Abstract

It all started in September 2018 with a tweet posted by the sociologist Masahiko Kishi on Twitter: There are many things in Tokyo, but I want to hear about people’s lives in the city with its hardships and joys. Many years ago, Kishi read Studs Terkel's The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on American Dream and was impressed about how the story of ordinary people could be interesting enough as it was. Once he become an adult he wondered if he could make a similar book but set, in his case, in the city of Tokyo to get some of its inhabitants talking about their stories of life in a plain and simple way. His proposal received a great response and eventually he decided to produce this book.

As the most populated city in of the World it is difficult to visualize what kind of people lives in Tokyo. Therefore, he decided to call for interviewing candidates to help him to gather as many stories as possible from the widest backgrounds.
The call for interviewers began in July 2020: We don’t require any kind of qualifications or affiliation. We just look for people capable to carefully listen to others. We only require seriousness, quietness, and humility. The result was nearly 500 applications and 150 selected candidates. After that each interviewer must find a storyteller by his own. No matter if it was his or her grandparents, neighbors, or even unknown people. For instance, one of them asked his grandmother, a zainichi Korean, a native Korean who had lived in Tokyo for many years and she talked about her life in the city during the Pacific War and after the defeat. Other interviewer asked a classmate, a University Chinese Student from the city of Wuhan and he explained about his experience living in Japan during the pandemic of COVID19. Other talked to a young Cambodian he met at work who was worried about how to explain his family about his new life in Tokyo and the discovering of being gay.
As a result, all the interviews shows a big picture, a wide range of different ages, genders, occupations, classes, situations, backgrounds. In a nutshell, a reflection on the huge human variety living in the city.
It is also significant for the book that these interviews were held before the Olympics Games postponed due the restrictions of the pandemic.

Author’s Information

Masahiko Kishi was born in 1967. Professor at Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of Advanced Studies. Specialist in Okinawa’s, history and society and social research methodology. He is author too of Assimilation and Otherization: Mainland Workers in Postwar Okinawa, Life in Town, Sociology of Fragmentary Things (winner of the Kinokuniya Jinbun Grand Prize 2016), Methods of Qualitative Social Research: A Sociology of Understanding the Rationality of Others, Vinyl Umbrella (nominated for the 156th Akutagawa Prize and 30th Mishima Prize), Old Okinawa, Mangoes and Grenades, and Library (nominated for the 32nd Mishima Prize).