Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage [Paperback]

Gail Dubrow (Author), Donna Graves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2002

The Hashidate-Yu, a Japanese-style public bathhouse, or sento, gave Japanese immigrants and their families a chance to relax and socialize at the corner of Sixth and South Main Streets in Seattle, the heart of the area known as Nihonmachi, or Japantown. There used to be hundreds of bathhouses in Japanese American communities across the United States, but the Hashidate-Yu, carefully preserved in recent years, is one of only two of these historic sento that have survived. The details found there are poignant reminders of daily life in Japanese America prior to internment during World War II. "Sento at Sixth and Main" combines in-depth research on historic places, personal memories, and striking vintage photographs to showcase once-familiar parts of Japanese American life - bathhouses, community halls, farms, lumber camps, temples, schools, hospitals, midwiferies, and bowling alleys. This exploration of a previously undocumented architectural heritage weaves the loose thread of Japanese American history back into the fabric of public memory. Focusing on ten places significant in Japanese American heritage - located in Seattle, Auburn, and Selleck in Washington and Sebastopol, San Jose, and Los Angeles in California - "Sento at Sixth and Main" also calls attention to the many landmarks awaiting further study and protection. Gail Dubrow is an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington and director of the Preservation Planning and Design Program. She is co-editor of "Restoring Women's History through Historic Preservation". Donna Graves is a writer and cultural planner in Berkeley, California.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Beautifully conceived and produced . . . [Sento at Sixth and Main] makes . . . a pointed case for the value of structures in documenting the history of communities.”—Arcade --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Gail Dubrow is an associate professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington and director of the Preservation Planning and Design Program. She is co-editor of Restoring Womenís History through Historic Preservation. Donna Graves is a writer and cultural planner in Berkeley, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295982454
• ISBN-13: 978-0295982458
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,870,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arcade Journal Review by Richard Engeman, July 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage (Paperback)

The following review written by Richard Engeman appeared in Arcade 20.3, a journal of architecture and design in the Pacific Northwest:

No longer is history created solely from the written word. No longer is historic preservation justified solely by esthetics. We will be seeing a very much more layered look at our past, as new research combines evidence from unexamined data along with different ways of analyzing the information it holds. In Sento at Sixth and Main, Gail Dubrow and Donna Graves have created a striking work about Japanese American communities on the Pacific Coast from the 1890s into the 1990s. It provides a novel way of understanding the past by carefully observing the buildings of the physical present, and by imaginatively analyzing a wide variety of historical evidence.

What Dubrow and Graves have tried to do is to recreate some aspects of the daily lives of residents of Japanese American communities, using the buildings and structures that remain and that represent archetypal activities of the communities. The ten chapters/structures might be characterized: industrial work/housing; farm; store; theater; bath; school; temple; clinic; urban district; entertainment hall. Each chapter details the story of a building or structure in the Seattle or Los Angeles area: its history, its significance, its place in community life. The books makes extensive use of oral history interviews, personal snapshots, archeological findings, and such paper ephemera as merchandise catalogs and newspaper clippings, as well as more traditional historical sources.

This is a rich and dense production that will cause you to look more closely at the everyday world, to wonder what it says and what it represents. A building may give sign of its significance away at first glance, as Emmanji Temple in Sebastopol seems to do. But you would not know by looking at it that it was originally built as a railway exhibit building for the Century of Progress at Chicago in 1934, intended as of a replica of a Buddhist temple of the Kamakura period (1185-1333). Many other structures betray little if anything that would associate them with an ethnic community. An example is the deserted and largely demolished milltown of Selleck, Washington, where the differences between the housing for Japanese American workers and that for white workers are not distinguishable in the absence of the residents, although they were readily apparent when the town was active.

The book weaves text and illustrations into a convincing whole, where photographs are not merely illustrations but are a vital and integrated part of the argument and the story. Alas, a few of the most striking photographs do not directly portray what one thinks they do. The evocative cover image of a woman in a sento (bath) was taken in Japan, not Seattle, and quite recently. The timber workers whose image anchors the section on the town of Selleck, were photographed in Oregon, a hundred and fifty miles from Selleck. As historical evidence, the first photo fails to represent either the time or the location that its placement suggests. The second example misleads only in terms of place, and not significantly for documentary purposes, but its placement within the book suggests it was taken near Selleck. Caption notes at the back of the book tell most of the story, but fail to note that the cover photo was in fact shot in Japan.

I hoped there would be a chapter about a garden, but there is not. I was thinking of the remarkable Kubota Gardens in Seattle, a vernacular construction that is the result of an intersection of esthetics and business. Interestingly, Fujitaro Kubota worked at the Pacific Coast Lumber Company mill in Selleck not long after his immigration to the United States.

Small criticism for a book that is beautifully conceived and produced, and that makes such a pointed case for the value of structures in documenting the history of communities. It gives the cause of historic preservation good reason to examine the values of vernacular architecture, and for all of us to examine the values of community.

_________________________________

Richard H. Engeman is public historian at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland. He was at the University of Washington Libraries 1984-1999, where he was the archivist in charge of historical photographs and architectural plans and drawings.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing, fascinating...even for me, a Japanese in Japan, August 4, 2005

By 

Etsuko Nishiki (Yokohama, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sento at Sixth and Main (Paperback)

Sento(bath house) is a place where Japanese people communicate with friends and neighbors, as well as enjoy in a hot bath. When the Issei Japanese emigrated overseas around 1900, they made Sentos near their new residences.
This is a book that show us about prewar Japanese-American heritage (such as Sento, school, temple...) on the West Coast. And also, lots of interviews with (mostly) Nisei people are included. Very interesting...

I've just had a chance to see this Sento in Panama Hotel, Seattle. I was totally lost for words. Old bath tubs, "TAKE OFF SHOES HERE" sign, store ads...everything there was just as they used to be in '30s. Today, it's rare to see such a thing even in Japan.
If you visit to Seattle, please drop by Panama Hotel's cafe (at 6th and Main) and just take a look. They have lots of old pictures and furniture. You'll learn Japantown's history while enjoying nice coffee.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, September 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage (Paperback)

Sento at Sixth and Main is beautifully written and executed. This book is not only historic and academic, but culturally elegant and articulate. Studies like Dubrow and Grave's are much needed in ethnic communities. I enjoyed learning about these different sites, as well as experiencing the artistic and honorable way they are presented.