Shogun Santa Brought Out The Child In Me
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 23 Dec, 2025

For years now, LA's Shogun Santa in Little Tokyo has offered a culturally specific alternative to the historically White figure. Other cities are following suit.

This past Saturday, less than a week until Christmas, I set out to meet Santa.

I hopped on the LA Metro’s Hollywood station in the direction of Japanese Village Plaza Downtown.

Shogun Santa held a Japanese folding fan

It was the final weekend before Christmas and — 75 degree LA weather be damned — the holiday spirit was palpable.  Numerous passengers of the LA metro donned ugly sweaters of red and green.  One man was going from passenger to passenger selling homemade Musubi, a Hawaiian Spam and rice delicacy, for $5 a pop.  $6 with fresh avocado.

As I disembarked at my final stop and emerged from the Little Tokyo metro station, I was greeted by a building-sized mural of Japanese baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

I proceeded to my destination on foot, passing boba shops and street carts with freshly made red bean bao.  Holiday shoppers were grabbing last minute Labubus and video games.

Finally, I turned a corner and there he was, seated beneath a massive Christmas tree.

The event was put on by Little Tokyo's Business Association

Yes, I could have spared myself the 45-minute journey by visiting any mall Santa near my house.   But I had not schlepped across LA on one of the busiest shopping days of the year to see just any Santa:

This was Shogun Santa.

For years, now LA’s Little Tokyo District has given children the opportunity to meet this one-of-a-kind character during Christmas time. 

Shogun was the title given to military rulers in feudal Japan between the 12th and 19th centuries.

Aside from the fact that he was of course a Japanese man, Shogun Santa had a unique look from any Santa I had ever seen.

He eschewed Santa’s heavy black boots in favor of socks and sandals. Rather than a red and white Santa hat, the golden battle helmet known as a kabuto sat atop Shogun Santa’s head.  

Fortunately, given the presence of children, Shogun Santa did not wield a sumari sword.  But he did wave a handheld bamboo folding fan.

Asian Santas

Asian Santa at the La Su Chinese Gardens in Portland, OR. [Photo by Mark Graves of The Oregonian] 

It was just earlier this month that I had begun wondering if there was an Asian Santa Claus. 

Much as with Jesus, Western society just sort of decided that Santa was White, despite the fact that he is a global figure who visits every house in the world.

In recent years the concept of a Black Santa has taken root.  It was even the subject of a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Kenan Thomson this past Saturday.

Were there such thing as an Asian Santa, I wondered, what might separate him from the others?

I pondered whether the milk and cookies that one leaves out for Asian Santa might be a Yakult and fortune cookies.

Perhaps he drove a TukTuk instead of a sleigh.

It would make sense that Santa is Japanese, I realized.  The Japanese, after all, boast the highest life expectancy in the world, which could help explain Santa’s current age of about 1700 years old.

After doing a little research, I learned not just of Shogun Santa in my own backyard, but a few other Asian American Santas as well.

The Lan Su Chinese Gardens in Portland, Oregon recently became home to a Santa who, per the Oregonian, dons “fierce eyebrows” and arrives by ox cart.  The Gardens’ Christmas Tree is actually a persimmon tree, bearing bright orange fruit in place of ornaments. 

In 2022 the Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN featured its first ever Asian Santa.  While he donned the traditional velvet red and white santa suit, he was able to wish children a Merry Christmas in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hmong.

Shogun Santa

As a 35 year old man, it has been a couple decades since I sat on Santa’s lap.  But when I saw that Shogun Santa’s adoring fans could simply grab a seat on the bench next to him, I began feeling a strong urge to say hi.

I waited until there were no more children in line before approaching him.  He gave me a big smile and motioned for me to take a seat. 

“Is it OK that I’m not a child?” I asked.

“Of course,” Shogun Santa replied in the thoughtful way that one might expect from an AAPI elder.  “Meeting Santa will bring out the child in you.”  So I sat.

Now, as we all know, Santa Claus is real.  But I will say that Shogun Santa bore a striking resemblance to Hollywood actor Jesse Dizon.

In our brief interaction Shogun Santa reassured me that I wasn’t the only adult to visit him.  In fact he even told a story about how, several years ago, actor David Arquette had travelled all across LA to get a photo with him.

Surely it was just a coincidence that Arquette’s wife Courtney Cox had starred alongside actor Jesse Dizon in NBC’s 1985 science fiction series “Misfits of Science.”

I would have loved hearing more, but there were now kids in line behind me.  I decided to move along, resisting the urge to accept free candy from the Little Tokyo Business Association’s volunteers.  I mean elves.

I thanked Shogun Santa and went on my way.

He was right, by the way. Indeed, that brief encounter had brought out the child in me.