Best Japanese Food in Chicago, Ranked

Before World War II, Chicago had roughly 400 ethnic Japanese residents — a genuinely tiny community. That changed almost overnight: between 1942 and 1945, roughly 20,000 Japanese Americans resettled to Chicago, many directly from the incarceration camps the U.S. government had forced them into, some returning from military service in the same war that had imprisoned their own families.

The enclave that grew out of that resettlement centered on Clark and Division on the Near North Side — historians call it a Nihonmachi, a real Japantown, with more than 200 Japanese American-run or -frequented businesses over about two decades. One real, named example: Kusuhei and Tsuruyo Yamamoto, resettled to Chicago in 1945 straight from the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona, opened the Gila River Restaurant near Clark and Division, and later a second spot, the Liberty Inn, a block north at 1126 N. Clark.

The community migrated north through the 1950s and '60s, following Clark Street up into Lakeview, and at its peak in the '60s and '70s the corridor from Belmont to Addison held nearly 150 Japanese-owned businesses and institutions — never formally named 'Japantown,' so historians use the term Nikkeimachi instead. Toguri's, a dry goods and import shop, followed the community north in 1969 and anchored the corner of Belmont and Clark for 44 years before closing in 2013.

Almost none of it is still there. Most of the shops that once lined Clark Street are sports bars or chain stores now. A handful of legacy businesses remain scattered around — Matsuya was still open under new management at a new Clark Street address as of 2014, and the Nisei Lounge, a block from Wrigley Field, is marking roughly 75 years in business, one of the last living threads back to the original 1940s resettlement.

What's above is a very different shape than that original Nikkeimachi — fine dining in Gold Coast and West Loop, izakayas and markets out in the suburbs, omakase counters scattered citywide instead of one walkable strip. The food followed the community exactly the way it did for Korean and Filipino Chicago: outward, not gone. That's a heavier, more specific history than a tourist map would ever tell you — the kind of real Chicago story I ❤ Chi is actually about.