Q&A with Producer Eryn Kimura

Directed by Akira Boch and Tadashi Nakamura
$2 Members
$3 Non-Members

Ricky and Bobby Okamura wrestle with closing their beloved family-owned manju shop after serving the San Francisco Japantown community for 115 years.

Ricky and Bobby Okamura, the current owners of Benkyodo mochi shop, established in 1906, make a difficult decision to close their family business. The Japanese pastry shop, a landmark for Japanese/Asian Americans in the Bay Area, is one of two mochi shops currently open in the San Francisco-Bay Area. Currently 115 years old, the business has endured the anti-Asian laws of the early 20th century, Japanese internment, Redevelopment of the 1960s and continues to weather San Francisco’s notorious high costs of living. The unsurmountable economic pressure, coupled with the two brother’s desire to preserve their Japanese heritage, family business and community space, create an age-old conflict many children of diaspora face–between the laborious preservation of culture or the submission to the economic forces of racial capitalism.