Japan's Threepenny Opera (日本三文オペラ, Nihon Sanmon Opera?) is a novel by Takeshi Kaiko in 1959.
The name was derived from Bertold Brecht's Threepenny Opera and in a way is its variant, in the Japanese setting.
The novel is based on actual events. It is set in post-World War II Japan. In the middle of Osaka there are ruins of the Imperial Arsenal demolished by American bombing, full of scrap metal. While the metals are precious in the destroyed economy of Japan, state bureaucracy is extremely slow to recover them. A settlement of outcasts, lumpen proletariat, spontaneously organize themselves into brigades, using this circumstance as an opportunity to sneak into the Arsenal and scavenge the scrap. Reporters dubbed them Apaches, after the Native American Apache tribe, and they accepted the name.
The novel seemingly has no positive heroes, it is intentionally anti-aesthetical, but the reader feels sympathy for these people strugging for life in the miniature copy of the capitalist society with all its attributes: division of labour, exploitation, hard toil and the dream to get rich quick.
After this novel the term "apache" entered the Japanese language to denote scavengers of recyclables, e.g., of scrap paper.
Famous quotes containing the words japan, threepenny and/or opera:
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)