Nozaki Byouin — Beauty Shoppe

Nozaki Byouin — Beauty Shoppe

1947

313 E First Street, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

Donated by Kawasaki Family

This beauty salon sign was located on the same building as MONA’s Matsu-No-Sushi restaurant sign. Nozaki Byouin is written in intricately bent Kanji characters. The first two letters of the sign spell the family name, Nozaki. Upon further inspection, MONA historians noticed the current family name is painted over the name of a previous family, which cannot be clearly made out. 

Also of note are the name Floyd and Wade, which were scrawled into the sign by a ner-do-well hanging out of the second floor window when the sign was displayed. 

Made two years after World War Two, this beauty salon sign from Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo district, speaks to the resilience of the Japanese American community post-internment. Nozaki and other beauty shops at the time were one of the primary places where Japanese women found work. Advertisements for the shops would be printed in Japanese newspapers like Rafu Shimpo and Shin Nichibei. The sign is an important historic artifact of the large Japanese American population that helped shape Los Angeles’s distinct culture.