ABSTRACT
San’ya is a small district in northern Tokyo. In the postwar era, it became home to several thousand day-laborers who lived in cheap and simple hostels (doya). These day-laborers played a large role in building the booming city around the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, while San’ya itself gained the reputation of being a rowdy, mafia-infested, and outright dangerous place. Over the 2000s, however, San’ya has gradually become a cheap and accessible destination for international tourists and will not least absorb the visitors of Tokyo 2020. This chapter discusses San’ya’s contested transformation from day-laborer quarter to tourist destination.
