• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.803-819
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• 2009

This study explores of the lowest social class segregation in the residential area of Yao city of the Osaka Prefecture. The Buraku people, who constitute a social class that was the object of societal discrimination and exclusion since the beginning of modem times, formed a segregated residential area of their own. During the process of an organized struggle against discrimination that was institutionally recognized, communal consciousness among the constituents was consolidated. Moreover, in the Yao city, Korean immigrants in Japan, another discriminated group, as well as Vietnamese refugees and Chinese, who are also social minorities, increased in number. Also, activities by the Buraku people and Korean immigrants in Japan to defend human rights and the rights of social minorities began to unfold. Recently, the number of small scale factories in the Buraku's Douwa District decreased due to relocation of manufacturing companies elsewhere throughout Japan and to the effects of depression. New non-Buraku houses began to appear one by one on the site where factories started to disappear. While the spatial separatism of Yao city, as part of the isolated Douwa District, is weakening, the struggle based on communal consciousness among the social minorities and continued human rights activity is exerting great influence upon the administrative policy of Yao city. In the case of Yao city, while the visual appearance of spatial segregation is weakening, the communal consciousness among the regional residents remains. From this perspective, it can be said that this case represents a modified form of isolated space or the social pattern of segregation which is in the stage of extinction.