The Yaozen restaurant at San'ya

San'ya, bordering on the Yoshiwara, has had a long history, since the Edo era, as a small community of the lowest class. In addition to day laborers, prostitutes, vagabonds, and the like, low-caste workers such as butchers, tanners, leatherworkers and the like, were also forced to live in this undesirable region; the predominantly Buddhist authorities, who found their work with dead animals repugnant, exiled them here. It has retained its association with lower class workers to this day; in the 1970s it grew into Tokyo's largest day-laborer quarter.