Sanya: Japan's internal colony

Abstract

You have to get up early to know Tokyo. Take Baba as a case in point. By day, it is an ordinary, slightly run-down park beside the tracks of the city's central commuting loop, halfway between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro stations. Go at dawn and a thousand men populate the park—young men in shirts and sneakers, carpenters in their belling, knicker-like pants, the muscular dokata, construction workers, duffle bags thrown over their shoulders and heavy black cloth shoes on their feet, a handful of men in office suits and leather shoes, old men, hoboes—the park is a different world. At six, the action begins. Vans pull up and encircle the square, the contractors dismount, enter the crowd, and wait as clusters of men gather around them to negotiate the sale of their day's labor. Small eating carts dot the park and along the cement paths second-hand clothes vendors peddle pants and jackets piled on squares of open cloth. The bargaining reaches a climax at seven, when wages are highest, and goes on for another hour as weaker, less aggressive men take what is left. Then, one by one, the vans with their cargoes of workers drive off, the cart-owners lock up, the clothes vendors bundle their goods back into their squares of cloth, and by eight Baba is once more a drab, empty park.