Resident Koreans in Kyoto Today— The wrong side of the tracks

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For decades this part of Kyoto has been the center for “recycling,” from gleaning scrap metal in the early post-war years, to organized glass and metal collections today.
However, the sight of collected refuse is also one of the features of the area that many object to, as it reminds them of their position at the bottom of the occupational status ranking.
Midori Taoka, an eighteen-year old resident of Yonju-banchi used her part in the “Higashi-kujo no Ima” photography day to document the conditions of this neighborhood
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

When residents of Higashi-kujo talk about their district, one particular location generally gets most of the attention. For Higashi-kujo is the home of one of Japan’s most famous “suramu” districts: Yonju -banchi (“address number 40”), also known as “zero banchi”. This is a collection of houses and buildings constructed on the flood plain of the Kamo river.

The original structures of Yonju-banchi were not constructed so as to be durable. In part their lack of sturdiness reflected an optimism about the situation between Japan and Korea in the 1950s—an optimism that was destroyed when the treaty between Japan and South Korea made no provisions for compensation of Koreans resident in Japan.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

Much of Higashi-kujo before World War I was agricultural plots (the area was once famous for growing green onions) surrounding a few clusters of houses, some small industry, one of Kyoto’s larger buraku areas, and the river and its banks.

Yonju-banchi is really only a riverbank. And with 80% of its population being Korean, it is the most “international” neighborhood in Kyoto.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

The clusters became the “old families” in the area, and the fields were slowly built in as housing (much of it substandard), and more small industrial (piecework factories) and service industries.

 

More fences to keep out those who might have some use of the land.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

The construction of Kyoto station and the railway line forced many to move south into this district, as did the later (1960s) construction of the shinkansan (bullet-train) line and station.

Kyoto Station and its many tracks and trains separates the northern from the southern parts of the town. The northern (ekimae—in front of the station) side faces the old imperial palace, while the southern (ekiura—behind the station) side is the “wrong-side-of-the-tracks” side, where tightly-packed residential areas abut warehouses and small industries. This photo shows the new airport shuttle train. Photo from:
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/

Today the area is zoned for industrial use and for the highest residential concentration in the city. The city’s “Grand vision for 21st Century Kyoto” [see: http://www.city.kyoto.jp/index_e.html] calls for building “...a dynamic and attractive city: careful measures to preserve the natural and historical scenery of old Kyoto and surrounding mountains; harmonious regeneration of work, residence, learning and leisure facets of the city center; creative development in the southern region of Kyoto - the key to growth in the 21st century.” But for the Higashi-kujo district, the “creative development” plans to date include rezoning for greater residential density and a higher level of industrial use, and a new 40+ meter tall Kyoto Station building creates a modern “odoi”: a visual barrier separating the south from the central old city of Kyoto. But then Korean have always inhabited “the wrong side of the tracks” in Kyoto.

“By 1950 the economy was starting to recover, and the [city] administration began to consider cleaning up this messy place. When foreign tourists and royalty arrive on the train through the tunnel from Yamashina and enter Kyoto station right there they see the barracks. In order to get rid of the black market and the temporary shelters in the 1950s [the city] started a policy of compulsory removal [of people from the barracks]. But because it doesn’t matter if you are removed, you have to live somewhere, and so a house is built whenever another is destroyed, so it was a vicious circle...”
Local activist
Interviewed in 40 banchi

Housing in Kyoto, particularly pre-war housing, is often built on a very modest plan, with narrow lots that can today only hold only a “nagaya” [tenement-house], or a house like the one my family rented, a “machiya” that maintained the floor plan that was designed for such a lot. NOTE: this house is not, however, in 40 Banchi. The City has spent many resources trying to design modern houses that can fit these lots, but the results are not what they hoped for.

The end of the war brought thousands of Korean conscripts to Kyoto station—one of the main intact train centers in the area (Kyoto was never bombed in the war). These and many other migrants into Kyoto’s urban population found temporary shelter in this region adjacent to the Station. Boarding houses and other accommodations were available here, where they were not to the North. Hundreds of temporary shelters were fashioned just south of the station and rented to this influx of transitional persons. So too, the proximity to the railways and to regional highways made Higashi-kujo the central black market in Kyoto’s post war period. In the 1950s the City received funds from national programs to upgrade housing in the burakus.

“If you were Japanese, even though it would take money, and was only a hut, you could slip into it [a new house] somehow. But if you were Korean with a foreigner’s residence or a family register, the authorities discriminated against you when you moved.
“They’d tell you ‘You must understand that housing is not available,’ or simply ‘it is impossible [shikataganai=there is no way],’ or ‘do you drink liquor?’ or ‘I bet if you went and over in that area...’ but you’d go there and it would just be the same all over again—really, wouldn’t [you call] this discrimination?”

Local activist
interviewed in 40 banchi

Although many Koreans had houses in the buraku area south of Kyoto station, unlike their Japanese neighbors they were not compensated¹ when their houses were destroyed to make room for public housing blocks. This created another source of animosity between the Korean community and the city, and between Koreans and their Japanese neighbors. Adding to the problem, Koreans also faced the difficulty of locating new housing: a difficulty that remains until today. Vacant apartments are suddenly not vacant.

This was the first of major “slum clearance” in the City, and it resulted in the razing of hundreds of houses and the construction of city-owned housing blocks with the burakus. But in the 1950s there were many problems with housing in Japan and Kyoto, and many still persist. The lack of adequate housing, particularly in terms of affordability and is perhaps the single greatest problem in urban Japan.

Narrow catwalks connect the structures to a central spine running parallel to the river.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

But in the 1950s this discrimination was not done surreptitiously, but openly. “And so they [resident Koreans] went around and found no place, and they moved to the south side of the Kamogawa, where there was not a house in those days, only a grassy plain, and they began to build houses by themselves. That is the origin of Yonju-banchi [address number 40]. (resident of Yonju-banchi)”

This photographer’s work focused on Yonju-banchi’s many chain-link fences.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

The construction of houses on this site increased constantly through the 1950s to the 1960s. By 1963 there were 150 structures, and the present state of Yonju-banchi was almost complete. This coincided with the end of the “slum clearance” of temporary shelters south of Kyoto Station.

Yonju-banchi is built out over the southernmost end of the Takaseigawa, where this joins the Kamo River.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

This is no coincidence. The city was instrumental in the creation of this neighborhood by pushing hundreds of local families onto the street with nowhere else to go.

Each fence has its own sign warning against trespass.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

The site itself is not in the city proper, as the flood plain of the river is technically national land. This is one reason why the city has avoided the issue of creating alternative housing for these residents.

 

 

The area's utilities are rudimentary and prone to failure.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

“Today there are 1300 people living in Yonju-banchi, in the mid 1960s there were 4500. They’d take a space for a pig-pen, and make a house, then they’d divide this into two with a wooden panel: [the result] an ‘octopus² house’ [takobeya].”
Local activist
Interviewed in 40 banchi

The overcrowding in this area has decreased as the demographics have changed (fewer children). Today about 23% of the residents are elderly (over 65 years of age). And after fires and floods, the damaged structures are fenced off, and so the number of structures is slowly dwindling.

(Below) Many of the structures have been damaged or have deteriorated in the last 30 years.
Photo © 1994 Midori Taoka
Used with permission

“On the north side [of the station] they gave compensation when they tore down the houses, but on the south side, they did not: it was determined as an ‘issue of national territory’”
Local activist
Interviewed in 40 banchi
In other words, because they were Koreans, they did not merit compensation when their houses were torn down.

The structures are not actually hooked up to a sewer system, and so there is a problem of hygiene and odor. Families still live 4-5 to one small room, and in many cases there is only a single parent. High-school entrance is below the national average, as is the number of high-school graduates who go on to college, but these are statistics that are common to the local buraku area as well.

Well up river from Higashi-kujo (and north of the Gojo-minami buraku areas) expensive Kyoto-cuisine (kaiseki) restaurants have been given space to extend their premises out over the banks of the Kamo River. These patio dining areas are popular in the summer, but are generally unaffordable apart from business-expense entertainment. The riverfront south of Gojo offers the same potential ambience, but that area’s geographical stigma prevents its occupants from using this opportunity. Photo from:
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/

There is no water system for fighting fires, and when a wind comes up, the entire neighborhood is vulnerable to disaster. Should a hundred-year flood occur the entire neighborhood is likely to be washed away. But there are some who would rather live here than in an other part of Kyoto. Though the rents are not justified by the accommodations, they are cheap by Kyoto standards. As this is a majority Korean neighborhood with virtually no official links to the city, it maintains a sense of cultural and social independence that some residents enjoy. Korean songs and food, language and dress are not marked here. “There is a carefree space here for Koreans who are working” said one resident.

The aseptic hallways of the public housing block is an alternative that many people living in Yonju-banchi would not prefer to their own catwalks.
Photograph ©1994, Yu Chinmi
Used with permission

The area has a high concentration of day laborers, and it is difficult to escape the mood that arises with too little available work (and too much hard labor when it comes) for too little money; too many bosses, and too few opportunities to move up. There are too many reasons here to become depressed about the present and desperate about the future.

The future of Yonju-banchi is an interesting question. I have seen a model of a proposed public apartment complex (the proposal came from Kyoto University) that would be built on this site, after it was raised above flood level. But the money to build this is not yet secure. The city managed to celebrate its 1200th anniversary year without facing its most glaring challenge.

Kyoto’s kaiseki cuisine, probably the most expensive food in the world, represents one of the pinnacles of aristocratic cultural achievement in the city. With a dinner for two that could easily cost a month’s wages for a day laborer in Kyoto, this is food that few persons outside of the corporate world can enjoy. Photo from:
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/

 

 

 

 

The campus of the self-proclaimed “International Institute of Advanced Studies,” where virtually all of the research is done by Japanese individuals from Japanese universities and corporations. This is another example of the local use of “international” which does not necessarily include persons from other nations, but merely refers to topics or interests that are not limited somehow to Japan. Foreign scholars need not apply. Photo from:
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/

Yonju-banchi from the 10th Street bridge across the Kamo River. The towering public-housing block of Matsunokimachi danchi is on the left. Here hundreds of Kyoto natives who happened to have Korean ancestry built their own neighborhood, when the city and the nation destroyed their homes to construct the Bullet train line through Kyoto.
©1994, Higashi-kujo Today
used with permission.

Yonju-banchi is one of Japan’s most notorious slum areas, having been the target of regular NHK (Japan’s government television) programs. After each program there would be a moment of hope within Yonju-banchi that something positive would result from this attention. But today that hope is pretty much gone. So now TV cameras are not allowed into Yonju-banchi.

There are people in other parts of Higashi-kujo who find a small comfort in feeling superior to those who live such a precarious life on the riverbank, and so the isolation of this neighborhood is rather fiercely drawn. At some point it will fall to fire, wind or water, or to old age and decrepitude. The city thinks it has time on its side. But the residents of Yonju-banchi may not go down to defeat so easily. This is a home ground of the Higashi-kujo Madang festival, and its residents are ready to transform their outsider condition into a new demand for multiculturalism in the city. They see their place not at the margin, but at the forefront of a more international society in Kyoto. But in order to move themselves and the city into a space of mutual respect and dialogue they will have to confront the city’s public sphere and self constructed identity.

The sight of geisha on the street is on of the most enduring of Kyoto’s photo-ops. The continuance of the geisha system, which requires women at a very early age to be pledged to a life of “cultural servitude” with both opportunities and constraints—neither of these within their control—is one of the social paradoxes of the vestigial forms of Kyoto’s once-aristocratic (and nearly always sexist) cultural production. Photo from:
http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org/hellokcb/

Here (below) is a video of a geisha who was sent to the Heian Shrine for a photo opportunity with a group of wealthy businessmen and their wives. One the way back to her cab she is also “acquired” momentarily by others (including the odd anthropologist with a video camera) who wish to capture her image as a memento of Kyoto. Look at how completely she maintains her acquired geisha composure.

¹Until recently, when written contracts have begun to be used in these transactions in Kyoto, renters acquired an informal right to stay in the place they were renting, and the rents rarely increased. Landlords were not bothered for small repairs. In order to move a renter, some compensation was necessary. So too, moving into a new house would require “key money” a significant cash payment ($2-20,000 US), which the landlord would pocket.

²The octopus is famous for fitting its large body into the smallest of spaces.