Isolation, Social Isolation--Japan Seen from ``Poverty-Concentrated Areas''-Yahoo! News

What should the community look like when people who have lost blood, territorial, and social ties grow old? The problem first appeared in regions where poverty was concentrated. Tatsuya Shirahase, a sociologist who has been doing fieldwork in the Airin area (commonly known as Kamagasaki) since 2003 and has published "Poverty and Regions", and Makoto Yuasa, who has been providing support in the field of poverty for more than 20 years, will talk. (Construction: Masako Furukawa, non-fiction writer / Yahoo! News special editorial department)

Vitality in the midst of a deep recession

Since when did Mr. Shirahase Yuasa and the Airin district become involved?

Shirahase It was 2003 when I entered graduate school at Kwansei Gakuin University. In the world, "disparity society" was beginning to become a keyword of the times.

Yuasa I started homeless support activities mainly in Shibuya in Tokyo in 1995, but for a while I went to areas called "yoseba" (areas where day laborers gather) like the Airin district. I never did.

I was surprised when I went to Sanya in Tokyo around 2000. Some people are sleeping on the street, others are calmly having a bonfire. There were people sleeping on the streets in Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro, but they lived quietly in the corners of the city. In Sanya, homeless people and day laborers lived in the center of town.

I was even more surprised when I went to the Airin area around the same time. There are different degrees of noise. There are people in every corner of the city, and it is lively. It was chaotic.

Shirahase Even in the Airin area, when the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, construction demand in the Kansai region cooled, making it impossible to pay for daily lodging, and the number of workers spending the night on the streets increased rapidly. A newspaper in 1993 reported that there were 700 homeless people in the Airin area alone, and it is said that the number exceeded 1,000 in the late 1990s.

However, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 caused a slight recovery in construction demand. The “vigor” in the chaos that Mr. Yuasa saw may be a remnant of that.

From a homey slum to a private doya-gai

Yuasa Whether it's a "yoseba" or a tent village for homeless people in the city, there are places where people who have been in the throes of society gather. , there is a unique atmosphere in common. When I was helping the homeless in Shibuya, there was an old man named Mr. Iijima. Whenever I meet him, he always comes up to me and says, "Uncle, give me a cigarette." It may be that the person who was in the facility has escaped because he has an intellectual disability. I have a wandering habit, and when I thought I wouldn't see it for a while, I went to Nagoya or Tohoku. I'm walking. Everyone there divides lunches for Mr. Iijima, and feeds him if he receives money. But I don't feel like that person is a burden. The streets had an easy-going attitude, like, "Everyone has a scar on their shin."

You can also see such a scene at Shirahase Yoseba.

Yuasa There is also the word "slum" in the sense of a place where the poor live. The Airin district has a strong image of doya-gai (doya is the upside-down word for inn, meaning a simple lodging house), but what is interesting in Mr. Shirahase's book Poverty and Regions is that "Kamagasaki has a slum-like character. Doya-gai with ”” is written.

Shirahase Until the 1960s, relatively many households with children lived in Kamagasaki. In 1961, 1,290 children were enrolled at Haginochaya Elementary School (closed in March 2015) located in this area.

In an environment where the whole family lived in an overcrowded 3 tatami space, the slum residents had problems such as children not going to school and women who made a living by prostitution. On the other hand, since many of them have families and tend to live long-term, they have relatively close human relationships.

However, in preparation for the Osaka Expo in 1970, the character of the area as a gathering place for day laborers became stronger, and the color of Doya-gai, where single men gather, deepened.

Yuasa Sanya and Kamagasaki are often said to have created cheap and ready-to-use workers at the request of capital, but Mr. Shirahase suggests that there may be a different aspect in this book. I am drawing it in. In other words, people who moved to public housing arranged by government measures to combat slums in the 1960s and those who had the financial means to relocate left, and what remained were day laborers in the most severe circumstances. As a result, labor issues have risen.

Shirahase Yes. Not all of the problems in this district can be reduced to the problem of poverty among day laborers. A situation in which people with some sort of problem are left behind can happen in any region. What I wanted to write in this book is the importance of looking at poverty issues from the perspective of "regions."

Yuasa I think it's a very modern theme.

Solitary death, not someone else's problem

Shirahase The other day, I contributed an article to "Toyo Keizai Online" about the elderly living alone in the Airin district. “There are solitary deaths as a result of social isolation, and this is what happens in the Airin district,” she said.

Yuasa I read it too.

Shirahase When I did that, there were a lot of reactions like, "I'm with you." The Airin district, which was once thought to be an exceptional area, has come to be seen as ``a place where our future challenges and territories are connected''. Some said, "What's wrong with that?" It is a sense of incongruity to discuss solitary death as if it were a social problem. "I should live alone and die alone," he said. I realized that society as a whole is becoming more individualized than I had imagined.

Yuasa There is certainly that tendency.

Shirahase I don't think it's a simple solution like ``Let's nurture territorial ties''. However, what is interesting is that in the Airin area, which is at the forefront of the elimination of ties, interest in mourning has been increasing for several years.

"I don't care when I die, and I don't have a bereaved family who will be sad if I die." ” is increasing.

Yuasa A memorial service will also be held.

Shirahase Yes. Every year during Obon, a memorial service is held as part of the summer festival. People who are usually scattered will gather at the altar only at this time and pray quietly.

Yuasa If you don't have blood, territorial, or company ties, you are said to be 'unrelated', but the ties in the Airin area and Sanya are none of those. If so, I have no choice but to work hard with "another edge". However, I think there are hints for modern society as a whole. Not only pessimistic about the unconnected society, but also create ties other than geographical, blood, and company ties. In this way, we aim to create, so to speak, a "rich unrelated society." If you think that new forms of funerals and memorial services are efforts for that purpose, they are also hope. There is no need to beautify or mythologize impoverished areas, but instead of simply looking down on or avoiding them, I would like to have the perspective of properly evaluating the accumulation of efforts.

Changes due to redevelopment

The Shiranase Airin area is about to change again. A major impetus for this was the "Nishinari Special Zone Concept," which was presented in January 2012 by Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka at the time, and which mainly targeted the Airin district. In the plan, efforts are planned to attract households raising children and to attract tourists.

One more thing I wanted to write about in this book is that the “connection” that has been carefully cultivated in the Airin district may be lost due to large-scale redevelopment.

Yuasa Actually, I think places like the Airin district are fine. It is precisely because poverty has been concentrated in this area for many years that a diverse range of people have been involved in it and played a role in creating connections and communities. By accumulating that, even if a top-down "reform" comes down, I think that there is a "toughness" that allows us to read it into our own context and swallow it. That's what I thought when I saw the movements of various organizations involved in the community working together, such as the Haginochaya Community Development Expansion Conference.

Shirahase At the conference, the town associations, cheap lodging associations, support groups, welfare facilities, etc., who had no relationship with each other or were at odds with each other, gathered together. In fact, the start of this conference has resulted in the administration being reluctant to deal with difficult problems that have been neglected for many years, such as the problem of stray dogs, the problem of food stalls that have illegally occupied roads for business, and the trafficking of stimulants. was raised.

Yuasa I was able to get so many different local groups and residents to sit at the same table. I always think that 80% of the power of democracy is the ability to bring diverse people to the same table. In that sense, residents' autonomy and democracy are functioning properly in the Airin district. It is not a simple reaction or pandering to the government, but rather a regulatory power that allows us to read administrative measures in our own context and "utilize" them. In the future, even if the government or the government intervenes in urban development, we will use them to our advantage and stubbornly carry on. I think I have that kind of power.

Shirahase In fact, the people who are working hard to develop the city are proud of it. While protecting the people currently living in the Airin area, we must increase the vitality of the town.

What we can learn from the Airin district, a “problem-prone area”

Yuasa Even in an area where individualization and isolation are progressing, people like Mr. Iijima, who I met in Shibuya, and the people around him, Or, like the Airin district, which is building a new form of mourning, nevertheless, we must not lose our inclusiveness and tolerance. On top of that, it is important how to build a "rich unrelated society".

Shiranase There is a place where people with various backgrounds are embraced in the yoseba. Conversely, the tolerance of other regions is too low. Areas like the Airin area have taken over people who were excluded from the community because they had disabilities or because they had different characters. In the future, I hope that each region will become a society that accepts weaknesses and differences.

Masako Furukawa Non-fiction writer. Born in Tochigi prefecture. Graduated from the Faculty of Letters, Sophia University. With the theme of people facing "life", we will follow people with illnesses and disabilities, medical and nursing care workers, and innovators who are active at the intersection of science and society. His publications include Kyodai Risk (co-authored with sociologist Ryo Hirayama, published by Asahi Shinsho).

[Photo] Photography: Tomoaki Endo, Yuji Okamoto Photography supervision: Masaru Goto, Reminders Project