Tokyo Ueno Station

This section begins as Kazu offers some of his more explicitly rendered commentary on the nature of poverty, building on the theme of Invisible Classism in Japan. Kazu points out the simple but important fact that people do not sign up to be unhoused. This statement dispels a pervasive belief that people without homes end up where they do because of their own poor choices and that they remain unhoused because they refuse to help themselves. Kazu points out that reality is not so simple and that unhoused people often become defined by their lack of a home, with few considering the fact that they were once “regular” people with “regular” lives.

Kazu points out that people often end up without homes because of a series of unfortunate events, rather than one particular thing. He says, “Before, we had families. We had houses. Nobody starts off life in a hovel made of cardboard and tarps, and nobody becomes homeless because they want to be. One thing happens, then another” (83). Sometimes, people take on too much debt, for one reason or another: medical bills, tuition costs, addiction, and so on. Other times, as in the case of Kazu himself, people are simply born into poverty and have no true means of escaping, an example of The Power of Circumstances.

Kazu also points out that there is an element of inescapability associated with poverty. Once one becomes unhoused or impoverished, it is exceedingly difficult to escape that situation. Kazu says,

If you fall into a pit, you can climb out, but once you slip from a sheer cliff, you cannot step firmly into a new life again. The only thing that can stop you from falling is the moment of your death. But nonetheless you have to keep living until you die, so there was nothing to do but continue working diligently for your reward (83).

The metaphor of the cliff illustrates the drastic degree of a fall into poverty and the monumental effort a person in poverty must put forth, even though their efforts likely will not free them from their circumstances. These comments from Kazu add weight to his previous words: His exhaustion and the fact that he “did not live with intent, [he] only lived” indicate that he worked hard merely to survive (2).

Kazu states that he feels death is the only true escape from poverty, which the author uses to describe The Influence of Poverty on Mental Health. Kazu says, “We were always on edge, dogged by danger and the anxiety that if we had something even for a moment, it could be taken away” (85). When one is always going without, everything seems precarious. One can never anticipate when things will be taken away or lost. This positions people in a near constant state of high anxiety. They cannot rest comfortably, nor can they enjoy typical leisurely experiences in life. This is illustrated in multiple ways within the novel: the way the unhoused population is evicted from Ueno Park during imperial visits, the fact that Kazu sees his jacket was taken by someone else after his death, and so on.

Kazu devotes a good deal of his narrative to describing the unhoused people who populate Ueno Park. These descriptions do not follow any kind of predictable pattern. In some cases, he highlights the mismatched clothing and the sometimes unkempt appearances of the people in the park. At other times, he points out people who are well dressed but who are sleeping on park benches: “The man looked so neatly turned out that people with homes would not have guessed it, but the fact that he was sleeping like the dead on a stone bench with a bag of cans at his feet told me that he was almost certainly homeless” (100). These varied descriptions further add to the author’s attempts to break down generalizations and stereotypes of unhoused people.

A large part of this section focuses on Japanese history, partly through Kazu’s reflections but mostly through flashbacks of conversations with Shige. The story of Saigo Takamori and the shogitai presents distinct parallels between the past and present. Saigo was a major participant in the Meiji Restoration, a massive overhaul of Japanese society with the dismantlement of the feudal shogunate, which occurred only roughly 65 years before Kazu was born. Saigo’s subsequent Satsuma Rebellion was driven, in part, by the changes in Japanese society. Though Saigo aided in the Meiji Restoration, he was against the loss of power for the samurai class, and many of his supporters were warriors who found themselves impoverished due to massive societal changes.

Japan, especially Tokyo, went through a similar revitalization after World War II, which began just over 70 years after the Meiji Restoration. In order to get a foothold in the global community—and as a result of postwar orders from other countries—Japan once again pushed for a westernized, modernized, industrial society. However, residual effects of the feudal class system meant that the lives of people like Kazu were distinctly affected by both of these major events. Kazu, for example, was born into rural poverty and primarily took on agricultural jobs before moving to Tokyo for a better paying job in construction. Once the major projects dried up, many people like Kazu were left impoverished and forgotten.

Lastly, Shige and Kazu note the irony attached to the way these major historical events are treated. The fact that Saigo’s statue is so close to a memorial for the very warriors he fought against shows a distinct emotional distance from the people involved. This continues the observations they made about the statue for the firebombing of Tokyo, which was likewise invisible to passersby. The placement of Saigo’s statue—which Shige calls “a compromise”—also hints at the Japanese government’s concern with appearances and implications, particularly in regard to the imperial family. Shige points out that, historically, the people of Edo supported the shogitai. But to the modern government, it is primarily important that Saigo’s statue not be placed on imperial grounds, as his rebellion carries more weight than his contributions. Thus, they feel it is acceptable to place the statue near the shogitai memorial, and with the aforementioned emotional distance from these events, no one in Kazu’s time seems to care one way or the other.