Uwajimaya

Uwajimaya is the largest Asian supermarket in North America. The store has a long history in Seattle and connects the city to places and producers across the Pacific.

Uwajimaya founder Fujimatsu Moriguchi immigrated to Seattle in 1923, where he took up work as a fish cutter. In 1928, he began selling fishcakes out of a truck in Tacoma. He named the business Uwajima-ya, after his hometown of Uwajima, Japan. When the Moriguchi family was forced into an internment camp during World War II, they lost the business. After the war, however, the Moriguchis moved to Seattle and opened a fish market at Fourth and Main.[1]

In 1962, Moriguchi opened a Japanese gift shop at the Century 21 Exhibition, Seattle’s second world’s fair.[2]

When he died, Moriguchi left the business to his family, who expanded to new locations and established their own import business called SeaAsia.[3]

In 2000, the Uwajimaya flagship store opened at the new Uwajimaya Village. Uwajimaya Village includes more than 70,000 square feet of retail space, 176 apartments, and an underground parking facility. The Moriguchi family continues to run the store.[4]

[1] Doug Chin, Seattle’s International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community (Seattle: International Examiner Press, 2001), 107; “History," Uwajimaya, accessed August 15, 2016, http://www.uwajimaya.com/about/history.

[2] Chin, Seattle’s International District, 107.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.