A column sharing insights of Women of Color through their creative explorations and life journey
WHAT RETRO SHOPS DO FOR OUR CULTURE
Story and photos by Shela Ho
Illustrations by Michelle Quach
Meet Our Cultural Observers
Once high school friends, Shela Ho and Michelle Quach connect on a regular basis to catch up on life. Although they took different career paths, some of their commonalities have remained unchanged for more than a decade. Their enthusiasm for a hearty conversation — and for coffee — gives them more reasons for social exchanges. In this column, they explore legacy businesses on both sides of the Pacific and the relevance to preserving Asian cultures.
_____
Osaka’s Jun-Kissa
Navigating through Dotonbori, Osaka’s largest shopping mecca, was not an easy feat even on weekday afternoons. Barely maneuvering through the lapping waves of people in the opposite direction, I had a sense of newfound appreciation for the GPS on my phone as it turned us into an alley none the more distinguishable from the last, and toward a retro storefront with an old neon sign filled with coffee beans at the door. Arabiya Coffee’s black sign was among the numerous colorful store signs that cluttered the sky, but the wafting aroma of coffee beans made it clear that we had reached our destination today.
Arabiya Coffee is a beloved jun-kissa in the city, serving coffee made with beans roasted in-house since 1951. Translated to “pure coffee shop,” jun-kissa refers to a retro coffee shop opened in and characterized by aesthetics and cafe culture of the Showa era (1926-1989), often featuring wooden interiors, antique lighting, hand-drip coffee and jazz classics humming behind overlapping conversations.
According to its website, Arabiya initially opened with a mission to provide an addictively refreshing yet mild cup of coffee to the public during a time when strong coffee was consumed and considered a luxury for the elite class.
Now operated by second generation owner Akiro Takasaka, the rich history and identity of Arabiya Coffee still shone throughout the store — antique coffee equipment and hand-carved wooden mission statements adorned the walls alongside autographed baseball memorabilia, ski equipment and frames of foreign currency bills. It was as though we got a glimpse into the family’s passions before any words were exchanged.
The cafè’s dedication to coffee was evident as our waiter handed us a single-page menu meticulously introducing each coffee option by its bitterness, sourness and notable impressions. After much deliberation, our travel group ordered a Dutch coffee, Mandheling and classic iced coffee, paired with jun-kissa food classics of French toast and purin (egg flan).
One sip was all it took to understand the essence of Arabiya’s coffee. Distinct in its tasting notes, yet light and refreshing, each cup of coffee was smooth and enjoyable both black and with milk — even to a non-coffee lover’s palate. The French toast had a nice crisp on the outside before reaching the pillowy texture within, and the purin had a subtly sweet flavor that tempted me into another bite. An afternoon snack within these mahogany walls felt like I had been momentarily transported back in time.
With Arabiya Coffee now in its 71st year, Takasaka states on their website that his goal would be to reach their 100th anniversary in business.
Arabiya Coffee survived through the economic waves of Japan’s 1990s bubble collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic through their transition into social media and a steady customer base. However, the jun-kissa industry as a whole has reduced by half in the past 30 years in Japan, according to an article in IT Media Business. While modern cafes have taken over the role of serving coffee and desserts, the Showa-era nostalgia shared through jun-kissa establishments could disappear with their retirement-ready owners.
San Francisco’s Legacy
In San Francisco, we have seen a string of legacy store closures in the last few years. Sam Wo, boasting 115 years in Chinatown with its Cantonese-style rice rolls and infamous customer service stories, shuttered its doors for good at the end of January 2025. Before that, Benkyodo, Japantown’s oldest business and the only in-house mochi maker in the city, announced its permanent closure in 2022 after unsuccessful attempts to find a successor. Both were cultural pillars that lived through key minority struggles building up the Asian American community today. Benkyodo survived the Japanese internment camps during World War II, and Sam Wo’s history includes opening shortly after the 1907 San Francisco earthquake and fire devastated Chinatown.
Legacy businesses are rare spaces that can celebrate old community milestones with people unacquainted with or not intentionally seeking out history. Through the five senses, we can enjoy har gow shrimp dumplings at Hang Ah Tea Room and coffee crunch cakes from Yasukochi’s Sweet Stop, while glimpsing through framed photos commemorating families at grand openings, beauty pageants and news articles in a San Francisco familiar, but unknown to us.
These memory-filled establishments accompany Asian American youth in their challenge to discover their identity and preserve tradition in the borderland of two cultures. Losing spaces like Sam Wo and Benkyodo further reduces access to a niche history of people who have faced and overcome the same obstacles.
While changes in the cityscape are inevitable, there is only a fine line between legacies fading into the past and blending into culture. Without active participation, it is a matter of time before we forget the history that empowers our community, and by extension, part of our identity.
Watch for the New
Thankfully, more local initiatives are emerging in defense of our San Franciscan cultural landmarks. In Japantown, multi-disciplinary arts nonprofit KOHO inspires local involvement through a mix of new cultural arts events and educational forums on Japanese American history. Notable KOHO events include reimagined Bon odori (Japanese festival dance) event BonPop! that invites attendees into a group dance, as well as a film festival featuring SF Japantown voices in reaction to changes in their community and systemic racism in the U.S. KOHO recently organized a Bay Area Call to Action linking the Japanese American WWII incarceration to recent mass detention and deportation. In June, KOHO opened the first creative co-working space in Japantown.
In Chinatown, BeChinatown founded the popular bi-monthly Chinatown Night Markets in late 2024 with the help of the Chinatown Volunteer Coalition, spotlighting local small businesses serving Chinese delights like tanghulu (candied hawthorne) and zongzi (bamboo sticky rice). New AAPI-centered shops such as On Waverly feature independent artist books and stationery highlighting the Asian American experience and invite younger generations to book talks and creative workshops exploring racial identity. These are a few examples of the efforts revitalizing a Chinatown that SFGate reported was at risk of disappearing during the COVID pandemic.
With growing political dialogue that challenges minority rights to be American citizens once again, it is crucial for us to reconnect with the local stories and cuisines of our forebears while these spaces exist. There is no reversing Sam Wo and Benkyodo’s closures. There also is no doubt that Japan’s original jun-kissa will continue its decline in the next decade. However, these establishments and the eras they represent can be memorialized and carried forward by new entrepreneurs.
IT Media Business reports an increase in Showa retro-themed cafes opened by the younger generation alongside their statistics on decreasing jun-kissa in Japan. Arabiya Coffee has several younger hands in their team and an active social media presence.
In San Francisco, acclaimed Michelin guide restaurant Four Kings bases its ambiance and menu on retro Hong Kong nostalgia – walls decorated with classic Stephen Chow movie posters and 1990s Cantopop hits from Andy Lau playing in the background.
The new businesses and organizations fueling Chinatown and Japantown are a testament to our generation’s ability to honor the legacies crafted by our predecessors. It takes our participation to ensure our Asian American history is remembered and used to propel further growth in our communities … and in San Francisco overall.
A Quick History of Chinatown and Japantown
Growing up in San Francisco, I often took our culture hubs in Chinatown and Japantown for granted. However, both communities endured decades of racism and oppression in order to openly assert their heritage.
John Kuo Wei Tchen, co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America in New York, described the Chinatowns we know today in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles as “the consequence of the exclusion laws, which created the conditions, between racism and the law itself, for segregated, isolated Chinatowns.” Anti-Chinese sentiment was rampant through the mid- to late-1800s; so much so that the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882 became the first major national law to prevent immigration and naturalization by race. In that era, Chinese residents were rarely able to find housing or labor opportunities outside of Chinatown, and even barred from owning land in some Western states. Chinatown was described as both a home and a prison to its residents.
Japantown shared similar history. According to Nihonmachi: A Digital Exhibit to Northern California’s Japantowns, the earliest Japantowns started sometime in the 1890s and were located south of the Market District, within Chinatown, and faced multiple relocations in San Francisco before its presence in the Western Addition today. In a recent interview with The San Francisco Standard, Ben Pease, historian and owner of California Japantown archives Japantown Atlas, details that by some accounts, “the Japanese were living in the worst, smokiest, darkest basement living quarters.” During World War II, the U.S. government uprooted Japanese citizens to hastily built internment camps in deserts and isolated plains, confiscating land and possessions they owned in the process. Even upon their release from the camps, Japanese Americans had to restart from scratch as their land, houses and prior possessions were taken from them.
Modern-day Chinatown and Japantown in San Francisco are a far cry from their restrictive origins. Now popular tourism sites unique to the city, the two communities proudly display their culture in storefronts and through events such as the annual Chinese New Year Parade and Cherry Blossom Festival, flocked by locals and visitors alike in the thousands. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie even held his January inauguration in Chinatown, complete with a free street rave by San Franciscan EDM artist Zhu.
It is easy to forget the difficult roots underlying our communities as they become celebrated parts of the city. However, awareness is integral to appreciating our predecessors’ long battles to advance these spaces, and ensuring racial oppression does not repeat.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. The last Japanese internment camp in Tule Lake – only a seven-hour drive from San Francisco – closed in 1946. Both events are less than a century old. When I visited the former Tule Lake internment site in a 2017 Japanese American Citizens League youth camp, our guide explained that historical artifacts from the internment were still being excavated.
Even more recently, reporters are drawing parallels from the recent surge of anti-Chinese sentiment during the COVID pandemic to similar accusations against Chinese Americans during early 1900 outbreaks of smallpox and Bubonic plague.
For more of Shela’s inspirations, follow her on Instagram @matchaccino.
Updated June 21, 2025