Will the slum remain the same? A visit to San'ya, home to Japan's underclass, where community values are on the auction block

Japan, Inc., April, 2004 by Ty Harvey

Hungry for a wage

At the end of World War II, the changes San'ya saw were far different from those seen by the rest of the city. As Tokyo began to rise from the ruins left by Allied bombing, San'ya again was set aside to be the home of those at the bottom--people who had no way to survive other than to take whatever jobs needed to be done, no matter how small, dirty or dangerous. While new houses and shops and office buildings were built throughout Tokyo, flophouses and kitchens were built in San'ya to house and feed day laborers.

While in many of the surrounding buraku areas the pain of the past gave way to the civility and prosperity of a new Tokyo, San'ya remained a haven for men hungry for a wage--and often willing to kill another man to get it.

San'ya became a place where, before sunrise, men stood ready to riot if not given work, where there were drunken brawls in the streets after dark and the yakuza took a cut when money changed hands. The police wore plain clothes to avoid being killed. Two film directors did their best to capture it all in a documentary titled Yama, and were murdered for sticking their cameras and noses where the yakuza decided they didn't belong.

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This was San'ya until Japan's economy stalled in the 90s and the day labor market hit bottom. Layoffs throughout Japan created a new population of middle-aged homeless men unwelcome by the authorities in the cities they once called home. So they descended upon San'ya, where no one would harass them for being homeless.

With San'ya's ambulances, men sleeping in doorways and bonfires big enough to warm forty hands or more, it's easy to forget about people like Kigoshi and Nidaira. But on nearly every block one can hear the faint sounds of machines sewing or stamping or grinding. In spite of the violence and prejudice San'ya has seen, the tradition of craftsmanship is still alive. At least for now.

Kigoshi tells me that the local shoe industry (the oldest and most common in San'ya) faces serious troubles of its own: "Because the recession in Japan has created a decrease in demand for our products, and because foreign suppliers can better compete with Japanese producers by making their goods cheaper than ours, local workshops are now in a very dire situation." Nidaira agrees. He has to do more and harder work to make ends meet. He works over 100 hours each week already. Even so, he says, there are times when "it just doesn't pay off."

Sitting at a tavern in the center of San'ya, patrons talk with the bartender about the changes they believe are bound to come, changes that would make life for the crafts-people impossible. The cheap property and restaurants that have helped to keep the local shoe industry on its feet are beginning to attract more and more students from the art college in nearby Ueno. The college is beginning to look at San'ya's rows of vacant storehouses as ideal places for student studios in this city of astronomical real estate prices.

Things of the past