Linguistic landscape of the concentrated Koreans in Japan: Focusing on Ikuno Korea Town

Abstract

Ikuno Korea Town was a place where Koreans who came to Korea during the Japanese colonial era gathered and lived in poverty, and it was also a symbol of poverty and discrimination in Japanese society. From the 1950s to the 1970s, many Koreans in Japan visited this place to find food ingredients. However, since the 1970s, due to the generational change in Korean society in Japan, it has entered the path of decline. Afterwards, the store owners began to seek revitalization of Ikuno Korea Town through various methods such as landscape maintenance and holding festivals. And as of 2023, due to their efforts and the Korean Wave boom, Korean culture has been actively accepted, and Ikuno Cori Town is visited by so many visitors that there is no room to step foot. This paper paid attention to the signboards of the stores showing their names among the language landscapes of Ikuno Korea town with such a history. Since 1993, Ikuno Korea Town has enhanced its ethnic landscape with arcades, street lights, and road maintenance. However, when looking at the language landscape, it was confirmed that the stores that easily reveal the ethnicity of Ikuno Korea Town still use a lot of signboards written in Japanese. In most cases, store signboards are installed for the purpose of providing information about the store or urging customers to enter the store, and the language used in the store signboard is the choice of the store owner. In other words, store owners consider various social aspects when choosing a language for signboards, and store signboards reflect the culture of the society. Considering such points, using Japanese on signboards can be said to be one of the methods of Koreans in Japan store owners who tried to ‘coexist’ in Japanese society. Also, it was confirmed that Koreans in Japan tried to apply the cultures of their home country and the country of residence by crossing over through political and social conflicts in Japan.