Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
45
boundaries-blurring and re-positioning practices. To understand these processes, I draw on De
Certeau’s understanding of ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ simultaneously, and try to overcome the
opposition between these two dimensions. On the one hand, buraku urban practices work as
strategies, insofar as they ‘assume a place that can be circumscribed as proper (
propre
) and
thus serve as the basis for generating relations’ (De Certeau 1984: xviii). On the other hand,
they act as ‘tactics’, by insinuating themselves into the other’s place, ‘without taking it over
in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance’
(De Certeau 1984: xix). The
practices that I illustrate in this article act between these two levels, both circumscribing their
own place of operation (the buraku) and infiltrating and move in the symbolic dimension of
the ‘other’ (the ‘Japanese’) to look for new spaces of representation. These spaces are a new
form of management of difference by minority networks — which I call ‘re-positioning’ — in
addition to the four patterns that were identified by Joseph Doyle Hankins and that include
enlistment, equilibration, authenticity
, and
wounded-ness
(Hankins 2012).
3
I focus on the urban initiatives in Kinegawa (Tokyo) and Naniwa (Osaka) leather
towns, in particular the activities organized by the Museum of Education and Leather
Industry (hereafter Archives Kinegawa) and the Osaka Naniwa Human Rights Respect Town
Making’ project. I conducted fieldwork research in these social fields between 2007 and 2009
and, during this time, regularly visited districts, museums and leather factories, participated in
community activities and conducted informal interviews with activists, museum personnel,
educators, experts, and community people. Here, I draw especially on the exhibitions and my
visits to the neighbourhoods and leather factories.
Archives Kinegawa is an exhibition hall on the ground floor of the former Kinegawa
Elementary School in Kinegawa district (Tokyo) that was built in 2004 after the closure of
the school. Teachers involved in the organization of the museum are also engaged in activities
in the surrounding districts, including educational and community initiatives in collaboration
with the local branch of the Buraku Liberation League (hereafter BLL).
4
Most of these
3
‘Enlistment’ refers to the identification and placement of minorities alongside each other in a list as
evidence in the struggle against homogeneity; ‘equilibration’ entails an assumption that all minority
groups need to be rendered equivalent under a rubric of human rights; ‘authenticity’ demands for a
culture to display as a proof of the existence of minority groups; finally, ‘wounded-ness’ is the
description of these groups as victims of social harm and violations of human rights (Hankins 2012).
4
The Buraku Liberation League (BLL, Buraku kaih
ō
d
ō
mei) is the main buraku political movement
and was founded in 1922 under the name Zenkoku Suiheisha (National Levelers Association).
