a grinning fish half-reclining on a chopping block, with the message: “Sashimi--Raw Is Better”, or “I’m with Bakatare” and a finger pointing sideways.  Definitely rated PG-13 with their edginess, but maybe that was the appeal.  The artwork on the shirts were never credited to anyone, so I often wondered who was creating these clever ideas.

Soon I discovered that the place to get these shirts was at at the Asahi Shoe & Dry Goods Store, founded in 1908 in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, by Mitsuhiko Shimizu.  The store was known for importing shoes from Japan and carried hard to find sizes, such as a Mens’ size 4.  For those of you that still frequent Little Tokyo, the store was located at 211 E. 1st Street, down a couple of doors from the current Fugestu-Do confectionary store to give you a reference of this historical treasure.