This is an ethnography of a Buddhist, Catholic, and secular collaboration tending to the souls of marginalized men in San’ya, Tokyo’s former day labor ghetto. How does this post-secular project focused on death and the afterlife reshape relationships that bond the living and the dead? How does it relate to neoliberal biopolitics of urban poverty management? This paper demonstrates how the project subverts traditional Japanese patrilineal necrosociality in ways that enhance ontological security and social ties among participants. Additionally, project developers’ post-secular notion of rapprochement through acknowledging and accepting differences between communities bridged long-time rifts among faith, social service, and activist groups. While in some ways the project enables neoliberal privatization of social services, it is also a potent form of resistant necropolitics from below that reconfigures social relations around death to connect diverse groups, highlighting and addressing the limitations of a familial model of welfare amid neoliberal capitalism.
AllisonA (2013) Precarious Japan.
Durham:
Duke University Press.
2.
AokiH (1988)
Seisha to shisha no taiwa – Kamagasaki etto toso kara [A dialogue between the living and the dead: From the Kamagasaki Winter Struggle].Kaiho Shakaigaku Kenkyu2: 8–24.
3.
BoltonC (2015)
Tracing faith-based service landscapes: The contours of messiness at the Open Door Community in Atlanta.Urban Geography36(2): 221–235.
4.
BrennerNTheodoreN (2002)
Cities and geographies of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’.Antipode34(3): 349–379.
5.
CasanovaJ (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World.
Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
6.
ChapmanDKrognessKJ (2014) Japan’s Household Registration System and Citizenship.
New York:
Routledge.
7.
ClokePBeaumontJ (2012)
Geographies of post-secular rapprochement in the city.Progress in Human Geography37(1): 27–51.
8.
ClokePMayJJohnsenS (2010) Swept Up Lives? Re-envisioning the Homeless City.
Malden:
Wiley-Blackwell.
9.
CookE (2014)
Expectations of failure: Maturity and masculinity for freeters in contemporary Japan.Social Science Japan Journal16(1): 29–43.
10.
DeVerteuilG (2016) Resilience in the Post-welfare Inner City: Voluntary Sector Geographies in London, Los Angeles, and Sydney.
London:
Policy Press.
11.
Estevez-AbeM (2008) Welfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
12.
FowlerE (1996) San’ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo.
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
13.
GiddensA (1990) Consequences of Modernity.
Oxford:
Polity Press.
14.
GillT (2001) Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan.
New York:
State University of New York Press.
15.
GillT (2012)
Failed manhood on the streets of urban Japan: The meanings of self-reliance for homeless men. The Asia-Pacific Journal10(1).
16.
GroveK (2013)
Hidden transcripts of resilience: Power and politics in Jamaican disaster management.Resilience: International Policies, Practices, and Discourses1(3): 193–209.
17.
HallPALamontM (eds) (2013) Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
18.
HenniganBPurserG (2018)
Jobless and godless: Religious neoliberalism and the project of evangelizing employability in the US.Ethnography19(1): 84–104.
19.
KimJ (2016)
Necrosociality: Isolated death and unclaimed cremains in Japan.Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute22: 843–863.
20.
KimuraK (2010) San’ya Chi’iki to Seikatsu Hogo: Yoseba kara Fukushi Koroni no Henyō [The San’ya District and Livelihood Protection Benefits: From Yoseba to Welfare Colony]. Master’s thesis, Tokyo Women’s University.
21.
KitagawaY (2008) Poverty and the social exclusion of single men: Perspectives on homeless men and their relationship with the welfare administration. In: IwataMNishizawaA (eds) Poverty and Social Welfare in Japan.
Victoria:
Trans Pacific Press, 210–225.
22.
KongL (2010)
Global shifts, theoretical shifts: Changing geographies of religion.Progress in Human Geography34(6): 755–776.
23.
LancioneM (2014)
Entanglements of faith: Discourses, practices of care, and homeless people in an Italian City of Saints.Urban Studies51(14): 3062–3078.
24.
MaddrellA (2016)
Mapping grief: A conceptual framework for understanding spatial dimensions of bereavement, mourning, and remembrance.Social & Cultural Geography17(2): 166–188.
Marr M (2015) Better Must Come: Exiting Homelessness in Two Global Cities. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
27.
Marr M (2014) Promises and pretenses of declining street homelessness in the United States and Japan: A human security perspective. P. 135–154 in Maruyama M and Bae S (Eds.) Human Security, Changing States, and Global Responses: Institutions and Practices. New York: Routledge.
28.
Marr M (1997) Maintaining autonomy: The plight of the American skid row and Japanese yoseba. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless 6(3): 229–250.
29.
MiuraM (2012) Welfare through Work: Conservative Ideas, Partisan Dynamics, and Social Protection in Japan.
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
30.
MitchellD (2003) The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.
New York:
The Guilford Press.
31.
MolendijkAL (2015)
In pursuit of the post-secular.International Journal of Philosophy and Theology76(2): 100–115.
32.
MuehlebachA (2012) The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy.
Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
33.
PadgettDK (2007)
There’s no place like (a) home: Ontological security among persons with serious mental illness in the United States.Social Science & Medicine64: 1925–1936.
34.
ParmaksizU (2018)
Making sense of the post-secular. European Journal of Social Theory21(1): 98–116.
35.
SchoppaLJ (2006) Race for the Exits: The Unravelling of Japan’s System of Social Protection.
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
36.
SharpJP (2000) Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance.
New York:
Routledge.
37.
ShirahaseT (2014)
Airin chiiki ni okeru tanshin koureisha seikatsu to shi: tomurai no jissen o chuushinnni [The livelihood and death of elderly single people in the Airin area: On mortuary practices].Gendai Shukyo92–114.
38.
SmallML (2009) Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life.
New York:
Oxford University Press.
39.
SuzukiNOgawaTInabaN (2018)
The right to adequate housing: Evictions of the homeless and the elderly caused by the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.Leisure Studies37(1): 89–96.
40.
VogelEF (1979) Japan as Number One: Lessons for America.
Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
41.
WhiteM (2002) Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval.
Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
42.
WilliamsA (2015)
Post-secular geographies: Theo-ethics, rapprochement, and neoliberal governance in a faith-based drug programme.Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers40(2): 192–208.
43.
WilliamsAClokePThomasS (2012)
Co-constituting neoliberalism: Faith-based organizations, co-option, and resistance in the UK.Environment and Planning A44: 1479–1501.
44.
WillseC (2015) The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States.
Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
45.
WintherJA (2008)
Household enumeration in national discourse.Social Science History32(1): 19–46.
