Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles

A visual history of Japanese American car culture in Los Angeles, from gardeners’ trucks and family sedans to hot rods and race cars.

Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles explores how generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California shaped, and were shaped by, local automobile cultures and industries: from desert lakebeds to concrete speedways, gas stations to design centers, souped-up import tuners to humble gardening trucks. Along the way, cars and trucks became literal and figurative vehicles for Japanese American self-expression, social mobility, community identity, and much more. Cruising J-Town is driven to explore how these diverse relationships between people and the world of cars have steered the Nikkei community’s American stories across the generations.

Interviews and oral histories chronicle the people and stories behind how Japanese Americans have played vital roles in countless car scenes throughout the region. Cruising J-Town is filled with vintage and contemporary photographs, drawings and ephemera that bring the story to life.

Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at CSU-Long Beach and the author of Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews of the San Francisco Bay Area (Duke Univ. Press, 2015). He is the curator for the Japanese American National Museum exhibition, Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community, a summer/fall 2025 exhibition about Japanese American car culture in Los Angeles. He is author and editor of the exhibition’s companion book, to be published by Angel City Press. Oliver is a regular writer on music, arts and culture for outlets including NPR’s All Things Considered, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and KCET’s Artbound. He has co-hosted the podcasts Pop Rocket and Heat Rocks and is currently developing a new podcast on the songs of Asian America. He currently lives in the San Gabriel Valley.