Kogura Company has sold origami paper, tea sets and chopsticks from the same Jackson Street corner since 1934. The family running the register today is the third and fourth generation to do it. A few doors down, Tom and Judy Kumamaru have spent 38 years folding mochi and pinching manju by hand at Shuei-do Manju, the second family to keep that shop open after the Ozawas ran it for the first 35 years.
Nearby, a newer chapter is taking shape. San Jose approved a Planned Development Permit in July for a six-story building at 653 North 7th Street that will carry 65 apartments above roughly 14,000 square feet of ground-floor space, and one of the anchor tenants written into the plan is a dedicated taiko performance studio. The developer, Shea Properties, is the same company that recently finished the nearby mixed-use Sixth & Jackson complex. The taiko studio gives the new building a ground floor devoted to a Japanese performing art, and it arrives in the same year Japantown's state cultural designation is a recent fact rather than a proposal.
The Businesses That Didn't Move
Walk Jackson Street and the oldest storefronts are still the ones setting the pace. Kogura Company originally opened in 1928 just across the street before settling into its current spot in 1934, and the shop is now run by the third and fourth generations of the Kogura family. Shuei-do Manju has had exactly two owning families in its history: the Ozawas for 35 years, then the Kumamarus for the 38 years since. Shuei-do Manju still makes its sweets by hand in the back room every day.
The newer name on the block is Minasan, a shop whose name translates to "everyone" and which stocks local crafts, vintage t-shirts and vinyl. It has become a gathering point for neighborhood events and draws a younger crowd than the district's older anchors, but it sits inside the same three-block footprint that Kogura and Shuei-do Manju have occupied for generations. The mix of a century-old candy shop and a vinyl and vintage store on the same short strip is not a contradiction. It is what a working neighborhood commercial district looks like when nothing forces the old tenants out to make room for the new ones.
What Finished Building Next Door
Sixth & Jackson, the mixed-use complex Shea Properties built at the edge of the district, is now complete. The project pairs market-rate apartments with ground-floor retail space, and its own marketing describes the location as sitting where "Japantown and downtown San Jose converge," with authentic Japanese eateries, artisan shops, galleries and a farmers market within walking distance of the front door. That kind of framing only works because the neighborhood it borrows credibility from was already there. Sixth & Jackson did not create Japantown's character. It built on top of it.
That distinction matters for what came next.
The Building Now Waiting on a Permit
The 653 North 7th Street project is a different kind of bet. It sits on a 0.74-acre vacant lot north of Japantown's main commercial corridor, and the plan includes below-grade parking and limited tree removal alongside the 65 residential units and roughly 14,070 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. City planning records describe that commercial space as a mix of gallery, office and workshop or performance uses, and the taiko studio is the headline tenant among them.
The site also sits next to open space that is part of a larger plan the city calls the Japantown Corporation Yard Redevelopment, a longer-term vision for mixing housing, public amenities and cultural uses in that stretch of the neighborhood. City staff signed off on the permit at a Director Hearing, and the project now moves toward final permits and building-plan review. Shea Properties is positioning it, in its own public materials, as a companion to the work it already finished at Sixth & Jackson rather than a separate, unrelated bet.
Why a Taiko Studio, Not a Gym
San Jose's Japantown was officially recognized as a California Cultural District in 2025, one of only three historic Japantowns remaining in the country. The three-block Jackson Street corridor at the center of it dates back to 1900, when Japanese immigrants working the surrounding farms first established the district.
That designation does not freeze the neighborhood in place or block new construction. The 653 North 7th Street project is the first new proposal to reach approval since the recognition. Its backers pitched it as a way to energize Japantown with new arts, retail and housing activity together, and the city's project materials describe it as a mix of housing, arts and public space meant to reinforce the neighborhood's cultural heart. A taiko studio on the ground floor is how that description shows up in the building itself.
Shea Properties has now built in Japantown twice. Its second project pairs housing with a performance studio for taiko, the Japanese drumming tradition, in the same neighborhood that just received the state designation.
What the Calendar Still Runs On
None of this changes the events that have anchored the neighborhood's year for longer than any of the current construction has existed. Japantown's two largest annual gatherings remain:
- Nikkei Matsuri, held each April
- The Obon Festival, held each July
The Japantown Business Association also keeps a running farmers market calendar and posts closure updates on its social channels rather than through a fixed printed schedule, which is worth knowing if you plan around it. These events are the reason Sixth & Jackson can advertise proximity to "culture and community" as a selling point in the first place. The calendar was built by the neighborhood's existing institutions long before either apartment project broke ground.
What This Means If You Live Here
The practical shift for anyone in or around Japantown right now is more neighbors and more ground-floor activity concentrated into a district that has physically stayed about the same size for decades. Sixth & Jackson is already occupied. The 653 North 7th Street building still has to clear final permits and construction before anyone moves in, which typically takes longer than the approval headline suggests, so the taiko studio and its neighboring commercial space are not opening on any announced date yet.
In the meantime, the neighborhood keeps its shape. Family-run shops like Kogura and Shuei-do Manju and a festival calendar that predates the current construction now sit inside a district with formal state recognition. The 653 North 7th Street building, with its taiko studio, gallery and workshop space, is the next project to watch on the Japantown calendar.
If you're watching how a specific pocket of San Jose is changing and want a clearer read on what that means for property values or timing, Sonali Sells is happy to talk through what it means for your own home.
