James L. Huffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824872915
- eISBN:
- 9780824877866
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824872915.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This work examines the daily lives of Japan’s very poor—the kasō shakai or underclass—during the last half of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Focusing on urban slums (hinminkutsu), it attempts to ...
More
This work examines the daily lives of Japan’s very poor—the kasō shakai or underclass—during the last half of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Focusing on urban slums (hinminkutsu), it attempts to understand how poor people themselves experienced life. After examining the dominant popular views of hinmin or poor people in this era as a baseline, the author looks at what brought masses of hinmin to the cities, where they lived, and what work they did: everything from pulling rickshaws to making textiles, from carrying night soil to providing sex. It looks too at the daily challenges of stretching budgets, grappling with educational issues for children, and preparing meals. One chapter concentrates on the major problems, such as illness and disasters, that made the poverty-stricken life especially difficult, while another examines the endless ways in which the very poor acted as agents, filling life not just with hope but with activism and celebration in the here and now. Final, comparative chapters take up the nature of rural poverty and the lives of poor Japanese immigrants in Hawai’i’s sugar plantations as a way of understanding what was unique about urban poverty. The work contends that despite massive difficulties, the hinmin attacked life as intelligent agents, experiencing a range of life experiences similar to those that typified the more affluent classes.Less
This work examines the daily lives of Japan’s very poor—the kasō shakai or underclass—during the last half of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Focusing on urban slums (hinminkutsu), it attempts to understand how poor people themselves experienced life. After examining the dominant popular views of hinmin or poor people in this era as a baseline, the author looks at what brought masses of hinmin to the cities, where they lived, and what work they did: everything from pulling rickshaws to making textiles, from carrying night soil to providing sex. It looks too at the daily challenges of stretching budgets, grappling with educational issues for children, and preparing meals. One chapter concentrates on the major problems, such as illness and disasters, that made the poverty-stricken life especially difficult, while another examines the endless ways in which the very poor acted as agents, filling life not just with hope but with activism and celebration in the here and now. Final, comparative chapters take up the nature of rural poverty and the lives of poor Japanese immigrants in Hawai’i’s sugar plantations as a way of understanding what was unique about urban poverty. The work contends that despite massive difficulties, the hinmin attacked life as intelligent agents, experiencing a range of life experiences similar to those that typified the more affluent classes.
James L. Huffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824872915
- eISBN:
- 9780824877866
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824872915.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
After a description of a “ typical” hinmin day in Tokyo, the chapter examines the forces that caused Japan’s cities to mushroom and slums to explode numerically after the 1880s, in particular the ...
More
After a description of a “ typical” hinmin day in Tokyo, the chapter examines the forces that caused Japan’s cities to mushroom and slums to explode numerically after the 1880s, in particular the mass migration of young farm males because of rural economic disasters. The slums (hinminkutsu) and other poverty pockets where they lived are then described, not only as grim and polluted places but as neighborhoods full of energy and variety. In Osaka, the poor lived primarily in the south; in Tokyo, they lived in shitamachi—the northeastern wards such as Asakusa and Fukagawa along the Sumida River. A discussion follows of hinmin living spaces. The greatest numbers lived in cheap, cramped apartments in nagaya or row houses, paying rent by the day; the worst off lived in kichin’yado or flophouses.Less
After a description of a “ typical” hinmin day in Tokyo, the chapter examines the forces that caused Japan’s cities to mushroom and slums to explode numerically after the 1880s, in particular the mass migration of young farm males because of rural economic disasters. The slums (hinminkutsu) and other poverty pockets where they lived are then described, not only as grim and polluted places but as neighborhoods full of energy and variety. In Osaka, the poor lived primarily in the south; in Tokyo, they lived in shitamachi—the northeastern wards such as Asakusa and Fukagawa along the Sumida River. A discussion follows of hinmin living spaces. The greatest numbers lived in cheap, cramped apartments in nagaya or row houses, paying rent by the day; the worst off lived in kichin’yado or flophouses.
