Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
56
certain practices as the ‘authentic’ (Hankins 2012) culture of the buraku. This is different
from Kinegawa, in which a more inclusive identity is registered that includes different
backgrounds. Here a demarcation line is made between buraku groups and other minorities
when it comes to the leather production (as the culture of the buraku), whereas links and
cooperation with other minorities are emphasized when it comes to the ‘human rights
culture’.
However, like Kinegawa town-making programme, the project in Naniwa challenges
the idea of separateness from the Nation by simultaneously highlighting local aspects and
features of the area, while recognizing the contact with the rest of the city and the nation by a
special emphasis on trade activities (Naniwa as a leather trade centre) and the urban everyday
life in the district (the Road).
On Reconstructing Buraku Leather Towns into ‘National Spaces’
Like both De Certeau’s ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, the practices illustrated in this article operate
through a twofold approach: on the one hand, they limit their place of operation within the
spatial boundaries of the ‘buraku’ (industrial area, factories, taiko stores) and celebrate the
community on these very aspects; on the other, they try to search within the conceptual
spaces of the ‘other’ (the Japanese) for new forms of identity representations and meanings
(the ‘nation’, ‘national culture’, socio-economic values, the ‘city’) where identities merge.
The result are spaces that connect with pre-existing shared and accepted images of the
‘Japanese’, as well as those of disconnection, insofar as the buraku areas maintain
characteristics of discrimination to challenge social relations and commonplace
categorizations. ‘Authentic’ cultural forms become the basis for more complex manoeuvres
of multiculturalism in which heterotopic modes of re-positioning and boundary-blurring
challenge the idea of separate-ness between the Japanese and minority groups.
The urban programmes in the two leather towns make use of native aesthetics of the
past, local attachment and social and economic values of the industrial areas within the wider
context of the ‘city’ and the ‘nation’. This is done without opposing the two, and combining
elements of the local imaginary of the past with the present effects of urbanization and
industrialization. In Naniwa, for instance, taiko shapes are integrated in the urban life of the
district through bus stops and traffic signals. In Kinegawa, the factories are presented as a
source of economic roles producing things for everyday modern life via old techniques and
hard work. Consequently, the view of the ‘marginal’ and the ‘central’, the buraku and the
