天王寺の変遷史Transformation History of Tennoji

Umeda mainly developed as an exchange hub where people from northern Osaka, Hyogo, and southern Kyoto gathered, while Namba and Shinsaibashi developed significantly as exchange hubs where people from southern and western Osaka gathered. From this background of differing atmospheres, Osaka created a unique culture in which the Umeda area was long referred to as “Kita” and the Namba–Shinsaibashi area as “Minami,” but the place I was most attached to was Tennoji, which lies further south of these urban areas. Since I was born in Sakai City in the mid-south of Osaka, Tennoji was the closest place to go out to the city, and having gone there many times since childhood, I believe I have seen its transformations over time.

One interesting point is that both “Kita” and “Minami,” through large-scale redevelopment, completely lost their former vigor—the somewhat dangerous atmosphere and the inexplicable mixture of people—and have now been replaced by streets built around visitors, with the crowd that moves through them homogenized to the point of resembling Tokyo. In other words, everything has become superficially “clean,” but this cleanliness undeniably erased Osaka’s unique culture and identity all at once. Tennoji, however, alone barely sustains remnants of its former atmosphere, though I sense it will be lost within a few years, making the town itself the final remnant of Osaka’s old character. That said, Tennoji, like Kita and Minami, has also been a target of redevelopment, and compared with the scenery I saw in my student days, both the people and the city have changed dramatically (in fact, this redevelopment turned out to be a major failure). In the spot now known for housing Osaka’s tallest building, “Abeno Harukas,” there once stood the somewhat cluttered Kintetsu Department Store, and behind it, the “Abeno Q’s Mall” did not yet exist. The completion of this Q’s Mall actually became the very symbol of Osaka’s loss of unique culture and identity.

Originally, Kansai-based railway companies such as Kintetsu, Nankai, Hanshin, and Hankyu boasted strong independence, and there was hardly any room for Tokyo-based companies to enter. Since railway companies also ran real estate businesses through their group companies, there was an unspoken rule that redevelopment in a railway’s stronghold area was handled by its own group’s real estate arm. However, Q’s Mall is operated by the real estate company of Tokyo’s Tokyu Group. In this, we can read the sign that Osaka began to lose ground to Tokyo, or rather, that Osaka began to assimilate into Tokyo. It is also significant that the opening of Abeno Q’s Mall was on April 26, 2011, just after the Great East Japan Earthquake had occurred in the previous month.

Historically, Tokyo and Osaka developed as rival metropolises in the east and west, each cultivating its own foundation, fostering strong identities, and developing with a spirit of rivalry and competition, which gave them distinctly different characters. The common view that people from Osaka are sociable can also be traced to this historical background. Although Tokyo was a “townspeople’s city” in the Edo period, in the modern era it forgot that spirit as people flooded in from outside Edo and urbanization and bureaucratization advanced, which gave Tokyo a more distant temperament. A typical example was how those from Choshu and Satsuma who carried the Meiji Restoration secured positions as the new ruling class. Osaka, on the other hand, had developed extensively as a “merchants’ city” throughout the Edo period, and therefore was able to preserve a sociable atmosphere more easily even in the modern era.

Yet now even that distinctive identity has been lost. The greatest feature of Osaka—that “chaotic and slightly dangerous scent”—was systematically destroyed by rulers through redevelopment driven by money-making schemes over nearly the past twenty years, so the sense of Osaka I once knew through direct experience has been fading. Amid this, I literally walked through every corner of the city in search of Osaka’s lost heritage, but since the entry of the Tokyu Group, I feel the scenery of Tennoji too has changed entirely. Still, it may be hard to grasp this transformation, so to understand it, the first step is to revisit the works of great photographers. From that, one will realize just how drastic the changes in this region have been.

Though now urbanized to the point it is hard to imagine, Tennoji was originally called “Tennoji Village,” a diverse district where entertainers and socially unattached drifters often settled, giving it a unique atmosphere. This character was nurtured and inherited until after the war, when Japan’s defeat in the Second World War triggered a massive influx of craftsmen and laborers from the countryside seeking work, and the village of entertainers rapidly transformed into Nishinari Ward, a district of day laborers. Interestingly, this identity of social unattachedness was strongly carried on even after the war, and most fortunate of all, a remarkable photographer settled in the district at this time and continued to photograph Nishinari.

Foremost among them, and one I deeply revere, is Seiryu Inoue (1931–1988). Inoue actually lived in Kamagasaki, part of Nishinari Ward descending from Tennoji Village, and uniquely continued photographing its people. His works vividly record the chaotic, indescribable energy of the people of that time. It is no exaggeration to say that Osaka’s street photography began with Seiryu Inoue, and since the now world-renowned street photographer Daido Moriyama was also from Osaka, he has often recalled how he once accompanied Inoue to photograph Nishinari. Though it was reportedly quite a dangerous place then, today Nishinari too has not escaped Japan’s aging tide and has rapidly declined.

Beyond photography, in film as well, figures strongly inspired by Inoue emerged. Chief among them was the maverick film director Nagisa Oshima (1932–2013). This was partly because Oshima was of the same generation as Inoue. Starting his career at major film company Shochiku in the late 1950s, his background of having been steeped in student movements at Kyoto University later made him a pioneer who brought an independent spirit into Japanese cinema. Oshima, inspired by Seiryu Inoue, captured the atmosphere of Nishinari in his film The Sun’s Burial (1960). Surprisingly released by Shochiku, the film skillfully translated Inoue’s lineage into cinema and realized it brilliantly.

In terms of releases, Oshima’s film appeared in 1960, while Inoue’s Human Landscapes – Kamagasaki came in 1961, but since Inoue had lived in Nishinari for over four years photographing before its release, his work was more pioneering.

The fact that the works of these two great artists—a photographer and a filmmaker—were presented to society meant that, due to their immense impact, for a time no other outstanding works set in this region emerged. However, in 1981, after the passage of time, the photographer Kazuo Kitai (1944–), who had intensely documented postwar social movements such as student protests and the farmers’ struggle against Narita Airport, turned his gaze to this region, living there from 1979 for two years and continually photographing daily life. What is remarkable in Kitai’s work is that, in sharp contrast to the “chaotic and dangerous” image of Tennoji Village/Nishinari Ward expressed by Seiryu Inoue and Nagisa Oshima, he placed at the forefront the perspective of “people simply living their daily lives there,” transforming the image attached to the region. Although many photographers continued to photograph Nishinari thereafter, because the predecessors were so extraordinary, the successors could not present new perspectives and stagnated, and eventually, the area ceased to attract attention up to today.

In a sense, the influence of Seiryu Inoue, Nagisa Oshima, and Kazuo Kitai in recording and representing the image of Tennoji Village/Nishinari Ward was so strong that if one does not look at the present situation, one might mistakenly believe such an atmosphere still exists. But in reality, neither the landscapes nor the people they recorded remain. Above all, the disappearance of that vigor itself—that was the very core of Osaka’s culture and identity—is something rulers today have no way of knowing.