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Kasumigaoka Apartments: The People Evicted Twice for the Tokyo Olympics
Author(s) -
Mayumi Mori,
Sand Jordan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1111/ciso.12290
Subject(s) - settlement (finance) , world war ii , economic history , spanish civil war , history , population , political science , law , sociology , demography , business , finance , payment
This essay introduces the stories of four former residents of a municipal housing complex built in the late 1950s in central Tokyo. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the interviewees and their families had found shelter in and around an abandoned Imperial Japanese Army base. After moving them into concrete housing blocks in order to hide their settlement prior to Tokyo's hosting of the Olympics in 1964, the city moved them again in preparation for the 2020 Olympics. Their stories reveal the ways that war and defeat left the city’s population to fend for themselves, as well as the long tug‐of‐war that ensued between the interests of settlers and those of the municipal and national governments.