Japan Times: The urban underclass of a modernist Tokyo
The sheer amount that we can learn about the Asakusa of 1929-1930 from Yasunari Kawabata's "The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa," along with the unconventional form Kawabata adopted to deal with the confusion of knowledge that modern urban life threw up, place this novel squarely within this tradition of which "Ulysses" is the paramount example...This bit of popular storytelling helps Kawabata to capture an Asakusa driven by popular culture...If sociology seems too earnest to be entertainment, there is also the found poetry of the revue billboards: "MAJOR DANCE REVOLT OF THE NAKED IT GIRLS," "GREAT NAKED MARCH, ALL AND EVERYTHING GROTESQUE." There is Tokyo lore, now almost forgotten. We learn, for example, of the "cat catcher" who "lets loose a sparrow on a string. Cat is lured closer. . . . Nabbed tabby is beaten to death at once. . . . Cat-catcher hides the pelt under his clothes . . . . It brings in a lot at the samisen store."
