A Life of Quiet Squalor
SEIDENSTICKER, EDWARD
JAPAN'S LOWER DEPTHS A Life of Quiet Squalor By Edward Seidensticker Tokyo The big problem facing Japan at the moment is rather pleasant as such things go: The economy is growing too...
...JAPAN'S LOWER DEPTHS A Life of Quiet Squalor By Edward Seidensticker Tokyo The big problem facing Japan at the moment is rather pleasant as such things go: The economy is growing too fast...
...The poorer districts of Tokyo," said the novelist Nagai Kafû some years ago, "are squalid, to be sure, but when compared with like places in New York and London they have about them a certain quiet, a hush, a tranquility...
...The day laborers' lot can be a very unhappy one...
...they have no legal existence...
...And newsreels of the Osaka disturbances suggest that the police, so admirably restrained in their handüng of political riots, are not very gentlemanly when the rioters are non-political...
...The two areas are those to which any reasonably well informed Japanese would send an outsider asking for a slum, just as he would refer an inquirer after a high, graceful mountain to Fuji...
...Most people who come to the two districts have no more intention of staying permanently than does the person who steps inside a church to avoid a shower...
...A local magazine aimed at foreigners recently warned that it was dangerous for them, as well as for prosperous Japanese, to be seen in Sanya or Kamagasaki...
...Both districts are inhabited predominantly by day laborers...
...This is especially true in the season just over, the summer, which seems to goad the urban slum-dweller into a blind rage...
...A ditch digger with a little initiative has an increasingly good chance of finding his ditch without mediation...
...Difficult though their lot is, the problem is thus not as serious as it would be if the middle and high schools of the country were pouring a flood of graduates into Sanya and Kamagasaki...
...One can see why outbursts of violence come in the summer...
...It is a rare country indeed that has to worry about holding down economic growth rather than stimulating it...
...The Sanya riot of 1960 was aimed entirely at the police, and the Kamagasaki riots of 1961 began with attacks on the police and moved on to such pranks as setting fire to trucks and taxis and stopping trains...
...The slum resident seems to feel that the policeman is his enemy, failing to protect him from the extortionist and treating him as if he himself were a criminal...
...Most of them, not being registered, do not vote...
...But the economy is growing at a rate to startle the Prime Minister and befuddle the gloom-makers of the opposition, who a year ago thought Ikeda too sanguine...
...The lowest class has tiers of little holes that pass for rooms, each capable of accommodating two sleepers rather as a double bed would accommodate them, but not allowing sufficient head room to stand up, and ventilated by a hole perhaps a foot square...
...By itself, this might seem like a callous reason for not being really disturbed by the rioting...
...But those who offered political views to interviewers during and after the riots generally indicated support for the governing conservatives...
...Although no one really need starve today, the consumption of the cheapest foods— bowls of gruel that sell for the equivalent of two or three cents— rises in Sanya and Kamagasaki when the weather is bad...
...The typical slum residence is a cheap inn, charging prices that range from the equivalent of 10 to 60 or 70 cents per night...
...Unfortunately, there is some evidence to support this view...
...As the wages of day laborers rise, the percentage of men who rent rooms by the month and so save money for better things does not rise accordingly...
...In Japan, as in most countries, conservative opinion rises in direct proportion to age...
...when these were outlawed in 1958 the prostitutes executed a strategic withdrawal, to the advantage of no one save perhaps their pimps, more in demand now than they were under the old system...
...A cynic might take comfort from the belief that more money will not do the Japanese workman much good in any case—a variant of the notion that the poor should not have bathtubs because they only keep coal in them...
...It has been estimated that one Kamagasaki dweller in 10 has a criminal past...
...the public employment services are inadequate...
...But there are other and better reasons...
...Yet, despite its over-exuberant economy, Japan is still a sort of inbetween country—ahead of the rest of Asia, to be sure, but behind Western Europe...
...In extreme cases, children are not only without legal residences...
...There is a saying that you do not need a knife to kill a day laborer in Japan: A week or 10 days of rain will do the job as efficiently...
...Each district happens to be fairly near what was once a quarter for licensed prostitution...
...Not even the poverty of the Italian South can drag that country's per-capita wealth down to the Japanese level...
...Edward Seidensticker, a veteran correspondent based in Japan, is a contributor to many periodicals...
...There is little need in Osaka and Tokyo today for an able-bodied young man to go to work as a day laborer, and the result is that the depressed class in Sanya and Kamagasaki is made up predominantly of men in or approaching middle age who have come upon hard times and lack the stamina or the resilience to go to work for an electronics plant...
...ONE STRIKING FEATURE of the slum-dwelling day laborers is their lack of interest in politics and their tendency to be conservative, if anything at all...
...The quiet is occasionally broken today, but the remark continues to be meaningful...
...Since he took office last year, the favorite call of Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda has been: "Double the national income in 10 years...
...In the dog days of 1960, there was an ugly riot in the Sanya district of Tokyo...
...And, only the great concentration of Japanese wealth in Tokyo brings the per-capita wealth of this metropolis up to something like the level for all of Italy...
...And I have more than once been in Sanya, and not in the least frightened, at a time when I would not have been comfortable in a similar district of New York...
...With them are various lesser groups, ranging from the settled bourgeoisie of shops and inns to prostitutes, their hangers-on and gangs of extortionists...
...His wages are now close to $2.50 a day...
...Even with 10 days of rain or toping per month a single man has enough to get by on—one of many indications of the recent improvement in living conditions for the lowest Japanese classes...
...No doubt Britain would wish that the causes for the softness of the pound in the world market could be similar...
...This is perhaps due as much to the workers' age as to anything else...
...The way a policeman has of looking you from head to foot when you ask him a question," said one man shortly after the rioting, "is enough to make you want to kill him...
...Nor does it seem likely that the Socialists and Communists will be able to exploit the unrest...
...Even when it is good the worker is frequently dependent on unscrupulous labor brokers...
...Indeed, the breaks in the silence may themselves be a sign that things are getting better...
...Yet the most remarkable thing about the underprivileged Japanese is how little he seems to demand, and how little he makes do with...
...Hence prices are rising and the foreign-trade account is in the red...
...In the winter it is not too difficult to keep warm, but in the humid tightness of a Japanese urban summer night it is impossible to be anything but miserable without at the very least cross ventilation and a certain discreet distance from the nearest sleeping body...
...Therefore they do not go through the legal registration procedures, a fact which complicates the operations of what public employment agencies there are...
...If one needs a reminder of dynamic Japan's poverty, he can be fairly certain of having it with some regularity...
...There are many mothers who flee maternity hospitals in the night to avoid paying their bills, and fail to register the babies they take with them...
...I myself have had long rambles through both districts without any feeling of being threatened or even resented...
...It also tends to keep children on the streets rather than in school...
...Per-capita expenditures for liquor do...
...Reports since the Kamagasaki riots suggest that the Japanese labor broker may be losing his power, and that he is no longer able to have his way by force as he once was...
...Even the heat would probably not lead to violence if it were not accompanied by chronic resentment at the police...
...The police can be grateful that the political demonstrators of other seasons are asleep or down at the beach while the slum-dweller is running amuck...
...this year there was a series of still uglier riots in the Kamagasaki district of Osaka...
...There is something easy-going about even the worst-blighted districts of Japan that keeps them from being merely grim...
Vol. 44 • November 1961 • No. 37
