Ota City, Gunma Prefecture: A Walk in a Deep Town of Chaos: “Brazil City” Reflects “A Little Hope for Japan
Ota City and Oizumi-cho, Gunma Prefecture: A Transformation of a Pleasure Town Once Supported by Subaru and Panasonic One out of Five Foreigners Nowadays, the issue of foreign workers has become an overblown issue.
Many towns have been transformed by the increase in the number of foreigners, redevelopment projects, and policies to clean up entertainment districts. In this series of articles, we will walk through every nook and cranny of this multicultural “deep town” to get a closer look at the realities of this chaotic city.
While the issue of foreign workers has become a prominent issue in recent years, there are some municipalities that are attracting attention as model cases of harmonious coexistence. They are Ota City and Oizumi Town in Gunma Prefecture, the “Brazilian Cities” of Japan. Ota City has about 13,000 foreign residents, while Oizumi Town has about 8,300, or one out of every five residents is a foreigner.
It takes less than two hours by car from Tokyo. After exiting the Ota-Kiryu Interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway, a series of huge factories came into view, and after about 10 minutes we arrived at the center of Ota City, where a huge signboard for Subaru appeared.
It was a weekend when I visited, but walking around the Ota Station area, I saw almost no people during the daytime. When I entered a restaurant that was open for business, the owner sighed and grumbled, “This area has been cleaned up a lot.
The area has been cleaned up a lot and the outside appearance has improved, but people don’t come around here on weekends. In the end, it’s a town held together by Subaru and Panasonic.
