Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
55
in 2002 by a committee including the Osaka Municipal Government, Japan Rail East, the
Osaka Taiko Industrial Association, the BLL Naniwa branch, and various experts. The road’s
construction was intended to bring tourism to the area and to reclaim the history of drum-
making in the district (Cangià 2009, Bender 2012). The impetus for the project was the
success of a local band of drummers, called
Ikari
(literally anger) formed over a decade
earlier by a group of youngsters interested in reviving the traditions of the taiko in the area.
The Road is composed of ten zones, from ‘Taiko makers’ to ‘human rights culture’ zone, and
runs nearly 500 meters towards the Osaka Human Rights Museum (
Liberty Osaka
). The Road
includes taiko-shaped benches, telephone boxes, display of drum music pieces, statues, and
information boards all of which concern the history of the district, the production and
typologies of taiko drums. In the area nearby Liberty Osaka museum, several bronze statues
of drummers are located and explain the production of drums. Some statues represent
Japanese traditional drums, while others represent Okinawan native drummers and Korean
percussions. According to Bender (2012), the statues function to include these other
minorities as part of the multi-ethnic tapestry of modern Osaka. As a matter of fact, the
museum represents the conditions of different minorities and develops a multi-ethnic nuance
and a kind of cultural authenticity (Hankins 2012) in its exhibitions.
One of the major aspects of the Naniwa project are the taiko stores (
taiko-ya),
the
factories in which the drums are produced, often mentioned and represented in the museum
scripts and in the Road. The taiko stores are described as the ‘places where traditional
techniques of taiko production survive’, a tradition that is ‘shared with the community people
and the rest of the country’, and the means to change people’s perception and understanding
of the practice.
Naniwa town-making
strategically
retains some typical museum features, such as the
search for more authentic forms of representations and the creation of a discursive logic, by
‘equilibrating’ (Hankins 2012) various minorities within the broader contexts of human
rights. Moreover, it looks for representative objects to define the buraku culture; thus it
makes use of stereotypical visual and material images to highlight self-awareness, sense of
pride and related struggle undertaken by buraku people over their history. While a discourse
on ‘human rights culture’ (Amos 2011: 179)
8
links the issue with other groups, a special
emphasis is especially put on the ‘buraku culture’ (
buraku no bunka
) through identification of
8
The expression, ‘Human Rights Culture’ is popularized in the Plan of Action document authored for
the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (see Amos 2011: 149).
