Quote:
Originally Posted by alexjon
The problem arose because people don't realize that Japanese heritage has more or less been erased from Portland. I'd really love it if people took the yellow up to Expo Center and looked around the station. It talks at length about the Japanese removal.
|
That sounds about right to me. I knew the cherry trees along Naito Parkway were a memorial to the interred Portland citizens during the war. I'm sure there are some fascinating stories to tell from that chapter in Portland history.
It just seems to me, as an old Portlander from the 70's and 80's, that there is some revisonist history and serious backpedaling going on here on the part of the PDC with this sudden rush to add Japanese elements into Chinatown. For the last 30 years the neighborhood was branded as "Chinatown" by the Portland City Council and the PDC. And the street lamps do look great!
http://www.greatstreets.org/StreetLa...Portland3.html
Now all of a sudden folks are throwing around the title "Japantown", as if Portlanders have been calling the 15 blocks north of Burnside and south of Broadway "Japantown" for decades. I was in Portland in the 1970's and 80's, and trust me when I say that
no one ever called that neighborhood Japantown. And we certainly never used the cumbersome title "Chinatown/Japantown". And as there was never any reference made to Japanese culture by the PDC or City Council when they installed the new Chinese street furniture and street signs in the 1980's really says volumes on this topic. Japanese culture was not referenced and was not included in the original plan to revitalize the Chinatown district.
You gotta admit, it's pretty interesting to see a Japanese grocery store go in to a neighborhood christened decades ago as a Chinatown. And since the area is so desperate for new development, that when a fun Japanese supermarket shows interest in the area suddenly people start calling it Chinatown/Japantown as if they had meant to include the Japanese culture all along for the last 30 years of attempted redevelopment. Apparently 500,000 Portlanders for the past 30 years kept forgetting to add the word "Japantown" on to the back of the Chinatown label. Oops!
If the desire now is to cultivate a Japanese angle to the neighborhood, at the very least the city needs to tone down the Chinese street furniture and get some diversity into Chinatown's design elements. They might also want to consider changing the name. Seattle was really smart in the 1970's when they christened the area north of the Kingdome as the "International District".
Maybe Portland should do the same with its Chinatown? But what to do about all those Chinese street lamps and Mandarin street signs?
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/214/4...1428fd.jpg?v=0