The other chapters of this series dealt with buildings and alleys. This one deals with people, so it is written carefully.
Geography first
Taking Shin-Imamiya station, where JR and Nankai cross, as the reference point sorts the directions out. East lies Shinsekai with Tsutenkaku and Janjan Yokocho; south lies the Airin district, the area also called Kamagasaki Fact. Two neighbourhoods of entirely different character sit a few minutes’ walk apart.
A street of people who came to work
Airin has been known as Japan’s largest day-labourer district Fact. It has a history of repeated clashes between workers and police since the 1960s Fact, and in recent years it has been shifting toward a welfare-centred neighbourhood as the workers age Fact. The situation here is not in the past tense: older people are living it now Estimate.
April 2022
Then change arrived. In April 2022 Hoshino Resorts opened OMO7 Osaka, a large urban tourist hotel, in the area Fact. That prompted concern about rising rents and land prices Fact. Displacement does not happen only through forced eviction — it was also pointed out that a shift in who lives there can make existing residents uncomfortable enough to leave of their own accord Fact.
But one more thing
Filing this away as a simple gentrification story misses half the facts. The hotel staffs 25 OMO Rangers who research local restaurants and shops in detail and guide guests toward them Fact. It is an attempt to design tourist money so that it passes through the local economy rather than bypassing it Estimate. Whether that attempt actually works, and whether it is enough, remains open Estimate.
A third way of failing the same question
Every city this series has walked passed through one question — who decides the next layer of a working old district Estimate? In Dadaocheng reuse worked so well that rents pushed the original trades out. In Incheon reuse happened and nobody came to fill it. Shinsekai and Nishinari are a third case: tourism is arriving, and the most vulnerable people already live where it is arriving Estimate. Not a problem of buildings or of vacancy, but of people.
Where the traveller stands
So this chapter’s conclusion is simpler than the others. Airin is not a sightseeing spot but a neighbourhood where people live Estimate. Do not go in to look around or photograph residents, and do not imitate content that sells the area as a sensational sight. Conversely, choosing the old shops of Ep.6 and Ep.7 over chains when you spend money in Shinsekai leans toward leaving more of it in the district Estimate.