Occupying Urban Space: US Policies, Black Markets, and Barracks in Osaka, 1945–55

This paper investigates how the geopolitical dynamics of the U.S. hegemony in East Asia in 1944-55 shaped and were shaped by the urban spaces of Osaka. Specifically, it focuses on food and housing provisions, two topics which occupied the mind of every soul, officials and citizens alike, in the war-torn city. Mid-twentieth-century Osaka is a privileged place for such an investigation, because of its deep and exploitative prewar ties to Asia. Pre-1945, Osaka boasted the largest colonial population and trade with the colonies in the Japanese mainland and thus was a site of intense contestation amongst the various actors in post-1945 East Asia. The struggle for control over urban space was waged not just between the occupation force, Japanese officials, and native residents, but between the increasingly “foreignized” populations of Korean, Okinawan, and Amamian migrants, as well as the ostracized Japanese settler-returnees. The contestation was especially fierce in the spaces of food and housing. American and Japanese officials bulldozed black markets and makeshift camps of houseless people in an attempt to enforce the official ration system, while people resisted through both confrontational and evasive means. To this urban dynamic, global geopolitics inserted itself when the U.S. foreignized formerly colonial subjects, especially Korean people. The Japanese officials enthusiastically followed suit by restricting them from access to official provisions of food and housing. In turn, the subjugated people established new black markets and claimed different neighborhoods as sites of their new temporary tents and makeshift houses, leading in some cases to the rollback of U.S. policies. As much as the U.S. tried to enforce its ethno-national vision in East Asia, the urban space of Osaka never completely conformed. Minoritized populations (literally) ceded little ground, spatially marking the limits of postwar U.S. hegemony.