Osaka Municipal Ikuno Library:
The First Public Library to Offer Multicultural Library Services in Japan
Akiko Yano, Former librarian of Osaka Municipal Ikuno Library
Yasuko Hirata, Professor of Jiyugaoka Sanno CollegeAbstract
The Osaka Municipal Ikuno Library is one of 23 branch libraries in the city of Osaka. It issmall but well known as the library which started services to Korean residents in 1988. That
was the first program in Japan targeted directly at serving minority people. Ikuno-ku has along-established Korean community. There are about 135,700 people living there now, andalmost one quarter of the population is Korean. However, the library had not provided
services to them until 1987.
During 1987, the issue of the alien fingerprinting system was raised, especially by Korean
residents who thought it was an example of discrimination. In addition to this issue, theupcoming Seoul Olympic Games of 1988 fostered their Korean identity and drove them tovisit the library for information. That was the first time that librarians became aware of thespecific needs of this community. The library staff tried to get more information about theKorean community and reached a decision to set up a "Korean Books Corner" in the library.
The corner started with 650 books on Korea written in Japanese and 50 picture books inHangul; now there are 6,000 books in total.
The 52nd IFLA General Conference held in Tokyo in 1986 approved professional resolutions
that libraries should promote services to multicultural populations in Japan. It had a great
impact upon Japanese librarians. The Osaka Municipal Ikuno Library initiated multiculturallibrary services in 1988. Their activities, together with the concept of multicultural libraryservices, have been encouraging subsequent practices by other libraries in Japan over theyears.
1. About Ikuno
Ikuno is one of 24 wards of the city of Osaka. Osaka is in the Kansai region of Japan, andone of the country’s biggest cities -- equivalent to Tokyo and Yokohama. Ikuno is located in theeastern part of Osaka and covers an area of 8.4 square kilometers. It is a town comprised of adensely built-up area, with small factories, offices, and stores. Most of the residents belong tothe lower income bracket, and they are very friendly.
According to the demographic data, the population of Ikuno is about 135,700 nearly one
quarter of whom are South or North Koreans. In fact, there are much more people from
Korean background. Ikuno has had a long-established Korean community since the prewar
period. They are called “Zainichi” or Koreans living in Japan, Now they live in Ikuno as1

long-time residents, Korean descendents who were born in Japan, newcomers, andnaturalized Korean-Japanese.
2. Relationship between Japan and Korea
Korea is geographically adjacent to Japan, and the relationship between the two countries
has a long history. This relationship was drastically changed by Japan’s annexation of theKorean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Korean people migrated, or they were forced to migrate,
to Japan as workers. Especially in 1923, the influx of Koreans into the Ikuno area wasaccelerated markedly because the shipping route between Osaka and Cheju in Korea wasestablished.
After World War II, most of the Koreans who were in Japan returned to their mothercountry. It is said that there were 2,300,000 Korean people living in Japan at the end of thewar, 1945. However, about 600,000 Koreans were not able to leave. In addition, when theKorean War started in 1950, many people returned to Japan in order to escape the war.
During the occupation by Japanese troops, Koreans had to change their true names toJapanese names; many of them in Japan still have both names. The reason that they still use
Japanese names in Japan even after World War II is because they try to hide their ethnic
background in order to avoid social prejudice against Koreans. Therefore, it is very hard forthem to establish their self-identity. Although the issue of discrimination against Koreans
still exists, it is now much better than years ago. Coincidentally, the number of people whogive out their true names is increasing steadily.
3. Establishment of Korean Books Corner in Ikuno Library
The Osaka Municipal Ikuno Library is one of 23 branch libraries in the Osaka Municipal
Library Network System. Under the policy that each ward should have its own library, theIkuno Library was opened in May, 1981, with an area of 893 square meters, including a staffroom. It occupies the third floor of the Municipal Disaster Control Center Building. Thelibrary had 9,000 books and 5 staff members, 4 librarians and one clerk, when it first opened.
At the beginning, the librarians knew there were many Koreans in the community, and thelibrary was located near "Korea Town". However, they were not aware of the specificcommunity needs because the librarians had not received direct requests regarding thecollection from Korean residents. Therefore, the library had purchased only a limited amountof material on Korea.
During 1987, the issue of the alien fingerprinting system 1 was raised, especially byKorean residents, who thought it was an act of discrimination. In addition to this issue, thethen upcoming Seoul Olympic Games of 1988 intensified their Korean identity and motivatedthem to visit the library for the information about the fingerprinting issue, Korean history,
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Korean culture, and so on.
The Ikuno Library suddenly found itself dealing with many reference questions from theKorean population. Then librarians thus became aware of the community needs for the firsttime. They tried to research the Korean community, Korean associations, ethnic schools,
ethnic libraries, and Korean book stores. As research was went on, they decided that thelibrary should provide information and materials to all members of the community, and that
it was time to take a step forward to finally meet the needs of Korean residents.
At the same time, the librarians submitted a budgetary request to the Osaka Municipal
Main Library. The Main Library manages the entire library system, including allocating thebudget and purchasing and cataloging materials. Branch libraries usually select materials,
program events, and draw up service plans. Ms. Masako Miyagi, the chief librarian of theIkuno Library at that time, urged administrators to allocate the budget for minority services,
stating, "Who can provide this service except us?" The budget request was approved fairly
easily and was funded to set up the "Korean Books Corner" in the library.
The 52nd IFLA General Conference held in Tokyo in 1986 approved professional
resolutions that libraries should promote services to multicultural populations in Japan. The
concept of multicultural library services was new to Japanese librarians. Therefore, theprofessional resolutions had a great impact upon them and it permeated into library society
as a whole. This trend provided a true impetus to the development new services in Ikuno.
4. Beginning of the Korean Books Corner
In June 1988, the "Korean Books Corner" started with 650 books on Korea written in
Japanese and 50 Korean picture books. The corner was laid out in an eye-catching andcomfortable place in the library, in an area of 30 square meters. This was small, but it
comprised the first multicultural library services directly targeted at minority residents inJapan. There had been no preceding practice at all in Japan. The librarians made all kinds ofefforts to advertise and develop the corner. The sign for the corner, written in both Hangul
and Japanese characters, was hung up on the wall. It was 50 centimeters long and 140
centimeters wide. In addition, the librarians tried to get input directly from the patrons, andthey carefully utilized these comments to improve their services for the first several years. In
the librarians’ notes, there are some vivid users' voices, such as:
When elementary school girls found picture books in Hangul, they shouted excitedly,"Hey, they are Urimal". That means our language.
An adult woman said, “I would like to read novels in Hangul. There are many
newcomers here, and they may too.”
When an elderly man found a newspaper in Hangul, he commented: "I would like toborrow it." After this conversation, the library started lending newspapers except
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for the latest edition.
One adult man said, "Good collection!”
An elementary school girl who borrowed picture books in Hangul said, "I will ask mymom to read these books because she is Korean".
After the Korean Books Corner was built, there was a significant increase in user
registration by Korean names, rather than by their Japanese names.
5. Implementing services
In the beginning, only picture books in the corner were written in Hangul while allmaterials for adults were written in Japanese, because it was not easy to collect books in
Hangul in Japan at that time. Also, the librarians were in a hurry to create the corner. But
the more Korean residents came to use the library, the more they requested materials inHangul. The library therefore increased its acquisition of Hangul books for adults. Since nostaff member knew the Korean language well enough to select and order books, somelibrarians were driven by necessity to take a Korean language class at his/ her own expense.
In a preliminary survey, the library expected that about 20 % of all patrons would use
materials in Hangul. However, the word that the Ikuno Library had books in Hangul spreadamong the Korean community, and many people far from Ikuno came flocking to the library.
In order to meet user requests, the library also continued to expand the collection to include
books on history, culture, and arts, Korean popular novels, bestsellers translated fromJapanese to Korean, cookbooks, books on child-rearing, medical books for the family, andbooks on Korean law. Since 1990, newcomers consisting of women married to Korean
residents have increased. The library added women's magazines for them, and thosemagazines are still heavily used.
In 1989, the library staff published their "Book List on Korea" in handwriting which could
help find books their patrons needed. It was distributed to the main public libraries in othercities of Japan. The response to this book list was tremendous. The library has accepted ahuge number of requests for the list and interlibrary loans from other libraries.
The establishment of the Korean Books Corner produced an amazing reaction, and thelibrary had to handle many visitors, including librarians, scholars, university students, ethnic
school students, and TV and newspaper reporters. In 1989, Mainichi Newspaper reported on
the corner in an extensive article with a picture. One of the video series on the library,produced by the Japan Library Association, included the Korean Books Corner as the primeexample of multicultural library services.
Some of the librarians who had visited the Ikuno Library started multicultural libraryservices to minorities in their own respective libraries. The Ikuno Library became a model
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library for multicultural services.
6. Present situation of the corner
The multicultural services at the Ikuno Library at first targeted longtime residents,
because many Koreans in the community have been living there before World War II. Thecommunity is now a mixture of newcomers, longtime residents, several generations of manyfamilies, and naturalized Korean-Japanese.
The library has tried to collect materials on Korea without any political or social bias fromthe two different regimes of North and South Korea. Now the total collection of this cornerconsists of 2,100 books in Hangul, including 700 children's books, 3,900 books in Japanese
including 300 children's books, 11 magazines, 120 videos, 6 DVDs, and one newspaper. This
corner can be used by both Korean speakers and Japanese speakers.
From the beginning, patrons’ use of the corner has grown steadily, with a marked increasein numbers since 2000. There seem to be two big reasons for this surge in popularity andusage. One was that Japan and Korea co-hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup; and the other wasthat a Korean TV drama became very popular among Japanese women. It was called "Halyu",
or Korean boom in Japan. The circulation figures for books in the corner more than doubled
from about 7,600 volumes in 1998 to almost 16,000 in 2006.
In spite of the growing circulation, the special funding for the corner was cut off a few years
ago because of financial difficulties in the Osaka Municipal Government. However, the Ikuno
Library continues to purchase books on Korea by allocating a yearly budget to sustain thecorner. One sixth of the library’s total book budget is used for the corner.
7. Challenges for the future
It has been 20 years since the multicultural library services started at the Ikuno Library.
The Korean Books Corner has been recognized as an indispensable service by community
residents. However, the library faces some challenges to improve services in the future. The
first challenge is to employ a librarian who can speak Korean and provide services such as
story telling to Korean children, although hiring new staff is very difficult during the current
budget shortage.
The Ikuno Library has occasionally asked for Korean volunteers to help at the library.
Patrons were willing to help by translating from Japanese to Korean, planning events, anddonating Korean books and magazines to the library. However, there is no establishedpartnership between the library and the Korean community. The second challenge is to forge
a closer relationship with residents, related associations, ethnic schools and school libraries,to inspire them to work together.

58. Multicultural library services in the Osaka Municipal LibraryIn 1996, the new Osaka Municipal Main Library building was completed. It is one of thelargest public libraries in Japan. The main library has a spacious corner of international
materials including books, magazines, newspapers, videos, and CDs in several languages. All
Osaka Municipal Library catalogs are merged in the computer network called “OMLIS”2. This
makes it much easier for libraries to search other library collections and request inter-libraryloans.
There are many foreigners living in the city of Osaka. Its population is now about 2.6
million, with about 120,000 foreign citizens. Nine branch libraries recently started
multicultural services, depending on the needs of their various communities. For example, theAbeno Library collects materials in English and Chinese; the Higashi-yodogawa Libraryprovides materials in Chinese; and the Nishi-yodogawa Library has materials in Portuguese.
The librarians work together to publish library guides in Korean, Chinese, and English. Also,
they frequently exchange information on users’ needs and have a staff training course toimprove their services.
Conclusion
Akiko Yano has had an unforgettable experience when she worked at the Ikuno Library.
Since the very beginning, the library has had many exhibitions and events to inform residentsof the existence of the corner. Every year, the library exhibits Korean books and sometime
provides lectures or musical performances to introduce Korean culture. At one of the ethnic
cultural events, the library provided a program to present Korean traditional music using aninstrument named "Jangu", a kind of drum. At a librarian’s invitation, a Japanese man in his60s, a frequent library user, joined the event. He later told the librarian that he had neverknown of such tremendous performing arts in Korea because he had had no contact with
Korean residents in the community. If the library had not organized this event, he would have
had no opportunity to learn about Korean culture.
The same thing could happen at any time and in any place. If minority culture is notpreserved and introduced to their neighbors, people will never know other cultures. Thelibrary has a huge role to play in bridging cultures between the majority and various minority
populations living in the same community.

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Alien fingerprinting system in Japan started in 1955, and it became defunct in 1999.
OMLIS in Korean is available at http://www.oml.city.osaka.jp/korean/index.html.
Accessed 2008/07/03.

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