Edward Fowler (East Asian Languages and Literatures, UC Irvine)
| DATE: | Thursday, September 16, 2004 |
|---|---|
| TIME: | 4:00-6:00 p.m. |
| PLACE: | IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor |
| FORMAT: | Colloquium |
| SPONSOR: | Center for Japanese Studies |
There are thought to be 24,000 homeless in Japan. BBC News, World: Asia-Pacific, Friday, April 26, 2002
The stately Samurai Castle of Osaka towers over the trees of Osaka Castle Park. Park authorities say that around 700 homeless live in the park in makeshift shacks and tents. Insiders claim it is 1300.
Japan's day laborer quarters have changed immensely since Edward Fowler's research for "San'ya Blues" (Cornell, 1996). After the so-called economic bubble collapsed in the early 1990s, San'ya (Tokyo) and Kamagasaki (Osaka) have seen their function as sites for recruiting casual laborers become attenuated; and they have been largely transformed, along with certain public spaces (e.g. Ueno Park; Osaka Castle Park), into very visible sites of homelessness. What sorts of people occupy these sites? This talk will attempt an answer to this question, both through the text of a book the speaker is translating by a white-collar worker living in San'ya and through slides taken over the past decade in Tokyo and Osaka.
This event is free and open to the public.
