2023 Volume 10 Pages 74-93
Buraku communities are socially disadvantaged areas where problems such as poverty and discrimination have long been concentratedly witnessed. In order to improve the harsh conditions that Buraku communities face, they have built settlement houses throughout Japan since the postwar period to support the residents who have various difficulties, including poverty and discrimination. In Buraku communities in Osaka City, settlement houses, which had long played an important role as a center for community welfare and exchanges among local residents, were closed in 2016 because of the Osaka City policy decision. In response to this, in the Asaka area — one of the Buraku communities in Osaka City — multiple community bases have been created in a variety of ways, including a community café through the remodeling of a vacant unit of municipal housing, a community space through the renovation of a former community center, and a new community facility constructed by a local social welfare corporation. In the newly developed community bases mentioned above, community organizations have been attempting to implement practices for the reconstruction of settlement work. However, according to a questionnaire survey conducted in 2021 by local groups targeting residents, it is found that a lot of respondents experience difficulties in their daily lives and their neighborly ties are undermined. In this study, the authors identified the challenges to reconstruct settlement work as a system of mutual support in the community by analyzing and examining the data collected from the participant observations and a questionnaire survey involving community members.
