The men get off the bus at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in dark suits, briefcases swinging, and cross into Manhattan before the morning fog has lifted off the Hudson. Their families stay behind on the Palisades, in high-rise apartments with a view of the bridge, living a version of Tokyo that has been carefully transplanted onto a New Jersey cliff. The Japanese in Fort Lee are, more than almost any community in America, a community of the in-between: posted here for three or five years, half in this country and half still in the one they left.
The Place
Fort Lee sits on top of the Hudson Palisades, the line of cliffs on the New Jersey side of the river, directly across from the Washington Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan. The George Washington Bridge lands here, and the borough has been shaped by that fact ever since the bridge opened in 1931.
It is a place of towers. From the 1960s onward, developers replaced the old film-era lots with high-rise apartment buildings, and by 2019 at least ten of them rose more than 300 feet. That skyline, packed onto a narrow strip above the river, is what most Japanese families see first.
People who know New York sometimes call Fort Lee a sixth borough. It is close enough to Manhattan to commute in minutes, and cosmopolitan enough that you can live there in several languages at once.
How It Became Japanese
The Japanese did not come to Fort Lee the way most immigrant groups came to America. They were not fleeing poverty or persecution, and most never intended to stay. They came because their companies sent them. It is a pattern unlike the older agricultural migration that built the Japanese American community in Gardena, California, and unlike the deep-rooted history of Japantown in San Jose. Fort Lee’s was a corporate migration, white-collar and temporary from the start.
The corporate posting
In the decades after the war, as Japanese banks, trading houses and electronics firms opened offices in Manhattan, they needed somewhere to put the executives they rotated through New York. Fort Lee, on the far end of the bridge, was the obvious answer: close to the office, full of apartments, and quickly home to the shops and schools a Japanese family would need.
These were not permanent migrants. They were chuzaiin, the posted employees, sent over for a fixed term of usually three to five years before being recalled to Japan. In 1988 roughly 77 percent of Japanese businesspeople in greater New York were temporary employees of exactly this kind.
Schools for children who would leave
A community defined by temporary postings needs schools that keep its children ready for home. By 1987 there were around 1,800 Japanese national children in North Jersey, and five juku, the cram schools, operating in Bergen County. Two of them were in Fort Lee, including the Hinoki School with about 130 students.
The institutions sharpened over time. The New Jersey Japanese School began in 1992 as a branch of the Japanese School of New York, teaching grades one through four, and became independent in 1999. It is a full-day school whose stated aim is to prepare expatriate children for the Japanese educational system they will return to. It now runs out of rented space at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church at 117 Franklin Avenue in nearby Oakland.
Alongside it grew the weekend programmes, where children attending American schools all week kept up Japanese reading, writing and maths on Saturdays, so that re-entry to Tokyo would not leave them behind.
A cultural anchor on Main Street
The Japanese-American Society of New Jersey, founded in 1974, gave the community a permanent address on Fort Lee’s Main Street. It has run language and cultural programmes there for half a century, teaching English conversation to newcomers and, in the other direction, sado tea ceremony, ikebana flower arranging and Japanese crafts.
For a population that turned over every few years, the Society was a fixed point. New families arriving from Japan could find their bearings there, and the institution outlasted every individual posting.
The supermarket that changed everything
The single largest event in the community’s history happened just downhill, in Edgewater. In September 1988 the Japanese retailer Yaohan opened its first East Coast supermarket on the Edgewater waterfront, a short drive from Fort Lee.
It was a revelation: an entire Japanese grocery, food court and bookshop on the wrong side of the world. When Yaohan went bankrupt during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, its American executives bought the stores and rebranded them. The Edgewater location became Mitsuwa Marketplace, and it remains the largest Japanese-oriented shopping centre on the East Coast.
The Landmarks
Mitsuwa Marketplace, 595 River Road, Edgewater. The centre of gravity for the entire region’s Japanese life, opened in 1988 as Yaohan and rebranded in 1998. Under one roof there is a full grocery, a food court of ramen and curry counters, a Kinokuniya bookshop and a Daiso. On weekends the car park fills with families who have driven in from across three states.
Japanese-American Society of New Jersey, 208 Main Street, Fort Lee. Founded in 1974, the community’s oldest institution and its cultural home. It teaches Japanese to children and English to adults, and runs classes in tea ceremony and flower arranging on the upper floors of a Main Street building.
Soba Noodle Azuma, 246 Main Street, Fort Lee. A noodle house on Main Street known for its handmade soba sets, the kind of unpretentious lunch counter that anchors an expatriate neighbourhood. It is a few doors from the cluster of Japanese businesses that have grown up along the street.
Sushi Aoki, 215 Main Street, Suite 104, Fort Lee. A small high-end omakase counter with roughly ten seats, the sort of place where the chef sets the menu and the meal unfolds piece by piece. It signals how far the local Japanese dining scene has matured beyond the basics.
Sazanami, 400 Main Street, Fort Lee. A Main Street sushi bar and Japanese kitchen known for its curries as much as its fish, serving the everyday comfort food of home rather than the special-occasion menu.
The New Jersey Japanese School, 117 Franklin Avenue, Oakland. The full-day school for expatriate children, independent since 1999, renting space from a Catholic church. Its small enrolment, in the dozens, reflects a community that rises and falls with the corporate postings that feed it.
The George Washington Bridge. Not a Japanese landmark, but the reason the community is here. It opened in 1931, stands 604 feet tall, and is the busiest motor-vehicle bridge in the world. Every weekday morning it carries Fort Lee’s Japanese executives into Manhattan and home again at night.
Where They Came From
Most of Fort Lee’s Japanese did not come from any single village or prefecture, the way an Italian or a Korean enclave often traces back to one region. They came from the head offices of Japanese corporations, which means disproportionately from Tokyo and the other big cities where those companies are based.
They were salaried employees of banks, trading houses, electronics makers and shipping firms, sent to staff the New York operations during Japan’s long postwar economic rise. Their selection was professional rather than geographic: you came to Fort Lee because your employer needed someone in New York, not because a cousin had gone before you.
That gives the community an unusual shape. It skews toward white-collar households, it expects to leave, and its size tracks the fortunes of corporate Japan. When Japan’s economy slowed and firms cut expatriate benefits in the 2000s, the flow thinned, and the Bergen County Japanese population that had once climbed settled back toward roughly 6,000 by 2011.
Fort Lee Today
Fort Lee today is far better known as a Korean enclave than a Japanese one. Korean Americans made up about 23.5 percent of the borough in 2010, against the 6.09 percent Japanese ancestry recorded in 2000, the highest Japanese share of any New Jersey municipality but a much smaller number. The Japanese here have always been the quieter, smaller presence on a street that now reads, to most visitors, as Korean. The same Korean wave reshaped neighbouring towns up the Palisades, from the Korean families of Leonia to the Korean community in Cresskill, and Fort Lee itself is now counted among the country’s largest Korean enclaves.
The community is also more rooted than it once was. Not every family leaves: some executives stay, some children grow up bilingual and choose New Jersey, and a second generation has begun to treat Fort Lee as home rather than a posting. The institutions built for transients, the Society on Main Street, the schools, the noodle shops, now also serve people who are not going anywhere.
Still, the rhythm of arrival and departure remains. Mitsuwa fills every weekend, the weekend schools open every Saturday, and somewhere in one of the high-rises a family is unpacking, knowing they may have only three years above the bridge before Tokyo calls them back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is there a Japanese community in Fort Lee, New Jersey?
The Japanese in Fort Lee are largely a corporate expatriate community. Japanese companies with offices in Manhattan posted executives to New York for three to five year terms, and Fort Lee, at the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, offered apartments, a short commute and Japanese shops and schools.
Is Fort Lee more Korean or Japanese?
Fort Lee is far more Korean. Korean Americans made up roughly 23.5 percent of the borough as of 2010, while Japanese ancestry was recorded at 6.09 percent in 2000. The Japanese community is smaller and quieter, though it has the highest Japanese share of any New Jersey town.
Where do Japanese families in Fort Lee shop for groceries?
Most shop at Mitsuwa Marketplace at 595 River Road in neighbouring Edgewater, the largest Japanese-oriented shopping centre on the East Coast. It opened in 1988 as Yaohan and was rebranded Mitsuwa in 1998, and it functions as the informal commercial heart of the region’s Japanese life.
What schools serve Japanese children in the Fort Lee area?
The full-day New Jersey Japanese School, independent since 1999, now operates in Oakland and prepares expatriate children to return to the Japanese system. Saturday weekend schools and cram schools, or juku, have served the area’s Japanese national children since at least the 1980s.
What is the Japanese-American Society of New Jersey?
Founded in 1974 and based at 208 Main Street in Fort Lee, it is the community’s oldest institution. It teaches Japanese to children and English to adults and runs classes in tea ceremony, flower arranging and other traditional arts, serving as a cultural anchor for a population that turns over every few years.
How large is the Japanese community in Fort Lee?
It is modest and tied to corporate postings. As of March 2011 about 2,500 Japanese Americans lived in Fort Lee and Edgewater combined, with the wider Bergen County Japanese population around 6,000. Numbers rose and fell with the strength of Japanese corporate presence in New York.
If your family’s story passed through Fort Lee, or any of the places Japanese families have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a head office in Tokyo to a high-rise above the George Washington Bridge, to wherever you are now.