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

With construction underway, many flophouses will soon become apartments. Other landlords are already advertising themselves online as the most inexpensive hotels in Tokyo--youth hostels for foreign backpackers--using touristready nearby Asakusa as a lure. The abandoned factory sites in the area are being reclaimed and cleared to make way for new developments, new parks, new anythings. All the authorities need is a reason to tell the homeless that they're no longer welcome, and they'll have no choice but to go elsewhere.

The government of Tokyo has kicked the homeless out of places before, most notably in preparation for the 1964 Olympics. The beaten-down, good-hearted people, as Mr. Kigoshi refers to them, will lose their place to run to. And proposed changes would raise local prices so high that many of the working craftspeople of San'ya would also have to find new homes. San'ya would lose the community that has been its sole source of stability for decades, and Tokyo would lose a critical source of its centuries-old balance.

Kigoshi is already amazed by the changes he's seen in the past 10 years. The police are back in uniform; the arson, the riots and the brawls in the streets are all things of the past.

But with his CAD CAM from Italy, Kigoshi says he's ready for the San'ya of the future. "To survive in the local shoe industry, manufacturers have to make lots of various high-quality products," he muses. He bought the machine so that he can work with the type of manufacturers that produce and sell for the modern world.

Nidaira sees a different San'ya: "Nothing has changed, and nothing will." He will work and live in San'ya until the day he dies, he says. In his 53 years, he has watched many come and go. And in the end, he adds, San'ya remains the same because "friends always invite friends."

But if the city gets its way and San'ya is finally gentrified, some may come uninvited--and they may not be so friendly.

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