A hardware store isn’t where you’d expect to find a drawing class, a matcha pop-up or plant sales. Unless you’re at Anzen Hardware, an 80-year-old staple that nearly disappeared from Little Tokyo in 2023.
The business reopened in November, and it’s been trying to find its groove in a neighborhood where legacy businesses are moving out — such as Suehiro Cafe and Rafu Shimpo — while navigating a different world from when it first opened.
“We’re noticing the need for hardware tools is declining,” said Philip Hirose.
Jo Ann Maehara Hirose, along with her son Philip Hirose, are the new owners of Anzen Hardware. They are also the daughter and grandson of the founder.
Philip Hirose is bringing new programming, from matcha pop-ups to drawing classes, to the reopened Anzen.
Hirose and his mom, Jo Ann Maehara Hirose, are the new owners — the grandson and daughter of the founder. With the help of trusted family friend Rockett Ito Wong, Anzen is carrying on its legacy as it becomes something new.
“None of the three of us have that much experience with running retail stores,” said Wong, a college student. “It’s been quite a bit of trial and error.”
Eight decades on First Street
Tsutomu Maehara opened Anzen Hotel Supply, a precursor to Anzen Hardware, after being incarcerated at Tule Lake during World War II.
Tsutomu Maehara — Jo Ann Maehara Hirose’s father — settled in Los Angeles after being incarcerated at Tule Lake during World War II.
In 1946, he founded Anzen Hotel Supply on First Street to sell provisions to nearby single-room hotels.
Anzen Hardware from its early days in Little Tokyo.
“As soon as I could hold a broom, we were sweeping the streets or the sidewalks outside,” Maehara Hirose said.
Anzen eventually pivoted to selling American hardware and imported Japanese tools and goods — including bamboo garden rakes and handcrafted knives from a company that once made samurai swords.
Twenty-year-old Rockett Ito Wong is a longtime family friend and runs the floor.
“It’s always a discovery,” said Mike Okamura, president of the Little Tokyo Historical Society and a patron since Maehara was behind the cash register.
Maehara Hirose remembered Anzen imported one of the first rice cookers from Japan. “A National. That one-button one,” she said. “They were flying off the shelves.”
These days, tariffs are making it harder to keep and find suppliers. Still, Wong has just brought in a shipment of knives and chisels.
“I don’t even think it’s been a question that we would source any of this stuff not from Japan,” he said.
The shop still sharpens knives. In fact, Wong is the guy responsible for the job.
How to visit
Anzen Hardware
Location: 220 E. First St., Los Angeles
When: Saturdays & Sundays, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Memory Capsule Drawing: Documenting Our Elders
When: Saturday, Aug. 22, 6–8 p.m.
Purchase tickets
A reluctant homecoming
In 2023, then-owner Nori Takatani, a distant relative of Maehara who had worked at Anzen since he was a teen, put the store up for sale. He was in ill health and asked Maehara Hirose and her husband to take over.
She was hesitant, having opened the restaurant Azay several years earlier. She worried about taking on a second business. Besides, there were two prospective buyers, both invested in preserving Anzen’s legacy.
But one day, Takatani told her the deals fell through because the landlord was jacking up rent.
Wong was able to find a new supplier from Japan for an order of new wood chisels.
“You gotta buy it,” he told her.
Anzen Hardware returned two years later at one of its previous locations, 200 E. First Street.
“It was great news and great joy,” Okamura said when the community found out who the new owners were.
More than a hardware store
On a July evening, about a dozen people, pencils and paper in hand, were at Anzen to learn how to draw.
Their subjects were Patty and Carrie — friends in their 70s — who ended up regaling the participants, some decades younger, with stories of their lives and community advocacy work.
The “Memory Capsule Drawing” class was taught by Kris Chau, an artist and loyal patron. She still brings in the knife she bought a decade ago for sharpening.
In July, Philip and artist Kris Chau organized a drawing class at Anzen Hardware. The models were two 70-something community activists.
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Kris Chau
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Courtesy Kris Chau
)
She said she was inspired to start the drawing class after Hirose said he was noticing that some elders were losing confidence and purpose.
“Even though you could see the light within Carrie and Patty, they were like, ‘Why would anybody wanna draw us?'” Chau said. “The young students were just, like, in tears at the end of class.”
Anzen Hardware
Where: 220 E. First St., Los Angeles
When: Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Memory Capsule Drawing: Documenting Our Elders
When: Saturday, Aug. 22, 6–8 p.m.
Purchase tickets
That, along with the store’s matcha pop-ups, plant sales and artist collaborations, may just be what a legacy neighborhood business needs to survive.
“Philip [Hirose] is taking it forward, but keeping in mind the history and paying tribute to it,” said Okamura, who has been helping out at both Anzen and Azay since he retired as a banker.
“I see the old Anzen — the same counters and some of the hardware too,” he continued. “But then I see other things — the programming inside the store, which has never been done before.”