Crossroads in Nihonmachi
By Adrianne Anderson

Earlier this year, Urban VOICE Executive Director Boku Kodama began tackling his latest project: producing a feature-length documentary exploring the complexities of redevelopment in San Francisco’s Japantown during the 1970’s. Urban VOICE (an acronym for Video Oratories Inspiring Common Equalities) is a nonprofit committed to creating films focused on social justice issues.

The film, Crossroads in Nihonmachi—Resistance, Reflection and Renewal, aims to highlight historical patterns of urban renewal in the United States through the example of one Japanese-American community torn/disrupted sacrificially for a larger Bay Area development plan.

In July 2005, Kodama began enlisting his current 17-person crew, including previous Production Manager Ken Yamada and a large group of volunteer interns. The team consists of film students, journalists, world travelers, and artists. During the past few months, the group has filmed almost twenty individual interviews, digitally edited footage, and researched the story’s broader cultural context.

Crossroads’ unique approach as a film is to focus on a group interview/reflection session, gathering 12 prominent individuals from 1970s Japantown nearly three decades later. The round-table discussion will include bishops, community organizers, nonprofit leaders, Redevelopment Agency officials, local business developers and everyday folk.

The organization only recently adopted its focus to producing documentaries, and actually has its roots in a different type of service arena. In 1997, Kodama founded a technology training center in Oakland for low-income residents. But despite great successes, cutbacks by the Bush Administration forced the project to close in 2004.

Not wanting Urban VOICE’s original focus on digital storytelling to disappear, Kodama decided to re-orient the nonprofit’s mission. Without the funding to help people create their own personal stories, the organization continues to explore the wealth of everyday people’s untold stories in the context of social justice issues.

In the summer of 2004, Kodama and Yamada co-produced two, 50-minute DVDs with the National Japanese American Historical Society-- looking at the difficult period following the return of Japanese-Americans from internment camps, and NIhonmachi’s bustling heyday during the 1950s. Crossroads in Nihonmachi is Urban VOICE’s first full-length venture.

Project will be completed July 1, 2006, right around the time of the Nihonmachi Centennial Celebration.

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Urban VOICE will produce Crossroads with the support of perennial award-winner Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), the Community Technology Foundation of California (CTFC), the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC), Kimochi Inc., and JAM Workshop. This project is an extension of previous works evolving through grants from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Project (CCLPEP) funded by the State Libraries and a majority grant made by Urban VOICE.