Osaka Blues

Nishinari Ward in Osaka is widely considered the most dodgy district in all of Japan.  This 4.5 square kilometre (2.8 square mile) ward is populated by yakuza, prostitutes, drug dealers, transients and homeless.  It is famous for its doyas (cheap rooming houses), its red-light district, illegal gambling dens, frequent riots and the highest rate of tuberculosis in Japan.  Oh, and there is a zoo too.

So why, you might ask, would I go to such a place?  Well, amid all this shady activity are some respectable music venues, and my friend Madoka Kimura was performing at one called Nanbaya.

The temporary home of Nanbaya is in a long, dim shotengai (shopping arcade), the faded remnants of another era.  Like most of these covered shopping streets in Japan the majority of the shops are shuttered.  There are however dozens of barber shops, kissaten (coffee shops), and karaoke bars open for business, as well as a few suspect jewellers.  The customers are mostly old men.  There is no indication of an imminent hipster revolution here, of slow-cooking gentrification or any sort of redevelopment.  It is alive, just barely, but with a future as dim as the lighting.

Nanbaya is not gritty or beat as one would expect of a blues club.  There is nothing cool or even kitsch about the space.  It is over-lit with harsh fluorescents and smells of grease.  Were it not for the musical instruments and flyers for upcoming shows taped to the wall I would never guess this was a music venue.  The staff are curiously unfriendly.  I listen to them explain to another patron unapologetically that there is very little to eat.

Madoka-san brightens things up when she takes the stage, wearing a midnight blue swing dress, evening gloves, rhinestone mules and hair in an up-do.  She has the voice and swagger of a blues singer, her style both sultry and buoyant.  She and guitarist Haruyuki Tanaka work there way through a list of blues standards for the small but appreciative crowd.  The music invites some passersby over for a peek.

The blues is a music born of struggle.  It has always lived on the fringes.  It's no surprise really that I would find it in a place like Nishinari-ku.