Meghan McCarron has covered food and restaurants in Los Angeles for nearly 10 years. This is the first in a series from Headway about kitchens in Los Angeles that have reflected and inspired changes in the city.

Since 1903, a Japanese confectionery called Fugetsu-Do has been making mochi in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The shop’s interior, little changed since the 1950s, is lined with wooden shelves and glass showcases. Workers wrap packages of sweets in pink paper on a battered linoleum countertop. Through a doorway half-covered by a fabric divider is the store’s small factory, which produces a rainbow of mochi and manju every week.

Brian Kito, the store’s third-generation owner, no longer marks his manju with the intricate, handmade metal brands that his grandfather Seiichi used when he opened the business. But Brian still keeps them in a rice-flour-dusted plastic container under the factory’s wooden prep table.

The Kitos have stewarded Fugetsu-Do through many eras of upheaval that have threatened Little Tokyo: Japanese internment, urban renewal, the L.A. riots. Today, the store is thriving.

Now 68, Brian Kito is preparing to pass Fugetsu-Do onto his son, Korey. For Brian, keeping the store alive has meant more than even the gargantuan task of sustaining an established family business. It has also meant striving to preserve the Little Tokyo he grew up with, building on cultural traditions that span not only generations, but oceans.