"*Doyagai*: Japan's Skid Row" presented by Prof. Tom Gill

This lecture (in English) will be held Wednesday, February 15th at 7:00
PM
at Lakeland University in Shinjuku.

Most major Japanese cities have an area called a *doyagai*, roughly
corresponding to the American term ‘skid row’, a slum district
inhabited
almost exclusively by men, living in tiny rooms in run-down lodging
houses
known as *doya*. In Japan, there are three major *doyagai* – Kamagasaki
in
Osaka, Sanya in Tokyo, and Kotobuki in Yokohama. They started out as
centers of casual labour – a place to get a job for the day and a bed
for
the night. In recent decades, however, the demand for *doyagai* labour
has
declined, the population has aged, and the great majority of inhabitants
are on welfare. In this presentation Prof. Tom Gill will give a detailed
account of the history and present-day circumstances of Japan’s *
doyagai*,
with special reference to his main fieldsite, Kotobuki, and a
comparative
look at the Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Tom Gill is a professor of social anthropology at the Faculty of
International Studies of Meiji Gakuin University, Yokohama campus. His
research interests include marginal labour, homelessness and masculinity,
in the US, UK, and Japan. He has written numerous papers and two books
on
these topics, the first of which was *Men of Uncertainty: the Social
Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan* (State University of
New York Press, 2001). More recently he has published a one-man
ethnography
of a Japanese day labourer in Japanese (*Mainichi Ahōdansu*, Kyōtotto,
2013) and in English (*Yokohama Street Life*, Lexington, 2015). Since
2011
he has been doing fieldwork whenever possible with victims of the
Fukushima
nuclear disaster.

For a map and directions to Lakeland's Shinjuku Campus, see our
website:

*http://luj.lakeland.edu/Campus-Life/lakeland-lectures
*

Lakeland Lectures are a forum for researchers, students and members of
the
public to discuss contemporary issues affecting Japan. Lakeland
University
has offered a U.S.-accredited liberal arts program in Tokyo since 1991.
Lakeland's main campus is in Wisconsin, USA and was founded in 1862.
--
Roger Grabowski, Jr.
Assistant Professor of General Studies
Lakeland University Japan