“Apache” Koreans in Postwar Osaka:Figures of Indigeneity in the PostwarTranspacific

In 1959, author Kaikō Takeshi published “Japan’s Threepenny Opera” (Nihon sanmon opera). Taking inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 operetta of the same name (minus the national qualifier), it depicts a community of socially liminal subjects–Koreans, Okinawans, Communists, petty criminals, and undocumented migrants–eking out a precarious existence in the heart of Osaka in the mid- to late-1950s. While very much a work of fiction, the novel was inspired by an actual group living and working out of a makeshift enclave (shūraku) next to the ruins of the former imperial arsenal in what is now Osaka Castle Park and Osaka Business Park. Living in hastily and cheaply assembled “barrack” style dwellings (barakku goya) that were ubiquitous in poorer districts such as Shinsekai, journalists reported that residents had been caught on numerous occasions sneaking into the neighboring ruins of the former munition’s factory at night. The factory had been the one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the Japanese empire, providing tanks and munitions to Japanese land forces across Asia and the South Pacific. On August 14, 1945, one day before Japan’s unconditional surrender, the factory was leveled by Allied bombing, burying the precious metals (and the unfortunate workers) in rubble.1 The site remained uncleared through the late 1950s and was eventually identified by those living on the socio-economic fringe of postwar Osaka as a lucrative target for scrap-metal collecting; an act that amounted to theft due to the fact that the ruined factory and its inventory remained state property.