NORTHEAST ASIAN HISTORY FOUNDATION 06/2022
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Kim In-deok, Professor at Cheongam College
“This place, with a population close to 20,000 people, is also famous among Koreans in the Kobe and Kyoto areas. Two years ago, one or two people started selling their favorite foods, difficult to find anywhere else, and now it has become a thriving space where close to 10,000 people come to buy things every day.” This article was published in the 『Asahi Club』, published in Japan in the 1930s. It is a record of the appearance of Ikaino in 1933, the space of the Joseon people.
Koreans gathered here for the repair work of the Hirano river. This construction was started in March 1919 by the Tsuruhashi Farmland Consolidation Association and was completed in 1923. It was 2,144 meters long and 16 meters wide. In 1923, the population increased in this area. Workers who participated in the repair work and craftsmen of various factories moved here and lived together. In the early days of settlement, they gathered boards and earth to build a house like a pigsty and lived there.
In 1928, 162 households and 1,577 people lived in the Korean Village in Ikaino. They formed the Korean Village by borrowing old row houses. For 13 years, including the 1930s, more than 40% of the population were Koreans.
Ikaino is an area stretching over Higashinari Ward, Ikuno Ward, and Hadougi City, Hirano Ward, Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture. Before the implementation of the current address marking in 1973, there were regional names such as Ikainoodori, Ikainonishi, Ikainouchi, and Ikainohigashi. It comprises a part of the present-day Tamazu and Oimarinishi in Higashinari Ward, the entire area of Nakagawanishi in Ikuno-ku, and parts of Tsuruhashi, Momotani, and Katsuyamakita, Katsuyamaminami, Shariji, Nakagawa, and Tajima. After the independence of Asahi Ward in 1932, Osaka's Higashinari Ward was governed by Nakamoto Police Station in the north and Tsuruhashi Police Station in the south. In particular, the area under the jurisdiction of the Tsuruhashi Police Station became independent in 1943 and became Ikuno Ward. After the war, Tatsumi-cho was incorporated, and it became what it is today.
![니시슌토쿠 지조(西俊徳地蔵)[이쿠노구 가쓰야마기타 4초메(生野区勝山北4丁目)]. 왼쪽 일방통행 표지판이 있는 도로 부분에 한 때 구 히라노강(旧平野川)이 흐르고 있었다.](/upload/image/84/64384_202206131601524970.JPG)
According to the ancient history of Japan, many people came to Japan in the era of Emperor Nintoku. It is said that this area came to be called 'Inoino' because immigrants had a custom of domesticating pigs. Also, according to literature, the oldest bridge in Japan was placed over the Baekje River (currently, Hirano river) that flows through it. Later in the Edo period, it was called Tsurunohashi. This is the origin of present-day Tsuruhashi.
Currently, Korea Town was developed in this area.
The reasons Koreans settled in Ikaino are as follows. First, there were many small and medium-sized businesses where Koreans, who could not speak Japanese, could easily find a job as long as they had a healthy body. Second, there were houses where Koreans could live. At that time, few Japanese rented houses to Koreans. Since the houses in this area were built on low wetlands by filling up the fields with earth, the road became muddy when it rained, and flooded when it rained a lot. For this, it was rare for the Japanese to rent a house. For lack of anything better, the landlords lent the house to Koreans.
Once a place to work and a place to sleep are secured, food becomes an urgent issue. Although clothes and housing were quickly adapted, the most conservative thing that was difficult to adapt to was food. This is because it is difficult to change the diet that the body has become quite accustomed to since childhood. The Korean market in Ikaino was not a public market in the early days. When the market opened here first in the early 1920s, the police opposed the formation of the market because they thought it would pollute roads and obstruct traffic. Similar markets opened in Imamiya and Mori-cho. Here were familiar foods they had had since they were children, and the clothes they wore as children. There were not many places where they could find these things except in the Korean market. The actual public market opened in 1926. After that, around 1927, Koreans who were doing business came, and more than 20,000 people came and went when the market had many customers.
In the mid-1930s, the ‘Korean Market’ flourished in the back alley of a shopping street along the main road. When the Pacific War began, there was a shortage of food and other supplies. The government started to control the economy, and business became difficult. In 1941, with the enactment of the Material Control Decree, most shops disappeared as the police began demolishing them. In addition, as the air raids intensified, more and more people closed their shops and evacuated. There were also Japanese shops, but about half of them were destroyed by fire. As air raids by the US military became more frequent, as mentioned above, the number of Japanese stores dispersed to avoid air raids increased. The void left by the Japanese was filled by Koreans who wanted to have their own store in the main street shopping district despite air raids. In this way, the Korean shops in the back alleys gradually moved to the main street, and by the end of the war, there were already Japanese and Korean shops in the public market.
Here, Koreans maintained their own lifestyle culture. At the time, people could hear Korean in this area. However, most children spoke Japanese to each other, and the reality was that they almost forgot Korean in less than two years. It is said that children studied Japanese diligently to obtain excellent school grades. Of course, there were cases where children were not admitted unless they could speak Japanese.
Since superstitions are deeply rooted in their lives, fortunetellers and shamans became successful, and unlicensed dentists went door to door to provide treatment. By 1939, there were over 200 shops for daily necessities, selling pollack, red pepper powder, and even wedding gifts.
From the early 1930s, small rubber factories began to flock to the Ikuno area, including Ikaino. It became the so-called mecca of the rubber industry. Koreans who began to be self-reliant ran their own business, and rubber factories were filled with Korean workers who were brought through regionalism and family ties.
In 1925, in Ikaino, there was a clash between the Arirang Group, composed of people from mainland Korea, and young people from Jeju Island. After the natives of Jeju Island won the fight, natives of Jeju Island, who had been discriminated against elsewhere, gathered in Ikaino, and this became Jeju Island in Japan. At that time, there was a notion of regional discrimination in Korean Japanese society. In particular, the conflict between natives of Jeju Island and natives from the mainland was apparent. This phenomenon arose because of the limitations within the activists oriented toward national and class liberation.
As Japan's defeat in the war became imminent, the Korean market also faced changes. At the end of the Pacific War, in June 1945, when this area was also attacked by air raids, people in the shopping district had to flee to the countryside due to a shortage of goods. Even after the war, the Japanese who were originally residents of this area hardly ever returned. Koreans were the only ones that rented the shops left empty. As described above, one or two stores that were dealing with Korean food materials in back alleys before 1945 moved to the main shopping street. There were also stores that started doing business by placing boards under the eaves of closed shops. It was after 1948 that Koreans appeared in shopping streets.
In 1951, there was an attempt to reorganize this place into a shopping street for Japanese people, mainly led by Japanese shopkeepers who felt awkward about Koreans advancing into the market. However, these attempts ended without winning the consent of the majority while faced with problems such as the withdrawal of the capital. Rather, the chairman who was trying to reorganize the shopping mall resigned. After that, the shopping district was divided into east, west, and center.
In the 1950s, Koreans here entered the Korean market from the back alleys of shopping streets. As such, the market continued to grow and develop in the region, establishing official companies and fostering entrepreneurs. Until the 1960s, Korean products such as chima jeogori (dress and skirt) and ingredients for ancestral rites that were needed by Korean people for ceremonial occasions and holidays could not be bought elsewhere. Around holidays, shopping malls were crowded with customers from all over Japan. In the 1970s, the situation changed. As the generations of Korean people changed, the attitude toward food and traditional cultures also changed gradually.
Ikuno in Osaka is a hometown in the hearts of Koreans. The center of this place was Ikaino. Although the name of Ikaino does not remain, the memory of Ikaino remains in the hearts of Koreans.
I-Ka-I-No.
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