Date of Award

12-13-2024

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

East Asian Languages and Culture: Japanese

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Type

Dissertation

Abstract

When literary scholars examine narratives about Osaka, they have largely focused on the relationship between Osaka and Tokyo or the representations of Osaka in the national imagination. The approach tends to neglect the role that minority groups play in creating Osaka as a city of local cosmopolitanism. Centering on how Osaka writers have represented four underclass and working-class neighborhoods in the city, this dissertation scrutinizes how the narratives complicate the images of Osaka constructed by the national government and challenge the official narrative of a homogeneous Japan. Despite Osaka’s changing position within the nation-state, its importance as a home for minority communities has remained constant. These communities have provided the labor to build modern Osaka, and their stories have contested the stereotypes of marginalized people as passive and subjugated. The city of Osaka offers an exemplary lens through which issues of marginalization, migration, and border in mid-twentieth century Japan could be examined. Instead of viewing “Osaka” as a singular or homogeneous entity, I analyze how individuals of different origins, classes, and cultural backgrounds are positioned in Osaka-focused literary works and how these individuals perceive their relationships with their neighborhoods and the city. I scrutinize the representations of the underclass and working-class neighborhoods in novels and essays by native Osaka writers Takeda Rintarō (1904–1946), Oda Sakunosuke (1913–1947), Kaikō Takeshi (1930–1989), and Kim Ch’angsaeng (1951–). These writers created neighborhood-centered works based on their direct experiences of the communities or their conversations with local residents. These neighborhoods are located in the west and south of Osaka: Kamagasaki, Japan’s current largest neighborhood of day-laborers; Ikaino, the neighborhood of Zainichi Koreans; a multi-ethnic residential area of scrap metal thieves in Sugiyama Ward; and the fictional Gataro Alley modeled after the Ueshio Ward, an area distinct for its alleys of densely constructed wooden row houses. These neighborhoods are home to people including day-laborers and migrants from western Japan, the Ryūkyū Islands, and the Korean Peninsula. By situating these texts within Osaka’s social and historical backgrounds from 1933 to 1960, I argue that these Osaka narratives represent neighborhoods as independent local spheres that resist the discourse of Japanese nation-building. More specifically, I shed light on how people in these neighborhoods tell their own stories, build solidarity, and reclaim their individual and group agency to counter the dehumanizing processes of marginalization enforced by Japanese government policy and capitalist expansion. This study contributes to the ongoing effort to reconsider the connotation of Osaka literature and reimagine Osaka as a city of immigrants and minorities. It also complements the scholarship of modern Japan by situating Osaka within the larger discourse of Japan’s national narrative. Furthermore, by analyzing how some of these works represent Osaka’s relation with locales such as Manila, Benguet, and Cheju Island, I suggest an alternative way to understand Osaka through its position as a locus of migration within Asia.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Rebecca Copeland

Committee Members

Diane Lewis; Jamie Newhard; Ji-Eun Lee; Lori Watt; Marvin Marcus

Available for download on Tuesday, January 13, 2026

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