The Neighborhood as Refuge: Dignity, Inclusiveness, and Compassion in Takeda Rintarō’s “Kamagasaki” (1933)

Kamagasaki, an urban enclave in Osaka, maintains a long history of marginalization that can be traced to the early 1900s. This article examines the representation of Kamagasaki in Osaka writer Takeda Rintarō’s novella “Kamagasaki.” Written in 1933 during the economically prosperous “Greater Osaka” (“Dai Osaka”) period, the story features the underclass and working-class people in the neighborhood of Kamagasaki, revealing how Osaka’s development has concealed issues, including economic exploitation and social division. This article introduces the concepts of “a compassionate participant” instead of adopting existing tropes of observers of city life, such as the flâneur and the “curiosity hunter” (ryōkisha). Through the perspective of such an observer, Takeda represents the issues of poverty, segregation, and homelessness in a humanistic manner. Simultaneously, by constructing various voices for fictional characters in the novella, Takeda highlights the importance of the “internal gaze” and voices from Kamagasaki. This article argues that by emphasizing how the locals value dignity and interpersonal bonds, Takeda’s representation of the neighborhood subverts the stereotype of urban slums as morally degenerate. Through his conscious resistance to the social stigma imposed on Kamagasaki by dominant national discourse, which reduces Kamagasaki to a place of degeneration and danger, Takeda depicts a neighborhood characterized by shared attachment and resilience.