San'ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo

This volume presents a firsthand account of life for day-labourers in Tokyo’s shunned ghetto district, San'ya. The author provides a context for the oral accounts provided by the area’s inhabitants, as they describe their personal histories and daily lives as part of Japan’s urban underclass. Accepted by the labourers, the author’s repeated visits culminated in his own six-week stint as a day-labourer. He points to the similarities between this life and that of America’s own inner-city population.