fingers crossed
May. 14th, 2012 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiThere's a neighborhood in Osaka which is not like anywhere else in the city. For many years the city's flophouses have been concentrated there--cheap pay-by-the-day lodging houses, Single Room Occupancy kind of places, catering to day laborers mostly working construction. Because the city has done its best to shaft these people over the years, especially during periods when the economy's down and there's no work, this neighborhood has a history of riots. It's changing somewhat now, as day-labor work in general dries up and the long-time laborers grow older, some of them on pension. Backpacker kids from abroad come there to sleep cheap, artists are moving in (not so much in a SoHo-esque gentrifying way as to work within the existing community) and people reexamining the whole idea of the place.
I've walked through it a few times (it's quite a bit south of where I live) and found it very different from other neighborhoods--all lodging-houses (big ones with names like Hotel New Japan, little old-fashioned ones with names like Moonflower Inn and shoe-boxes in the front hall), box-lunch-for-a-dollar places (100 yen, that is), soda vending machines priced at half what they are elsewhere, tiny grimy long-established bars, coin laundries and storage-locker storefronts, religious establishments of unclear affiliation at a much higher frequency than you'd see elsewhere. And people camping out on the sidewalk, some with what seems like a full set of furniture, some literally huddled in doorways. Mostly men, middle-aged to older, populating the streets. I've been glared at and looked at curiously and hit on (very gently) and, when I passed through around New Year's, given a handful of tangerines.
One of the reasons I know something about the history of this area is a book that came out last year, edited by some postdocs from Osaka City University, with contributions from all kinds of people involved with the area--long-time residents, artists, lawyers, priests of both the Catholic and Buddhist variety, cartoonists, labor organizers, city employees, you name it. Not so much personal testimony as a careful examination of the history of the neighborhood through the twentieth century, its problems and quirks and troubles, and how things stand now. Blessedly free of the "Japan Sentimental" tendencies you see so often around here, just factual and informative, and interesting because the material itself is interesting--at least if you're at all interested in Osaka, urban studies, poverty, modern history, labor, aging, religious activism, construction, you name it.
So I read this book and thought, hmm, this should be available in English. You know? I could do that. And this year, having gained myself some extra time, I plunged into a cafe in the neighborhood mentioned in the book, and said something along the lines of um, I want to translate this. who should I talk to? Amazingly enough, they were able to put me in touch with the City University guy who was the editor within the same day, and he was very nice (and, um, sort of my type) and said it was a great idea and he'd talk to the publisher. And it looks like something might actually happen. Details not yet clear, but the publisher said he'd like to do it too, so... We'll see. As they say, be careful what you don't ask for, you might not get it.
I've walked through it a few times (it's quite a bit south of where I live) and found it very different from other neighborhoods--all lodging-houses (big ones with names like Hotel New Japan, little old-fashioned ones with names like Moonflower Inn and shoe-boxes in the front hall), box-lunch-for-a-dollar places (100 yen, that is), soda vending machines priced at half what they are elsewhere, tiny grimy long-established bars, coin laundries and storage-locker storefronts, religious establishments of unclear affiliation at a much higher frequency than you'd see elsewhere. And people camping out on the sidewalk, some with what seems like a full set of furniture, some literally huddled in doorways. Mostly men, middle-aged to older, populating the streets. I've been glared at and looked at curiously and hit on (very gently) and, when I passed through around New Year's, given a handful of tangerines.
One of the reasons I know something about the history of this area is a book that came out last year, edited by some postdocs from Osaka City University, with contributions from all kinds of people involved with the area--long-time residents, artists, lawyers, priests of both the Catholic and Buddhist variety, cartoonists, labor organizers, city employees, you name it. Not so much personal testimony as a careful examination of the history of the neighborhood through the twentieth century, its problems and quirks and troubles, and how things stand now. Blessedly free of the "Japan Sentimental" tendencies you see so often around here, just factual and informative, and interesting because the material itself is interesting--at least if you're at all interested in Osaka, urban studies, poverty, modern history, labor, aging, religious activism, construction, you name it.
So I read this book and thought, hmm, this should be available in English. You know? I could do that. And this year, having gained myself some extra time, I plunged into a cafe in the neighborhood mentioned in the book, and said something along the lines of um, I want to translate this. who should I talk to? Amazingly enough, they were able to put me in touch with the City University guy who was the editor within the same day, and he was very nice (and, um, sort of my type) and said it was a great idea and he'd talk to the publisher. And it looks like something might actually happen. Details not yet clear, but the publisher said he'd like to do it too, so... We'll see. As they say, be careful what you don't ask for, you might not get it.
