The sweet symbol of
Japanese America

Every morning just before 06:00 while most Angelenos are asleep, Brian Kito leaves his home in Monterey Park and passes a row of family-run shops on East 1st Street in downtown Los Angeles. Some stores advertise their names in English, most are written in Japanese, but only one bears a historical marker on the window: Fugetsu-Do, the oldest confectionary store in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighbourhood, owned and operated by the Kito family since 1903. 

Inside his family’s sweet shop, Brian pushes past shelves of Japanese sweets and imported snacks and heads through a set of swinging doors into the back room. For the next eight hours, he and six men will mix, cook, roll and wrap glutinous rice into 20 types of steamed rice cakes known as mochi. Brian keeps a watchful eye on things as he moves around the kitchen and greets customers in the front.

As steam billows out of a rice cooker, the men move in sync, hardly talking save for the occasional instruction Brian delivers to his team. Just like his grandfather and father before him, Brian runs a tight ship and makes sure that the different kinds of rice cakes are made in time for deliveries to markets throughout the city and for customers visiting the shop later that day.

Brian is a third-generation Japanese American. His family, and its mochi-making tradition, can be traced back to the early 1900s when waves of Japanese immigrants were arriving in Little Tokyo. Today, this five-block-long neighbourhood is a National Historic Landmark and the heart of one of the US’ largest and most historical Japanese-American communities. In many ways, the Kitos’ family history echoes that of Little Tokyo itself and bears witness to the painful and often overlooked Japanese American experience. 

Following the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese labourers from immigrating to the US to protect jobs for white citizens, many Japanese came to Los Angeles and took on the low-wage jobs once held by Chinese. East 1st Street has always been the main hub of Los Angeles’ Japanese community, and as more Japanese immigrants arrived, they opened a slew of businesses and temples catering to the growing population.

Seiichi Kito, Brian’s grandfather, arrived in the United States in May 1903 and settled in Little Tokyo. Trained as a mochi maker in Tokyo, Seiichi started selling sweets and opened a shop with friends two blocks from Fugetsu-Do’s current location. As Seiichi made the mochi, his wife, Tei, helped at the front counter while his children helped him package the sweets. Their little shop soon gained loyal customers up and down the Southern California coast who came to try their mochi and red bean paste manju rice cakes.

The Immigration Act of 1924 eventually banned all Asian immigrants from coming to the US, but as more Japanese Americans gravitated to Little Tokyo from other US cities in the 1930s, it became home to the largest Japanese community in the country. Like the neighbourhood itself, Fugetsu-Do started to cement its place in California’s Japanese American society.

Japanese often enjoy rice cakes as a snack, but during the holidays they typically give them away as gifts. Mochi and manju are traditionally gifted on New Year’s Day, Girls’ Day (3 March) and Boys’ Day (5 March). In the weeks leading up to New Year’s, the Kitos would work in their kitchen around the clock making mochi and manju, and volunteers from the community would help them keep up with demand.

“Mochi is connected to our culture and religion, so the pastry is easily part of the community,” Brian said. “My grandfather also cared about Little Tokyo and found ways to take care of his neighbours.”

Following the war, the US government discouraged Japanese Americans from returning to their homes, in hopes of disbanding their communities. But the Kitos knew they had to go back to Little Tokyo, the only home they’d ever known in the US, to reopen their sweet shop. It would not be easy, however.

When Seiichi and Roy tried to retrieve their machinery from storage, they were told they had to pay four years’ worth of back rent. They could not get the money together, so the property owner kept the machinery. Without a home of their own, the Kitos lived at Koyasan Temple for nearly a year and Roy worked for $0.20/hr as a waiter until he'd saved enough to move into an apartment. A year later, in May 1946, Fugetsu-Do reopened in its current location on East 1st Street after another family in Little Tokyo, the Tanahashis, invested in their mochi shop.

Roy inherited the business from his father in 1957. In the decades after the war, whenever the Kitos’ Japanese neighbours needed help, they first turned to each other instead of going to the police out of fear of discrimination. And because of the Kitos’ pre-war roots in Little Tokyo, more often than not, the community turned to Seiichi and Roy for help.

“It was just how things were with my grandfather and father,” said Brian. “No-one was told to help others; my family just took leadership roles in our community.”

Brian grew up watching his father in the shop. Like Roy, he showed an acute interest and skill in mochi making. And like Seiichi and Roy, after Brian took over the family business in 1980, he became the go-to person for any Japanese American that needed help in the community – often reading letters, giving advice and advocating for his neighbours.

Following the 1992 Los Angeles riots, downtown Los Angeles became rundown, and the ensuing crack epidemic made it even worse. To protect his community, Brian helped establish the Little Tokyo Public Safety Association – a group of volunteers who patrolled the area, cleared the streets of panhandlers and worked with the police to reduce crime.

“If I didn’t go out and make a foundation for my store and clean up the area, it doesn’t matter what happened in the store,” Brian recalled.

“Today it’s not as bad as it was,” said Bill Watanabe, who has worked with Brian to improve Little Tokyo for the last 40 years as the founder of the Little Tokyo Service Center community organisation. “Many people appreciate what he does and has done, and we worry who will take over after Brian.”

Brian has agreed to step aside and let Korey take over the business once he finishes with his bachelor’s degree, if he so chooses. If so, Korey says he will go to Japan to train with mochi masters to get a better sense of how to evolve the shop in the future.

Still, Brian thinks Korey has a lot to learn when it comes to repairing the equipment and knowing how to deal with the rough times that surely lay ahead for the business.

“Korey has only seen the business make money,” said Brian. “Maybe this year, it will be his chance to go through a rough patch because of the coronavirus pandemic and how it will affect the business’ future.”

Like many small businesses, Fugetsu-Do has been forced to adapt to the current pandemic. Even as most of Los Angeles had shut down, Brian and Korey were still in the kitchen, helping to fulfil wholesale orders for supermarkets and welcoming any customers from Little Tokyo who dropped by. No-one knows what the future may bring, but Brian hopes that Fugetsu-Do will survive this latest cultural and economic challenge and prevail with a new generation of Kitos behind it.