Interviews

1. Memories of the Japanese Hospital (English/Japanese)

2. The Closing of the Japanese Hospital (English / Japanese)

3. The Secret to Youth (Japanese)

4. The Father who started the Rafu Shimpo (Japanese)

Inose,Yoshiko

(b.1908) Daugther of the first publisher of the Rafu Shimpo

The Father who started the Rafu Shimpo (Japanese)

(Japanese) My father, Shibuya Seijiro, came to the U.S. in 1901. First he came to San Francisco with the goal of majoring in Economics at university in Pennsylvania. He came to the U.S. with that goal, but in San Francisco he ended up working for a newspaper company, the New Japan-U.S. Newspaper Company or something like that. Then, in 1903 he came to Los Angeles. He opened a branch for the San Francisco company in Los Angeles and, after talking it over with some friends, decided to publish a newspaper there. Apparently it started in 1903. That’s when he, another person from Niigata Prefecture, and one more person started the Rafu Shimpo.

Japanese language newspapers journalism media newspapers Rafu Shimpo (newspaper)

Date: February 3, 2010

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Eiko Masuyama, Carole Fujita, Yoko Nishimura

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Mrs. Yoshiko Inose (nee Shibuya) was born in Los Angeles, California in 1908. Her father, Seijiro Shibuya, was the first publisher of The Rafu Shimpo. In the early 1930s, Yoshiko married Seijiro Inose, the adopted son of Inosuke Inose. Yoshiko’s father-in-law Inosuke was the president of the first Japanese Hospital, near Little Tokyo called Nanka Nihon Byoin or Southern California Japanese Hospital, located on Amelia and Turner Streets. (April 11, 2010)