Chapter 324: The Poor

As time passed, the people inside the Manila bar store were gathering more and more. Older, younger, those who came alone, and those who came in groups of three or five.

Female clerks interspersed with them delivering towels, drinks, this or that. The Filipino women who work in the bars in Manila are able to send 100,000 yen a month to their hometowns when business is good.

If business is slow at the bar, it’s not so sure. They also need to live on their own, and Tokyo is known globally for its high level of consumption, a world-class standard.

They had to work six days a week, while the Manila bar was open nineteen hours a day. If they came during the day, no later than six p.m., the cost of personal consumption would be cut in half.

While Masayoshi Kishimoto and the others were drinking, various topics of conversation were still going on. Among them, there were some who thought highly of themselves, and felt that even if they were in the commonplace Manila Bar, they were completely different from the cab drivers and others who came in to spend their money.

It’s like some chess players who think they are superior to mahjong players.

They have souls and the ability to think independently, while those people are just a bunch of people with uninteresting souls, boring lives, muddling along, living in mediocrity, and not even knowing why they are living until they die.

Meanwhile, Masayoshi Kishimoto turned his body sideways and stretched out one ear to eavesdrop on the conversation of the congregation of people at the card table next to him. In his mind, there was no such thing as “the dirty thoughts of a man of culture” in his head at all.

Different professions have different lives and experiences. Even though he was a second-generation rich man in his previous life, he did not look down on the poor at all. In his current life, he is a high-ranking economic emperor and plutocrat, and he still has no intention of looking down on the poor.

The middle-aged taxi driver is also a human being. Even if their personal lives are not as good as they could be, they are still much better off than the Filipinos in Japan.

Even if they were naturalized, they would still be discriminated against by the current mainstream society. Their children are often the first to be bullied in Japanese schools, and they are never told to go back to the Philippines.

There is nothing they can do about it. Couldn’t they really take their children back to their home country, the Philippines? That would never happen.

Even if they themselves were willing, the bullied children would not be willing. Their hearts were as clear as a mirror. If they stayed in Tokyo, even if it was hard and tiring, even if they lived in the slums, they would have no problem getting enough to eat and wear.

If they went back to the Philippines, it would be a different story. The poor Filipinos who live in the slums of Manila regard “PAGPAG” as an alternative cuisine.

What is “PAGPAG”? PAGPAG” is a kind of meat that is sorted out from the garbage of McDonald’s, KFC, and other fast-food restaurants, that is, the leftover fried chicken that other people have not eaten or eaten.

Many of them have spit and other filth on them. In the place where maggots and flies are all over the place, there is a person who sorts the meat by hand and removes the leftover meat from the chicken bones.

If they come across any that are relatively intact, they will leave them for the people inside their own homes to eat. They then sell the meat to vendors who specialize in processing it into “PAGPAG”.

The “PAGPAG” vendors reprocess the meat and sell it to the poor who need it. Even if the poor people who buy “PAGPAG” know exactly what they are buying, they still buy it because it is cheap.

Some people became sick after eating “PAGPAG”. Even so, it did not stop the poor in the slums of Manila from buying it.

Whether it was self-congratulation and deception, or genuine ignorance, they had no choice but to agree that it was not the fault of the “PAGPAG” itself, but the fault of the people who had not taken care of it.

In this regard, Justice Kishimoto could not help but think of Jack London’s documentary work “Deep Down”. London’s documentary work “Dwellers in the Abyss”. He wrote about the living conditions and ways of the people in the slums of the East End of London in 1902.

One of the most memorable aspects of the book is Jack London’s book “The Dwellers of the Abyss”. London’s book was accompanied by accounts of household expenses, thus best visualizing the misery of a low-paid life.

Not only that, but the working hours were long and even the work was unstable. This is not enough to eat and wear, but also a family life. Even being a soldier is better than living in the East End of London.

George Bernard Shaw once said that soldiers appeared to be heroic and patriotic patriots, but in reality they were unfortunate poor people who offered up their bodies as cannon fodder in order to get regular rations, a place to live and clothes to wear.

This is just like when China was so backward and economically poor that the people were so hungry for meat that they would even buy and eat plague pork (a pig that died of a disease and the meat would be completely red in color).

However, comparing the two objectively, the poor in the slums of Manila in the Philippines are much more miserable. It would not be an exaggeration to describe their living conditions as a cold meal.

Many people at the bottom of Japanese society, once they reach middle age, begin to live alone. Not that they like it, but there is a kind of helplessness in the heart.

In Japan, people who work as cab drivers are generally middle-aged and old. They would come to Manila Bar after their shifts were over, just to squeeze out their inner loneliness and look for a harbor where they could dock mentally.

They don’t need to know who Kenji Miyazawa is, what great masterpieces he’s written, and how good his works are; it doesn’t do anything for them.

It does not bring them the most direct increase in financial income, nor does it soothe their hearts and minds.

Only in a place like Manila Bar can they find comfort for their soul and spirit from the female shopkeepers. This is what they want to enjoy spiritually.

In Takenozuka, Adachi Ward, a northern suburb of Tokyo, there are more than 50 Filipino-run bars like Manila Bar.

Although Adachi is one of the 23 wards in Tokyo, it is one of the three biggest slums in Japan, with a large number of delinquent youths, and the average price of houses in this area is the lowest in Tokyo. It can be considered an “island on land” in Tokyo, and is often ranked at the bottom of the list of 23 wards.

Hirokazu Ibushi’s “The Family of Thieves,” which won the Palme d’Or at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, not only shows viewers the darker side of Tokyo behind the glitz and glamor, but also exposes the problems and contradictions that exist in Japanese society.

The movie is set in the Arakawa and Adachi neighborhoods. Even though Arakawa is one of the 23 wards in Tokyo, it is still a marginalized area.

In the Edo period, Arakawa-ku was a farmland. From the Meiji era onwards, numerous factories were built using the water source of the Arakawa River, thus promoting industrialization.

To this day, it has a very low presence, and does not even have a commercial district like Akabane, which is more worthy of the word “Arakawa” in its name.