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I’d lend him some of the money my grandmother had given me when I left home.
    The place they called “skid row” wasn’t all that far from my uncle’s firm, in Fukagawa. The whole area was crammed with flophouses; at the most there was only about a yard’s space between them, so you had to turn sideways to get through the alleys. There’s no telling how many of these “inns” there were altogether. The boards over the open drains had come off, and the sewage spilled over into the road; you got the stuff on you, all sticky and squelchy, as you walked.
    There was only one time every day that really mattered in the area. Early in the morning, so early you could only just make people out in the dark, a scout would come and stand out in the middle of the road and yell “Hey, there!” and a couple of dozen men would come trickling out.
    “There’s unloading work at such-and-such a place,” he’d shout. “Anybody who wants to go, put up your hand.” And the hands would go up. The scout would pick some of them out by name. “The rest of you’ll have to wait till next time,” he’d say, and those left would move off without a word.
    He’d check the number of men who were going to work that day and give them ten sen each. “Off you go, and be quick about it,” he’d say in his bossy way. “I won’t stand for any lateness.”
    And the men would dash off with their ten sen in their hands. You know where they were going? To the grub shop.
    The people who lived in those parts never had any more money than they needed to keep them going that day. So most of the men hadn’t had any breakfast. The first thing the scout did was give the guys he’d picked some money to have breakfast with; otherwise they’d be too hungry to work properly. As for the ones who didn’t get any work—there was nothing they
could
do, so they just stayed put till something turned up.
    The flophouses turned them out in the morning, so they had to stay out in the road. Whenever a scout came, they’d gather around him. If nothing came of it, they’d go on staying put. If there was nothing that day, they’d hope the next day would be better. And if it wasn’t, then they stayed put till the next day again. Anyone who still had a bit of cash could go into a flophouse at night, but the rest were turned away. What did the guys do who didn’t get work even on the third day? Nothing—just put up with not eating. Just stood around with their arms folded, drinking some water occasionally, making the best of it.
    In that world, there were a few things you just never said. One was “I’m hungry”; the others were “I’m cold” and “I’m hot.” As far as being hungry was concerned, they were all in the same boat, so it was a kind of competition to see who could bear it longest. If any of the men standing around there complained of being hungry, he’d be treated as an outsider, a slob who didn’t have the guts to stick it out. They were all barely keeping going as it was, and for somebody to talk about food would have been the last straw.
    It was the same with anyone who said he was cold. A loincloth more like a bit of rag, a single cotton kimono, and a small towel—that was all the property a man had. Even in winter with an icy wind blowing, they’d stand there in their loincloths and kimonos, putting up with it, trying to look as though they weren’t cold, even though their bellies were empty and a wind was blowing fit to knock you over. It was the only shred of pride they had left.
    After three days of steady rain with no work to be found and nothing to do, a man gets desperate. If your belly’s rumbling and your head almost reeling, you feel like eating anything you find lying around, whatever it is. But they wouldn’t let themselves become scavengers—they absolutely refused to pick up anything lying in the road, or take scraps from the grub shop. Anybody who gave in and did that would be sneered at for letting himself