Yoshi’s is one of the premier jazz clubs in the country, internationally known for the quality of its sound system, the diversity of the music it presents and the delicious menu. The club’s current location in Oakland’s Jack London Square is its third home, a far cry from the 20-seat establishment that opened on Euclid and Hearst in Berkeley in 1972.
“I started Yoshi’s so I could eat Japanese food,” Yoshie Akiba, the restaurant’s namesake, said. “I was a student at UC Berkeley, working at a dress shop. I borrowed money from people I knew. My friend, Hiroyuki [Hori], was a good cook; Kaz [Kajimura] did carpentry and maintenance; and I was the waitress, along with another Japanese woman I hired.” Yoshi’s slowly grew bigger and moved to Claremont Avenue in Oakland.
Akiba grew up in an orphanage in Zushi, Japan. “There were three women taking care of us,” she said. “They’d all graduated from college and instructed us in music and dance, so we could entertain the people visiting the orphanage. I learned Japanese folk songs and how to play the koto. There was an American naval base near us. We’d go there to sing and dance in the officers’ club. They had people like Benny Goodman and other jazz bands come in. It was interesting music and made me very happy.”
A woman who worked at the base introduced Akiba to her brother, a naval officer. He taught her English, and she taught him how to dance. “He told me, ‘If you stay here, you’ll be nothing. If you come to America, you can study dance.’ We got married, and I came to Baltimore with the naval fleet.”
Eventually, the couple parted ways. “I’d seen movies of the hippies in Berkeley and decided I wanted to go to California. I flew to San Francisco,” Akiba said.
When she landed at the airport, Akiba met two students from Berkeley. “I was sitting on my trunk,” she remembered. “They asked me if I was lost and invited me to stay with them.” Akiba moved into a room a friend of the students had just vacated. She got a job, began studying dance at UC Berkeley and opened Yoshi’s.
“I always wanted to have music in the restaurant, and the new place in Oakland had two floors,” Akiba said. “I trained eight waitresses to sing and dance, and we started putting on performances. We had local jazz bands on weeknights and Latin jazz on the weekends, so everyone could dance.” The restaurant/venue began drawing crowds, but Akiba wasn’t surprised. “Oakland needed it,” she said.
Yoshi’s slowly expanded to the building next door, adding a proper space for performances. When Chuck LaPaglia, a jazz-club booker from Milwaukee, visited the club, he was impressed and offered to help bring in national acts. Performers like Al Di Meola, Chick Corea, Pharoah Sanders and other headliners began selling out shows.
“I was all over the place,” Akiba said. “I was the hostess, and I performed and danced with some of the people who came in to play at the club. Al Di Meola asked me to dance with him, and I improvised on the spot. Improvisation is very natural for me. I hear music, and I move. In the beginning it was jazz, but I like all kinds of music—R&B, blues, Latin jazz. Right now, Latin jazz is my favorite.”
As the audiences grew, Akiba began looking for a larger space. With help from the City of Oakland, she built a new place in Jack London Square in 1997, designed from the start to be a live-music venue. With the help of Berkeley’s Meyer Sound, she had a state-of-the-art sound system installed.
“Before we came in, the neighborhood was dark,” Akiba said. “Yoshi’s helped bring a light to it. The city even created parking spaces for us. We built it from the ground up.”
Daniel Grujic, the club’s artistic director, said, “The new club was made to be an intimate performance space. It’s a place for artists to showcase their talent in the best possible environment for the audience and the artist. This means having a capable and professional crew, and taking the sometimes large steps of consistently upgrading the equipment in the space. We did one such overhaul in 2022. It has some of the best acoustics and equipment in the nation.”
The venue brought in chef Shotaro “Sho” Kamio, known for his San Francisco restaurant, Ozuma. He crafted innovative Japanese dishes that complemented the sounds created on Yoshi’s stage. Thanks to his help, the San Francisco Chronicle put Yoshi’s on their Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants list for four years running. The current chefs, Victor Reyes and Lolo Gonzales, worked with Kamio and carry on his tradition of innovation, with a fusion of Japanese and other flavors.
In 2007, Yoshi’s briefly opened a San Francisco location in the Fillmore District. It began operating during an unexpected economic recession, and failed after seven years. Around that time, Akiba turned over the day-to-day operations to Hal Campos, the current company CEO.
“I’m still the owner, but I got interested in other things,” Akiba said. “I help run the Oakland Zen Center. My husband, Gengo Akiba, is one of the top Zen practitioners in the world. He’s helping many American women to become Zen priests, with financial help from the Soto Zen organization in Japan.
“With my friends Shelia E, Lynn Mabry [one of the original Brides of Funkenstein] and Jason Hofman, I started a nonprofit organization called Elevate Oakland,” she continued. “We send musicians and artists into more than 30 Oakland public schools, to give music and art classes to young people and provide places for them to perform, like the Fox Theater and Yoshi’s.”
Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. 510.238.9200. yoshis.com
Excellent piece! Thank you
Thanks, j. poet, for the richly detailed, long overdue tribute to Yoshi and Yoshi’s. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
Such a great story! We always see Yoshi dancing, and now that I know her history, I understand why.
Great story. In the mid to late 70s, I had a woman friend that lived on Chaabot and we loved to eat at Yoshi’s. Great food.
I remember all 3 of Yoshi’s locations. Enjoyed all, both the wonderful food and the music. Good times at Yoshi’s!