A magnitude 3.5 earthquake was reported early Monday about 22 miles from Bakersfield, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake occurred at 2:37 a.m. and was about 25 miles from Tehachapi, 29 miles from California City and 32 miles from Arvin, Calif.
In the last 10 days, there have been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
An average of 234 earthquakes with magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.0 occur per year in California and Nevada, according to a recent three-year data sample.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 2.7 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6.5 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
Are you ready for when the Big One hits? Get ready for the next big earthquake by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
This story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
After burning 2,487 acres, destroying 13 structures and damaging three more, the Highland fire was 100% contained on Sunday evening, according to Riverside County fire officials.
The fire ignited Oct. 30 in grasses and brush in the Aguanga area and quickly exploded in size, driven by Santa Ana winds that swirled in the Inland Empire. More than 1,100 firefighters were deployed to attack the fire from the air and the ground.
By Tuesday, around 4,000 people had been ordered to evacuate, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued a smoke advisory the following day.
All fire road closures and evacuation orders have since been lifted, but warnings remain in place for the fire perimeter area.
Fire officials urged motorists to continue to be cautious while driving near the fire as crews continued to work in the region.
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
A magnitude 4.0 earthquake was reported Friday afternoon seven miles from Ventura, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake occurred at 1:12 p.m. and eight miles from Santa Paula, 12 miles from Oxnard, 14 miles from Camarillo and 15 miles from Fillmore.
In the last 10 days, there have been no earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater centered nearby.
An average of 234 earthquakes with magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.0 occur per year in California and Nevada, according to a recent three-year data sample.
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 6.5 miles. Did you feel this earthquake? Consider reporting what you felt to the USGS.
Are you ready for when the Big One hits? Get ready for the next big earthquake by signing up for our Unshaken newsletter, which breaks down emergency preparedness into bite-sized steps over six weeks. Learn more about earthquake kits, which apps you need, Lucy Jones’ most important advice and more at latimes.com/Unshaken.
This story was automatically generated by Quakebot, a computer application that monitors the latest earthquakes detected by the USGS. A Times editor reviewed the post before it was published. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, visit our list of frequently asked questions.
Employees at a popular Los Angeles rock climbing gym walked out after learning that management had not immediately disclosed a shooting threat and that they had worked in ignorance — and possible danger, they said — for days.
According to an open letter posted by staff at Hollywood Boulders, one of five Touchstone Climbing gyms in Southern California, a gym member on Oct. 22 reported concerning text messages that they had received from another member. The letter did not repeat the messages in full but included phrases by the writer that they were “strapped” and “wanted scalps,” as well as a warning to the recipient to “avoid the gym for a while.”
The texts went on to say the gym had “been way too lenient with all the wannabes here. no mas” and that the member “already has a kill order” and “god has spoken.” When the person who received the messages asked, “wdym stay away from the gym? Everything okay?”, the member replied, “i’ll know soon enough.”
The Oct. 25 walkout coincidentally happened the same day as 18 people were killed in a mass shooting in Maine, which put people throughout the nation on edge as police hunted for the gunman, who was later found dead.
“Mass shootings happen virtually every single day in this country,” the open letter states. “This is part of our new normal.”
In a staffwide email sent Tuesday that was shared with The Times, company Chief Executive Mark Melvin said the threats were not found to be credible.
Melvin said in the email that the threats were immediately reported to law enforcement, which determined they were not credible and told company officials to “take no further action and not to alarm our staff and community.”
Although gym owners and upper management were informed of the threats, according to the open letter, staff members did not learn about them until Oct. 25. It is not clear from the letter how employees learned of the texts. Staff asked to see the messages but were unable to get them from management, the letter says, so they walked off the job, causing the gym to close early.
The letter criticizes management’s decision to withhold the threats from staff, as well as the actions taken without input from staff.
In his email to staff, Melvin said external security was hired at all five locations in Southern California, and the person who wrote the texts was banned from all gym locations.
Melvin in his email emphasized that the text message threats never specified a location, that they were not deemed credible by law enforcement, that there was no active shooter present and that the messages were simply “personal communication” between two gym members.
The gym remained closed Oct. 26 because of the walkout but reopened the following day, according to Melvin. Staff also began circulating a letter to gym members, encouraging them to freeze or cancel their memberships and to donate the funds to a GoFundMe fundraiser toward staff to make up for lost wages during the walkout.
Hollywood Boulders management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is the first time we’ve experienced anything like this, and we know our response wasn’t perfect,” Melvin’s email concludes. “Given the tragic state of gun violence in our nation, we understand why some members of our community were alarmed to learn about some details of these events through various online channels.”
Desert tarantulas aren’t considered poisonous to humans. That doesn’t mean, however, that they can’t be dangerous.
A trio of international travelers learned this lesson over the weekend when the brown, hairy spider’s appearance caused a two-vehicle accident in Death Valley National Park that sent one man to the hospital.
A Canadian motorcyclist crashed Saturday afternoon into the back of a camper rented by a Swiss couple who suddenly stopped in the middle of the road to provide safe passage for a desert tarantula crawling across the highway, according to national park officials.
The Swiss tourists “were fine,” according to park spokesperson Abby Wines, but the biker was transported via ambulance, roughly 100 miles, to Desert View Hospital in Pahrump, Nev.
Wines said his injuries “were non-life-threatening,” but no update on the man’s condition was available.
The spider, according to park officials, “walked away unscathed.”
Seeing a tarantula above ground is unusual. Park officials said the spider spends most of its time underground. Fall happens to be the one season 8- to 10-year-old male tarantulas leave “their burrows to search for a mate.”
Female tarantulas are more deadly for males than any wayward car or motorcycle: The females often kill and eat males after mating.
Park officials described the eight-legged creature, both male and female, as “slow moving and nonaggressive” and said their nonpoisonous bite is “similar to a bee sting.”
The accident took place along the two-lane California State Route 190 near Towne Pass, which provides western access to the national park.
“Please drive slowly, especially going down steep hills in the park,” said Mike Reynolds, superintendent of Death Valley National Park, in a statement.
Reynolds was the first park employee to survey the accident scene.
“Our roads still have gravel patches due to flood damage, and wildlife of all sizes are out,” he said.
Part of the state route that was closed due to flooding was reopened on Oct. 15, while other parts of the park and adjacent roadways are still closed.
The father arrested on suspicion of killing two of his four young children has a criminal history along with a string of domestic violence cases and had lost custody of his children last year, court documents reveal.
Prospero Serna was detained by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Sunday for allegedly killing two of his four biological children, who were discovered by authorities after their mother made a frantic 911 call directing deputies to an apartment in Lancaster, according to the department.
All four children were found in a bedroom with lacerations, and two died after being taken to a hospital. The other two were in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Their names and ages were not immediately released.
On Monday, the Sheriff’s Department announced it had enough evidence to charge Serna with killing the two children. His booking was delayed by the fact that Serna was not cooperating with deputies, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
Court documents show he had a troubled history with the law since at least 2006, when a restraining order was filed against him in San Bernardino County, according to court records.
That same year he was charged with contempt of court and disobeying a court order, though it is not clear if that was related to the previous harassment case. He was eventually convicted in 2009 of a lower charge of failure to appear after he posted a written promise to appear.
In Los Angeles, a woman filed for a restraining order in a domestic violence prevention case involving minor children in 2007. There were no documents immediately available in that case, and it was not clear whether the restraining order was granted.
Serna was charged in 2014 in San Bernardino with battery on a spouse, though the charges were dismissed three years later in the interest of justice, according to court records.
In 2016, Serna was again hit with a temporary restraining order that said he could not harass, attack or strike another woman who was the mother of his children.
Then in 2021, another temporary restraining order was issued against Serna in a San Bernardino County case involving a man. That order was dismissed a few weeks later.
Serna lost custody of four of his children to their mother in July 2022, according to court documents reviewed by The Times. “Mother is awarded sole legal and sole physical custody of all minors,” a judge wrote in the July 13, 2022, order.
Based on those records, the children would now range in age from 3 to 7. Two are 3-year-old twins.
In the Los Angeles County Superior Court order, the judge decided Serna could have “unmonitored visits” with his four children at his own mother’s home, as well as monitored visits outside that home.
The judge specified that Serna’s visits would not occur at the home of the children’s mother. The order did not cite any conduct by Serna for the limited access to his children.
Other criminal cases found in court records include a conviction for causing a fire to a structure or forest.
Serna was active on social media until a few days before his arrest.
He was posting regularly on Facebook about the Israel-Hamas war in October, calling for an end to the violence in the Middle East.
“Ceasefire or the world will be uninhabitable for everyone,” Serna said in an Oct. 16 post on what appeared to be his Facebook account.
He had previously posted about his own history with mental health authorities.
“Do u guys remember that time I told u guys I was tortured and injected with different drugs at a mental facility (Arrowhead regional) well I wasnt lying. So don’t judge the way I think. How would u think if u were injected by an unknown poison?”
The driver accused of killing four Pepperdine students in a high-speed Malibu crash almost two weeks ago has been released on bond, according to jail records.
Fraser Michael Bohm, 22, faces four counts of malice murder and four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said at a recent news conference, adding that the charges stem from Bohm’s “complete disregard for the life of others.”
Prosecutors say Bohm was speeding along Pacific Coast Highway at 104 mph before the fatal collision.
Bohm pleaded not guilty to the eight felony charges Wednesday in a Van Nuys courtroom, where his bail was initially set at $8 million but the amount was lowered to $4 million during his arraignment. He was released on bond on Friday.
Bohm was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence following the Oct. 17 crash, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Maria Navarro said. But he was released hours later.
In a news release at the time, the Sheriff’s Department said he was “released to allow detectives time to gather the evidence needed to secure the strongest criminal filing and conviction.”
Bohm was re-arrested on Thursday and booked on suspicion of four counts of murder. In the days between arrests, investigators collected additional evidence — including toxicology test and search warrant results and speed analyses — before submitting the case to the district attorney’s office.
Not much information about Bohm is available in public records. He attended Chaminade Prep and Oaks Christian, two pricey private schools with annual tuition of more than $20,000.
The BMW driven in the accident was paid for by his parents, Christopher and Brooke Bohm, who lived in a home in a gated Malibu community that was valued at more than $8.7 million, according to the Daily Mail.
Brooke Bohm filed for divorce in 2017, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court documents.
The four people killed — Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams — were sisters in the Alpha Phi sorority and seniors at Pepperdine University. Authorities believe they were standing near several parked vehicles in the 21600 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when Bohm’s BMW barreled into the cars and then struck the women shortly before 9 p.m. on Oct. 17.
Investigators said they have determined that Bohm was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash, but the onboard computer of his car shows he was traveling at 104 mph before he lost control in the deadly collision, according to law enforcement sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly. It was that data, along with statements made by Bohm, saying he was aware of the posted 45-mph speed limit on that stretch of PCH, that led to the charges against him, sources say.
But Bohm’s attorney, Michael Kraut, says his client was not traveling that fast. He also has forwarded a claim to prosecutors alleging that another vehicle was involved in the crash. Last week, Kraut said his client is the victim of a road-rage incident on the night of the crash.
“They ignored evidence of a second car,” Kraut told The Times. “My client was getting away from the guy chasing him.”
Kraut said another driver “came into the lane and clipped him,” and Bohm “hit the brakes.”
“The evidence turned over showed at max [he was going] 70 mph,” Kraut said, citing the information he has received in the case, and adding that his client has “totally cooperated” with the investigation and passed a field sobriety test.
L.A. County sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Arens told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that he had “no evidence” that the crash stemmed from an alleged road rage incident.
The collision has renewed calls for safety improvements on PCH, particularly in the area of the crash, which some call “Dead Man’s Curve.”
Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
Thousands of people waving the black, green, red and white Palestinian flag and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” gathered at Pershing Square on Saturday afternoon to protest Israel’s escalating air and ground war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The event began with a series of speakers who decried the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Israeli bombing attacks since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants launched their bloody incursion into Israel, and called for an end to what they termed an Israeli occupation of the densely populated enclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
The crowd then began marching slowly down the middle of 6th Street, attracting hundreds more people who had arrived to show their support by joining the event led by groups that included the Palestinian Youth Movement, an independent, grassroots organization of Palestinian and Arab youths.
Demonstrators carry a gigantic black, green, red and white Palestinian flag in showing their support for Palestinians at Pershing Square in downtown L.A. on Saturday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Among them was Salah Odeh, of Pasadena, who said he was supposed to have joined his University of La Verne teammates in a game on Saturday but decided that the situation in his home country is “bigger than football.”
He said it’s imperative that the people of Gaza be given humanitarian aid and that Palestinian fighters receive military assistance in the face of Israel’s bombing campaign in recent weeks.
“People are offering their prayers, and that’s good — but we need physical help. We need military assistance,” said Odeh, who wore a black-and-white keffiyeh on his head, a Palestinian flag around his neck like a cape, and a pro-Palestine shirt and necklaces.
Gaza, he added, “is an open-air prison where everyone has been given the death penalty simply because they are Palestinian.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march down 6th Street in downtown L.A. on Saturday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Many of the demonstrators were heartened by the size of Saturday’s protest, which they view as an indication that younger generations are rejecting media narratives that they say unfairly seem to portray all Palestinian people as terrorists.
Negar Mizani, of Los Angeles, was accompanied by her husband and 3-year-old daughter in their third street demonstration since the war erupted on Oct. 7 with an attack on Israel by Hamas militants.
She shared an impassioned plea. “We would like for the Israeli apartheid to end — and a cease-fire,” she said. “It’s about recognition of the humanity of the people of Gaza.”
Nearby, Roy Nashef, of Los Angeles, held up a sign calling on the media to differentiate between Hamas and the residents of Gaza. “I’m just here to grieve with everyone else,” he said.
The war has led protesters on both sides to take to the streets across California and around the world.
A week ago, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, then began marching down Hill Street chanting and carrying signs denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal.”
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered two weeks earlier near the Israeli Consulate in West L.A. to condemn the bombardment of Gaza.
The next day, thousands marched to the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in solidarity with Israel. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members, and while views on the conflict run the gamut, many have found themselves reeling by the events that have unfolded in recent weeks.
The latest bloodshed began Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its incursion into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people — mostly civilians — and taking more than 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has launched a barrage of airstrikes across Gaza that have destroyed neighborhoods as Hamas militants fire rockets into Israel.
On Saturday, Palestinian officials published the names of 6,747 Palestinians killed and pleaded for help in a humanitarian crisis, with more than 1 million people displaced.
Israeli officials said 230 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas. On Saturday night, Netanyahu said that the military had opened a “second stage” in the war by expanding the bombardment and sending ground troops into Gaza.
Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.
Los Angeles police detectives found and reunited a Boyle Heights teen with her family after she had been missing for nearly two weeks, the girl’s sister confirmed Friday afternoon.
Michelle Giselle Lopez, 15, disappeared on Oct. 12 after being dropped off for class at Downtown Magnets High School.
Hollenbeck Division detectives, whose area includes Los Angeles’ Eastside, called Lopez’s mother on Wednesday evening and reunited the mother with her daughter at the station, according to the girl’s sister, Nataly Jaqueline Arias, 27.
“It’s been a crazy last few days and we were finally able to sleep yesterday,” Arias said. “We finally feel like she’s safe and resting.”
Since the reunion, the family has spent the last couple of days at the home of a relative outside of Los Angeles County and avoiding media contact, Arias said.
“We want to try our best to make her feel like her old self,” Arias said of Michelle. “She’s starting to eat again and talk and feel more and more like that.”
Arias said Michelle hasn’t shared what happened since she went missing on Oct. 12. On that day, Michelle’s mother arrived on campus to pick up her son, Carlos, and Michelle at 3 p.m. but never met up with her daughter. The mother filed a missing person report that day.
Arias also said that detectives have provided no details on what may have occurred.
An LAPD spokesperson only confirmed that Michelle had been found and returned to family members, but said no other information about the search was available.
Police Cmdr. Lillian L. Carranza, of the Central Division, tweeted that Hollenbeck investigators “exhausted every lead until the [missing] person was located and safely returned to the family.”
Arias said that her sister was likely “going to need a lot of therapy” and that the family was working to “give her everything she needs.”
Early in the week, Arias expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the case.
She thanked members of the public and media for “pressuring the authorities to finally follow every lead.”
“Without that support, I don’t know how much attention this story would have got,” Arias said.
The family created a GoFundMe account earlier this week that Arias previously said would be used to hire a private investigator. The account raised more than $5,300 and was disabled.
The family said the money would now be used to provide Michelle with “therapy and any resources she may need to overcome this ordeal.”
A mother of eight children is accused of abducting her children, taking them from their foster care facilities, and then fleeing across five states until police caught up with her in a small town in northern California.
Trista Fullerton, 36, allegedly violated a court order of custody for the eight children, as well as the terms of her probation for a domestic violence conviction, when she took the kids from the town of Rogers, Ark., and fled across the country while Arkansas police tried to reach her, according to court records.
Her father told police that Fullerton planned on heading to Arizona “to start a new life,” according to a warrant for her arrest. Instead, Fullerton was found in Anderson, Calif. — 150 miles north of Sacramento — where police said they spotted her and six of her children in a pickup truck filled with trash after someone reported that Fullerton was “displaying bizarre behavior.”
According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by The Times, police from Rogers began trying to contact Fullerton on Oct. 17, after receiving a report that she had “interfered with court ordered custody of eight children.”
Rogers Police officials declined to provide additional details on the case, including who made the initial report. A spokesperson for the department said the case is still under investigation.
According to the affidavit, police reached out to Fullerton’s father, David Fullerton, on Oct. 18, and he told police that his daughter had told him about taking the children to Arizona. Police learned the following day that she and the children were in California, according to the affidavit.
Police had made contact with her and the children in Redding, about 15 miles north of Anderson, but she and the children were not detained because there was no warrant.
Rogers Police filed an arrest warrant Oct. 20, and the next day, police in Anderson, Calif., spotted her and six of her children in a Dodge pickup with Arkansas plates, according to a statement from the Anderson Police Department.
Two of her other children were located at a nearby home in Cottonwood, according to the statement, and they were taken into custody by Shasta County Children and Family Services.
Fullerton was booked at Shasta County Jail and is being held without bail, according to jail records. She is expected to appear in court Thursday.
Trista Fullerton, 36, allegedly violated a court order of custody for her eight children, as well as the terms of her probation for a domestic violence conviction.
(Anderson Police Department)
David Fullerton, said during a brief call with a reporter that his daughter had made a “mistake” and is “innocent.”
“My daughter stands a chance, you know,” he said. “She made a mistake. She went across the line taking her babies but she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to.”
Court records indicate that Fullerton was on probation at the time of her arrest in Anderson. Records also show that she had been involved in at least two instances of domestic violence, twice violating court orders to stay away from the victim. In one incident, she was accused of punching the father of one of her children in the face.
Fullerton pleaded guilty to domestic violence on July 12, 2022 in Arkansas, after she “hit the father of her child in the face, causing physical injury” in June 2021.
The victim is only identified in the court documents as a 40-year-old Hispanic male.
In a court record dated Aug. 9, 2021, Fullerton indicated she had seven children at the time, ages 15, 14, 11, 7, 3, 4, and 5 months.
She also pleaded guilty to another case of domestic battery for a Feb. 5, 2020, incident in which she “punched her boyfriend in the head multiple times and scratched his face, causing redness and bleeding on his face,” according to court records.
Fullerton pleaded guilty to both incidents, and was sentenced to two years of probation, court records show. The terms of her probation, however, required that she not drink alcohol, not break the law and not leave the state of Arkansas without the approval of her probation officer.
The agreement stipulated that if she violated the terms of her probation, she could face a sentence of 12 years in jail.
On Wednesday, prosecutors requested her probation be rescinded and a $50,000 warrant was issued for her arrest.
Prosecutors said the case is currently being reviewed and it was unclear what, if any, new charge might be filed.
A man was arrested early Wednesday morning after allegedly attempting to break into a Studio City home and reportedly threatening the Jewish occupants — an incident authorities say is being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The home invasion was reported around 5 a.m. in the 3000 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The suspect, identified only as a man in his 30s, is accused of entering the home’s backyard and trying to kick in a door; he was held at bay by an occupant who then contacted the police.
KTTV-TV Channel 11 reported that the person who called police said the suspect had “threatened to kill them because they were Israeli,” and that the home’s occupants were Jewish.
Footage captured by the television station showed the suspect yelling, “Free Palestine” several times after being placed into the back of an LAPD vehicle.
In additional footage taken by a neighbor, the man can be heard yelling incoherent responses to police and stating that he was not armed.
LAPD officials said the incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime. In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called it a “vile act of hate.”
“In the wake of the terror and violence inflicted over the previous weeks, this is one of the worst fears of Jewish families across our country — hatred spilling across the threshold, destroying the sense of safety and sanctuary in a home,” Bass said. “We remain steadfast in support of the Jewish people. The people of Los Angeles will not cower to hate.”
Bass said the LAPD would continue to conduct increased patrols and called on officials “to take action to ensure the person responsible for this heinous act is held fully accountable.”
It’s hard to say what’s cooler about the Japanese shōya house at the Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens — the centuries-old wood structure that was once the center of a small farming village in Marugame, Japan, or the backstory of how it got to its new home at the Huntington’s Japanese Garden.
The shōya house’s original conical ceramic roof tiles had to be broken to move the structure. They were recreated by Japanese craftspeople, complete with a sprouting seed design.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The journey took nearly eight years of negotiations, bureaucratic wrangling and skilled craftsmanship to dismantle, reassemble and, in some cases, re-create the 3,000-square-foot house and gardens. And starting Saturday, visitors can finally tour the compound, which will be open daily from noon to 4 p.m. (except Tuesdays, when the gardens are closed).
Los Angeles-based Akira and Yohko Yokoi donated their ancient family home to the Huntington, but the $10 million job of moving it to San Marino was far more complicated than just taking apart a puzzle and putting it back together.
Consider the distinctive conical ceramic tiles covering the pitched roof like rows of tight curls. All those silver-gray tiles had to be remade by Japanese craftsmen because the originals were mortared to the roof and had to be broken to disassemble the house. The exquisite garden outside the largest and most important room of the house was carefully mapped and measured, and every stone numbered by landscape designer Takuhiro Yamada so it could be re-created at the Huntington.
Akira and Yohko Yokoi outside the shōya house they donated to the Huntington.
(Sarah M. Golonka / The Huntington)
And outside the gatehouse that protected the house, built new because the original was damaged by a storm, the Huntington installed a terraced mini farm growing small plots of rice, buckwheat, sesame, wheat and other traditional Japanese crops, surrounded by a riot of colorful cosmos flowers. The house sits higher than the farmland, so water collected from the roof and ponds all drains down to irrigate the farm land.
So this installation isn’t just an exercise in cultural awareness, says curator Robert Hori, the Huntington’s associate director of cultural programs, who oversaw the project from start to finish. To him, the Japanese Heritage Shōya House is a quiet but effective example of sustainability — “learning from the past for a better future” — and a reminder that farmers “are really the backbone of our society.”
Robert Hori, the associate director of cultural programs at the Huntington, is framed by tall cosmos blooms in the farm area outside the shōya’s gatehouse.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Small terraced plots of farmland grow rice, sesame, wheat, buckwheat and other traditional Japanese crops outside the shōya house.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
There were plenty of trying times — more than two years of negotiating with city, state and federal officials to get the necessary approvals and occupancy permit to move and rebuild the house. And in the midst of the pandemic, when the disassembled house sat in dozens of packing crates for nearly nine months, Hori had to coax reluctant Japanese craftspeople to come and put it together so the ancient wood pieces didn’t warp in SoCal’s dry summer heat.
“When you’ve spent two years lovingly repairing this wood and then you’re told everything might be lost, that was a call to action to the craftspeople who painstakingly worked on this,” says Hori. “Even in the face of a pretty scary time, they felt like it was their responsibility to put this house back together.”
The project started with a chance meeting in 2016 during a party at the Beverly Hills home of Los Angeles philanthropist Jacqueline Avant. Hori had come to talk with Avant about a Japanese art collection she wanted to donate to the institution. During their conversation, Avant introduced Hori to her friend, Yohko Yokoi, who soon would be traveling to Japan.
“I said, ‘Oh, that will be a wonderful visit because the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom,’” Hori recalled, “and [Yokoi] said, ‘No, because I have to take care of my house.’ And then she began to tell me the story of this house.”
The front entrance for farmers and other common folk at the shōya house. The swept-dirt courtyard was for village events. Dignitaries entered through a special gate at the left.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Hori recalls Yokoi saying the house had been built after the war, “so I thought it was a prefab house from the 1950s with poor construction, built after World War II. But then she was saying, ‘We used to have a castle,’ and that’s when it came to light that this house was built around 1700, after the war that unified Japan.”
Prior to that final battle, Japan had been a confederation of warring city-states and provinces, he said. It took 100 years of battles to create a cohesive central government known as the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Yokoi family’s castle was destroyed during the war. They had been fighting on the losing side, says Hori said, but the victorious Tokugawa clan decided to incorporate all the losing factions into its new bureaucracy, to become tax collectors and shōya, or village leaders.
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The Yokoi shōya house was built around 1700 in Marugame, says Hori, and was the family’s private residence as well as a kind of community center for the village.
Inside the gatehouse, a large courtyard provided space for weddings, funerals and celebrations. Farmers and merchants entered the shōya house through one entrance, to measure and store their rice, pay their taxes and try to collect funds for other provisions. These rooms had floors made from hard-packed earth, and rustic beams hand-hewn from pine.
Adjacent to the dirt-floored rooms were the places where the family lived and worked. These raised floors were covered with rice-straw tatami mats. The wood-framed walls and beams were planed to feel as soft to the touch as satin sheets. Sliding walls with windows covered in rice paper and glass opened to reveal exquisite gardens, enjoyed only by visiting dignitaries who entered through their own special gate.
The exquisite Japanese garden of distinctive stones, pond, trees and shrubs outside the shōya’s grand room for dignitaries.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
After the military shogunate system was overturned in the late 19th century, the house became the Yokois’ private residence and went through several renovations, according to Yokoi and her husband, Akira. The last family member to live there was Akira’s mother, who died around 1988. The couple moved to California in the late 1960s, says Hori, where Akira worked as an executive for Matsushita Panasonic, the parent company of Panasonic. They visited the house regularly and kept it maintained, with the idea of retiring there someday.That plan faded, however, and eventually, he adds, the upkeep became a chore.
Hori already was thinking about a big project for the Japanese Gardens when he first met Yohko Yokoi. The Huntington’s Chinese Garden was in the midst of a huge expansion, and the discussion was how to add to the Japanese Garden to balance the two, says Hori. “This was an ongoing conversation we’d been having [at the Huntington] since 2012, and I’d been taking several trips to Japan to figure out what we should be adding next to that garden,” he says.
The Yokoi house sounded promising, so even though he had just returned from a visit to Japan, he made another trip within a few weeks so he could see the house while Yokoi was visiting. And that’s when he got the vision that sustained him through all the difficult years to come.
“I thought it had good bones when I first went to look at it, but also, I was interested in the house because it was really a conglomerate of various styles: the front room with its very rustic wood beams and style on one side, and then on the other side a formal reception room with the elegant carvings and mix of styles; a public face and private face of a scale big enough to accommodate visitors circulating through it.”
There were other signs too. The Huntington’s historic Japanese Garden, with its curved wooden Moon Bridge over a small lake and display of a Japanese home, first opened in 1912 when the West was fascinated by Japanese culture, plants and architecture. The garden fell into disrepair during World War II but was refurbished with support from the San Marino League. In 1968, the garden was expanded with a bonsai collection and Zen Court of plants and raked stones. Then in 2010, the Pasadena Buddhist Temple donated a small ceremonial tea house to the garden, which was disassembled and sent back to Japan to be refurbished before being shipped back to San Marino, where it was reassembled.
Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) rises above the shōya house gatehouse.An intricate carving of farm life at the top of the entrance to the shōya house’s grand room.A soft wood walk way surrounds the perimeter of the shōya house.(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The tea house was much smaller than the shōya house, says Nicole Cavender, director of the Huntington’s botanical gardens, but it gave them the confidence to tackle a much larger structure and create a reconstruction of village life.
“We wanted this to be an immersive experience,” says Cavender, “so it has to be productive as well as beautiful.” The fields of tall magenta, pink and white cosmos flowers that edge the farm weren’t added just to enchant, she said, “but to show that we’re actually trying to grow something. The flowers draw pollinators who help the crops grow.”
Eventually there will be koi in the garden pond by the house, and the water circulating in that pond will be enriched with their poop, she says, and help feed the farmland below. Around the house is decorative edging called rain catchers — narrow drains filled with smooth gray rocks to collect any rain or dew falling off the roof, which also drained to the farming areas below.
Three hundred years ago, the Japanese didn’t have a word for sustainability, but they lived the concept every day with this type of regenerative farming, says Hori. “It’s how you survived. We want people to understand that ornamental gardening started with the ability to move water, and to move earth, which is what we have in farming. It all came out of farming.”
Robert Hori paces in the shōya’s largest room, reserved for dignitaries. The walls slide open on both sides to reveal the garden.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Hori’s vision encompasses more nuanced lessons too. The house has few furnishings. The smooth wood decking around the perimeter of the house is patched in places where the wood was worn, but the patches were done decoratively in the shape of a small gourd. And the simplicity of the furnishings is a gentle question.
“It gets you thinking … do we really need all this stuff we have? We want this to be a living museum, and walking through the house you can really find the three Rs of sustainability — reduce, repair and recycle, reuse or remake,” says Hori.
“It was all part of a circular economy where nothing was wasted. A ‘circular economy’ is a big concept, but we’re hoping these small doses of a big concept can help people take away these lessons and understand them. As a nonprofit we are in the business of inspiring and changing lives. We can make a difference, and that’s a great thing to come to work to.”
