Following the Ghost: Photo-Based Research on the Absent Presence of Migrant Sex Workers in Yokohama

• In Event: Thinking Ourselves “Out of” and “Into” Visual Research Methodologies in Education

Abstract

In January 2005, foreign migrant women working in a red light district of Yokohama were suddenly “removed” from the city’s landscape (Burman 2006). They were removed by the government to “clean up” the city in preparation for the Port of Yokohama’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2009. Immediately after the removal, the array of small brothels where these migrant women used to work were completely transformed into art studios and fashionable stores under Yokohama’s creative city project. As most of the migrant women were undocumented, some of them were deported back to their countries of origin. It is not publicly known what happened to the rest of the women.
Although the migrant sex workers are no longer present in the district, their “imprint” remains in the city in the forms of urban legends constituted by rumors and various forms of cultural texts and architectural remains of the former brothels (Burman 2006, p. 281). Although they are absent, their ghostly presence continues to constitute the materiality and “lived space” of the present city (Lefebvre 1991, p. 39). It persistently tells us a repressed history of interracial sexual encounters that took place under Japan’s imperial domination over many developing countries, including Japan’s former colonies, from which the foreign women originally came via voluntary or forced migration.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology
Drawing on Avery Gordon’s (2008) notion of “ghostly matters,” this paper pays attention to the ghostly presence of migrant sex workers and attempts to visualize their absent presence through photographic images I take in the city and existing visual materials that serve as the visible evidence of their presence in the past. In so doing, I practice Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism—gleaning the pieces of ghostly remains and reconstructing them to create an image of the past—and suggest a radically different way of seeing Yokohama’s history. I argue that the ghostly presence of migrant workers disrupts the city’s public discourse that renders Yokohama as a cosmopolitan city kept alive by international movements of government elites, business people, tourists and consumers. Instead, it reveals the Yokohama’s history of imperialism, racism and sexism.

Scholarly Significance
As an implication of my research, this paper also tackles a methodological challenge in ethnographic research whereby the researcher is unable to bear witness to the physical subjects of inquiry, in this case, the migrant sex workers who are no longer “available” for the researcher to directly engage. I suggest that visual methods are one of the effective ways to engage the materiality of the absence of people or “ghostly matters” and bring to light things forgotten or left behind. The photographic images produced as a consequence of the research could potentially serve to change and refashion the social relations in which people, including the researcher and the viewers of the images, are located.

Author

• Ayaka Yoshimizu, Simon Fraser University