In this photo, Japanese actress Yoshiko Mita stands in the stage door of the old Nippon Kan (Japanese Hall) Theater on S. Washington Street in Seattle's Chinatown International District. The graffitied walls are covered with names and dates that predate WWII. Built with funds from the community, the theater opened in 1909, and served as the cultural center of Seattle's Japanese community from 1909 until the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942. The theater was renovated and reopened to the public in 1981. The building was sold for office space in 2005.
Yoshiko Mita was in Seattle to film a Japanese television show telling the story of Waka Yamada, a Japanese women who was trafficked to Seattle as a teenager in 1897 and forced into prostitution. Waka escaped a few years later and went on to become a journalist and prominent women's rights advocate in Japan.
Caption information sources: "Japanese TV crew films in Seattle," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 11, 1979; "Nippon Kan Theater opens in Seattle's International District in 1909" by Priscilla Long, HistoryLink.org Essay 3180 Caption information also derived from captions written by Seattle Post-Intelligencer staff and attached to the back of the photograph.
