Creese Courtyard, 3220 Chestnut St.
Creese Courtyard stands next door to the original site of the Philadelphia Hostel, a limestone row house that once stood at 3228 Chestnut. The Philadelphia Hostel provided temporary housing for Japanese Americans being released from U.S. concentrations camps during World War II. Our window is a commemorative space for Saburo and Michiyo Inouye, proprietors of the hostel. Open 24/7
Rising Sun Night Market (aka Spiral Q storefront), 3808 Lancaster Ave.
It was rumored that a Japanese American shopkeeper ran a store on Lancaster Ave., though we were unable to verify the history of the shop. This installation is a commemoration: a ghost market, a space of commerce, displaying goods that mark the dates of events in real and speculative histories of various Japanese and Japanese Americans who passed through Philadelphia. Visit day or night; nightly video projections run from 8:30pm-10:45pm
4238 Spruce Street House
Bamboo from Tatsui Baba’s Woodland gravesite is transplanted here. The Philadelphia Hostel, which the Inouyes transformed to serve international students, moved to this house during the late 1950s. Leave an offering at the roadside shrine in the front yard. Open 24/7
Tatsui Baba Gravesite at Woodlands Cemetery
Use the Woodland Avenue entrance gate, directly across from the SEPTA 40th St Trolley portal. A map to Baba’s grave located just inside gate.
Tatsui Baba was a minor figure in the modernization of Imperial Japan—an intellectual and author of political tracts. After being arrested and accused of carrying explosives, he relocated to Philadelphia where he founded the Oriental Club of Philadelphia, an independent scholarly organization that operated until 2016. Two years after his arrival in Philadelphia, Baba died. His remains are split between here and Japan. Open from dawn to dusk