Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
52
displaced, marginal, rejected or ambivalent’ and proposing ‘an alternative mode of ordering’,
through a rigorous selection of objects and narratives, as well as through the translation the
buraku into readable conceptual spaces (e.g. local attachment, industries, objects of everyday
life). Maps marking the number of leather factories and old pictures of the district are
displayed. As a matter of fact, the increase in the number of factories as a sign of local
improvement, and their size and the modernization of the leather production are described as
positive aspects and representation of the wider context of Japanese industries: the
replacement of urban and environmental negative aspects (the smell, the dirtiness, the narrow
street and grey colours) with positive ones is illustrated by the presence of objects, poems and
parts of children’s diaries. These exhibitions display the community and its people’s pride in
their social relationships, the work of parents in leather tanning, family relationships, and the
attachment to the locality.
Another part of the exhibition, and of the whole district project, includes children’s
experiences in the life of the community. The children’s imagery of the local environment is
one of the priority interests of buraku education and neighbourhood activism intended to
strengthen self-esteem and social relationships. During school time, children write diary
notebooks (
seikatsu noto
) about their daily life. Some diaries written between 1964 and 2003
have been compiled into the collection called ‘Children of Kinegawa’ and displayed in the
last section of the museum as historical documentation. Children are asked to write about
their daily life in the district to identify, to describe and reflect on aspects they consider
important, to think about the local environment, as well as to give testimonies of personal
experiences. These writing practices help foster the relationship with their hometown and the
community. In some diaries, children reformulated the image of the district by exchanging
dominant features like touristic spots (Tokyo tower, Ginza district) to create a parallel
between the hometown and the rest of the city. Other essays contain descriptions of factories
and explicit concerns about discrimination. Children demonstrated awareness of the district’s
problems and the need to intervene in their environment, by highlighting negative attributes
(the smell) through personal feelings exemplified by remarks such as, ‘I used to wake up to
the sound of cars and the smell of the oil and I did like it’; alternatively, they replaced the
negative aspects with other positive images, saying ‘the oil can be used for making food,
soap, instant noodles, bread, margarine, cookies and perfumes’
(Cangià 2012).
In general, during my staying in the community, I have observed a common
identification of the district as ‘not different from the rest of the city’, as a ‘big industry’ with
