A Look at the Other Japan
SEYMOUR, CHRISTOPHER
SANYA'S DYING MAVERICKS A Look at the Other Japan BY CHRISTOPHER SEYMOUR Tokyo ?t is 5:30 a.m. on a Monday. The main drag in Sanya, often described as Tokyo's Bowery, is crowded...
...But unlike most Japanese, he is repelled by the cult of undying corporate loyalty, has no taste for too long a shift and doesn't like too many questions...
...In fact, they are largely "real" Japanese who have chosen to go it alone in Tokyo's "dirtwood" businesses...
...The cops here are real brutes...
...Like those earlier stages of development, the neighborhood's culture of independent laborers may, by the year 2000, become a historical footnote...
...Minoru points out that the old structures I am admiring are the worst kind of doyagai...
...The station was constructed in 1960, as Sanya's population swelled with builders of facilities and highways for the '64 Olympics...
...You work like a horse for 30 years and end up like garbage in the gutter," growls Minoru Isobe from beneath his dirty Yomuri Giants baseball cap...
...Morimoto is a nice guy, but look how he tortures those hungry men...
...His face is creased, his right eye is half closed and several teeth are broken...
...They'll listen to your problem and then decide if they'll help you, says Minoru, who has turned to Sogidan three or four times...
...The neighborhood adjoining Sanya is Yoshiwara...
...Their tough-looking young drivers have been sent to entice and deliver warm bodies to mob-run construction sites around the city...
...They have come to Sanya because it affords them the freedom to indulge their lifestyles...
...Minoru moves spryly in his gray sweatpants and sneakers...
...An adjacent garbage can holds two dozen hardwood truncheons, each about the length of a broomstick and twice as thick...
...You see me, I've wasted my life here...
...Big white Toyota vans are lined up along the curb...
...I ask...
...He refuses to deal with the Japanese bureaucracy, and the price for a forged white book from the local yakuza family is far too steep...
...While occasionally we encounter a drunk prone in the gutter, we also pass some lovely slope-roofed wooden buildings, survivors of the 1945 incendiary bombings...
...When else could I have shown an American my Japan and gotten his pack of high-class smokes...
...At the low end—say, 800 yen—a man is stuck with several others in a room about 9 feet by 12 feet that has four bunk beds and a single fluorescent tube on the ceiling...
...Rows of blue public lockers that serve as safety-deposit boxes for Sanya men line the alleys...
...Sanya police talk like gangsters too, peppering their argot with grunts and shrugs...
...At their best (about 2,300 yen a night, or a quarter of an average day's pay), doya offer clean single rooms with TVs, private toilets and Japanese baths...
...Every morning, as the men are checking Ubekata's job board, a Sogidan representative doles out a more radical brand of advice than the workers would receive inside...
...The wall was torn down after prostitution was abolished in 1958, but similar services are still offered on the same acreage...
...His days revolve around various Sanya soup kitchens, where he receives one meal a day—usually a bowl of noodles, apieceof fruit and tea...
...A few tiny white pebbles are embedded in his forearms, just below some rough tattoos of a flower and a butterfly...
...Most of the men around here bet at the Japan Racing Association [off-track betting] parlor at Ueno Station...
...The Sanya men have been characterized as criminals hiding from the law, ostracized Koreans or, more dramatically, deserters from Japan, Inc...
...As we talk, Minoru offers to give me a tour of the neighborhood...
...Today was my best," he smiles...
...We try to put our biggest, roughest officers in Sanya," says Assistant Police Chief Matsumoto, who oversees the personnel in Asakusa area...
...Theplainclothesmen have the short, wiryhairand smoky sunglasses of & yakuza soldier...
...some of the men haven't eaten in two or three days, but they make us listen to a boring speech on morality...
...Japan's wealth is only on the surface...
...Yes, most of the neighborhood's denizens are drinkers, and they sometimes don't want to get up in the morning...
...Yeah," he replies...
...The six cops we come upon later are not typical Tokyo Barney Fifes hunkered down in flimsy aluminum police ministations, drinking coffee and misdirecting tourists...
...Three restaurant workers in white uniforms are huddled over piles of blue 1,000 yen bills...
...I hope Sanya disappears," says Minoru, sitting in the darkened Tamahime Inari shrine grounds...
...Some theorized that the action was designed to mitigate Tokyo's homeless problem, on the of f chance that the royals decided to visit a place like the glamorous Sumidagawa freight yards...
...And get beaten up...
...The cops are friends of the yakuza," Minora insists...
...Sanya originated as a way station for travelers entering Edo from the north...
...Minoru tells methemen from Sanya head down the side streets to the cheaper houses of pleasure...
...A lone toilet is shared by 40 men...
...The typical Sanya man is in his middle 50s, with the average climbing steadily, and very few young Japanese are interested injoiningthenotorious scene...
...There's more yakuza around here when the times are bad...
...There may be more beer and sake vending machines on the corners, yet one notices plenty of potted plants, carefully trimmed bonsai and purple morning glories along the narrow roads...
...Outside the Center's fence a metal desk and chair serve as the auxiliary "office" of Sogidan, an ostensibly Left-wing, direct action group...
...By concentrating themselves in this area, they have created a distinct postwar subculture that seems to support them fairly well—until the economy cools, or it rains, or a worker grows old...
...So does the frequently superfluous roadwork that keeps the ward coffers full and the pois (and the yakuza) happy...
...Now, shaved and dressed in the baggy knickers and soft, knee-high boots of the Japanese worker, the men walk confidently from van to van, cutting deals and clogging the street...
...There was a time when 10 men turned out for everyjob...
...It's like an old movie...
...They care more about the yakuza than the citizens...
...Of the men here, only 20 per cent, no, maybe 10 per cent want to hear the sermon," says Minoru, pausing to take a drag from a fresh Marlboro...
...He is sitting cross-legged on his cardboard pad of three flattened Asahi beer boxes, squeezed between yellow maintenance trucks the city government stores in the gravel parking lot in front of the Tamahime Inari Shrine...
...The average worker who inhabits the 40-odd blocks of Taito ward that constitute Sanya—unsuccessfully renamed Kiyokawa 25 years ago, to improve its image—could find plenty of steady jobs...
...Yousee," headds, "the police in Sanya are friends to the men...
...He is anxious to show me around, but first he asks for a cigarette...
...The yakuza—Japan's mafia—is said to play a formidable behind-the-scenes role at virtually all levels of society, but here it functions out in the open...
...He has no pension and has lost his official identification card plus the "white book" entitling him to a bit of welfare money...
...Soon the aging workers who have never put away money will be stuck with a tiny government stipend...
...You don't see those kind much anymore," Minoru comments...
...He lives day to day just working, drinking, gambling, and hoping it doesn't rain...
...Today jobs are plentiful and some of the men are getting rich...
...Later, it was shaped by its role of providing housing for the staff of Yoshiwara's brothels...
...A lot of men around here are like me...
...If a man has a problem with apayment from one of the yakuza crews, this outfit will straighten it out for half the money due...
...You need strong men to handle all the drunks who live there...
...We walk toward the next corner where an Afro-permed yakuza with deep eyes and rough skin stands lookout...
...Along the main thoroughfare, yakuza barkers in white shirts and black bow ties talk up each passing man in an attempt to lure him into their gaudy establishments...
...He sizes us up, then buries his hands in the back pockets of his polyester golf pants and shrugs...
...This morning the young yakuza envoys are all smiles and jokes, for these days Sanya's free-lance laborers are enjoying a seller's market...
...The main drag in Sanya, often described as Tokyo's Bowery, is crowded with hundreds of mostly middle-aged men...
...Then there's dice on every block...
...A veteran of the last three months of World War II, Minoru harbors no grudge against Americans...
...You must have some good memories after three decades here...
...The pews are a jumbled array of stools and folding chairs spilling out into the street...
...He collects a small blue gym bag containing all his possessions: two T-shirts, a couple of changes of underwear and a pair of rubber flip-flops...
...What about the police...
...These cops are of the big and surly variety, and their police "box" is a three story ferroconcrete fortress...
...The rest come for the food only...
...I haven't worked since March last year," he complains...
...The flophouses stink of urine, their talami mats are full of mites, and their mattresses are infested with body lice...
...Maybe it'stheir age, perhaps they're getting tired...
...Minoru, whose limp is more pronounced now, nevertheless remains an enthusiastic guide...
...Established in 1967 as a simple legal aid office for the men of Sanya, at present it is the area's largest and most effective agency, offering health care, banking services, housing information, and job contacts with legitimate outfits (these are less desirable to the men since they usually do not provide transportation and require applicants to answer a lot of nosy questions...
...We all know they're up there on Namida Bridge...
...But I do wish that would stop...
...Better than living like a pig...
...This concernsmemost," Ubekata says, "more than the riot police up on Namida Bridge with their telescopes...
...Like tough cops in every city, the grayuniformed officers on the Sanya beat resemble their criminal rivals...
...Yoshiro Ubekata knows too, but as supervisor of the Sanya Employment Center he is preoccupied with another issue...
...The men are taking less pride in their work," Ubekata observes...
...The Sanyans were then beaten and forced to disperse...
...He winces, though, at the memories of the brutal treatment inflicted by Imperial Navy training officers...
...Ha...
...IN the sharp light of a clear afternoon, Sanya looks like other working class neighborhoods in northeast Tokyo...
...When the War ended, Minoru tried to begin life anew in his hometown of Sapporo...
...He tells me that before the 1990 visit of Prince Charles and Princess Diana the police swept through Sanya and chased out all the street and temple dwellers...
...Two stacks of 10 curved metal riot shields lean against the station's facade...
...The Center receives government assistance, but it is a private, non-profit organization...
...Minoru no longer possesses the minimal fitness the Sanya lifestyle requires...
...The preaching infuriates him: "We're hungry...
...Do you have another cigarette...
...What does morality mean to an old man...
...Surrounded by a fence and scarred with old handbills, Ubekata's Employment Center has the ambience of amethadone clinic...
...There are still poor people here...
...A 10-day contract under an assumed name with a mob-run crew suits him fine...
...What Sogidan does is make trouble," Minoru grumbles as he leads me past the signless doorway and dark flight of stairs that is the entrance to the organization's headquarters...
...His platitudes are delivered with booming exuberance, but he cannot distract the churchgoers in the back rows from the sumo wrestling visible on a neighbor's TV...
...A young yakuza in a red golf shirt exhorts them to place their bets, smiles, and feigns pain as he rakes in their losses...
...Others are failing to fulfill their 10-day contracts, and want the Employment Center to help them collect for the days they put in on the job...
...If the money you're owed is too little, they'll tell you to take a walk...
...Since its erection, it has been the flashpoint of four or five "riots"— cops-versus-labor disputes that were tame, cathartic affairs...
...When it rains, there's no work...
...Some of the men get used to that smell and the mites," Minoru says, "but I couldn't live with the bugs and the stealing that goes on in those low-class doya...
...I was an idiot...
...Sometimes we carry them home when they're drunk, or bring them old clothes...
...For the majority, however, the lack of pensions is a problem just starting to hit...
...Ubekata is having difficulties with workers faking injuries to dupe construction companies out of insurance money...
...As for himself, he prefers to avoid "women who know too much" and sticks to his home territory...
...I inquire...
...He usually beds down either at the temple or in nearby Ueno Park, where recently he was beaten and robbed of 1,000 yen ($7.30...
...He also has learned to get by without money...
...In the middle of the small block I hear the rat-tat-tat of rolling dice...
...And why do they have us under surveillance every day...
...It's a hell with no way out...
...Soon we reach an open storefront that is the altar of Reverend Morimoto's church...
...The men headed en masse to nearby Sumida Park, where they were confronted by young yakuza toughs armed with two-by-fours...
...He washed dishes at an American base until the occupation troops pulled out, then he railed down to Ueno Station, the major depot near Sanya...
...Won't they shut the games down...
...The average resident is a man who can't go back to his hometown or family...
...Frequently he must sit through a speech on godliness and thrift before the food is served...
...The men are too old to cause real trouble anymore...
...a handful have savings in excess of 40 million yen ($300,000...
...Foreigners from Southeast Asia and Iran have tried to assimilate into the community, but the all-powerful (and xenophobic) yakuza hiring men would not touch them...
...I was only 16 and wanted to die for my country...
...At age 63, with an ailing liver and a bad leg, he calls his life "wasted...
...As the Sanya men die off the doya will be torn down, bland apartment buildings will go up, and relatively upstanding citizens will reclaim this vestige of old Tokyo...
...Minoru has never had an apartment, acar, a bank account, awife, or children —the basics of a normal Japanese life...
...Under Tokyo's dark violet early evening sky the reverend's sermon is in full swing...
...if we can't afford a decent place, we'd rather sleep in the park...
...Once the most famous of Tokyo's licensed prostitution districts, it used to be enclosed by a wall separating it from the rest of the city...
...I want you to tell the world the truth," he says...
...One good day...
...In leaner times, they are viciously pitted against one another, pushing wages below the subsistence level...
...The personal details may vary, but they are hardly romantic...
...Christopher Seymour, a new contributor to these pages, is a free-lance journalist who currently lives in Japan...
...That was a setup between the cops and the yakuza," Minoru declares...
...But they were lucky this year, the rainy season was dry...
...The bastards slapped and punched us all the time for absolutely no reason...
...Don't tell me it wasn't...
...I haven't slept indoors for three weeks," Minoru says...
...Let me show you where they'd rather be...
...Minoru scoffs...
...He could probably sign on at the Nissan plant in nearby Kawasaki, for instance, or at Hitachi about an hour outside Tokyo...
Vol. 74 • November 1991 • No. 12
