Screen Representation of <i>Nikoyon</i>: The Unemployment Relief Public Works Program Workers in the Screen Cultural History

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  • スクリーンの「ニコヨン」たち―失業対策事業日雇労働者の映像文化史
  • スクリーン ノ 「 ニコヨン 」 タチ : シツギョウ タイサク ジギョウ ヒヤトイ ロウドウシャ ノ エイゾウ ブンカシ

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Abstract

<p>The problems in unemployment caused by the Dodge Line had reached a crisis level when the Unemployment Relief Public Works Program (URPW) began to provide the unemployed with daily outdoor work through the job placement office in each district starting in 1949.</p><p>People working under the aegis of the URPW were nicknamed nikoyon. These nikoyon workers were often depicted in the 1950s Japanese screen media including film and lantern-slide gento as a special representation, which embodied human rights, poverty, and labor problems in postwar Japan. Films such as And Yet We Live/ Dokkoi Ikiteru (1951) or Nikoyon Story/ Nikoyon Monogatari represent male UPRW workers’ hardships of life.</p><p>Moreover, UPRW workers produced several independent films as part of their union activities. For example, some UPRW union members Iidabashi, Tokyo produced a lantern slide film titled Nikoyon (1955) on their own. Nikoyon focused on everyday problems which female URPW workers facing. In 1962, UPRW workers union commissioned Mochizuki Yuko to direct a semi-documentary film titled Koko ni Ikiru/ Here We Live (1962), which also offered the perspective of female URPW workers. In this article, I examine the process by which UPRW workers used screen media to produce their own representations, and how they showed that outdoor day workers could be women and not just men.</p>

Journal

  • eizogaku

    eizogaku 102 (0), 31-53, 2019-07-25

    Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences

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