The San Francisco chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League seeks to mollify community concerns as criticisms have continued to mount following three community meetings held in May and June regarding their proposed history mural.

The project leaders have expressed their willingness to work with those raising their concerns, but opponents feel the discussion is not moving forward.

The SF JACL first proposed the “San Francisco Japantown Journey Mural,” formerly known as the “Japantown History Mural,” in late 2022 in partnership with Mission Art 415, a gallery responsible for the Lilac Mural Project in San Francisco’s Mission District. The organization contracted muralist Rigel Juratovac, an artist better known as Crayone.

The working group, setting out to paint a mural depicting the 115-year-history of San Francisco’s Nikkei ethnic enclave through depicting 10 or so “notables,” held a series of public meetings to discuss the proposed project. The meetings, which included discussions of the selection process for the “notables” by an advisory committee and a meeting to collect input on “historic elements,” drew complaints from several community members regarding the artwork’s core concepts, including the use of “notables” to depict Japantown’s history in the first place.

Festering Issues
In previous meetings, community members expressed several concerns, especially around the concept of selecting notables. However, mural project leaders stressed that the notables were essential to its concept. Crayone has painted murals on the side of buildings depicting large profiles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, César Chávez and Frida Kahlo.

“On many levels, this mural violates Japanese cultural norms. You’re not supposed to lift up individuals. It’s all about the group, and we’re lifting up some folks who have contributed to Japantown’s history,” Emily Murase, an SF JACL board member, said June 12 during the last public meeting the project leaders held. “But we have been engaged in this two-year process because we believe strongly that the Japantown history story needs to be told. If we don’t tell it, nobody’s going to tell it. …”

Other issues included concerns over how the SF JACL board decided to invest an initial $100,000 using funds bequeathed by Frank Minami, Greg Marutani and Yo Hironaka and how much the total project will cost. The SF JACL has since published a budget and description of the project on their Website. It has not raised additional funds for the project at the request of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, but project leaders said Lisa Brewer, owner of Mission Art 415, plans to contact her network of funders who have helped fund murals in the past.

Draft Plans Criticized
Discussions, however, came to a head earlier this year as the SF JACL presented their draft design of the mural May 11. Organizers solicited comments on the initial draft, which the project team is working to address. Critics have also repeated previously expressed concerns, including what they say is the lack of opportunity to participate in the process.

According to Juratovac, they have addressed a number of comments on the design, such as how the Japanese YWCA building was located at the edge of the mural rather than being more prominently featured next to one of its founders and notables, Yona Abiko. One of the biggest mistakes was the inclusion of a protest that took place in Los Angeles rather than San Francisco to depict the work of the Committee Against Nihonmachi Eviction, which Judy Hamaguchi, SF JACL board president and mural project leader, pledged to correct by working with former members of the activist group.

Hamaguchi also said during the July 17 Japantown Task Force board meeting that the Recreation and Parks Department had expressed concerns over the mounting criticisms on the project. Following the June 12 public meeting, the SF JACL held a closed-door meeting with those who had expressed concerns with the project on July 16, according to e-mails obtained from those involved with the meeting.

SF JACL Agrees to Compromises
Since the meeting, the SF JACL announced they intended to continue working with the mural’s critics, releasing a statement dated Aug. 7 with four agreements:

“1. We stand by the process for selecting the 9 notables and intend to proceed with the portraits of, in chronological order, Kyutaro and Yona Abiko, Archbishop Nitten Nishida, Jimbo Edwards, Clifford Uyeda, Yori Wada, Janice Mirikitani, Tomoye and Henri Takahashi, Tsuyako “Sox” Kitashima,” and Jeff Adachi.

2. We accept the recommendation that the portraits be reduced in size.

3. We accept the recommendation that the mural name should be changed from “Japantown History Mural.” We have decided on “San Francisco Japantown Journey Mural.”

4. We will work with members of the Committee Against Nihonmachi Eviction on an improved depiction of the Redevelopment era in Japantown.”

However, Boku Kodama, a former CANE member, said the statement comes as a “complete surprise.”

“At the last meeting with the community, the JACL had stated they would meet with us again in two weeks (which is now four weeks old) to create a working solution but no such meeting has been proposed,” Kodama said in an e-mail to the Nichi Bei News on Aug. 11. “The JACL has also never responded to some of my concerns including the legitimacy of the fiscal agent, Lisa Brewer and her legal troubles, which have been widely reported in the press.”

Kodama said the bigger issue lies in how the mural would depict the neighborhood’s overall history. He did not elaborate on what he would like to see in the mural, but said those critical of the project would issue a statement in reaction to SF JACL. The Nichi Bei News had yet to receive the statement as of press time. Others contacted by the Nichi Bei News who attended the July 16 meeting declined to comment or had not responded to the Nichi Bei News as of press time.

Japantown Task Force Endorses Mural
The day after the SF JACL held their meeting, the Japantown Task Force reaffirmed their support for the project July 17. In a voice vote with 16 board members present with two members opposed, the organization agreed to send a letter of support to the Recreation and Parks Department on the “preliminary design of the Japantown History Mural, with the understanding there will be adjustments in accordance with community input.”

The Task Force held the special session July 17 during its summer recess at the JACL National headquarters located in Japantown. Benh Nakajo, one of the board members, requested the dedicated meeting and urged the board to vote against the endorsement, arguing there could be “major changes” to the mural’s design pending the ongoing discussions the JACL is having with the broader community.

“There are a lot of people in the community who are very unhappy with this design,” Nakajo said during the JTF board meeting, saying the JACL chapter must work more closely with concerned community members to reach an agreement.

“I feel there is going to be major changes after discussion with certain groups and certain individuals about what the design should be….” he said.

Hamaguchi, who attended the task force meeting, however, said it was hypocritical for those criticizing her organization’s project to demand no letters of support should be sent until a community consensus could be reached, when those who have complained about the project have engaged in writing letters of opposition to the city.

Despite the complaints expressed by those critical of the mural project, however, only Nakajo, as a JTF board member, spoke in outright opposition to the motion to support the mural.

Conversely, Scott Hamaguchi, no relation to Judy Hamaguchi and a task force board member, spoke in favor of the project.

“I struggle with comments like ‘this doesn’t reflect history of Japantown,’ not being backed up by examples. And I struggle with character attacks on people that clearly have the backing of very notable people, and I can’t help but feel like, the anonymous, nameless, faceless objectors in the community who strongly object to this mural — we opened it for public comment, and none of them are here tonight, unfortunately,” he said.

Scott Hamaguchi said because the task force had previously endorsed the project in the September of 2022 meeting, the board should reaffirm support for the project during the SF JACL’s time of need.

“If we do support this, and clearly not everybody does, but if we do support this, I think it’s a critical time to send a letter to Rec and Park saying that we support the project,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lucy Fisher, co-chair of the task force’s Cultural Heritages Sustainability Committee, also noted the importance of moving forward.

“My concern with postponing a vote on this is that there will be so many rejections from some, perhaps anonymous people, that there never will be a mural that is acceptable to everyone,” she said. “And you know, art is art and history is interpretive. … There’s always going to be another side, as there should be, and hopefully a mural could be a starting point for us to have ongoing educational sessions and community meetings to talk about why we like or didn’t like, or what was missing, or why was something so important, when somebody else didn’t think it was.”

Glynis Nakahara, the task force’s board president, spoke to the concerns community members have expressed. “There have been nine or 10 meetings altogether, and I’m baffled by people’s comments about a process that wasn’t transparent or engaging, because the agenda, the mural has been on the Land Use/Transportation Committee agenda (for the task force) for two years, and we report regularly on it. And as Judy mentioned, there was outreach about the notables. Everybody knew about the notables,” she said.

A Community with a Problem Dealing with Disagreements
Jon Osaki, another task force board member, said at the board meeting that he attended the closed door mural meeting and pointed out that the Japantown community has a problem dealing with disagreements.

“I know everybody who was at that meeting yesterday and I respect them, and if they disagree with how the mural’s being done, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with disagreement. But I do think that there are times in our community where we have a problem disagreeing and start to become very personal.”

Osaki made the statement after addressing how critics of the project attacked Brewer, head of Mission Art 415, after a community member circulated news articles featuring her and Mission Art 415’s past legal troubles with past business partners.

“I felt kind of bad that nobody thanked her. That was a tremendously generous offer. She sat through the entire discussion. She addressed the points that people brought up, and as far as I’m concerned, I was satisfied with her answers. I didn’t get the sense she was trying to hide anything … I’m pretty confident in saying, I’ve had long-standing relationships with organizations in the Mission, and nobody had called me about this group,” Osaki said.

Brewer, who the SF JACL said is working on the project pro bono, did not respond to requests for comment from the Nichi Bei News.

While the task force tabled the discussion during their June board meeting, Joyce Nakamura, a former SF JACL board member, expressed her concerns during the previous meeting that Brewer’s past issues in the Mission District could impact the task force’s relationship with the Mission District as a fellow San Francisco Cultural District.

Nakahara said she contacted the Mission District organizations.

“I reached out to the executive director of Calle 24 (Susana Rojas), … I asked her if she thought that it would cause any kind of strife or discomfort between our culture districts and she said ‘no,’” said JTF’s Nakahara. “And I also reached out to Susan Cervantes (Calle 24 council member and artist chair), who is the head of Precita Eyes (a community mural organization), and she was noted in one of the El Tecolote articles, and I asked … her if she thought she personally would feel any ill-will or discomfort or strife between our two communities, not just her personally, and she said, ‘no.’”

Nakamura did not attend the July 17 Task Force meeting.

The SF JACL board added in their Aug. 7 statement that they “reject attempts to attack the reputation of Mission Art 415 and Lisa Brewer,” and “urge those with issues related to the mural to communicate these directly to the SF JACL Board.”

According to the SF JACL, “a former member of the SF JACL Board who resigned due to disagreements with other board members about the mural was circulating links to articles about Mission Art 415 and Lisa Brewer.” The organization said the links were not sent directly to the organization and instead “were forwarded by other community members.”

Looking to the Future and for Compromise
Kodama said in an earlier correspondence with the Nichi Bei News that, while he feels everyone supports the mural in principle, the present project may not come to fruition. Copying a message he sent following the task force’s meeting, he said he seeks a “win-win” situation with the SF JACL, suggesting someone else altogether lead the project.

“There is a possibility that we may never see this mural unless a new group(s) takes on the task, but within this ‘seniors’ group, I doubt any of us has the time or energy to proceed on a years-long endeavor.

However, now’s not the time to resign from the mural but to contribute to a concrete plan where we (ideally) engage a younger population to lead the charge.”

The July 17 JTF board meeting attendees, however, expressed that the mural project process has sent the wrong message to the younger generation of the community, and called for people to better embrace compromise.

Nakahara recalled the tenor of the final two community meetings.

“There was a lot of, some savage, comments made. And when I was sitting there in the audience, the whole time, I kept looking at the two young artists involved in the project, and thinking to myself how excited they must be to be involved, and to be part of the future of Japantown, and then just super embarrassed and bummed out about how intimidated things feel by all of this,” Nakahara said.

She went on to say that no one can get exactly what they want.

“It can’t be about, ‘I will only support it if it’s the way I want it,’ or it’s exactly what I want, right? We have to learn to disagree, but to always support each other,” she said.

Osaki, who is also executive director of the Japanese Community Youth Council, echoed Nakahara’s sentiments.

“I just wanted for the record, for folks to realize that, those are young people who came out of our program, and I think that, as a community, we could do better for them,” he said.

For a full summary of the project’s meetings and the SF JACL’s statement, as well as financial details and other materials, visit https://www.sfjacl.org.