Koreans in Japan: Urban Settings and Immigrant Labor

Osaka, with roots historically as deep as the Japanese state itself, reached what Hall refers to as a “golden age” first (Hall, 1998), only to be surpassed in the later 19th and 20th centuries by Tokyo, a backwater fishing village until the 17th century. Differences between Tokyo and Osaka begin with the function of each city, the physical structures, economic bases, and political practices of which all interacted to create the urban fabric into which the Korean migrants moved.