Illustration by Takamori Yakko. "If anyone doubts the large extent of Japan's modernization, he has, only to point ironically to her slums. They are (or in some cases were) on a par with some of the worst industrial slums in the world.

This is a glimpse of the slums (himmin-kutsu) in good old Kawasaki, as bleak an industrial landscape as modern man could devise. These are the ruins of the homes of the people who worked ten to fifteen hours a day for meager low wages in the Kawasaki airplane plants and others, helping to build the Zero and other weapons designed to raise the range of the Rising Sun. Now these same people have come back and reconstructed brave little shacks of scrap good and corrugated iron, usually of single room, that house a whole family. The cooking (and almost everything else) is done outside--an inside kitchen is an undreamed of luxury.

In great cities like Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo; in lesser great cities like Aomori, Sendai, Shizuoka, Hakata, Fukuoka; in small but important industrial cities like Gifu, Toyohashi, and Hiratsuka, this scene is duplicated. The road to even a modicum of modern comfort is truly a hard one for these millions. They meet it bravely. Their problem is Japan's problem. It would be almost axiomatic to say Japan will be well on the Road to Real Democracy when these “himmin-kutsu” are on the way out!

The artist? Just a man that can see beauty anywhere. The Japanese kids?--friendly as ever. "Chewing-gum arimasu-ka?" (Do you have chewing gum?)"

From: Grauer, Alvin. So I went to Japan. Tokyo: Nippon Times, 1947.