It has been almost 30 years since the end of the Cold War. Socialism has never officially approved of as a national ideology of Japan. Since the loss of World War II, Japan has enjoyed economic prosperity as a Western Bloc country, depending on the alliance with America. However, Japan's centralized economic structure, which was sometimes described as "the most successful socialism", was far from what was thought to be pure capitalism, and Japan Socialist Party, a former biggest opposition party, campaigned on a platform of "the road to socialism in Japan".

Whether it was realistic or not, there was a time when many more people than today showed their imagination for another world. But those possibilities seem to have sunk into oblivion under overwhelming globalism since the 1990s.

Socialism as "somewhere but here", however, has had complicated influences on Osaka, which has been for a long time the second largest city of unique presence in Japan. The shadows the influences cast on Osaka lie in the impersonal and nameless scenery which doesn't appear on tourist information. The scenery of Osaka may usually seem just inartistic and gloomy, but when we look at the scenery with historical imagination, we meet the moment when we see "socialism" in the scenery. The repetition of such a moment created this small collection of photographs named "OSAKAN SOCIALISM". This is a small attempt to listen to the fading reverberation of history.