Nobuyasu Okabayashi -- Sanya Blues（山谷ブルース）

 

As I've mentioned many times before in the blog, that summer trip in 1981 to Japan was the turning point in my life. I was just so amazed by what I had seen and experienced in Tokyo and other cities that I basically devoted myself to studying about the nation of my ancestors and that included presentations in high school. At the time, Japan was the No. 2 economic power in the world behind the United States and there was the belief that the nation, having risen out of the postwar ashes, could do no wrong.

It wasn't until midway through my university years that I had even heard of the place known as Sanya. When I learned that it was a slum that no one talked about and no mapmaker would draw, I was stunned because I'd naively believed that Japanese society could never allow slums or homeless people to exist. Y'know, it was the whole thing about a very few very rich and a very few very poor with a massive middle class. Apparently, however, even those very poor were considered to be persona non grata and were publicly not recognized.

When I started teaching in Asakusa from the mid-1990s, one of my colleagues who lived in the neighbourhood told me that Sanya was pretty much a stone's throw away from his apartment and he sometimes rode his bike through the area. I never went there myself and always wondered what the area looked like (there were blue tarp communities along the Sumida River that I saw); I'd heard that a lot of the residents were middle-aged or elderly day-labourers who waited for work in things like construction via employers who came recruiting in specific locations. 

With the advent of YouTube, I've recently been able to see personal walking tour videos of Sanya and the impression is that though the area looked very inner city, it didn't look anywhere near as bad as some of the slums I've seen and heard about in cities such as Philadelphia or Los Angeles. Plus, I also heard that at least before COVID-19 reared its ugly head, foreign backpackers had used local hotels in Sanya as desirable inexpensive accommodations. However, as you can see above, one YouTuber by the name of Oriental Pearl has reminded me that Sanya is no Valhalla though you have to search fairly hard to find it. Homelessness may not jump out at you in Tokyo but it does exist.

One commenter mentioned that though they appreciated the video, they also wanted to point out that the percentage of poor compared to the rest of society in Japan is miniscule when compared to similar rates in other nations. Point taken, but I try to imagine those people who can only live in Sanya (and Nishinari in Osaka) wondering about their lot in life in a country which is seen as a technological and societal envy in the world.

A while back, I had bookmarked singer-songwriter Nobuyasu Okabayashi's（岡林信康）"Sanya Blues" but when I wrote up the article on Akihiro Miwa's（美輪明宏）"Yoitomake no Uta"（ヨイトマケの唄）a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was time to talk about this song which was first released in September 1968 as his second single (it had also been the B-side for his debut single), a little over three years following the release of "Yoitomake no Uta". 

I recall that singer Sachiko Kanenobu（金延幸子）was considered to be the Joni Mitchell of Japan. Okabayashi was given a similar comparison in that he was seen to be the Bob Dylan of Japan...basically the God of J-Folk. From what I've read on his J-Wiki profile, he has also been brutally frank in his opinions through interviews and lyrics and probably has never suffered fools gladly (many of his songs ended up getting banned from being played on radio). As someone who had also worked as a day-labourer in Sanya, Okabayashi brought some of those experiences to bear when he created "Sanya Blues" along with co-lyricist Hisahiro Hiraga（平賀久裕）. Compared to the signs of hope and pride in "Yoitomake no Uta", "Sanya Blues" shows no optimism; the lyrics relate the story of a man trapped in the titular neighbourhood who churns through the same schedule of getting those odd jobs getting buildings and highways erected and then slipping into the shochu bottle after work, never getting any recognition for his deeds.

As dark as "Sanya Blues" may be, Okabayashi didn't mind having a sense of humour as you can see above. I'm not sure whether the song was one of those banned on radio but just like "Yoitomake no Uta", there were plenty of other cover versions by singers such as Shinichi Mori（森進一）in 1970 and Aki Yashiro（八代亜紀）. The original though peaked at No. 65 on Oricon and sold about 14,000 records.