Situated in the Western Addition neighborhood between Geary, Pine, Octavia, and Fillmore streets, San Francisco's Japantown, or Nihonmachi, is one of only three Japantowns remaining in the United States. It was once much larger, encompassing more than 30 blocks filled with Japanese homes, businesses, and cultural facilities. Japanese residents first moved here after the 1906 earthquake and fire drove them from their settlements in the Chinatown and South of Market districts. The neighborhood remained the center of the city's Japanese community until World War II, when its residents were uprooted en masse and sent to internment camps in California, Utah, and Idaho for the war's duration. Some Japanese-Americans returned after the war, but most found that their places had been taken by war workers, and the community was largely dispersed to other neighborhoods and cities.

The institutions, businesses, and families that remain are clustered around the Japan Center, which was built in the 1960s as part of a massive urban renewal project that transformed the Western Addition. The Japan Center complex houses two hotels, a Japanese bath and spa, a multiplex movie theater, and a bookstore, as well as many Japanese shops and restaurants.