Current Affairs

It’s now almost a year since Tepco lost control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and in that time many Japanese citizens have not only lost faith in the company, but in nuclear power itself. A suspicion and fear that’s most visible during demonstrations and marches, but also on the streets of Tokyo in the form of art.

The point of which is perfectly clear.

In modern, shrinking Japan, there isn’t exactly an abundance of babies, although it hasn’t quite got to the stage yet when noticing one is a novelty.

And yet as relatively small as their numbers are, they are still clearly fascinated by the kind of face that makes up even less of the population than they do.

Coverage of Japan invariably touches on a variety of regularly trotted out cliches, but arguably one constant is that of a modern, affluent nation. A country that despite its lost decade(s), still benefits from a relatively low unemployment rate, along with an enviably first-class infrastructure.

It’s an approach that admittedly contains a fair bit of truth, but what it also does is brush over the increasing number of people who aren’t aided by any of the above — a large number of whom haven’t done so for quite some time too. And while it’s not difficult to find poverty in many parts of Tokyo (let alone the country as a whole), around Taito-ku, in an area once known as Sanya, it’s starkly and depressingly obvious.

Photographs from this area have appeared on Tokyo Times before — images that are troubling not only in the plight of those featured, but in the potentially voyeuristic element of photographing the dispossessed and homeless in the first place.

It’s an argument that I’ve wrestled with, and one that understandably is often debated on photography sites and forums. But as ethically dubious as such photos can be, with next to no coverage of these problems, both in Japan and elsewhere, it also seems equally questionable not to publish them — even if it is only on a website like this, rather than in a newspaper, or on a site of note.

So here, without further justification or explanation from me, are the rest. All of which were taken in a short space of time, in the space of a few streets.

In the field of technological innovation or adaptation, Japan is often leading the pack, yet in regards gender equality, the country is still very much a luddite. The life expectancy of Japanese women, of course, is second to none, but when it comes to any kind of economic or political parity, they are very much at the wrong end of the scale. In fact, after reaching the dizzy height of 94th in the world according to The Global Gender Gap Report in 2010, Japan has now slipped back to 98th, just about forcing Kenya and Belize to the outer extremities of the top 100.

And yet despite Japan’s woefully low position, it’s clear that things have changed — just very slowly that’s all. A shift that means those young women who came of age this year will enter a world different from the one their mothers and grandmothers ventured into. A world not exactly poles part, but one that does at least offer the option of independence, along with the possibility of heading in a very different direction.

They don’t appear very often, but with the announcement that a disruptive neighbour, unpredictable dictator and the world’s greatest ever golfer had died, it wasn’t surprising to see special edition newspapers being handed out at Tokyo stations.