Lawrence Travel Stories (JAPAN)💕日本の歷史故事 · Lawrence

(FRA) l’histoire complexe de Kamagasaki, un quartier marginalisé d'Osaka

·17 min·1 clip

Comrades dug bare-handed in mud to recover 11 workers' bodies, the forgotten 'human pillars' of Japan's Expo 70.

This episode explores the hidden history of Kamagasaki, a marginalized neighborhood in Osaka, Japan, through five key stories: its role as an exploited labor pool, the 1961 riot sparked by police indifference, the forgotten workers who died building Expo 70, a priest's radical reinterpretation of Christianity, and a century of social control through surveillance. It examines how urban design, charity, and policing have shaped and been shaped by this community.

As heard by us

A tight neighborhood history that uses Expo 70 and redevelopment to show how cities shape memory.

Kamagasaki's small footprint gives the episode a useful scale: a neighborhood that is only 0.62 square kilometers, yet carries a larger history inside Osaka's modern cityscape.

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Why you'd press play

A tiny Osaka district with a huge, ugly memory.

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