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A Song of the Bottom / Dokkoi! Songs from the Bottom
(Dokkoi! Ningen bushi – Kotobukicho: Jiyu rodosha no machi)

Screening on Film
Directed by Shinsuke Ogawa.
Japan, 1975, 16mm, black & white, 121 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

As the protests at Sanrizuka transformed, Ogawa began looking for other subjects. He eventually moved to Yamagata, but considered other subjects like this one: the brutal Kotobukicho district of Yokohama. Only 250 meters on a side, it was home to 6,000 people living in 90 run-down flophouses. This was where day laborers lived and died on the streets. Following the method they developed in Sanrizuka, Ogawa’s crew lived with the workers, tenderly filming the trials of their daily lives in this heartrending film.

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